So here we are, the last blog post of the term. Man how time flies. Thanks to you all, my many faithful followers -- or all five of you at least.
It's been a pleasure to share my thoughts about technology in the classroom with you, and I'll look forward to seeing you down the road.
In the meantime, I'd like to share a few thoughts on what I learned in this course:
I entered the term thinking that technology was a good aid for teachers to reach students, and that those teachers who took advantage of technology are good, thoughtful and innovative educators.
What I see now is that, though these teachers should be applauded, technology is and will continue to become more of a life source for teachers, a lifeboat they will need to survive in the changing waters of education.
Soon technology will be considered the standard, and those who fail to integrate it fully into their classrooms will be left behind.
I can't wait to use the programs and applications that we learned in this class in my own classroom, as well as those that have yet to be developed.
It may be frightening to some, but I believe this makes it an exciting time to be entering the world of education. When I retire after a long and successful teaching career, I'll be able to look back and say I was there when the technology revolution really got going.
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Technology: a medium, not a message
PowerPoint, MovieMaker, YouTube.
The programs and technologies that Shawn Denton and William Sewell reference in their article, "Multimodal Literacies in the Secondary English Classroom," may be new. But the spirit behind their lessons are as old as teaching itself. And that is the key to their success.
In the article, printed this month in English Journal, Denton and Sewell review a number of multimedia projects they led in their high school classes.
Denton, a high school English teacher in Kansas, and Sewell, a former high school teacher and current professor of education, write about a project in which their students created PowerPoint presentations introducing a new holiday they invented, and one in which they created a MovieMaker presentation campaigning for their favorite bands for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (Sewell & Denton, 2011).
Both projects, among others the mentioned in the article, went far in engaging students. But, as much as the technology helps, it's the teachers' efforts to reach the students at their level that truly reaches them.
In facilitating the projects, the teachers creatively used popular culture to help draw the students in. For the holiday project, Denton showed clips of popular television shows Saturday Night Live and Seinfeld, both of which featured characters who have created their own celebrations. And in regard to the Rock and Roll project, Sewell encouraged his students to use video and audio clips of their favorite musical acts to highlight their presentations, which helped engage them fully.
"As music plays such an important role in students’ lives, students demonstrate a high degree of motivation with this project since they pick their own favorite music groups for their research projects," the authors write in the article. "Student who normally would not be engaged in traditional lessons put a great deal of energy and time into their presentations," (Sewell & Denton, 2011).
Certainly, the technologies available in Denton and Sewell's classrooms benefit the students in many ways. Learning to use the computer programs safely, responsibly and effectively will help them in both the academic and professional worlds, the authors note.
But without the teachers' innovative efforts to reach the students at common points of interest, like music and television, students may not engage as much, failing to put in the time or effort to learn from the assignments.
In other lessons, the teachers use clips from the movie Star Wars: A New Hope and from the television show Family Guy to teach lessons on story arch and internal and external conflict, among other literary themes.
"We found that these clips help build background and draw on previous knowledge to make connections with new learning," the authors write (Sewell & Denton, 2011).
"Implementation of technology in the classroom initially proved problematic as we had to learn the software, teach several different programs to our students, and adjust our teaching styles to be more multimodal in orientation," they concluded. "(But) in the end, we found assignments to be much more than work: presenting and receiving information in a multimodal format became fun for our students and us," (Sewell & Denton, 2011).
Sewell, W., & Denton, S. (May 2011). Multimodal Literacies in the Secondary English Classroom. English Journal, 100, 61-65. Retrieved May 21, 2011, from http://proquest
The programs and technologies that Shawn Denton and William Sewell reference in their article, "Multimodal Literacies in the Secondary English Classroom," may be new. But the spirit behind their lessons are as old as teaching itself. And that is the key to their success.
In the article, printed this month in English Journal, Denton and Sewell review a number of multimedia projects they led in their high school classes.
Denton, a high school English teacher in Kansas, and Sewell, a former high school teacher and current professor of education, write about a project in which their students created PowerPoint presentations introducing a new holiday they invented, and one in which they created a MovieMaker presentation campaigning for their favorite bands for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (Sewell & Denton, 2011).
Both projects, among others the mentioned in the article, went far in engaging students. But, as much as the technology helps, it's the teachers' efforts to reach the students at their level that truly reaches them.
In facilitating the projects, the teachers creatively used popular culture to help draw the students in. For the holiday project, Denton showed clips of popular television shows Saturday Night Live and Seinfeld, both of which featured characters who have created their own celebrations. And in regard to the Rock and Roll project, Sewell encouraged his students to use video and audio clips of their favorite musical acts to highlight their presentations, which helped engage them fully.
"As music plays such an important role in students’ lives, students demonstrate a high degree of motivation with this project since they pick their own favorite music groups for their research projects," the authors write in the article. "Student who normally would not be engaged in traditional lessons put a great deal of energy and time into their presentations," (Sewell & Denton, 2011).
Certainly, the technologies available in Denton and Sewell's classrooms benefit the students in many ways. Learning to use the computer programs safely, responsibly and effectively will help them in both the academic and professional worlds, the authors note.
But without the teachers' innovative efforts to reach the students at common points of interest, like music and television, students may not engage as much, failing to put in the time or effort to learn from the assignments.
In other lessons, the teachers use clips from the movie Star Wars: A New Hope and from the television show Family Guy to teach lessons on story arch and internal and external conflict, among other literary themes.
"We found that these clips help build background and draw on previous knowledge to make connections with new learning," the authors write (Sewell & Denton, 2011).
"Implementation of technology in the classroom initially proved problematic as we had to learn the software, teach several different programs to our students, and adjust our teaching styles to be more multimodal in orientation," they concluded. "(But) in the end, we found assignments to be much more than work: presenting and receiving information in a multimodal format became fun for our students and us," (Sewell & Denton, 2011).
Sewell, W., & Denton, S. (May 2011). Multimodal Literacies in the Secondary English Classroom. English Journal, 100, 61-65. Retrieved May 21, 2011, from http://proquest
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Over-parenting parents?
A few weeks ago in class, we were asking if parents can become too involved in their children's education.
Some of my classmates, who teach in classrooms of their own, spoke of their experience with online grade books, with overzealous parents demanding their children's grades.
I don't have much experience with parents myself, but I have to believe that, as annoying as they can be, involving parents in the education of their children only benefits everyone involved.
School administrators and education professionals seem to agree. Lorna Costantini, a co-host of the Parents As Partners webcast on EdTechTalk.com, addressed the matter in her presentation to the 2010 K12 Online Conference.
In her presentation, called "Digital Parent Engagement," Constantini reviewed the efforts of schools and districts across the globe that are using blogs, podcasts and social media not only to keep parents up to date on what's going on in their children's classes, but to welcome parents into the learning process.
In Toronto, district administrators are using blogs, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to communicate with parents. In Hamilton, Ontario, first grade teacher Aviva Dunsiger uses Voicethread to allow her parents to take part in the students' lessons, and at the Twynham School in England, teachers use an online portal called "Pathways" to allow parents to access their children's grades.
These programs allow parents to continue their children's classroom lessons at home, administrators said. And, in the words of one professor, they draw the line between parent involvement and engagement.
Some of my classmates, who teach in classrooms of their own, spoke of their experience with online grade books, with overzealous parents demanding their children's grades.
I don't have much experience with parents myself, but I have to believe that, as annoying as they can be, involving parents in the education of their children only benefits everyone involved.
School administrators and education professionals seem to agree. Lorna Costantini, a co-host of the Parents As Partners webcast on EdTechTalk.com, addressed the matter in her presentation to the 2010 K12 Online Conference.
In her presentation, called "Digital Parent Engagement," Constantini reviewed the efforts of schools and districts across the globe that are using blogs, podcasts and social media not only to keep parents up to date on what's going on in their children's classes, but to welcome parents into the learning process.
In Toronto, district administrators are using blogs, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to communicate with parents. In Hamilton, Ontario, first grade teacher Aviva Dunsiger uses Voicethread to allow her parents to take part in the students' lessons, and at the Twynham School in England, teachers use an online portal called "Pathways" to allow parents to access their children's grades.
These programs allow parents to continue their children's classroom lessons at home, administrators said. And, in the words of one professor, they draw the line between parent involvement and engagement.
"When we involve parents in school ... we're rolling them into the agenda that's already set by the school," said Debbie Pushor, a professor in the University of Saskatchewan's School of Education. "The school sets the agenda. they decide how they want the parents to be involved.
"When we're engaging parents, we're making a pledge to one another," Pushor said. "We're in a relationship that matters about something really important, and that's the children in our lives."
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Getting lost in our new Digital Nation
So, I'm becoming increasingly convinced that our Digital Nation hasn't yet defined its own boundaries.
For class this week, we watched an episode of the PBS program Frontline called "Digital Nation" that explored the benefits and drawbacks of our ever-connected culture.
The episode included educators, sociologists and business leaders who celebrated cell phones, the Internet and other technologies for bringing the world closer together; and it featured researchers who see technology as tearing us all apart.
What I got most out of it is that we really don't have a clue yet what long-term consequences these developments will have on our world.
Sure, it's easy to see the immediate impacts -- students are multi-tasking more and reading less. But to even venture a guess as to any long-term psychological or societal impacts strikes me as completely premature. Today's technology natives may lose all communication skills and devolve back to the stone age. Or multi-tasking might unlock brain capacities beyond what we've ever imagined. But we won't know either way for many years to come.
Of course then, it'll probably be too late to save us.
p.s. The other tidbit I garnered from this video is how frightening virtual reality can be.
In the end, I don't believe that texting, or the Internet will be the death of our society. But I do believe that the real damage could come through the melding of the real and virtual worlds. I fear that the more people defer to a virtual world, the more they could potentially lose touch with their own.
This point was drilled home for me in the video when they spoke about the video gaming centers set up by the U.S. Army. According to the producers, the Army has closed a number of recruiting centers around Philadelphia in favor of "Army Experience Centers," in which kids 13 and older are invited to come to play video games.
Army officials interviewed for the show say the centers are never going to replicate "the real thing." And yet the video also explores how the military is replacing real fighter planes with unmanned drones operated by "pilots" from thousands of miles away.
My fear is that, due to the distance, operating an unmanned drone stands to become a little more than a virtual experience, which leads me to ask, are these video games little more than training for these kids? It's a frightening concept.
For class this week, we watched an episode of the PBS program Frontline called "Digital Nation" that explored the benefits and drawbacks of our ever-connected culture.
The episode included educators, sociologists and business leaders who celebrated cell phones, the Internet and other technologies for bringing the world closer together; and it featured researchers who see technology as tearing us all apart.
What I got most out of it is that we really don't have a clue yet what long-term consequences these developments will have on our world.
Sure, it's easy to see the immediate impacts -- students are multi-tasking more and reading less. But to even venture a guess as to any long-term psychological or societal impacts strikes me as completely premature. Today's technology natives may lose all communication skills and devolve back to the stone age. Or multi-tasking might unlock brain capacities beyond what we've ever imagined. But we won't know either way for many years to come.
Of course then, it'll probably be too late to save us.
p.s. The other tidbit I garnered from this video is how frightening virtual reality can be.
In the end, I don't believe that texting, or the Internet will be the death of our society. But I do believe that the real damage could come through the melding of the real and virtual worlds. I fear that the more people defer to a virtual world, the more they could potentially lose touch with their own.
This point was drilled home for me in the video when they spoke about the video gaming centers set up by the U.S. Army. According to the producers, the Army has closed a number of recruiting centers around Philadelphia in favor of "Army Experience Centers," in which kids 13 and older are invited to come to play video games.
Army officials interviewed for the show say the centers are never going to replicate "the real thing." And yet the video also explores how the military is replacing real fighter planes with unmanned drones operated by "pilots" from thousands of miles away.
My fear is that, due to the distance, operating an unmanned drone stands to become a little more than a virtual experience, which leads me to ask, are these video games little more than training for these kids? It's a frightening concept.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Students, please set your phones to LOUD
High School must be a different beast these days.
Not only do teachers need to deal with students and all their backtalk, but they have to deal with their phones, as well.
Calling, texting, surfing -- phones have integrated themselves in every part of our lives, including school. And teachers and administrators across the country are having to re-write their rulebooks to accommodate them.
Some schools allow them between periods, others ban them outright. But in England, among other places, I'm sure, some academics are looking to welcome them into the learning process.
In the Winter 2009 issue of "The Futurist," the regular journal of the World Future Society, Rick Docksai reports on a British study that lauds the benefits of cell phones in the classroom.
The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Nottingham, tracked 331 teenage students across five schools that incorporated cell phones into their classrooms. Among other tasks, the students used the phones to record lessons, access websites, create movies and set homework reminders, according to the article. They used the phones to transport homework back and forth, and to time activities, as well.
Teachers and students throughout the article celebrate the use of phones as another way for students to reach their students. "We hope that, in the future, mobile phone use will be as natural as using any other technology in school," Elizabeth Hartnell- Young, co-author of the study, says in the piece. But I'm not sold yet on the idea of bringing cell phones into the classroom (Docksai, 2009).
Certainly, they could aid the education process, as can many other tools. And maybe in the years to come there will be a place for them. But, for the moment at least ,the opportunity for phones to distract students seems too great.
Phones are more than a means of communications now, for teenagers especially. Teenagers use them as toys to play with friends, chatting casually and sharing jokes, gossip and information.
I believe strongly there will be a time when our use of cell phones, as a society, off and they will be used more for basic communication than entertainment. But until that happens, I'm afraid they're simply a distraction and should be keep out of the classroom as much as possible.
Docksai, R. (2009). Teens and cell phones. The Futurist, 43, 10-11. Retrieved April 24 2011, from http://proquest.umi.com.ezproxy.snhu.edu/pqdweb?index=1&did=1606130781&SrchMode=1&sid=8&Fmt=3&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1303684450&clientId=49311/.
Not only do teachers need to deal with students and all their backtalk, but they have to deal with their phones, as well.
Calling, texting, surfing -- phones have integrated themselves in every part of our lives, including school. And teachers and administrators across the country are having to re-write their rulebooks to accommodate them.
Some schools allow them between periods, others ban them outright. But in England, among other places, I'm sure, some academics are looking to welcome them into the learning process.
In the Winter 2009 issue of "The Futurist," the regular journal of the World Future Society, Rick Docksai reports on a British study that lauds the benefits of cell phones in the classroom.
The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Nottingham, tracked 331 teenage students across five schools that incorporated cell phones into their classrooms. Among other tasks, the students used the phones to record lessons, access websites, create movies and set homework reminders, according to the article. They used the phones to transport homework back and forth, and to time activities, as well.
Teachers and students throughout the article celebrate the use of phones as another way for students to reach their students. "We hope that, in the future, mobile phone use will be as natural as using any other technology in school," Elizabeth Hartnell- Young, co-author of the study, says in the piece. But I'm not sold yet on the idea of bringing cell phones into the classroom (Docksai, 2009).
Certainly, they could aid the education process, as can many other tools. And maybe in the years to come there will be a place for them. But, for the moment at least ,the opportunity for phones to distract students seems too great.
Phones are more than a means of communications now, for teenagers especially. Teenagers use them as toys to play with friends, chatting casually and sharing jokes, gossip and information.
I believe strongly there will be a time when our use of cell phones, as a society, off and they will be used more for basic communication than entertainment. But until that happens, I'm afraid they're simply a distraction and should be keep out of the classroom as much as possible.
Docksai, R. (2009). Teens and cell phones. The Futurist, 43, 10-11. Retrieved April 24 2011, from http://proquest.umi.com.ezproxy.snhu.edu/pqdweb?index=1&did=1606130781&SrchMode=1&sid=8&Fmt=3&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1303684450&clientId=49311/.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Surviving in the digital world
"All teachers must provide equal access to the digital world to all learners."
It's hard to know exactly what to make of a credo like that. It certainly doesn't mean teachers must provide the materials to access the digital world -- I'm pretty sure any public school teacher would have a good laugh at that thought these days.
Instead, I think it is referring to providing the confidence and competence to access the digital world. Not every student will have a computer available at home or in school, but every student will certainly need to know how to use computers, and other technologies -- in school, in the workplace and everywhere between. So it's the job of the teacher to make sure all students not only know how to access and operate new technologies, but why that knowledge is necessary to survive in the digital world.
It's hard to know exactly what to make of a credo like that. It certainly doesn't mean teachers must provide the materials to access the digital world -- I'm pretty sure any public school teacher would have a good laugh at that thought these days.
Instead, I think it is referring to providing the confidence and competence to access the digital world. Not every student will have a computer available at home or in school, but every student will certainly need to know how to use computers, and other technologies -- in school, in the workplace and everywhere between. So it's the job of the teacher to make sure all students not only know how to access and operate new technologies, but why that knowledge is necessary to survive in the digital world.
The Internet: bully or tutor?
Cyber-bullying, sexting, Internet stalking. There is so much talk these days about all the threats technology, and specifically the Internet, poses to children. But we rarely hear a word about the benefits.
The Internet has opened up a whole new world of communicating and learning for children, including younger students.
Kelly Hines, a fourth-grade teacher in Washington, North Carolina addresses this in her presentation, "Little Kids, Big Opportunities" for the 2009 K12Online conference.
Rather than focusing on the privacy threats that Facebook and MySpace pose, Ms. Hines focuses her presentation on sites like wallwisher.com, wordle.com and edmodo.com that allow students to expand on in-class lessons with interactive and multi-media programming.
Edmodo.com, a social networking site, allows teachers to communicate with students, posting notes, polls and assignments. And Wallwisher, which allows students to post notes about books they read or videos they watch, encourages students not just to think about the stories themselves, but the sequencing of events and their own reactions.
"We were able to generate some very rich and powerful discussions over why they chose to sort the different sticky notes the way they did," Hines said of the site.
These websites, among hundreds of others available across the Internet, help even young students learn in different ways. And beyond academics, they teach the children to navigate the Internet, which will only become more relevant to their lives as they grow.
The Internet certainly can be a threatening place, especially for children. But it's a world that, if they learn to use it properly, can expand their learning dramatically -- as Hines shows throughout her presentation.
Kids are going to use it either way. So it's better they learn to use it now, safely and productively.
The Internet has opened up a whole new world of communicating and learning for children, including younger students.
Kelly Hines, a fourth-grade teacher in Washington, North Carolina addresses this in her presentation, "Little Kids, Big Opportunities" for the 2009 K12Online conference.
Rather than focusing on the privacy threats that Facebook and MySpace pose, Ms. Hines focuses her presentation on sites like wallwisher.com, wordle.com and edmodo.com that allow students to expand on in-class lessons with interactive and multi-media programming.
Edmodo.com, a social networking site, allows teachers to communicate with students, posting notes, polls and assignments. And Wallwisher, which allows students to post notes about books they read or videos they watch, encourages students not just to think about the stories themselves, but the sequencing of events and their own reactions.
"We were able to generate some very rich and powerful discussions over why they chose to sort the different sticky notes the way they did," Hines said of the site.
These websites, among hundreds of others available across the Internet, help even young students learn in different ways. And beyond academics, they teach the children to navigate the Internet, which will only become more relevant to their lives as they grow.
The Internet certainly can be a threatening place, especially for children. But it's a world that, if they learn to use it properly, can expand their learning dramatically -- as Hines shows throughout her presentation.
Kids are going to use it either way. So it's better they learn to use it now, safely and productively.
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