WebQuest: Online problem-based learning

Back in winter quarter of 2011, I explored problem-based learning in my Educational Technology class by creating a WebQuest. WebQuests are websites that lead students through a scenario that requires them to use online resources and interdisciplinary skills to solve a problem or create a product. My WebQuest invites students to prepare and present a pitch for an American city to host the 2020 Summer Olympic Games.

I can’t believe I never posted this to my bPortfolio! To explore my WebQuest, click here.

I event that my WebQuest is no longer hosted on the Quest Garden server, the like above will no longer work. In that case, you can view the contents of my WebQuest here:

WebQuest Process: What will students actually be doing?

WebQuest Evaluation: How will students be assessed?

 

ISTE Standard 5: Professional development and my favorite PD tools

Standard five from the International Society of Technology in Education (ISTE) concerns professional development. It encourages teachers to participate in professional development networks, both locally and globally, to share ideas and resources that will increase student learning and contribute to the effectiveness of the field. Teachers should also be regularly reviewing current research to ensure they are using the best tools in the classroom.

I appreciate that ISTE included a standard about professional development because it is just as important to improve myself as a teacher as it is to improve my classroom and school. If I am not constantly learning, reflecting, and growing, how can I expect the same from my students? And how can I meet their needs in a world that is in a constant state of flux if I don’t stay up-to-date? Professional development is vitally important to share ideas as well as provide, and receive, support. The events in the news as of late remind me that teaching is often a difficult job with many critics. This makes it all the more important for teachers to have places where they can be a part of a community and be supported by other professionals. A teacher who feels alone and isolated will have a very difficult experience.

Fortunately, the internet has brought professional development directly to us in hundreds of different forms. No longer do we need to travel and attend conferences to continue our professional education (although conferences continue to be a rich source of information and inspiration for many). We now have tools that can contribute to our professional development daily, anywhere. In the course of this unit I have been working out a professional development strategy that works for me. As I continue in my career I predict that this will grow and change, but for now I am finding that the most helpful sources of professional development for me are the English Companion Ning and Twitter.

The English Companion Ning is a social network for English teachers. It contains articles and a community forum where teachers can share ideas and request help. There are topics for adolescent literature, new teachers, literature circles, classroom management, how to teach Shakespeare, and even a book club. It is a wealth of information for current and potential English teachers. I was just reading the Adolescent Literature forum (a topic I am especially interested in) and got ideas for over a dozen YA novels that I’d never heard of before!

However, the crown jewel for professional development that I’ve found is Twitter. Sure, many of my friends use it to share what they had for lunch or their current location (a practice which almost turned me off to the tool entirely), but I’ve discovered that Twitter really can’t be beat for gathering information, ideas, and resources quickly, conveniently, and often directly from the source. Twitter, for those not familiar, is a social messaging platform where users can create a free account and post messages up to 140 characters. Users “follow” others to see their “tweets”, and anyone that follows them can see their tweets as well. By following teachers who teach in my subject area (for example, English teachers and middle school teachers), professionals who write blogs I am interested in, and other individuals, I can see a vast amount of information in a very short time. One blog author noted that they had “found more resources and got more useful advice for professional development in 3 months on Twitter than in the previous five years without it” (Olafelch, 2010). Every day, I spend a few minutes (or more!) perusing my Twitter stream and find wonderful articles about using technology to teach writing, up-to-date information on current events, and links to projects being done by teachers around the country. Yesterday, I participate in an “edchat” on Twitter, where I was able to join with other teachers and professionals to discuss whether or not homework was actually valuable. I even follow Diane Ravitch’s Twitter feed, which allows me to connect with one of the country’s leading and most vocal educational reformers.

It really is incredible how much I feel that I have learned from using Twitter as a professional development tool, even though I have been using it for just a few short weeks. According to Ferriter (2010), Twitter’s real strength is that it provides individuals with differentiated learning. Information gained from Twitter is automatically relevant to the user because the user only has to follow people or organizations that are of interest. It creates a support and idea network tailor-made to the individual. Says Ferriter, “I now turn to Twitter friends for help in the same way that I turn to teachers on my hallway” (2010, para. 11). He adds that Twitter could be a useful tool for older students as well, enabling them to create a personalized learning network tailored to their specific interests and passions. If you are considering utilizing twitter for professional development, the Twitter for Teachers Wiki is a great place to start.

Twitter will be a wonderful resource for me as I move into teaching, but it is only one of the hundreds of tools out there for professional development. Which tool you use isn’t important—what is important is finding a way to keep learning and stay informed. A teacher’s focus should be on their students, but they will benefit their students the most if they don’t neglect themselves and their own professional development.

References:

Ferriter, W.M. (2010). Why teachers should try Twitter. Educational Leadership 67 (5), 73-74. Retrieved from http://ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/feb10/vol67/num05/Why-Teachers-Should-Try-Twitter.aspx

Olafelch. (2010, January 3). Re: Twitter as a PLN [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://whatsnewintheworld.net/2010/01/twitter-as-a-pln/

Prensky, Ch. 10: Good and bad ideas about assessment

Assessment. It is somewhat of a “necessary evil” in teaching—after all, how do you know a student has learned if you don’t evaluate their learning? One of the current major debates in the profession is over what should be assessed and in what way. Nationally, standardized tests have been deemed the answer, and specific standards have been identified that students will need to get tested on. Yet reformers have pushed back on the mandates, criticizing standardized testing for taking the creativity out of teaching and setting impossible, stressful goals for students and teachers to meet.

Standardized testing is a form of summative assessment, but this is not the only way to assess a student. Teachers can also draw on formative assessments, which are more useful, says Prensky (2010), because they actually help students improve. Ipsative assessment (competing against yourself) and peer assessments are two other forms that Prensky identifies. But the most motivating and useful assessments are those that are rooted in the real world. For example, by posting a blog or video online, students can receive feedback from people all over the world (Prensky, 2010). How much more valuable would this be for a student than having their teacher, who probably isn’t the intended audience of their blog or video anyway, give feedback that seems artificial? If students are assessed by the actual audience of their work, the feedback they will receive will be much more relevant, authentic, and valuable.

Prensky (2010) provides the example of art critiques as a commonly used form of real-world evaluation. I think this sort of activity would be useful in subjects other than art. Couldn’t students critique the short stories or poems of other students? Wouldn’t they be able to provide constructive criticism of another student’s presentation or article for the school newspaper? Key here, of course, would be to make sure that the students know the appropriate way to critique another. Students aren’t often given the opportunity to provide meaningful constructive criticism, and they may not know how. Prensky (2010) points to a useful website that has a “tip sheet” about doing art critiques with students. The article suggests that the teacher present guidelines for how students should offer their criticism and encourage students to keep an open mind, use specific vocabulary, and listen to each opinion. These suggestions would be helpful in any discussion of student work.

Equally important is teaching students how to accept criticism, especially that from “real world” critics who don’t always exercise restraint. Care should be taken to remind students that comments should not be taken personally and that there is a difference between constructive criticism and inappropriate insults that should be ignored. If students can learn to give and receive constructive criticism early in their lives, they will be equipped to learn so much more—both in and out of the classroom!

I do differ with Prensky on one point that he makes: students should be allowed to test using their “tools” like calculators and cell phones. While I agree that there are many situations in real life were students will be able to rely on these tools to help them solve problems, there are many more situations where that won’t be an option. Sure, calculators can easily compute a math problem and the dictionary on my iPhone looks up words instantly. But what will happen to me if my calculator or iPhone dies, or gets lost, or just isn’t available to me at the time? Just because we have technology to help us does not mean we should become reliant on it.

Prensky insists that we should allow students to use their normal technology, asking, “Can you imagine a doctor being asked to make a heart evaluation but being told not to use his or her stethoscope?” (2010, p 178). But the reason the doctor gets to use his stethoscope is because he cannot make a heart evaluation without one. It isn’t a tool that makes his life easier, it actually makes his work possible—there is no way he could do as accurate of a heart evaluation without utilizing the stethoscope. This is not true with most of the tools that students use. People have been researching and calculating for centuries without phones, computers, and calculators. In most cases, using the tools does not net the user an answer that is any more accurate than completing the work without it. Students may do the work faster with the tools, but they often don’t increase their understanding. We need to think very carefully before we allow students to let technology do some of the thinking for them. Our job as teachers is not to create a generation of students who need a calculator to make change.

I have very much enjoyed reading this book on the Kindle, and I am hoping that some of my texts for next quarter will also have Kindle editions. The only thing I really do miss is the ability to easily flip back and forth between pages, which I do frequently when utilizing a book for research. As a result, I think I would prefer a paper version of a book that I would refer to often. But I think the Kindle is great for reading novels or certain textbooks, and I am certainly glad I was forced to get off my high horse and experience an ebook!

Prensky, Mark. (2010). Teaching digital natives: partnering for real learning (Kindle ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

 

ISTE Standard 4: Teaching students digital citizenship

Image from brainpop.com

The fourth standard instituted by the International Society of Technology in Education (ISTE) concerns modeling, teaching, and promoting safe and ethnical use of technology. This involves instructing students in digital etiquette, legal issues such as copyright infringement, online safety, and proper citation of sources. Teachers must also practice these behaviors in their professional lives so they show a respect for the rights and safety of others. In addition, the standard calls for demonstrating cultural awareness by engaging with students and colleagues around the world, which is made possible through our vast technological resources.

This standard is vitally important because our students have at their fingertips powerful technological tools that can hurt as much as help. Just as you don’t let a teenager drive a car without knowing the rules of the road, we shouldn’t set our students free in the land of educational technology without instructing them in appropriate behaviors. This is especially true of internet use. Kids are not usually thinking of their own safety when they log on, but the fact is that there are people out there who prey on others through the internet. Conversely, students can hurt others online if they are not aware of how to use the internet appropriately. Ribble, Bailey, and Ross (2004) identify nine areas of behavior that make up digital citizenship: etiquette, communication, education, access, commerce, responsibility, rights, safety, and security. To be good digital citizens, students must be informed in each area. They must know how to appropriately use technology in and out of the classroom, communicate online, and buy and sell things using the internet. Students should be informed about the gap in access to technology, the digital rights of themselves and others, and how to stay safe and secure (Ribble, Bailey, & Ross, 2004). The internet is a complex tool that students should not interact with blindly.

We cannot assume that students will walk into our classrooms knowing these things. We may have a student who is a cyberbully, another who illegally downloads music, and one who has a public Facebook profile that announces her address and phone number to the world. If we expect our students to successfully utilize the internet for educational use, we must take the time to teach them digital citizenship. I would love to use technology in my classroom, including the internet, but I will first set guidelines for what appropriate use of technology is—including language, privacy issues, etc.—and then model it every time I use technology myself.

For my project during this unit, I created a classroom poster on digital security that teaches students how to keep themselves and their equipment safe (I also posted about it here). This is the most vital topic in teaching students about the internet because there are real safety concerns involved. Students often see the internet as a completely safe place full of friends and information, but that’s not true. People out there want to take advantage of others. Students need to take steps to ensure that their identity is not stolen and no one can harm them or their property. As teachers who are striving to include technology into our classrooms, we need to be aware of the potential issues and be proactive with our students to prevent them.

Ribble, M.S., Bailey, G.D., and Ross, T.W. (2004). Digital citizenship: Addressing appropriate technology behavior. Learning and leading with technology 32(1). Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/teacherline/courses/tech340/docs/tech340_bailey.pdf?cc=tlredir

EDTC 6433: Practice makes perfect for partnering

In his ninth chapter, Prensky (2010) discusses the importance of practice in a partnering pedagogy. He points out that both students and teachers will need to practice to make partnering successful. It is obvious that teachers would have to practice—after all, Rome wasn’t built in a day and nothing worth learning comes quickly—but I appreciate his assertion that students will also need to practice. It reminds us that even though students might not be perfect at it right off the bat because it isn’t what they are used to, persistence can pay off and create a rich partnering atmosphere for everyone.

Prensky (2010) notes that students will need to practice self-motivation and self-discipline to be successful in a partnering environment. They will also need to practice connecting their personal interests and their schoolwork. I agree with Prensky that students will need to develop these skills, I also think that they should be developing those skills regardless of whether or not they are working in a partnering environment. That is, even if we decide not to work toward a full partnering pedagogy for some reason, all students should be given opportunities to practice self-motivation and self-dicsipline and connecting their passions with work. Those are valuable life skills that students will struggle if they don’t learn. The fact that a partnering pedagogy leans so heavily on those skills is one of its merits. Students will exit a partnering environment with skills that will help them for the rest of their lives.

Teachers, Prensky (2010) says, need to practice being comfortable with not being “in charge” and with having a more flexible, noisier, and often slightly chaotic classroom. From my work in the after-school program, I can attest to the fact that noisier does not always mean off-task. Often it means that kids are excited and engaged in discussion or exploration! There is a distinct difference between a busy classroom and an out of control classroom, but it is easy for teachers and administrators to believe that noise indicates the latter.

Teachers also need to practice the various roles that Prensky (2010) says need to be filled in partnering, like coaching, guiding, questioning, and goal setting. He advocates videotaping yourself to review your teaching style and your progress toward a partnering pedagogy. If something works, you should share it on the internet so other teachers can benefit. I couldn’t help but think of ISTE standard five: Teachers continuously improve their professional practice, model lifelong learning, and exhibit leadership in their school and professional community by promoting and demonstrating the effective use of digital tools and resources. By documenting their progress toward a partnering pedagogy using technological tools, and sharing this progress with colleagues, teachers are modeling professional development and providing examples of successful strategies.

I really appreciate Prensky’s focus on “practice makes perfect.” It is easy to become discouraged when things aren’t as easy as it seems they should be, but he reminds us that imperfection is no reason to give up. Rather, a partnering pedagogy involves skills and practices that are so different from those utilized in traditional classrooms that they are positively foreign to some people. It will understandably take some time to implement successfully in the classroom, but the benefits seem to be worth it.

No new insights on the Kindle this week. I still enjoy reading this book on my Kindle device over the Kindle apps for my desktop or iPhone, mostly because it strains my eyes less and feels more like reading a real book.

Prensky, Mark. (2010). Teaching digital natives: partnering for real learning (Kindle ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Digital Security: Lock Your Digital Deadbolt!

Blogs, twitter, myspace (does anyone use that anymore?), Facebook, instant messaging, forums, online shopping… the internet is everywhere and in every part of our lives. We use it on a daily basis, and it is easy to forget that the home of Amazon and status updates can also be home to people who are up to no good. But it might not be that hard for someone to gain unauthorized access to your stuff– causing damage to your computer or network, taking bank information and money, or stealing your identity. The internet can even make it easy for someone dangerous to find you in the real world.

Many kids don’t think about these things. Having grown up with this technology, they feel as safe with it as they do walking down their school hallways. For them, the internet is for connecting with friends and people who share their interests– they probably aren’t thinking that someone online may be out to harm them. It is very important for students to know how to stay safe in their online activities, both for the sake of their hardware and their lives. I created a poster, titled “Lock Your Digital Deadbolt“, to teach students the basics of internet safety. It is designed to be hung in a classroom, but a black and white version could easily be created as a handout.

EDTC 6433: Using technology to let students create

When I saw that Prensky’s eighth chapter was all about providing opportunities for students to create, I was excited. Having students make things is right up my alley! I work in an after-school program that also runs a summer camp, and I have learned over the years that there is nothing, nothing that the kids like more than actually creating something. My students have been known to spend two weeks making creatures out of felt and stuffing and to devote an entire week just to fashioning duct tape wallets. They have designed inventions and filmed commercials for them, constructed toys from recycled materials, and today the plan is for them to record their own podcasts. When we give the students these opportunities, more of them participate and I have fewer discipline issues. Why can’t I implement similar activities in my classroom?

 

I challenged the students to see how many cups they could get to stick on the balloon without tape or glue. This pair figured out it was all about surface tension and suction!

Prensky gives some great ideas for how to let students create in the classroom, but I think one of the most important points he makes is that we need to let them create for a real audience. One of the reasons I think the activities in my after-school program work so well is that the kids aren’t creating those things for me. Usually, they are making those things for a friend, family member, or just to play with. Their creations go out into the world with them. Prensky (2010) notes that while it used to be that students had an audience consisting only of their teacher, technology has made it so that the entire world can be their audience. It is even possible for students to get feedback from people in the “real” world. By posting on blogs, YouTube, message boards, and Facebook, students have the opportunity to share their work with a community that extends far beyond their classroom walls. This is profoundly motivating for students who are searching at every turn to figure out why what they are learning is useful in their lives. I think this fact is the reason that I have been so inspired by all of the educational technologies we have discovered in this class—there are so many ways to give my students an audience that is not me!

I’d love to use blogs in my classroom, when I finally get one, because they allow students to write in a place where people beyond the classroom can see. As an English teacher, I could also find magazines or other print sources for students to be published, as well as writing contests and letter-writing campaigns. I’m sure I could even find a forum for literary analysis that students could post to! I remember in middle school, one of my teachers encouraged me to send one of  my stories to a magazine of children’s writing, and although it was ultimately rejected, I worked harder on that story than any other in that class. Beyond writing, students could create videos that define and describe the parts of speech, create a podcast of a play, or conduct interviews and record oral histories. I’d love to even use NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month initiative that asks participants to create a novel in a month, although perhaps on a less ambitious scale (they do have a Young Writers Program, I see).

This chapter has just reinforced in my mind that I want my classroom to be different than those I grew up in. I participate in Odyssey of the Mind in middle school, a project-based team competition where groups find creative solutions to problems, and I remember being so excited every day that my team met. I loved being challenged and the freedom we had to solved the problem our way. I want my classroom to be that exciting and engaging. It might not be the easiest, but I feel that I have a slight advantage—Having never been in a classroom before, I’ll never know how much more work I am doing, will I?

As another week passes in the life of my Kindle, I find myself still enjoying it. It continues to run on its first charge from the beginning of January, which is wonderful. I am finding, however, that I prefer viewing my highlights on the Kindle website rather than on the Kindle itself. On the website, I can see them all in one place and easily read through what I found to be the most important. The “My Clippings” document on the Kindle is cluttered and hard to read. I also downloaded Kindle for Mac, having finally updated my OS to something less ancient, and found that I am not particularly a fan. I just don’t like the layout, and I really hate reading long documents on my computer. It just isn’t comfortable. Also, since the font size and display settings are so customizable, the same text doesn’t appear in the same place on the page as it does on my Kindle. Being someone who remembers quotes and information based on where they are physically located on the page, this is a huge problem for me.

Prensky, Mark. (2010). Teaching digital natives: partnering for real learning (Kindle ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

ISTE Standard 3: Technology that transforms the profession

The International Society of Technology in Education (ISTE) has created a list of five standards to guide the use of technology in the classroom. The third standard focuses on ways in which teachers can use technology to collaborate, communicate, and enrich the classroom experience. It expects that teachers gain familiarity with many different forms of technology and the ability to transfer what they know to new tools and situations. They should then utilize those resources to help them collaborate with others, communicate with parents and students, and conduct research.

Classrooms today have technological capabilities like never before. I went to high school in the early 2000s, which doesn’t seem so long ago, but we didn’t have any of the new technologies that exist today. Most of my classes used overhead projectors and some still had chalkboards with real chalk. The height of our school’s technological advancement was the bank of Apple desktops we used for our yearbook and newspaper. But classrooms now have document cameras (no more wet-erase pens and miles and miles of transparencies), SMARTboards, classroom blogs, clickers, and often a computer for each student. Instead of going to the library, I can search thousands of articles in online databases and download the PDFs to read and annotate on my own computer.

The ways in which technology is transforming classrooms are endless, and this is only the beginning. A PBS study found that more and more teachers are finding technology to be valuable in the classroom. In 2010, 21 percent of teachers thought that blogs were valuable to their classroom—up from only eight percent in 2007. Almost half the teachers (48%) said they valued student created websites in 2010 compared to only 30 percent in 2007. Teachers felt that laptops and eReaders like the iPad and Kindle had the most educational potential. It is clear that education has been forever changed for students, and teachers have not been left behind either.

After exploring this standard, I can’t believe how many resources are out there that could aid me in the fulfillment of this standard. I am especially impressed by programs like Zotero and Mendeley that allow PDFs and citations to be stored and organized online. Such tools will be invaluable to organize my educational research and ensure that I can easily reference relevant studies or interesting instructional strategies. I also think that blogs are wonderful tools to provide information to students and parents about upcoming lessons, events, and due dates. Sites like WordPress provide a free platform for the creation of blogs. A blog could even be set up to promote collaborative work among students, where they post their work and receive constructive criticism from peers.

Another great website to promote collaborative work among students, faculty members, or even parents is Google Sites. Our group from the educational technology class worked together using Google Sites to create our own webpage about Classroom Response Systems, a tool that teachers can use to quickly poll students and check for comprehension. Using the Google Sites format was an easy way to pull together information gathered by four different people. This project was a perfect example of an instance where teachers collaboratively used technology to communicate and convey information that will promote innovation in the classroom. Teachers could use this platform to write their own websites about tools or strategies they are interested in, create class or grade-level webpages, or allow students to create their own on a topic of interest. Building a webpage allows students to demonstrate their learning together and publish it in the “real world”—infinitely more engaging than writing a paper that only the teacher will read.

I’ve heard that teaching is a lonely profession. Fortunately, the purpose of ISTE standard 3 is to encourage teachers to utilize technology and make connections with the world around them. These tools allow more in-depth, frequent communication between teachers and their colleagues, students, and communities. They provide resources for professionals to learn, share ideas, and work together to improve their schools. ISTE standard three means that my professional life as a teacher should not be an isolated one.  I have an infinite amount of resources at my fingertips through the internet that plug me into the experiences and insights of others. Just as these technologies have changed the student’s experience in the classroom, they are also transforming the professional life of a teacher. As the PBS study showed, the face of the profession is changing. It is my job to utilize the technological resources that will enrich my classroom and enable me to maximize my teaching potential.

PBS and Grunwald Associates LLC. (2010). Deepening connections: Teachers increasingly rely on media and technology. Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/about/news/archive/2011/2010-grunwald-report/

EDTC 6433: A growing list of educational technologies

This week’s chapter in Prensky’s Teaching Digital Natives is essentially a list of over 100 technologies that Prensky views as having valuable educational implications. Many of them were not new things—CAD and e-mail have been around for a while—but it was interesting to hear his take on their educational use.

Several types of technology caught my eye in this chapter. First, he mentioned comic book creators. I have often thought that comic books are a wonderful way for students to learn brevity (a skill I still seek to learn) and sequencing. Assigning students to create a comic book of a novel or scene requires them to pick out the most important details and main ideas, and challenges them to convey those to the audience in a new way. Having no artistic ability, however, I always thought that comic books were beyond me to create or teach. Not so, says Prensky! He points out several programs that do the job, like Comic Book Creator and the website MashOn.com. Both of those seemed a little intense for me, so I searched around some more and found the much more friendly, and completely not reliant on artistic ability, Pixton. Pixton allows students to manipulate characters and props in any way they can imagine to create comic book projects. The graphics look professional, the interface seems intuitive, and it even lets teachers create groups to share projects within a class and rubrics to help with grading. It costs some money (although a free trial is available) but as a language arts teacher in middle school, I think this could definitely be a worthwhile investment.

Prensky also mentioned data visualizations as examples of digital tools that can be helpful for students. I love data visualizations. There’s a book called The Visual Miscellaneum that is full of visualizations of random things, and I would love to have it in my classroom. A website I found a while ago is visualizing.org. It is basically a library of visualizations that contains hundreds of them shared by their graphic designer creators. Students can search for visualizations, or create and share their own. The site even hosts competitions for students. It could be a great place for students to explore and be inspired. Here’s an example of a visualization from the site that could be useful in the classroom:

Visualization created by Gavin Potenza, from visualizing.org

 

Google Public Data Explorer allows anyone to create visualizations from their available databases of public data. There is a limit to the information that can be found on this site, but it could be another interesting tool for students to explore. Visualizations can even be embedded in webpages (although I couldn’t figure out how to embed one here) and are kept updated with the latest data.

This chapter had an extensive list of digital tools, and I know even more are out there. Yet chances are, in a few months, several of those tools will have been replaced by newer and better versions or completely different tools altogether. As a teacher with limited funds and limited time to explore new technology, how do I know what is worth putting my time and money into? Interactive whiteboards made Presnky’s list, but another list I read recently left them off entirely, commenting that they were not worth the money. Twitter could go out of fashion any day, and I just started actively using it again after a year of believing it to be useless. Online programs could go away. Something completely new and necessary could come out tomorrow. So how do I weed through it all? In this rapidly changing digital world, is this a new reality I need to become comfortable with? As in my physical life, I don’t want to clutter my technological life with programs and tools that end up being useless fads.

Before I bought my Kindle, I thought it was another useless technological fad. After using it for several weeks, however, I can see that eReaders, if not exactly in this incarnation, will probably stick around for a while. I hope that textbook publishers make more textbooks available for eReaders, because I would love to have all of my textbooks fit on my Kindle instead of weighing down my backpack. My Kindle also got the software update this week that is supposed to add page numbers to books. I noticed the bottom of the page looks less cluttered now (the location number isn’t visible until you press the menu key), which I appreciated. However, it still appears as if the ability to view public comments and highlights is still not working. This is interesting. Amazon announced this feature pretty prominently in the details of its newest software update for the Kindle, so it seems strange that we still aren’t seeing it work correctly.

Prensky, Mark. (2010). Teaching digital natives: partnering for real learning (Kindle ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

EDTC 6433: Addressing the issues with educational technology

Everyone did it in college—waiting until the professor was looking at another part of the classroom and furtively sneaking the phone from your pocket, or hiding it under the desk and texting with one hand while the other appeared to be taking notes, or choosing the darkest corner of the back row to exchanges messages with your friends. No one wanted to be disconnected from the outside world for an entire hour. Teenagers now are no different. After seeing how often I paid more attention to my phone than my professor, I began my teacher education thinking that under no circumstances would students be allowed to use those darn things in my classroom.

Well, all this reading about educational technology is changing my mind.

Prensky (2010) spends his sixth chapter explaining that cell phones are an example the nouns of learning. That is, they are one of the tools students can use to do the important actions of learning like discussing, presenting, and understanding. Prensky says that these nouns are changing and evolving faster than ever before. For a long time, textbooks and notebook paper and pencils reigned in education. But over the past few years, and increasingly over the next few, new technologies are coming to roost. Cell phones, interactive whiteboards, laptops, and iPads are changing the educational landscape. Because of such tools, students now have the ability to teach themselves (Prensky, 2010). Cell phones can be graphing calculators and decibel meters, ipads can be textbooks, laptops can be video portals into another culture or a conference with an expert. My college-rule notebook paper can’t do any of that.

There is a disconnect, however, between the available technology and the attitudes of school districts. Many administrators and teachers think like I did—that technology like cell phones and iPods have no use in the classroom. However, there is a growing body of writing that lauds such technology as vital to a 21^st century classroom. Prensky is such an example. Lisa Nielsen, who publishes the blog The Innovative Educator, is another. She has a great post that discusses technology that students use in the world but is banned in school. Go view her Google Docs presentation (I tried to embed it here, but WordPress.com doesn’t allow it). Her point is that students are adept at using these technologies outside of school, so if we want to make school applicable to the real world, we should allow those technologies inside of it.

Of course, using laptops, cellphones, and iPods in the classroom does open the door to new issues. How do we keep students from texting in class? How do we stop them from chatting or viewing inappropriate content or wasting class time on Facebook? These are all valid questions, and I think instead of shying away from situations in which those issues could arise, we should focus on finding solutions to prevent them from being an issue. Prensky (2010) makes the point that if students have a laptop in front of them and nothing to do on it, they are going to create their own entertainment that the teacher may not appreciate. Therefore, teachers have a responsibility to make sure they are regularly giving the students ways to use their technology constructively. I also think that students should be taught responsible uses of classroom technology alongside responsible uses of textbooks and other traditional material. Students should be taught about copyright laws alongside plagiarism, how to cite material from websites and blogs as well as books, and how to behave appropriately online. This links directly to what we are discussing in our educational technology class right now, so look for a post about digital citizenship soon!

This week’s Kindle notes: First off, I would like to brag that I bought my Kindle at the beginning of January and I have yet to charge the battery. This is despite forgetting to turn it off for weeks at a time. Unfortunately, that also means that I have no idea where my charger is. My Kindle frustration for this week is that pages don’t always look the same. That is, sometimes a page will start with one sentence, but if I flip back through, that sentence ends up on the bottom of the previous page. I’m not sure why it does this. It is particularly frustrating for me because I often remember where a quote is by remembering exactly where it was on the page. I can’t do that now because the pages shift unexpectedly.

References:

Nielsen, L. (2011, February 18). Banned in schools [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/2011/02/banned-in-school.html

Prensky, Mark. (2010). Teaching digital natives: partnering for real learning (Kindle ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.