I must say I was horribly worried about not being able to do the social bookmarking assignment. It wasn't that bad! I used diigo because I assumed I would understand it a little better since it's what Prof. Mislevy uses. It was so neat, and really not that difficult! I am already thinking about making a page for my Spanish classes. It would be cool to give them my site so that they can complete assignments (like webquests, or research projects). It would also be nice to add a link to my e-chalk page. My school uses e-chalk to keep parents and students posted on assignments and announcements for class. I could put a link there for additional Spanish tutoring. It also makes it easier to share my favorite sites with other teachers. I'm planning on sending my diigo page to my sister and friend who teach so they have quick access to tons of fun, educational sites! If more teachers in a school did this I'm sure someone would find something they could use for their classes! Well, if you're interested in my sites, here's my diigo site: http://www.diigo.com/user/carriejnell Have fun with it!
I'll be posting this week's blog in two entries. I'm recovering from some sort of awful flu and missed class last week, so I'll have to figure out what I missed about social bookmarking. Meanwhile, here are my thoughts on Excel! As I mentioned, I missed our second class on Excel, but I can relate to the hypothetical scenario described in our assignment (school training on excel). Today, my school had an Excel training session! Lucky for me! I was placed in the "beginners group" so we just covered the basics. In that session, we learned how to input data and do the various functions (add, average, etc.). This is helpful for teachers for obvious reasons. It's a great way to keep a class list, enter grades, and calculate grades for report cards. Teachers can also alphabetize their students, put students in order of highest grades received using the student's averages or one specific test to see who needs help with what topic. It allows teachers to really analyze data. On a higher scale, PSSA data can be assessed. Schools can see how many students ranked "below basic," "basic," "proficient," or "advanced," on that test, and see how many students they need to move up a level. They can also organize the data by filtering to see which teachers or "teams" (groups of teachers who have the same students)are doing the best in which subjects and can encourage those teachers to share suggestions for improvement. Students can also participate with excel. They can learn to input data, create graphs, and organize information for research or class projects. This can put a new spin on learning for them, and help them in future careers! I wish I'd learned it in school! My school principal also uses excel to give teachers schedules/assignments for class coverages, assembly schedules/seating charts, and to share discipline data (number of absences, detentions, suspensions, etc.). I'm sure there are many more ways to use excel, and I suggested follow-up training on the topic. I don't think an hour is quite enough to master the use of any form of technology and it would only real improve our school if teachers really understand how to utilize it.
Google Apps could have really helped me with group projects, especially in college. My statistics course in which we had to conduct research experiments comes immediately to mind. As a group, we were to get students to participate in our experiment, analyze the gathered data, and write a collective report. It would have been really useful if we could have posted the data to googledocs, so that each group member could have posted new participant data. Our participants were also motivated to be involved in as many experiments as possible, since extra credit was offered for participation. Google Calendar would have been an awesome way to share when we were running the experiment, and plan times to meet with our group members. Google Apps definately would have been useful, assuming all our group members and participants knew how to use it! Hopefully, in time, using these programs will become common knowledge. I also plan on using social bookmarking (probably de.lic.ious) as a way of tracking websites I'm interested in using for my class. My school has been making use of collaboration as a staff. We are expected to meet with people in our content areas (i.e. social studies teachers meeting with other social studies teachers) and discuss ways to improve our teaching. Tagging websites we find interesting can make it easy for us to stay on top of the best possible resources for our students. Teachers are also expected to give common assessments and analyze data. Google Apps could be used to do this as well. Again, this would have to mean that all of our staff is familiar with using the technology. If not to share with others, I can at least use tagging and Google Apps for my own organizational purposes. Social bookmarking will be a good way of saving websites until I'm ready to incorporate them into my classes.
The lesson plans I chose to print from the Google Apps link were not actually from my subject area (I couldn't find any for Spanish! No Fair!), but I can think of ways to adapt them and use them in my classes. The first is a Language Arts lesson plan called "Class Collection of Book Reviews". The students are expected to read a book and write a review of it in Google Docs, including information such as reading level, and a brief description. I would use this with short stories in Spanish or Spanish Poetry. The second lesson plan uses Google Calendar for a Social Studies plan called "History of Life on Earth". In this lesson students are to collectively report on the history of the earth (spanning 4.6 billion years) and compress this "Earth Timeline" into one calendar year. Rather than having my students report on the history of the Earth, I would have them focus on the history of ancient civilizations (Aztecs, Myans, Incas, etc.) in the now Spanish-Speaking world and the Spanish Conquests that took place in those areas. This would help to compress an excessive amount of information into one easy to process "calendar year," while holding students accountable for their groups research/work. Neat stuff!
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
1.As mentioned in my previous blog, I am considered a Net-Gener. Technology, in some way has always been a big part of the world I live in. After reading one of the articles, to which I related far too well, I realized, as I was reading off my sister’s laptop, watching TV, and checking my email, that the world of technology is more relevant to me than I thought it was. I have more in common with my tech-savvy students than I realized. It’s not the “language” of the technological world that I’m concerned about. My students and I are at least somewhat “fluent” in technology. What concerns me when it comes to incorporating R/W tools in the classroom, is the language in which they are writing. In the article emphasizing the effectiveness of blogging, many of the student feedback sections had grammatical/spelling errors, and am sure the ones that were chosen had the fewest errors. I appreciate that students can freely voice their opinions without the constraints of traditional pen and paper and/or size 12 font with 1 inch margins. I also like the fact that other students can give feedback and that students actually enjoy writing. But if the quality of their writing is poor, what skills are being reinforced? Last I checked, btw, lol, g2g, kool, etc. were not found on standardized tests. I think freely blogging may be a great way to get students thinking deeply about content, but when will they learn to write properly?
Also, I don’t think that all of my students are quite as surrounded by technology as those in these articles. Some kids (and schools) can’t afford technology! Not everyone owns a blackberry, computers, digital camaras, mp3’s, and everything else the articles have mentioned. So how do you keep those students from feeling left out when classroom assignments become largely technology based?
2.I didn’t realize that digital photo tools were R/W tools (actually, I didn’t know what R/W was, but was surprised photos fall into that category). Flickr and Shutterfly seem really neat. I also learned what an aggregator is (I had never heard the term before this), and thought that the webcams kept in the African wild and around Active Volcanos would be really fun to use in a science classroom. The communication via webcam between western/asian students (regarding the different versions of a fairytale) was really a good idea, and would be perfect in a Foreign Language classroom. I noticed though, that that project was funded by Time Warner! So, chances are it’ll be awhile before my school is financially capable of doing it.
Googledocs is a place where students, or anyone for that matter, can store documents online. Much like Microsoft Word, but on the internet. I have never used it, but I imagine it is considered R/W because it can be accessed and shared by anyone, anywhere (if they are set as able to view it).
As a Foreign Language teacher, I really enjoyed the terms “Digital Natives” and “Digital Immigrants”. Although according to “Educause” I am of the Net Gen (I was born in 1985, so I technically qualify), I’m having trouble deciding whether I am digitally “fluent” or not. I played Oregon Trail and Number Munchers in elementary school, and loved them both. I use the internet to check email, but I’m not sure I would if it weren’t for societal pressures to do so. I don’t enjoy updating the world on my life via Facebook, Myspace, or Twitter (but I do know what all of those are). I feel that face to face conversations and intimate “real life” relationships are far more valuable. I’d be lost without spell-check. I found the statistics in “Educause” to be shocking. I think it’s depressing that people spend so much more time playing video games than reading. I prefer real tangible books and libraries to online resources, unless I can print them out and find a nice quiet space to read them in. I almost always hand write drafts before I type them, and again I only type them because I am required to do so. I feel as if I am ignorant to much of what technology has to offer, but apparently I’m more tech-savvy than any previous generation. I believe I maintain views of the digital immigrants as well as the natives, and I’m confused as to where exactly I lie on the spectrum of digital fluency. Why must I be placed on one side or the other?
When it comes to education, I noticed both the readings emphasized interaction in the classroom. I see the benefits of incorporating technology into the classroom, especially if the funding is there, but who says that interaction has to involve technology? Both readings also seem to argue that students’ learning styles have changed and so should teaching methods. I agree completely, but is this really a new concept? I’m new to the teaching profession, but two of the current “buzzwords” in the school district for which I work are “Cooperative Learning,” and “Differentiated Instruction,” both of which emphasize group work/socailization skills and teaching to different learning styles, including hands-on learners. Constructivistic /“learner-centered” classrooms aren’t novel concepts.
I think technology can and should be utilized in education, but only as a percentage of the overall learning experience. Interactive learning should occur much more frequently than it currently does, but that doesn’t mean that technology is the only tool to use to accomplish that. I also think the readings don’t take the issue of funding seriously enough. I’m all for using additional technologies in my classroom, but I can’t even get a working laptop, let alone a digital projector or Smart Board. Technology seems to be outdated as soon as it’s created, I can’t afford to keep up and neither can my school district or the students I teach (a very large percentage of whom live below the poverty line). As the articles mentioned, most students believe that nothing can replace the expertice teachers have to offer or the overall social experience of school, and I agree. I think there are many different learning styles, and not all today’s students can be classified as “tech-savvy learners,” I certaintly can’t be.
I really liked this quote from the Digital Natives article:
It's not actually clear to me which is harder - "learning new stuff" or "learning new ways to do old stuff." I suspect it's the latter.
I do think students today learn differently than previous generations. I just think we need to develop new methods of instruction, which include technology but do not rely solely on it. A variety of teaching methods should be utilized, and technology should be one of many.
