EDU 533 Week 10: Technology and Teachers sittin' in a tree

An interactive tattoo

Ten years from now this Learning Through Technology class will undoubtedly look completely different from how it looks today. New, game-changing gadgets will have replaced our iPads and smart phones, or at least the gadgets of today will have evolved into something utterly unrecognizable. New web tools will rule the Internet, offering possibilities most of us haven't even considered yet. And classrooms will likely have undergone transformative changes as well.

 

Does this mean everything we've learned here will be obsolete in a decade's time or less?

 

Certainly not. I think one of the most important lessons imparted by this class -- and our truly fabulous teacher Kim Tufts -- is the simple idea that technology is critical to education. We have learned to use numerous web tools that will aid us in our teaching careers, but just as important -- if not more so -- we have learned the importance of integrating these tools and others like them into our teaching careers. The tools themselves may change over time, but the value of technology, of changing and adapting along with our rapidly changing world, will not.

 

"Technology needs to be like oxygen, ubiquitous, necessary and invisible."

 

These are the words of Chris Lehmann, founding principal of the Science Leadership Academy, taken from this thought-provoking YouTube video:

 

 

 

This class has helped me think of technology in just that way. A few weeks ago we took a look at our learning outcomes, evaluating whether and how we had met each one through this class. As we conclude the class, let's take another look and see if we have completed what we set out to do.

 

LEARNING OUTCOMES:

1. Demonstrate the understanding of how technologies can effectively promote student learning. Our webquests, the final project for this class, have not only tied a bow on all the things we've learned through this class, they've also helped us demonstrate our understanding of how these newly acquired tools promote learning. Rather than merely testing our knowledge of the various technologies and technology-related topics we've learned, they have forced us to apply our understanding by creating something we can use in our classrooms. 

2. Evaluate and use a variety of current technologies to enhance content instruction and to advance studentsí technological literacy Through the remainder of the term, we continued to add new tools to our repertoire, including things like Animoto and Diigo. We also learned new functions for Google tools, such as creating a survey and creating a basic website.

3. Design meaningful and authentic digitally based learning experiences with multiple and varied assessments. Our webquests are both meaningful and authentic because they consist of actual lessons that can be used in our own classrooms.

4. Reflect upon and demonstrate effective use of digital tools and resources. Reflection has been an important part of this class. Our blogs have really helped us sift through, synthesize and remember the numerous pieces of information we've been given.  

5. Demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of safe, ethical, legal and moral practices related to digital information and technology. These issues were covered thoroughly prior to our midterm reviews. We have had to keep them in mind as we continue to work with technology.

6. Illustrate through application how state and national standards are implemented within the curriculum (e.g., NH Curriculum Frameworks, ISTE (NETS-Teacher/NETS-Student) and NH-ICT Literacy Standards for K-12 Students (306.42)). I admit I still feel a little foggy on state and national standards. We have had several chances to review them and incorporate them into our assignments, which together have served as a fairly decent introduction, but this may be one of the minor drawbacks of taking this class first in a teaching program.

7. Demonstrate an understanding of the use of adaptive technologies and other digital resources to personalize and differentiate learning activities for every student. Writing our lesson plans, which contained a section on modifications, offered a good chance to look at some of the adaptive technologies available for students with learning disabilities or other special needs. This web page was particularly helpful.

8. Evaluate, adapt and reflect on emerging tools and trends by participating in local and global learning communities and by reviewing current research and professional literature. Our class itself is a local learning community, is it not? Throughout the class, the weekly modules have provided numerous opportunities to participate in other sorts of learning communities and to review current research and literature.

So, why is it important for all teachers to integrate technology into the lessons they teach, regardless of the age of the students? For starters, as we've discussed in the class at length, children begin to use technology at a very young age. Not only does it make good sense for us to teach them using the tools they enjoy and understand, it's imperative that we provide them the proper foundation for using these tools ethically, wisely and effectively. The PBS video Digital Nation illustrates this idea.

Integrating technology won't always be easy. Along with budgetary issues, teachers often must deal with entrenched mindsets about change and adaptation. This blog entry by high school principal Eric Sheninger discusses the mindsets and obstacles facing teachers who want to make transformative use of technology, as well as offering some helpful tips for overcoming them. He says:

"The time is now for all of us to critically analyze our respective schools and take a stand against the status quo in order to do what is best for our students."
 

In other words, one of the best ways to overcome barriers is simply to push them down with our own persistence and enthusiasm. Have formal and informal discussions with fellow teachers about the ways that web tools such as voki.com and scratch can make learning fun and appeal to different sorts of learners. Invite the principal to a multimedia presentation designed by your students. Involve parents in the technology loop by using tools such as symbaloo to keep them informed of homework assignments and classroom events.

 

Perhaps most important, we teachers of tomorrow should always keep our eyes on tomorrow, on learning right alongside our students, on boldly trying out new ideas and tools even if it means fumbling and screwing up.

 

 

 

 

EDU 533 Week 7 - Midterm Evaluation: Tech-nically speaking

Before beginning this course I was no technophobe, but I must admit that keeping up with the latest technology had taken a back seat to everyday things like cooking, laundry, nagging my children, making kick-ass Halloween costumes and cutting the guinea pig's toenails.

Halfway (or a little more, I think) through EDU 533, I feel much more up-to-date on the latest web tools that are available and am very excited about the ways these tools can help me as a future teacher. I think we've made an admirable dent in the learning outcomes for this class.

LEARNING OUTCOMES:

1. Demonstrate the understanding of how technologies can effectively promote student learning. If someone were to come up to my on the street and phrase this as a question, I think I'd have a pretty good answer: Kids today have grown up on the Internet and are generally very comfortable using technology, as we learned through the documentaries  Frontline: Growing Up Online and  Frontline: Digital Nation. First of all, teachers need to understand that this plugged-in generation requires a different teaching style than previous generations and that the digital gadgets and websites these kids love can also benefit them in the classroom. Things like blogs, avatars and wikis can appeal to different types of learners and help keep them engaged. The use of websites such as animoto.com, which facilitate multi-media projects, can help students reach the highest level learning objectives on Bloom's Taxonomy and develop high order thinking skills. And let's not forget that technology is transforming life for teachers too, offering us excellent organization tools, streamlining our lesson planning and helping us stay connected to other educators.

2. Evaluate and use a variety of current technologies to enhance content instruction and to advance studentsí technological literacy

So far, we have explored several specific technologies that can add value to the student's learning experience and help him or her become better acquainted with the web tools that are available. I have become familiar with blogging and can see how it would be a useful tool both for sharing information with students and for allowing them to exercise their creativity. We played around with making avatars on sites like Voki.com and saw how they could be used to get kids interested in a particular topic. As homework we viewed webinars and saw how these could provide us with a wealth of useful information we could put to use in our classrooms. And we have  begun learning about webquests and how they can open up all kinds of new learning experiences for young people.

3. Design meaningful and authentic digitally based learning experiences with multiple and varied assessments. As one of our assignments, we had to design avatars on voki.com which would deliver public service announcements about being good digital citizens. I think these could be meaningful in the classroom because they're just fun for the kids to view and then possibly play around with on their own. We also wrote fill-in-the-blank poems that we turned into "word clouds" using Tagxedo.com. These could prove to be very authentic ways of connecting with students and meeting learning objectives such as these:
Commmon Core:
L. 8.5 Demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships, and nuances in word meanings.

• Interpret figures of speech (e.g. verbal irony, puns) in context.
• Use the relationship between particular words to better understand each of the words.
• Distinguish among the connotations (associations) of words with similar denotations (definitions) (e.g., bullheaded, willful, firm, persistent, resolute).

L.8.3. Use knowledge of language and its conventions when writing, speaking, reading, or listening.

• Use verbs in the active and passive voice and in the conditional and subjunctive mood to achieve particular effects (e.g., emphasizing the actor or the action; expressing uncertainty or describing a state contrary to fact).

ITSE:
1. Creativity and Innovation
Students demonstrate creative thinking, construct knowledge, and develop innovative products and
processes using technology.
a. Apply existing knowledge to generate new ideas, products, or processes
b. Create original works as a means of personal or group expression

4. Reflect upon and demonstrate effective use of digital tools and resources To use digital tools effectively we as teachers have to understand them and their importance. Since beginning this class I've definitely become a believer in infusing my lesson plans with technology as well as using it to help me be a more effective teacher. One thing that stuck with me from one of the videos we watched in class was not to be afraid to let kids take the lead with some of the projects that use technology. Not only can we as teachers learn from our digitally savvy students but the act of teaching it to us and to their peers can boost their confidence and reinforce what they know.

5. Demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of safe, ethical, legal and moral practices related to digital information and technology. Our class spent a lot of time talking about the importance of being good digital citizens and teaching our students how to be good digital citizens as well. We made public service announcements on the topic and watched several documentaries and videos about topics such as cyber bullying, internet addiction and our digital dossier.

Digital Dossier video

6. Illustrate through application how state and national standards are implemented within the curriculum (e.g., NH Curriculum Frameworks, ISTE (NETS-Teacher/NETS-Student) and NH-ICT Literacy Standards for K-12 Students (306.42)) We are beginning to slog our way through various state and national standards including the Commoncore Standards and ITSE standards and have practiced locating the standards that best fit various projects we've done in class. We've also begun work on a lesson plan and a webquest, both of which have helped us become more familiar with the standards and how to apply them to our teaching.

7. Demonstrate an understanding of the use of adaptive technologies and other digital resources to personalize and differentiate learning activities for every student. I'm not sure about adaptive technologies, but we've definitely learned how various digital resources can help reach students at their level and accommodate the varied learning styles found within every classroom. For example, a video that we watched for homework last week when we were paired up to work on a Google document showed a teacher helping her students put together a multi-media study guide for Shakespeare's Hamlet. She discussed how that project was appealing to many of her hands-on students who never would have stayed engaged through a traditional review session.

8. Evaluate, adapt and reflect on emerging tools and trends by participating in local and global learning communities and by reviewing current research and professional literature. For one of our first projects, we had to choose a webinar to watch and then review on our blog. I chose a webinar on Symbaloo, a relatively new web tool that helps educators keep their bookmarks organized in an at-a-glance, visually appealing format; they can also add all sorts of other information, from student portfolios to collaborative lesson plans. The webinars are a great way to learn about new tools and trends and participate in local and global learning communities. In class, we also learned how to use Google Reader, a good tool for staying on top of current research and professional literature.

EDU 533 Week 7: Animoto

EDU 533 Week #5 -- Safety 'Net, Digital Citizenship PSA, part one

For more great tips on online safety, check out this article.




Learn more about digital citizenship here.

EDU 533 Week #5 Safety 'Net - Digital Citizenship PSA, Part 2

Learn more about digital citizenship here.

Week #4 Digital Citizenship: What a Tangled Web We Weave

Flip through any baby catalog, and you will see all manner of products illustrating the lengths society goes to in the name of keeping our kids safe.

The Thudgaurd infant safety helmet

Sometimes these efforts can be a bit extreme or misguided, especially as our kids get older and the threats to their well-being grow more complicated than sharp coffee table edges and pieces of hot dog cut too large.

There is no disputing the fact that the digital age has brought with it new dangers and dilemmas for our children. In last week's class we discussed several of these dangers, from oversharing of personal information to child predators to cyberbullying. It's important as educators not just to be aware of these issues but to fully understand the nature of the problems, the severity of the threats and the potential solutions.

Take cyber predators. A much quoted 2006 ABC News report concluded that 1 in 5 children have been approached by an online predator. This statistic led many parents and educators to fixate on a threat that, when studied more thoroughly, turned out to be far less terrifying than many more common and insidious dangers facing our children. According to this excellent article on the PBS Teachers website, not a single one of these reported incidents led to any physical contact, and almost half of the solicitations came not from adults but from peers. We as educators should not ignore the possibility of such crimes being perpetrated on unsuspecting children in their own homes, but we should understand that it is a relatively rare threat in the digital arena.

After watching the two PBS articles assigned for last week's homework and discussing online safety in class, I am convinced that the most frightening characteristic of the new digital world is its ability to disseminate information so rapidly and so irretrievably. Kids are often "set loose" online at a very young age, and even those who are carefully supervised can quickly learn to get around safeguards and/or stumble into unsafe places. So what are we as educators to do?

Blogger Suzie Nestico makes an excellent argument here that teachers need to be tech savvy themselves if they want to help their students be good digital citizens. It's not enough to have a glancing familiarity with the tools and programs our kids are using, she says. We should, for instance, know our way around Facebook and be able to address problems that arise on social media sites quickly and effectively.

But it's not enough, either, just to understand technology and the dangers inherent in its various forms. We have to help kids understand that the online world is not an alternate universe where they can go and do whatever they wish, but a part of the world they live in. Cyberbullying, for example, is not a whole new problem facing young people: It's a very old problem in new packaging. As this article on ReadWriteWeb points out, cyberbullying is a social problem that can't be addressed merely with a tidy list of online do's and don't's. Teaching our students responsible use of the internet goes hand-in-hand with teaching them to be responsible citizens of our communities and of our world.

Week #3: Documentary Discussion -- The Wild Wild West

Near the beginning of the 2008 PBS documentary, Frontline: Growing Up Online, one technology expert describes the internet as the Wild West. It's an image that sticks with you through the hour-long film, which examines the way the internet has thoroughly re-shaped the lifestyle of the average young person. Almost without warning, the internet has opened a new frontier for young people, one that is unimaginably expansive, fraught with real and imagined dangers and minimally policed. The follow-up 2010 film, Frontline: Digital Nation, continues he "frontier" motif but presents new and very different dilemmas that have recently sprung up in the rapidly changing world of technology. Where Growing Up Online focuses largely on the social issues surrounding internet use among young people and the generational gap it has opened up, Digital Nation examines how the internet's many-tentacled grip may be fundamentally changing the way people think, learn and interact.

Digital Nation posits that the new multi-tasking lifestyle born of the internet and the many digital gadgets available to consumers could be altering the way our brains work -- and not necessarily for the better. As someone who has always struggled with "staying on task," I find the notion of internet-induced attention deficit disorder very believable. In the time I watched the two films for this assignment and wrote just these first two paragraphs, I have interrupted myself at least 20 times to check my e-mail, send a text message, look at my Facebook page and look up random things only tangentially connected to the topic at hand. I have also been interrupted by my kids several times, and it is their development that concerns me more than my own stunted attention span. Along with being part of the "wired" generation, they are also part of the instant-everything generation, and I wonder if they will struggle all their lives with focusing on difficult tasks and working patiently to complete them.

Another worry for many parents and educators is the possibility of technology addiction. Both Growing Up Online and Digital Nation offer examples of young people who have all but disappeared into social networking sites and virtual worlds. Given the tremendous pressures young people face and the malleability of their minds, I think technology addiction is a valid concern for parents and educators. Whether or not it meets the critieria of a clinical addiction seems somewhat immaterial: If a young person is spending virtually all her waking hours living a make-believe life, we adults ought to be alarmed.

But even as it presents us with new and sometimes frightening challenges, the internet has enormous potential for educators, businesses and organizations. Video games are among the most addictive of the new technologies, but as Digital Nation points out, they are also being used in some innovative ways, including outside-the-box classrooms, virtual boardrooms and even therapeutic applications for the U.S. military. Having seen just a snippet of how video games might be used in the classroom, it's difficult to make a judgment call, but I certainly think they have potential for teaching certain hands-on skills or reaching unconventional learners.

In fact, the very idea of conventional learning is being called into question in this new digital age. As several educators and technology experts point out in the films, young people simply cannot be expected to absorb information the way they did 20 or 30 years ago, through lectures, long readings and rote memorization. While some people may find this reality difficult to accept, they should also consider the parallel reality that young people growing up today are preparing for an entirely different world than young people of a few decades ago, one that will require a very different skill set from their predecessors. In assessing new digital tools such as google tools, educators must consider that reality. Digital Nation offers an example of one struggling school that has transformed itself by embracing new technologies. I strongly believe that, particularly in schools fraught with poor test scores and serious discipline problems, experimentation with new technologies is a worthy investment -- as long as it's done thoughtfully and with an eye toward meeting the students where they are and preparing them for the future.

One benefit of embracing new technology is that we as parents and educators can have a better sense of what our kids are up to online. As several parents attested in Growing Up Online and Digital Nation, they truly had no idea what their kids were doing while they sat in front of their computer screens for hours on end. Just as preparing people to be good citizens and well-rounded individuals in the real world takes a multi-facted approach, teaching kids how to be safe and responsible online should be everyone's concern. Parents, who wield the greatest influence and bear the greatest responsibility for their children's welfare, ought to be the first line of defense. Now that the internet is commonly used in schools and for homework, educators should also take responsibility for teaching internet safety. The government can probably have minimal influence on general internet use without overstepping its boundaries but ought to have a robust program for dealing with internet crime such as child predators.

Of course, not all internet dangers are easy to define and monitor. Arguably one of the most detrimental aspects of the interenet is its many tantalizing tools for over-exposure. Young people -- and many adults -- don't always understand the irretrievable nature of a picture a video or an emotional outpouring posted online. Nor can they necessarily comprehend the damage they can do to their reputation and image simply by hitting "send" or "post." These decisions can come back to haunt them when they apply to colleges or jobs. Though it's difficult to teach young people where to draw the line when it comes to sharing information online, adults should nevertheless be vigilant about the dangers of letting their children loose in the new digital frontier.

Instead of combatting the everyday problems inherent to the internet, many parents fixate on the over-reported and relatively rare danger of internet predators. As Growing Up Online points out, most kids today are savvy to predator habits and not looking for trouble of that sort online. In my opinion, parents should be much more concerned about other interent dangers. Along with overexposure, the internet offers young people the ability to stay connected to their peers at all times -- a reality that can sometimes have devastating consquences, as one couple shares in Growing Up Online. Unable to escape the taunts of his schoolmates in the privacy of his home, their son turned to online suicide forums, where he learned methods for killing himself and gained encouragement from like-minded individuals. The combination of cyberbullying and the availability of these suicide sites caused him to ultimately commit suicide. Other very real dangers outlined in the two films include technology addiction and a growing inability to focus on difficult tasks.

One danger that was scarcely touched on in the pair of films was the real-life experiences young people may be missing out on by spending so much time online. While social networking does not preclude real friendships, the sheer amount of time kids spend online surely interferes with their ability to do simple things like take a walk with a friend, make something by hand, help out around the house or learn a new skill. Online habits also contribute to a sedentary lifestyle and the host of health problems that go with it.

I found the two films immensely informative and potentially useful in my future career as an ESOL educator. Growing Up Online gave me important insight into the way kids think, learn and interact today, and Digital Nation defined the new realities of teaching these digital natives. I was particularly bothered by the assertions, made in both films, that young people read very few books anymore after a certain age and that many educators no longer expect it. While I firmly believe in adapting and changing and trying new things as an educator, I do believe there's a place for old-fashioned tools and methods. We lose something very important as a society if we no longer read and honor great works of literature. Along the same vein, I think it would behoove educators at all levels to insist upon a few projects each year that require patience and sustained thinking. These would not necessarily need to be accomplished absent of digital tools, but they should be well-thought-out projects that nurture young people's ability to think deeply and work slowly and carefully. On a personal level, I hope to apply the lessons of these films by challenging myself to keep up with any and all technologies my multi-cultural students are using and that might help them be better learners. But I also plan to resist that notion that young people can no longer sit, unplugged, with a book open in their laps and thrill to what they find inside.