The Value in Teaching with Technology

Technology is fun - and useful, too!

Taking a course on teaching with technology was a bit daunting. My technological skills were basic when we started this course - to say the very least! But over the course of the semester, I've learned to create mind maps, podcasts, digital stories, and pdfs - just to name a very few of the skills I've picked up and can now take to the classroom to use in the future.

I've said this again and again over the course of the semester, but it's vitally important that teachers know enough technology to make classes both interesting and relevant to students. We can't be the ones left behind as our students move about confidently in the world of technology. That's why courses like Teaching with Technology are so important. I was shocked to learn, however, that not many colleges offer a course like this one to their students. And I know several teachers who use almost no technology in their classrooms.

I have made it my goal to share some of what we've learned in class with other teachers I know. In fact, I have already encouraged one to use blogs (my ICP topic) in his classroom, and I have sent him links to several of the free blogging services.

Reflecting on Learning

Well, it's finally over! (No offense, Dr. Smirnova, but this class was tough!) At the beginning of the semester, I had doubts that I would make it through with my sanity intact. In the end, though, taking this class was very worth it. Given the skills I've learned -- and the information I've acquired -- I have no doubt I'll now be able to offer my future students a richer learning experience.

Working on the ICP was the culmination of everything. It allowed us to take the skills we learned over the semester and actually apply them to a lesson plan. In the end, I would have liked a little more time to present because I felt rushed and left things out of my presentation, but overall, I was happy with it. I felt I included a lot of interesting information about blogs and how they can be used. My presentation would have benefited from a few more links to good education blogs. In a real classroom, I would also have time to actually have the students do the exercise in creating a blog in groups. (Below is the link to my presentation if you'd like to check it out.)

All in all, this class was very worthwhile. It provided more concrete, real information than almost any other class I've taken in graduate school.

Teaching with Technology ICP Presentation - take two!

For some reason my link didn't work, so here it is again:

ICP Final Presentation - Teaching with Technology

Teaching with Technology ICP Presentation

The following is a link to my final presentation. I had an interesting time creating this PPT (and slideboom presentation). I'm not very technologically able (although I'm much better after taking Teaching with Technology). I hope you enjoy it!

The Death of Creativity

I went back and watched Sir Ken Robinson's video on schools killing creativity again because I thought it was a very important topic. Many of today's schools do seem to be killing creativity in kids. Robinson makes the point that creativity is just as important as literacy, and I don't think I'd argue with this at all.

Our schools kill creativity by telling kids that they must learn in specific ways, and by making students learn by rote memorization (in some places), and by forcing teachers to teach to tests in order for students to pass those tests in order for schools to continue getting funding. It seems to me that this goes against everything we as future teachers are learning about how to most effectively teacher children. And yet we continue on in the same vein - doing things the same way - and getting results that seem to be getting worse and worse.

Robinson is correct in another point he makes. He says we have to be prepared to be wrong in order to learn. That's another idea I believe we foster constantly in our children. Parents refuse to ever tell children they are wrong - and teachers make those same children afraid to be incorrect - it all adds up to the fact that we are producing children who will never take any chances. And if these children grow up refusing to take chances out of fear, then our entire society suffers for it.

Below is a link to an interview with Ken Robinson on the same topic.

I'm smarter than I thought!

I just finished creating a newsletter and a blog for A7 and HA7, and I have to admit I did better than I thought I would. It was actually kind of fun to create a newsletter and a blog for a fake class.

I imagine that knowing how to do these things will come in very handy when I begin teaching in a high school or a middle school. Newsletters and blogs are great ways to keep parents involved in what their children are learning in school. Creating both a newsletter and a blog would be valuable because even though it's hard for many of us to believe, there are still some people out there who don't spend a lot of time on computers and who are therefore not comfortable hopping on the Internet and visiting a class blog. Having both a newsletter and a blog means appealing to a wider variety of parents. And letting parents know what their kids are doing in school is important because it allows parents more opportunity to take part in their children's lives.

YouTube for learning!

Hooray for YouTube! Using YouTube in the classroom!

I loved the link to the article on how to save YouTube videos so they can be used in the classroom. I have to admit, anytime I'm looking for video to jazz up a presentation YouTube is my first stop. It's such a wonderful resource for anyone who's presenting - not just teachers.

Along the same lines, I found a Web site that lists the '100 best YouTube videos for teachers,' which categorizes YouTube videos that could possibly be helpful for educators. The videos are broken down into categories like 'Humor,' 'Technology,' 'Classroom Management,' and others. Being able to look at all of these different videos in categories is very helpful for finding fun stuff to use in our classrooms.

ProProfs is tops!

ProProfs makes life easier for teachers!

Making a quiz on ProProfs.com was actually very easy. I am continuously surprised by what I am able to do when I am asked to do it for a class (no getting out of it that way). Web 2.0 tools like this site are a great resource for teachers.

I found ProProfs to be especially helpful because it allows teachers to make several different kinds of quizzes. One would think a site like this would be limited to only multiple choice, but that isn't the case. Additionally, being able to add the number of questions I wanted - instead of being locked into a specific form - was very helpful. I imagine that this site will be very useful for me in the future. In fact, I believe I will start using it right away!

Literary Terms » Fun Trivia Maker

Hooray for Engrade!

Engrade makes grading (and tracking grades) easy!

Setting up my class list on Engrade.com was far easier than I would have thought possible; it took just a few minutes to input my make believe class roster. It was so simple to type in the names and assign each a number that even those who are as technologically simple as I should be able to do it.

The one thing I didn't like about the site was the time it took to process all of my requests. The site seemed a bit slow, and I wondered whether or not that's because it's popular or because it's still being changed. I absolutely loved the calendar and attendance tools. Having an electronic way to track these things can make life much easier for teachers. I also liked that the site had an option for teachers to add comments about students. That could be a great way for educators to keep track of thoughts, assignments, and goals concerning specific students.

Engrade could be a better tool for teachers if it were a bit faster in processing requests. It would be hard for a teacher to take attendance in the classroom with Engrade if it is always as slow to respond as it was when I tried it. Many teachers now use online tools provided by their schools for attendance; Engrade could be a good subsitute in a school that doesn't offer this option, but it would have to be faster to prevent teachers from having to use paper backup. Other than increasing its processing speed, the only thing that could make Engrade better is the addition of number breakdowns for various grading systems - so that we teachers don't have to do the math ourselves. Although, I must admit - being able to add the percentages for each assignment will be very helpful.

Engrade could be very useful for classroom teachers in that it provides a place to keep and track grades, attendance, and student comments from any computer - anywhere! Teachers could duplicate the information they input into school systems so they would be able to grade at any time and from any place - as long as their schools will allow it. Teachers could also use it to communicate with parents. Parents and students would like the software because it would allow them to access grades at any time, which would make it easy for both parents and children to keep track of how the children are doing in school, check grades, and read teacher comments.

All in all, I found Engrade to be a very valuable tool. I'm going to add my current classes into the system to help with my own grading.

VoiceThread presentation

I was a bit frustrated creating my VoiceThread presentation. Although it was super-easy to upload files from my own computer for my project, I couldn't use anything else to make it more interesting. I was only able to upload one picture, as all of the other options on the site are part of the pay for service.

I've included a link to my project as well as the embed code for any readers who wish to view it. I fear it's not very intersting.


http://voicethread.com/share/240964/

MyStudiyo.com

The quiz on collaborative learning at MyStudiyo.com was an eye-opener. Although I thought the questions were interesting, I had a very hard time answering two of them because I thought either of two answers could be correct. I would have liked a more definitive answer in those two questions.

In general, I believe collaborative learning is the ideal, but it won't work in every situation. In order for collaborative learning to work, teachers will probably need pretty exceptional students - or at least smart students who are also well-behaved. With that in mind, collaborative learning might work better in a high school than in a middle school - as students tend to be a little more immature in middle school.

The Web site below has an online guide and video on the subject of collaborative learning.

http://www.tlc.murdoch.edu.au/pubs/learning/video_collab_learn.html

Digital Stories

Create my own digital story? Yikes, more to learn!

Creating my own digital story was actually a lot more fun than I thought it would be. I expected to have a lot of trouble due to my lack of knowledge on the subject, but it was actually much easier than I expected. I was thinking that I would have liked to have had enough time to create a digital story I could use with students, but then I realized that is our next project for class.

I chose to create my digital story based on how I ended up as the owner of seven cats. I started out by taking pictures of each cat, then I dug out a few old pictures I had of two of my cats. Unfortunately, I couldn't find more older pictures of my cats. I would have liked to have used an old and a new picture of each one.

Next, I imported my photos to MovieMaker 3. I was shocked by how easy it was. I then added titles to each slide and recorded the words I had decided to speak for each slide. Lastly, I laid sound over the entire "movie." I chose to use Ozzy Osbourne's "Diary of a Mad Man" because I thought it was an appropriate choice for a digital story about how I ended up owning seven cats.

I'm still trying to come up with a subject for my next "story." I'm hoping to create a story that I can use in the future with my students.

Excel Frustrations!

Columns, rows? What's the difference?!

AlexKay_A4podcast.mp3 (1.18 MB)
frustration.jpg (3 KB)

Creating a crossword puzzle in Excel proved to be quite rewarding - and quite frustrating - for me. Rewarding because it is yet another tool that I will be able to use in the future to enrich the educational experiences of my students. Frustrating because I am just not all that Excel-proficient.

Teaching software within the context of another educational area is a great idea because it creates an environment where the learner is having a two-fold educational experience: he/she is both learning the software and a textually appropriate use for it at the same time. Teaching someone how to use something like Excel isn't nearly as good as teaching that same person to use Excel while at the same time giving her/him an idea of how it can be applied to a specific curriculum.

Today's students are so technologically advanced that I think a crossword creation project in Excel would work even better for them than it did for me. Because I already know the words - and I'm not that familiar with Excel - my frustration came from putting the crossword together. Someone more technologically savvy would be able to concentrate more on the words than on the software, thus spending more time learning the words.

Next time, I would employ graph paper much earlier in the process. I sketched out my puzzle first on regular paper only to find it didn't fit when I transferred it to graph paper. Needless to say, I was quite frustrated.

Lastly, creating the puzzle with an online puzzlemaker was actually incredibly easy -- much easier than creating it with Excel. While the online puzzlemaker took just a few minutes, Excel took more than a few hours.

AuthorPoint Lite

No more pesky downloads!

AuthorPoint Lite is something I can see myself using frequently. Although I have the technology to open PPT presentations without a problem, many people have not purchased the program, and as a result, they either cannot open the presentations or have a hard time figuring out how to view them.

With AuthorPoint Lite, other people can easily view the presentations I create -- without any hassle to either them or me, and more importantly, without wasting any time. No more fumbling around trying to figure out what file reader is required! Additionally, since the program supports animations, narrations, etc..., there will not be any need to "dumb down" presentations, either.

Discovering presentations also sounds interesting. It seems as if the site has a search option in order to allow users to find presentations on interesting topics. All in all, AuthorPoint Lite seems like a valuable tool to know about!

Sea Change - "Shift Happens"

A time of transformation

I see "Shift Happens" as a sort of documentary of what's going on in the world today. The main idea of the entire video seems to be the transformation of the world -- technological and otherwise. Another key point, however, is the idea that no great power can last forever. Over and over, the piece seems to indicate that the United States is being outstripped/outpaced by other nations - namely China and India. England's super power status in the year 1900 is used to prove this idea. The fact that Sprint gave more money to technology research in a year than the United States government only shows us how this outpacing is occurring.

That we're preparing kids for jobs that don't yet exist and problems that aren't yet problems makes it all the more scary to think about. How can we hope to compete on a global basis (something that our constructivist readings say we're no longer doing) if other countries are doing so much better than we are at teaching/incorporating/using technology?

The picture I've included says that technology changes, but people don't. I'm not entirely sure that's true. If people don't change, then how is the United States no longer keeping pace? Something must have occurred at some point.

A sea change is happening in the world, and the U.S. is running behind the curve. If we're not careful, our country will transform for the worse.

Converting Files to PDF - A1

1 October 2008

I've found learning how to convert files to pdf to be incredibly helpful to both my school work and my job. I had no idea it was so easy! Additionally, taking the inventory in the files we converted was also pretty interesting. I found out that I know at least a little more about technology than I thought I did. For example, I already have a program downloaded that allows me to take screen shots, and I've been using it for quite awhile now (FastStone Capture).

I did learn some new things, though: where to look for Web site coding. All in all, assignment A1 was both helpful and eye-opening!

Digital Literacy

Here's a link to a recent article on digital literacy:

http://connect.educause.edu/Library/EDUCAUSE+Quarterly/ConnectingtheDigitalDotsL/39969?time=1222449389

Changing Literacy?

Is digital literacy really a new kind of literacy -- or is it simply a retooling of skills and knowledge that have always been used?

I found the video on the DISCOVER organizer for digital literacy quite interesting, but I'm not sure how much of what is mentioned within the video is new information. Most of the DISCOVER process are steps that teachers have been using with students for ages. The one step that has become much more important in the digital age is Verify. It's vitally important that we teach students the need to verify all information that they obtain online. They cannot simply trust what they find on any old Web site without taking the time to do a little research on the author and any possible bias he/she may have.

I'm not so sure, however, that we need to teach students how to "discover digital literacy" beyond stressing the need to verify and reflect. Most of them are light years ahead of their teachers in terms of using the Web as a tool. Reviewing steps for students in order to guide them to greater digital literacy, though, would be useful, as many students might not know about various educational and research sites.

Before we can do anything of this, we need to make sure our teachers are digitally literate. I know of many teachers who are still not taking advantage of the Internet as completely as they could be. Schools should institute mandatory training programs for teachers, so that they can they present information accurately to students -- and so that they (the teachers) have a greater understanding of things their students may already know.

Del-icio-us is a Delight!

Making my technological life easier - one small step at a time!

Part of last week's homework was to join Del-icio-us, and I have to say I'm completely in love with the site! Having the ability to save links to cyberspace is very convenient. I am constantly amazed by the things we're learning to do in Teaching with Technology. Without someone prompting me to learn, I probably would never have found and used half of these sites and tools.

I actually switched to gmail about a year and a half ago so I would have access to e-mail from whereever I was working. Because I do a lot of freelance work, this technology just makes my life easier. I look forward to learning more tools in the near future.

Citizens of the World

Digital Citizenship was one of the topics we covered in this week's readings for Teaching with Technology. The topic covers using digital technology appropriately, developing ethical direction when it comes to electronic sources, fair use of electronic materials posted online, and technology etiquette.

One of the phrases that struck me as being particularly pertinent was the one that said we are living in a "lawless digital society." Our group discussed what this really means, and we pondered whether or not appropriate technology-related behavior is something that should be taught at home - or if schools must come up with their own rules to police students' behavior. In the end, we decided that it's got to be a little of both. Parents should teach their kids common courtesy -- and hopefully that will extend to the digital world -- but schools also need to come up with their own rules for how technology can be used in school buildings and on school grounds.

In terms of developing ethical direction, students need to learn what is and is not acceptable to download and use from the Web. I particularly liked the five-step program for how educators can begin teaching students to use technology appropriately that was mentioned in one article.

As we become more technologically able, problems will only get worse if we don't take steps to control inappropriate behaviors now.

Information Overload

Just use information from any old Web site? No way!

Learning to evaluate Web sites is an incredibly important tool for both students and teachers to acquire. Although I have evaluated Web sites I planned to use for research on my own in the past, using Kathy Schrock's critical evaluation surveys gave me a better idea of what to look for on the sites I chose to evaluate.

Schrock's tools made it much easier to focus my observations on things that really mattered to my thoughts of the site's usefulness as well as the integrity of a site's author, the legitimacy of the information, and the attractiveness of the design. Overall, the evaluation surveys provided me with more tools I could use to determine whether or not a site was a good one.

For example, in the past I would probably only have considered the number of links that provided information on a site rather than thinking about the design of the site or the appeal of the links and whether or not they worked in a plain text format.

Students need to learn how to effectively evaluate Web sites because our world is so technologically-dependent now that they will continue to have to use the Web for research for their entire academic careers and beyond. If they use information from sites they have not evaluated, then they run the risk of using incorrect information in their school work or believing misinformation. In learning to recognize the legitimacy of a site like Albany University's Center on English Learning & Achievement (www.albany.edu/cela/), they learn to identify the things that are wrong with another site, such as the lack of well-developed lesson plans on Teachers.net. Additionally, students can learn that many sites are legitimate and useful even when not backed by a college, university, or other organization. For example, I found Vocabulary.com to be an incredibly useful site in spite of the fact that it was developed by a former teacher rather than a college or university.

Overall, I found the Web site evaluation exercise to be very useful. It gave me additional ideas for what to focus on when deciding whether or not a Web site will prove to be legitimate and practical. It also made me think about things I had not considered in the past, such as appeal.

Me as an educator

To be honest, I'm not really sure yet who I am as an educator - at least of high school students. I've been teaching college writing courses for quite awhile now, but most of the classes I teach are remedial, so I don't have a lot of opportunity to experiment.

I guess I would say that I'm a pretty casual teacher in the sense that I'm kind of laid back and not very strict. I also would never even consider lecturing for an entire class period. I always have a brief lecture (15-20 minutes) and then some kind of hands-on activity for the students to practice. Then we usually talk about the activity before moving on to something else. I also try to make myself as available as possible to my students in case they need help with anything.

I do use some technology in my classes in the sense that I occasionally use PowerPoint for a lecture. I also have the student go online to do research for a paper they must write and to find information on MLA citation rules. They can also use the computers in the classroom (when I'm in a smart room) to write their papers when they choose. Those are really the only technologies available to me in a basic writing class.

Blogs

I thought the podcast we listened to for class was pretty interesting. It's amazing to me how many people are now using blogs to get their messages across.

One thing that worries me when it comes to all of the information we post online is that students will think that much of what they read may be used as legitimate research sources. I see it with my own students in a writing course I teach. My students have little or no idea how to differentiate between legitimate sites and sites put out there by people with no credentials. Blogging gives voice to people who want to be heard - on any topic at all - and that's a great thing, but I do believe we have to find a way to distinguish. I also believe blogs can be very valuable tools for educational purposes.

One other thing mentioned very briefly in the podcast we listened to worried me as well. The host of the podcast mentioned that the NSA gave tons of funding to harvest the information from people's Web pages to develop profiles on people. I find it very scary that we're putting so much information about ourselves out there for anyone to see.