Notes from Millie D

You may have noticed a new category on the right hand side of the blog.  I’ve been asked to list some of the blogs that I read and how they could help promote student learning.  Here it goes:

2 Cents Worth- David Warlick is constantly pushing the envelope of what is out there for technology, classroom applications, as well as classroom philosophy.

Around the Corner-MGuhlin.net-Miguel is a technology supervision in San Antonio, Texas and technology champion.  Like David he is on the forefront of what is going on and the potential impact.

Cool Cat Teacher-  Vicky Davis is a middle school classroom teacher who gets it.  She not only talks the talk but walks the walk.  It is nice to get insight from the trenches and not just observers.

Creating Passionate Users- Kathy Sierra is not a classroom teacher but her insights with technology can easily be applied to the classroom.  She also includes interesting visuals to help make her points. 

Education/Technology-Tim Lauer-  Here is a principal who gets technology and it use in the classroom.  Tim is a principal at an elementary school in Portland, OR and champions technology in the classroom.  He is constantly letting his teachers take risks if they feel it will help promote student learning.

Every One Learns-Pedagogy, Technology, Motivation-Mike Muir is a Mainah.  It is great to get the local perspective on technology in the classroom.  Mike teaches at UMFarmington and what he preaches sound education pedagogy with technology.

Moving at the Speed of Creativity-  Wes Fryer is the author and he is Educational Technology Specialist in Oklahoma.  He and Miguel share common passions with technology and education.

Stephen’s Web-Stephen Downes, a Canadian’s perspective, eh!  Stephen is
very insightful and forward thinking.  He shoots straight from the hip.

Teach42-Education and Technology, by Steve Dembo-Steve is another one who gets it.  Steve is a blogger who offers great insight.

Thoughts from a Technospud-Jennifer Wagner looks at technology usage in the classroom through classroom projects.  Jennifer has started a blog to help with her insight and the impact of technology in the classroom. 

Weblogg-ed-Will Richardson, the guru of educational blogging.  Enough said!

If I didn’t mention your blog don’t take it personally, look at my bloglines feeds to get more great authors out there.

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Technology for Teachers : Coming of Age: an introduction to the new world wide web

The new world wide web offers so much potential as well as risk.  It is awesome to be involved at a time when some many things are on the verge of changing the landscape.  The one thing I am constantly going back to is the ideal that there is only 24 hours in a day.  At some point people reach a technology overload point.  We have been exposed to so much technology that it could be a full time job just reading blogs and keep up with the newest of the new along with the impact it could have on teachers (wouldn’t that be a great job). 

I have to keep reminding myself that it is okay to let some of this new technology go.  We will probably keep up with the technology with the help of others who keep pushing it to the front page (or the top of our RSS feeds).

KISS=Keep It Simple Sweetie

It is better to take 1 new technology and do it well than it would be take 5 technologies and do them okay.  It is still about the teaching and the education of children, the technology should help be a beacon on that journey with your students.

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Technology for Teachers : The World is Flat

This was a book I read last time last year and I’m still thinking about the book on an almost daily basis.  I’m not necessarily drinking the cool-aid that Tom Friedman is serving but there is so much that he said that is right on target.  So much of what we are not aware about going on in the world is going to catch up and pass us by if we don’t take the time to be aware!  We are producing a society of consumers and losing the society of producers. 

I will say that a flatter world is making a more efficiently world.  In rural Maine hospitals don’t have to find specialists to cover 24/7 at the hospital but that hospital can outsource some of their work to other parts of the world but still keep the same quality of care, AMAZING! 

I go to what I said in the podcast education should incorporate more thought process and situational education vs. regurgatation of factual information that standards based education is promoting right now.

technorati tags:21stcentury, education, technology, friedman

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I thought it would be best to reflect on the executive summary point by point:

1. Time Spent with Media:  Wow, more than a quarter of their day is spent with media.  That is a lot when you when combine this with the amount of school, 13 hours.
2. Media in the Home:  The amounts are not surprising given the ease of access and how the price points have come down.  Think about the $69 iPod shuffle.
3. Influence of Bedroom and Household Media Environment:  DUH!  If anyone thought there would be no connection or a negative one is foolish.
4. Media Use and Time Spent in Other Activities:  This surprised me I would have thought it would have been the opposite.  Society needs to capitalize on this fact and try to increase the benefits.
5. Demographic Differences in Media Use:  I wasn’t surprised by the different usage by ages.  Look at where they are and what their needs are and that should explain it right there.
6. Parental Rules About Media Use:  What is going to the be the long term effect of parents not imposing rules on the usage of the media?  This is going to be something society may need to address.
7. New vs. Old Media:  I’m glad to see that children are not replacing (although it does create an interesting debate on time management) new with old.  Each has their place it is just about the balance that kids need to acheive.
8. Media Multi-Tasking:  How well are kids doing their multi-tasking?  I would recommend people reading Kathy Sierra’s blog entry, Your Brain on Multitasking.  It puts a different spin on the issue.
9. Media use, Grades, and Contentment:  I have a funny feeling this is going to be a story about the haves and the have-nots.  Those who have good self-esteem won’t rely on the media but those who struggle with self-esteem will cling to the media.
10. Television:  I wonder how the role of portable digital players (iPods) that have video capability will effect how much tv kids watch.  I think that it will decrease because they will go to the Internet or use a service like the iTMS and put it on their iPods to watch later, on their time!
11. Music:  Music is the voice of their generation and that will not change.  Look at music promotion now, the industry is tapping social networking services like myspace to get the music out to the people.  Radio stations are starting to suffer.
12. Computers and the Internet:  With the ease of access of computers and the Internet I think you will see more usage of the computer and less on television.
13. The Digital Divide:  The digital divide is closing.  More and more people are finding a need (not want) for a computer in the home.  As prices continue to drop cost will become less of a barier.
14. Reading:  Reading for pleasure needs to be redefined for this generation.  I think they are reading a lot more for pleasure but it may be websites, blogs, etc.
15. Video Games:  The convergence between computers, video games, and the Internet is starting.  More and more tvs now are coming with video game ports and online playing is revolutionizing video games. I see the future where these techologies merge into 1 unit instead of separate entities.  Then you will see the time balancing out.

That represents my thoughts and opinion, I welcome yours…

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Again Prensky present an “in-your-face” view of education and the role of technology today. I buy into what he is getting at with the article but with some reservation. He presents a lot of ideal situations void of financial restraints and accountability from administrators. I would agree that keeping the ideal situation in front of us allows us to strive towards that level.

An interesting point Prensky makes that resonated with me was the idea of flexible learning groups. I almost got the point he would favor homogenous grouping in a virtual world. That would definitely be a different educational environment. I could potential see kids logging into to their virtual worlds (like Second Life) and go to schoolhouse where students of similar interests or abilities would be their classmates. Okay we getting closer to the Jetsons’ style of education.

I do feel that children are exposed to during the school day might be considered throw away, not useful. Inherently I think teachers want to constantly provide those meaningful education situations. Do I think playing games is one way of achieving it? Yes, but it would be no different than a calculator or other manipulatives might play. I think about all of the problem solving and logic skills children explore when they are building levels in the game SuperTux or programming with Logo and can justify it in an educational situation. These simulators or game-playing activities still need to be balanced with more traditional approaches in order to best fully educate.

I like the idea of using the students as a sounding board for digital content/activities/assessment tools. In a sense this is no different than planning backwards. The key is having quality essential questions for the digital tools to explore. Wouldn’t that be an interesting curriculum planning model? You definitely get student ownership of their education!

Are we on the verge of a digital revolution in public education? Prensky would definitely say yes! I’m still optimistic that educators will get it. Think back 4 years ago when the laptops started in middle schools. It wasn’t pretty at first but educators got it and started being innovative and engaging and now high schoolers are suffering withdrawls if they don’t have the same opportunities as they did in middle school.

http://www.kff.org/entmedia/upload/Executive-Summary-Generation-M-Media-in-the-Lives-of-8-18-Year-olds.pdf

Alice has said to skim the document. “When you take out the pictures it is only 21 pages.”

My very first reaction to the reading was “I agree” but when I took a moment to think about what it would take to make critical thinking through online discussion successful I realized that a lot of teachers are not at that point yet. Teachers need the time to be comfortable with the tools that technology can offer before they can help their students achieve that critical thinking. Just because you can email doesn’t guarentee success. I like to feel that if someone can email they have the potential to handle online discussions.

When I think back to my experiences as a student to online discussion and critical thinking it usually goes to listservs. In those cases the emails start fast and furious but after a while they die off and grow stagnant. Now I have a better idea why, the lack of the moderator to keep discussions focused and stimulated. Using blogs or wikis might have changed that failure because the emails get lost in the shuffle where a dynamic web pages like wikis and blogs are a little more in your face.

It would be interesting to ask (regardless of the technology) how much discussion goes on in the classroom for students to achieve those critical thinking moments. I hope it would be high…

I like the thought of starting the necessary skills offline and building up student confidence so when they do go online they are more likely to be successful. This is one environment where jumping in with both feet might be a precursor to failure than success. With the Read/Write/Think web in place the audience is potentially bigger than the classroom so taking the time in order to be success is smart.
I was impressed with the number of different ways discussion formats could be structured. Technology lends itself as a tool to help organize and promote the necessary thinking in order to address the essential questions the teacher may pose.
The biggest thing I took away from the article was preparation is the key to success. Success is not necessarily going to happen over night but with patience and dilligence (using technology or not) your students can think more critically. It is our job as teachers to promote critical thinking skills so we don’t end up with a generation of “zombies” accepting the status quo.

The power of blogging is immense but the apprehension for newbies can be just as immense. Usually that apprehension boils down to fear of the unknown and a control issue that is inheirant being a teacher.

Teachers are generally creatures of habit (shocking isn’t it). New technologies represent changes to those habits.

New technologies right out of the box also represent a lack of control. Usually when people adopt new technologies, like Blogs, the evolution of it will provide teachers the controls to make them feel comfortable.

Blogging has gone through that evolution process. David Warlick has developed a site called Blogmeister (http://classblogmeister.com/) which allows a teacher to set up a blog and student responses must be approved by the teacher before they appear on the site. There are other blogging sites geared specifically for teachers to use in the classroom that provides teachers with as much control as they want/need to have to implement it in their classroom.
Will Richardson makes a great point about the modeling the correct/proper usage of new technologies. I agree with him that teachers and educators need to use this type of technology to showcase the ethical and proper usage of blogging and other social networking websites because the kids are already using it. Without the proper models children are going to look to whatever sources will provide them with the guidance (positively or negatively).
History has pointed out time and time again when we don’t have models and best practices to follow chaos usually follows. Look at the whole myspace phenomena, kids and just doing it and in most cases there isn’t someone showing them how to use it safely. We hear about isolated cases (which usually ends tragically) when the technology is abused. Each generation has their own challenges in socially acceptable usage. A few years ago it was IM and before that it was email. We can probably go back and find similar debates over telephones and letter writing. What things do they have in common? Communication. Is education about the stifling communication? I think not!
Another aspect of the fear and apprehension of adopting new technology is the idea that more work is going to be added to their plate. Teachers in Maine have been told time and time again, “this is not meant to add more work…” but usually it does. Blogging doesn’t have to add more work to your plate if you allow to give up some of the control. Darren Kuropatwa has his students do the blogging as a component of their grade. The great feature is that their peers will provide and demand quality assurances. Thus giving up a little control means less work in implementing this new technology, blogging, in the classroom. Innovation and new items doesn’t have to mean more work if you think about it objectively.

The article is trying to point out that blogging is not going away anytime soon. How well educators can embrace it will determine the long-term effect it will have on society. Communication tools have usually made the world a better place to exist blogging shouldn’t be any different. Now the question is how well can we move people from resistance to comfort?