I have been rejuvenated. I am convinced that it will change my teaching. I will take small steps at first, but I am now an immigrant who wants to become fluent in the digital language.
Hopefully there will be support from the powers to be enabling all staff, students, and the community as a whole to adapt to the digital world.
What worked:
You have definitely opened my eyes to the digital world. Introductions to Blogs, RSS feeds,Del.icio.us accounts, Bloglines, and iPhoto have me very excited. After some R&R next week, I will revisit all areas of the course to process this material. Reading the articles convinced me that change in public education is necessary to engage our Generation M natives.
You as well as the other technologically literate people in the class are an inspiration.
What didn’t work:
You have me so excited about the web tools that I want to jump in and learn, learn, learn… Midweek I became oversaturated with reading articles. It did not take too many articles to see that we have to use more digital media in the classroom. I started getting depressed with my lack of digital knowledge. I wanted to get started on new strategies for teaching using digital media.
Suggestions for this course in the future
Although everything you did was helpful, there was too much material to process. The course needs to be longer. Instead of doing homework at night, I would have liked to process the material done that day and preview material for the next day.
There was an obvious dichotomy in the class. Maybe there should be a class for classroom teachers and a class for Technology intregraters.
RSS for Educators describes how by setting up a del.icio.us account it will store, sort and allow you to share feeds with your class.
Good Sites For Finding Good Sites can be used by both teachers and students to find resources on the Web provided by the Federal Government, State Agencies, Educational Consortia and News Agencies. We try to emphasize to our students that not everything on the Web is accurate. We encourage students to use edu and gov sites. This site would be a good starting point for student research.
A Difference Blog
It was interesting to note the reflections of Darren Kuropatwa on the evolution of his instructional design by semesters from the Winter 2005-Winter 2006. It was great to see the comparative list over this period of time. It appears that there was a shift to the student as worker. I hope to move in that direction.
Introduction
Every year in my Oceanography class we do a rocky shore study at Two Lights in Cape Elizabeth. Students are required to inventory the algae and marine animals along a transect line from the upper shore to the waters edge. From the time school starts until the trip requires a great deal of preparation. Pretrip work requires the students to learn the phyla, class, genus, species, and common names of common algae and animals on the rocky shore. I would like to develop a product that would allow a student to access a class blog that would include slides with all the information written and have audio also for pronunciation purposes.
Need for change addressed by this project (Why are you undertaking this project? For example, is it an old project that you want to do in a new way?)
This is an example of doing an old thing a new way. I have used a 35mm slide projector and most recently an iPhoto slide show to present the marine animals. This would require projecting a slide and students taking the information down on paper. This was very time consuming.
Expected outcomes (What will it look like if your project is successful?)
Students have requested hard copies of the pictures so that they could study. By utilizing a blog with visuals and audio of the marine organisms, students could work at their own pace and do several visits to the class blog to get prepared.
Activities correlated with objectives (How will you undertake this project?)
In order to develop this project, I would have to do the following:
Construct a class blog
Upload pictures from the web or digital camera to iPhoto or Flickr
Export to BubbleShare add audio
Export to class blog adding written information as post
Timeline for implementation (When will you accomplish each piece of your project?)
Since this is one of the first projects of the year, I will have to have this product in place prior to the start of this school year.
Measures of accomplishment (If your project is successful, how will you know?)
It would be nice to be able to give an online test to see if the students do know all of the marine plants and animals.
After reading the Generation M article, I wondered if my home was average concerning the amount of media. I discovered that we are above average in all areas having 5 TVs, 3 VCR/DVD, 3 video consoles, and 4 computers.
My sons are definitely media saturated with multitasking the rule. They are different than I am. When I read I can not have any distractions. My sons multitask: reading, watching TV and on Instant messenger simultaneously. How do they do it?
I was surprised that young people who spend more time with media report more time with parents. My son just received his computer back after it was broken for 2 weeks. He actually came out of his bedroom.
I had rules about media use until high school. Prior to that time I did not allow any TVs in their bedrooms. When the entered high school I lost that battle. Now there are TVs in every bedroom except mine. I am afraid that I will read less if I have a TV in my bedroom.
I am concerned about one of my sons lack of reading due to his media life. Maybe I should get talking books for his iPod?
I applaud the use of online discussions to teach critical thinking as a tool in advancing teaching and learning in electronic forums. In order to be successful in developing quality online discussions, necessary training must be provided. As stated in the article, the role played by faculty would require practicing modeling, coaching, questioning, reflecting, and task structuring. The students would also need training in collaborative learning and communication.
The potential that online communication offers is very great, but if it is undertaken it must be done correctly. Too often the necessary training is lacking , dooming an extremely exciting teaching strategy.
I utilize small group discussions on numerous occasions in my classes instead of attempting to have full class discussions. I feel that there is much more engagement instead of a few individuals dominating the discussion. I would like to use blogs to maximize discussions. I could pose a question or ask them to reflect on an article. These blogs would result in much more engagement.
Social Bookmarking would enable me to share websites on specific topics prior to introducing the material to the class. The student would then be able to be a more active contributor to the class.
It was great to see the change in Chris Burnett concerning the use of blogs in the classroom. Her students have taken responsibility for the quality of their work. Too often I hear the student comment that has become very stale–”good enough”. Many of my students feel that a first draft is their final draft. Having a “global audience” motivates students to continually revise their work until they feel that they have done a quality job.
Darren Kuropatwa’s pre cal blog using class scribes to publish notes of the class discussion for the day was a “breath of fresh air”. I have a difficult time getting students to take any notes. Using a blog, it enables students an opportunity to process and reflect on the activities for the day. Comments from other students will add information not included or modify inaccuracies.
I concur that we must teach the students how to use the tools effectively and appropriately.
A flood of technological information was given today. I will spend time this evening processing all of this information. It was an enlightning day. I learned a great deal including:
