Younger Americans, who buy only about 4 percent of books sold, have crafted their own environment for print media — non-traditional, of course. Kids, teenagers and young adults spend hours (and hours) on the Internet writing and reading (which should be of some comfort to English teachers). Bored with old-fashioned e-mail messages, kids prefer “synchronous chat.” Through MUDs (multi-user domains), young folks have transformed the solitary activity of reading into a highly social medium….
Nevertheless, I am excited and exhilarated by today’s electronic exchanges. The medium has changed, but the skill of reading is alive and well.
Writing is still essential, even if the style is mutating to “Internet casual.” Format aside, communication remains essential to getting your message across, and words are still the core components of the message.
The next generations are as hungry for knowledge as any we’ve seen — and, with the spread of electronic media — will likely be as literate as any other. - Dr. M. Ray Perryman is president and chief executive officer of The Perryman Group and economist-in-residence at the Edwin L. Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University
It is good to see that the higher ed folks are paying attention to the changing habits of today’s student culture. I wish I could say the same for the K-12 crowd. Videos such as Download? Are we unaware that there are more students in China taking the SAT test in English than in the Untied States? Do we simply not care that the top 10% of the population in China equals the total population of the United States and the top 25% is more than the total population of North America? We are not just competing with the neighboring school districts anymore. We are (or at least should be) preparing our students to compete against the world.
Is this a legitimate avenue for affecting change? Does fear motivate people to change? Might it motivate reluctant teachers to modernize their practices?
So is it the right thing to do? Do you think it is even possible to scare teachers into this type of paradigm shift in a K-12 setting? Do you see the need for this type of change in thought and instruction?
Have you ever thought of blogging in this way? It is what drives me in this area of the new web. As an information junkie, I am always trying to figure out a more efficient way of learning more in less time. Blogs eliminate a lot of the searching I had to do before because there are so many people doing the work for you now. I challenge you to blog for this reason if no other. While the state might say you have to get PD hours, make them useful. Remember, you can count the time you spend blogging and reading for a portion of the time. This is what Texas law reads:
Texas Administrative Code Title 19, Part 7, Chapter 232, Subchapter B
(c) Participation in interactive distance learning, video conferencing, or on-line activities or conferences.
(d)Independent study, not to exceed 20% of the required clock hours, whichmay include self-study of relevant professional materials (books,journals, periodicals, video and audio tapes, computer software, andon-line information) or authoring a published work.
Take advantage of it and gain ownership of your own learning today.
Tim Wilson, a technology integration specialist from Minnesota, hosted a session at NECC last year (NECC will be in San Antonio June 2008). The audience put together a list of classroom uses for podcasting. Tim blogged about it and offers this list:
Collect field notes during a science field trip Living museum, researching characters “Radio shows” Creating audio guides for local museums Teacher powerpoints Early language learners, (rhyming, etc.) Staff development Screencasts Language learners recording assessments Discovery Education videos Science reports Art projects Digital portfolios Weekly classroom news Serial storytelling Reflective journals Summaries of school events Broadcast school sporting events Roving reporters Capturing oral histories (family history) Podcast vocab words and spelling lists Flashcard practice with iFlash Musical compositions Soundseeing tours
Since podcasting is new to many in our school district, I thought I would offer this list up and see if anyone was interested in trying it out. If you are, give me a call. We have the equipment available for our staff to try these things out.
Any other ways to use podcasting that you can think of?
Thanks for the challenge, Vicki. I am going to answer these questions from my new position as an instructional technologist. My job is to train our staff on integrating new tools into their teaching AND learning. So here we go…
Do you spend any time talking about proper methods of e-mail?
Nope. We have an acceptable use policy in place for this. Does that negate the need for me to discuss it with staff. Not at all. Since this is my first year in a position my school district never had before, I will learn from this idea. Next year, we discuss it even if we only do it briefly. I am sure there is a good video out there that would do the topic justice.
Do you have a facebook or myspace profile?
No I do not, but that does not stop me from understanding how to navigate the sites. Proactive is the best policy for me. I am working on a parent training on this as well. It will be interesting to see what turns up when the parents start searching these sites. Eye opener anyone?
If someone wrote about you, is your name hyperlinkable? (Do you have something they can link to?)
Yes, I know my staff pretty well. Even the new folks are becoming very familiar as I move through the classes and hallways.
If your students have computers in the classroom, do your students make ongoing eye contact?
When I need them to, they would. But if they are like me, they are listening yet still working.
Are you unafraid of what would happen if youtube, myspace, and facebook were allowed in your classroom?
Not me. If you teach acceptable use and ethics first, most of the problems would take care of themselves. You will never take care of all of the issues, but you can work to lessen them.
Do your students collaboratively create documents?
My district recently switched to Google Apps for your Domain, so they now have access to the Google Docs suite. Already teachers area creating student lists to share with the entire campus (detentions, testing, conferences, etc). We even have an administrator using them to work out a presentation with another administrator who works in a neighboring district.
Do you expect your students to complete their reading assignments?
Yep. As an English teacher I did. But “complete” is a loaded word. Even I do not read every word in the books/blogs/etc that I read, yet my comprehension did not suffer. My students will vary with that. Of course, I pushed those with comprehension issues to pay attention to each word as they went through since one can easily get lost if they already struggle.
Do you assign papers and grade them after reading EVERY WORD?
I have, but it was not with every assignment. As a seasoned educator, it becomes second nature to know where a paper is headed. I wish the state of Texas chose seasoned educators to grade the state standardized essays. They spend less than a minute on each paper prior to putting a grade on it, and many of the graders are not even English majors, much less educators.
Have you ever given assignment and allowed students to create content on the public world wide web?
Absolutely. We have used wikis and blogs for the last few years. Now my goal is to get other teachers to take the same chances I took with student learning.
Do you allow students to post content WITHOUT pre-moderation?
Not at the middle school level with everything. I do RSS their wikis to be updated ASAP, but they can still post there before I can nix any inappropriate content. Funny enough, they never posted anything I needed to censor.
If you allow students to post online, do you subscribe to 100% of their content in your RSS reader?
Yes.
Do you comment on your student blogs?
Yes, I did.
Is more than 50% of your content relevant “to life?” (Ask your students)
Teaching English and reading? Well, the content itself not so much, but the skills were. In many cases I gave them the choice of what to write or read about, so the relevancy was up to them.
Do all of your students open their textbook for your class on a weekly basis?
Nope.
Do you give reading assignments that include web content?
Yes, I have.
Have your students been taught methodologies for assessing the validity of web documents?
We spent some time on it, but honestly it was not enough. The fact that I could fit it into an already packed list of items was pretty good. It really needed to be taught prior to the students hitting my door (common educator cop-out, I know). Maybe we can work it into one of our intro tech courses or cycle classes.
Do
you give students projects where they must manage themselves,
multitask, and deliver a comprehensive output that is relevant to your
topic?
Yes, I did. Their favorite was designing the classroom of tomorrow. Interesting thoughts from them, but not much in the way of innovation. What should I expect of kids who are taught to not take chances in their learning and stick to the rules?
Have you changed anything significant about ALL of the courses you are teaching THIS YEAR?
I cannot really answer this, per se, but I have used my previous learning from my personal learning network to help drive my direction in what my new position should be offering our staff.
Do you care?
More than I could ever show in a blog post. I want our kids to be successful. I want them to walk away life-long learners. I want THEM to care.
And now Vicki’s Double Dare: Show your administrator. I did. As soon as I became aware of the video, I invited him to watch it in my office. He agreed with what he saw (having a college-aged daughter helps him to). He is all about changing our landscape to fit the needs of students of today. Lucky me. Seriously.
I have recently been a party to a common conundrum schools face daily. This time it is with an organization, but it still truly pertains to schools as well.
How exactly do we utilize the new technology tools we push so hard to get teachers to integrate when we are so worried about the negative outcomes we have yet to see?
I find it odd to be in this position as a leading organization, personally, but it is a valid, current argument. So is this the type of thing that begins honest, open, valuable debate? Is this where the real learning starts? I sure hope so.
I was in Florida on vacation with my family when I came across this bumper sticker. While, its intended meaning was not, how I would say educational, it definitely drove my mind into the educational arena for whatever reason.
I have spent the last year and a half reading, listening, and learning about 21st century students, classrooms, and learning. David Warlick, Wes Fryer, Miguel Guhlin, Vicki Davis, and morehaveallbeengreatexamples for me to follow in this new area. While I have always felt that I was on the cutting edge of instruction with technology, I realized that I was… only it was the edge just ahead of the rest of my district. It was not the edge that my students were teetering on.
Their edge is dangerous. It has few boundaries and requires them to take risks to learn new skills. Their edge is the manipulation of multiple environments virtually to engage with others of like interests. Their edge is scaring the living daylights out of teachers everywhere so much so that new rules are being written almost daily to halt the tide. But why?
What the kids know, and few of us do, is that the future is now. Technology is just a tool to comprehend, adjust, manipulate, collaborate, integrate, mash-up, publish, and communicate. Technology is just a tool to share, envision, enlist, create, and orchestrate. Technology is just a tool. And every tool has a use. Our students are using this tool. Sometimes the right way, sometimes not. Ever hear your dad say, “If you are not going to use a (insert tool name here) the right way, don’t use it at all.” That is where we are at. Sometimes the tool is not used the right way, but it is mainly because we have not shown students how to do that. That is mainly because so many of us do not know how to do it ourselves.
So what does this all have to do with a bumper sticker seen on the back of a rusted, black primered 1977 Pontiac Trans-Am on Dale Mabry Boulevard in Tampa, Florida, on a balmy summer evening in June of 2007? Ammo. Plain and simple. The ammo our students use, to be exact. It is most definitely the currency of the new millennium. It is the currency that will deliver them into the new millennium with strength and knowledge beyond our comprehension. It is the ammo that we build our profession on. It is the ammo that we use to build our skills as professionals. The ammo? Information.
David Warlick and others have said many times, it is not the technology that is the focus. It is the information. He lists three things about information and how it has changed: 1. information has become increasingly networked, 2. It is increasingly digital, 3. We are overwhelmed by information.
Information is networked. I read and hear about people continually frustrated about their children memorizing odd facts to regurgitate back on to tests (capitals of states, major crops for regions, etc). I am fine with asking kids to know these things. No, let me restate that. I am fine with asking kids to know how to find these things. Right now it is as simple as Google. I am also fine with asking kids to remember these things AFTER engaging activities to learn them. Webquests, wikipedia searches, Google searches, informational videos/podcasts creation, wiki creation, fictional newscasts, and more can all give them these experiences. The point is, these kids can access and share information in ways they never could before. Networked. Yes, they are, and yes it is.
Information is digital. This is pretty simple to demonstrate. In 2002 alone, people around the world created so much new information (mostly digital), it could fill 500,000 Libraries of Congress. If it were not in digital format, where would we house it all? How would we and our students ever access it in an efficient manner? Blogs, wikis, and other digital tools are the avenue to which this information is being created. And that was nearly six years ago. Can you imagine now?
That easily leads to David’s last point: we are overwhelmed by information. Easily, this is the most fundamental reason to be using new read/write web tools in the classroom. Yes, we are overwhelmed by what is out there. our students are not. Yet if we sit back and do not offer them the chance to use tools that will allow them to wade through the mass, they will just grab the first ring they pass by and claim it to be accurate and factual. Consider these two sites: Dog Island & Tree Octopus. Both are very believable. Both are very false. Could you tell the difference if you were a kid?
We have not even hit on the ability to use and process this information in appropriate ways. That is a lengthy topic for another post, but start with this and this.
I am not preaching the “tech only” way of instruction. Putting a computer in front of a student (or teacher for that matter) does not a lesson make. Nor does it build new knowledge and higher level thinking without proper use. Technology is a tool. Or should I say that technology is the key. It can open doors for our kids in ways we cannot yet imagine.
Probably the most telling quote comes from Net Generation Comes of Age, written by Dr. Larry Rosen, Cal State professor who has been studying this generation of kids. He says,
“A baby boomer and even a Gen X would say, “Well, I use the Internet” or “I use my cell phone a lot” or “I text message” and so on. Gen X learned how to use technology, whereas the Net Gen kids were raised steeped in technology and they don’t use it, it just simply is.”
Technology allows our students to do new things with old and new stuff that will drive our future and theirs. It is the information that guides our futures. It is the information that causes us to think and operate at higher levels. It is the technology that allows us to collaborate, communicate, and create new things with information.
So as you begin this new experience of integrating technology, keep these things in mind. Regardless of the content area you teach in, your students need the ammo that only you can provide. Let them use technology to process it, and you will be impressed with the outcome.
Can anyone else relate to these phases in a different context? I can see clearly how I have moved through these steps throughout my years of technology immersion and integration. My early entry into technology was not so bad. I had a little anxiety, but not generally with the tools themselves. My dad tended to have some cool tools around to try out, and then I worked at Radio Shack when I was in college. There was plenty of equipment to play with there, and if I messed it up, somebody would fix it. (Key thing to remember here: It can be fixed!) The neat thing now is that most schools have lots of technology tools for teachers to try out.
Then the uncertainty sank in when I tried to figure out how to use these tools in the classroom. That is where my personal learning network kicked in with reading blogs written by other educators going through the same process of discovery (which is ongoing, by the way). Honestly, just reading what others were doing in their classrooms took me through the connections and the awareness stages. I learned how these tools tied to the learning my kids needed to do and realized which tools fit which need in my curriculum. No, it was not an overnight deal for me. It took reading and focusing on making myself a better teacher, but that is what makes a teacher better: being a lifelong learner.
So the next logical step for me was presentation. In my version of this chart, that means I began implementing the ideas, the tools, and the structure of technology integration. Technology was still only a tool, but it became more than that to the kids. It was a hook to get them interested. It became a conduit to process information, connect with peers, and to publish their findings and creations. They were excited about learning English and literature. The technology tools had them hooked, and they made them better learners because of it.
So how do I prove that? Well, through evaluation. Any educator worth his or her salt constantly monitors and evaluates what is working and what is not. If I cannot continually provide effective and affective instructional strategies, then I am not doing my job, and I am cheating the kids.
Does all of this make sense? Maybe I am just writing it to get my thoughts out on how I made it through the process to where I am now. I am in a perpetual loop with this list, though. New tools come out, and I move to either the anxiety or the uncertainty stage and work my way forward. I cannot help that. It is the way I learn and develop.
How about you?
Our students go through these phases rather quickly with or without us. Are you on board?
reference- Table from Developing Digital Portfolios for Childhood Education by Marja Kankaanranta. 2002.
What else can I say about the technology sessions offered in the k12online conference? Check out the poster below, and then check out the site. This is your chance to learn new technologies and the pedagogy behind them without having a class full of people sitting around you. No pressure to move on until you are ready. Yet, there is a ton of free support offered in this as well, so you are not left stranded. The conference is one I highly recommend.
Oh, did I mention it is free?
If you need help getting an RSS feed reader set-up so you can follow the conference happenings easier, let me know. I am always more than happy to help out.
In fact, a more useful lesson about the connections that story readers make, as we’re reading, is one that helps students decide how to respond to them. I ask my kids, “When you’re reading a story, do you ever bump yourself out of the zone because something in the book sparks a thought or memory?” and follow up with, “If so, how do you respond to the bump?”. . .these occasions when we read like writers: we pay attention to the way a text is written, and we enjoy an efferent moment as we observe something in someone else’s writing that we might choose to carry away, and put to use, in writing of our own.
Miguel’s direction on this is one that poses the question of how we handle this in connection with blogging inspiration, but mine is how we handle it with our students when they hit the “bump.” He leaves us with these parting comments paraphrasing a Scholastic article on the subject:
Every day, smart, well-meaning teachers erect instructional roadblocks between their students and the personal, digital communication tools.
So are we overlooking the teachable moment in the haste of curriculum delivery and test preparation? I know I have. Man, I hate it when I realize my shortcomings. Thanks, Miguel. Just thanks.
? Are we unaware that there are more students in China taking the SAT test in English than in the Untied States? Do we simply not care that the top 10% of the population in China equals the total population of the United States and the top 25% is more than the total population of North America? We are not just competing with the neighboring school districts anymore. We are (or at least should be) preparing our students to compete against the world.
I was in Florida on vacation with my family when I came across this bumper sticker. While, its intended meaning was not, how I would say educational, it definitely drove my mind into the educational arena for whatever reason.
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