"Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology" Ch. 5

"Home schooling has been successful at improving student learning." pg 67

My brother was homeschooled, and I was about to be homeschooled. My mother wasn't working at the time, so she was able to do so. I find it interesting how successful students who are homeschooled are; it shows that a teacher must really care, rather than remember everything they learned in their education to become a teacher.

"...we argue that innovations in workplace environments will soon influence learning throughout education." pg 71

This section reminds me of "just-in-time learning" from earlier in the book. I believe this is an important style of learning, and as technology improves it will only become more important.

"Distance education has already spread widely, and it will inevitably keep growing in the coming decades." pg 75

I don't disapprove of distance learning, but it seems that it destroys an interaction between student and teacher. If distance learning were to ever reach the younger grades I believe it would be a problem, as human interaction is an important part of the learning process.

"Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology" Ch. 4

"In the colonial years, the towns and villages set up independent one-room schoolhouses. They were largely ungraded and the teachers were males." pg 56

It doesn't surprise me that schooling started ungraded. While grades are a meaningful form of assessment, I do believe that they are not used correctly in schooling today. The pressure they put on students to receive a good grade rather than learn what they are being taught is significant. I am not saying grades should be eliminated, but the amount of value they have in society isn't beneficiary.

"Tests were introduced in order to make it possible to sort students into classes where all the students had roughly the same ability." pg 61

Tests are another factor of importance in schooling that has gone wrong. Tests are a a big cause of why grades are strongly emphasized; the meaning of assessment has gone from figuring out where a student is in their learning to evaluating how far they will be able to get in life.

"Diversity increases pressure on schools to individualize education to address the needs, desires, and ablities of different groups within the population." pg 63

Of course it does, but it is not a bad thing. Sure, different cultures and backgrounds increases the pressure significantly, but schools should always be prepared for diversity as everyone learns differently. Individualization of education should be a goal in every educator's mind.

Cool Tools Review

After reviewing a few Cool Tools, I would have the one I am most interested in possibly using in my classroom is Dropbox. It had the most functionality out of all the ones I have seen, and I feel a lot of the Cool Tools are a tad superfluous. Dropbox seems to function a lot like Google Drive as well, but seems a little bit less taxing to one's computer.
Dropbox would make things a lot simpler in my classroom. Being able to organize my files into one location for grading would save me and my students time and money. It is also a great way for students to cooperate and learn remotely.

"Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology" Chapter 3

"...For example, implementing a new mathematics curriculum pushes against the prevailing instructional, assessment, and curricular practices of schools." pg 34

This argues that implementing anything different then what we already have will hurt students because curriculum of other teachers will not coincide. It is a good thing there is a new influx of teachers coming into the schooling system, as these new teachers will be more susceptible to change and willing to learn new ways of teaching.

"The start-up costs of working with computers, such as the time to get the software installed and started up and getting the students situated, pressure the teacher to cut into teaching time." pg 39

This is a very logical argument and I have seen this from experience. It will be interesting to see how things will change when more cloud computing comes available and we are able to start up any computer with any program instantly. As we become more "attached" to our computers, the more of a necessity they will be and a less of a problem this will be.

"Standardized tests constrain how computers might be able to change learning in schools." pg 42

Standardization isn't necessarily a good thing, and technology seems to be slowly eliminating standardization. If we are going to let standardization stop us, that's too bad, because it is something we should be fighting against by and large.

"Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology" Chapter 2

"One of the longest-running trends of history is the movement from communities of place to communities of interest." pg 11

I believe the Internet is the biggest proponent of this movement, possibly the biggest ever. To be able to effectively communicate anyone who shares interests with you anywhere in the world, to be able to send files of pictures, text and videos to them, is extremely significant and gives communication no limits. There is less need to feel to leave where you are, when you can find those who share your interests no matter where you are.

"The time Kate spends communicating with people around the world may take away from her participation in her local community." pg 12

Everything in life has its positives and negatives, including the Internet. Perhaps someone like Kate may be being productive communicating with people around the world? Maybe she is learning new skills or facts. Whether that is the case or not, local communities are pleasent and have their benefits if you participate in them.

"Enthusiasts argue for just-in-time learning as the counter to the school strategy of trying to teach everything you might need to know someday." pg 14

This is one of the most interesting concepts I have come across in this book. Just-in-time learning is soemthing people do all of the time; I am always learning about new things on the internet when I want to know them. Information is very easy to access for many people in this age. I remember seeing a quote that said "My liberal arts degree is useless, everything I learned is on Wikipedia."

"Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology" Chapter 1

"The work has changed from hands-on to inferential, or from concrete to abstract." pg 5

There are so many more white-collar jobs today that I would have to agree with this quote. Computers and technology have expanded the work of humans into an abstract universe that exists electronically, thus making aspects of our lives less and less tangible. This applies to even how we turn in assignments; I turn in and complete most of my assignments online.

"...in many homes children lead the way, showing their parents how to use computers for gaming, research, and networking." pg 6

This statement can often be true and makes me wonder how much teaching basic technological skills will decline in the future. I imagine there will be less and less time focused on teaching students on how to use the computer, and more time on teaching them how to use what is on the computer. I also wonder if this will continue; will my students know more about what is on computers of the future then me?

"Technology makes life more difficult for teachers." pg 6

I am confused why this is a sentence in this book. I know the book also provides the skeptics point of view, but this sentence received little explanation for its full reasoning. There are a few teachers whom technology is more difficult for, but as teachers we are supposed to to accept the concept of learning, even if that means new technology. Why "teach" if you don't want to "learn?"

Screencast

My Screencast was about Dweeber, an online social site designed to help students study with their peers. I had fun creating the screencast, and I felt when I was talking about Dweeber via Screencast I was able to articulate my words rather easily.
I put a fair amount of effort into creating my Screencast. I went over the SWOT analysis steps and prepared a few sentences for each of the steps. I also explored the site quite a bit, and went through the steps to create a study session to get good feel for the website. I also looked into the "about" and "FAQ" sections to find out more about the site.
Creating this Screencast was a good experience for me, and I was able to learn more about this valuable web tool as well. I plan on recommending Dweeber to my future students, if it still exists by that time.

Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts Ch. 10 and epilogue

Chapter 10 reiterates a lot of what was already said throughout the book. It also discusses the big shifts in teaching and technology. I believe open content is the most important shift in education. With programs like Kahn Academy and free courses offered by colleges via the internet, it seems to be a huge game changer in education. Why pay top dollar for a university when you can get a free education offered by top colleges and learning programs? The education system should really be geared towards learning rather than the student trying to get the grade.
The epilogue was a bit odd, but it presented a teacher using technology within his classroom. He used a lot of web resources to prepare his class. I think the way the teacher has everything organized seems great, and once you have everything set up like he does it will make teaching much easier and more effective. Being a journalism teacher, this is especially useful to him and opens up a world of opportunities for him.

Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts chapter 7 & 9

When looking at Chapter 7's review of Flickr in education, I would have to say the most useful feature of Flickr in the classroom is its annotation feature. Annotating images can be extremely useful for the classroom; I can see it being very useful to teach geography, especially in the secondary setting. You can take an image of a mountain range and annotate its different features, from plataeus to distinct peaks. It also allows for students to annotate images themselves, such as giving them a quiz to identify different features of a mountain range.

Chapter 9 was focused on social networking. I agree there are some ways you cvan integrate it into the classroom, but only if they are networks such as Ning where the educator has a lot more control. Integrating Facebook in the classroom does not seem like a good idea at all and can only lead to problems. I recently attended a presentation by a lawyer who deals with a lot of educational law, and she gave many reasons on how Facebook can never be a good idea. Facebook involves integration into personal lives, and it would be extremely difficult and risky to set up a classroom network via Facebook as it has a very high chance of crossing into personal information.

Educational Gaming

I played educational games when I was a child, and I had a lot of fun and learned a lot. I mostly remember this math game that was in a science fiction setting. Here are some games I evaluated:

Oregon Trail- A great educational game that teaches not only some history but teaches lessons in frugality and how to intelligently buy things. The specific online Oregon Trail game that was linked in the agenda isn't very good, it is a free version and wasn't made very well. It would be better to buy the game; I owned "Oregon Trail 3" and it was pretty in-depth and I learned a lot.

Free Rice- This game has been around for a while, and I played it back when it was only a vocabulary game. It is cool to see it has expanded into something more. I think this is a great way to learn while doing something good for society, as I believe the site is legitimate.

3rd World Farmer- I am not sure whether this game was designed to be realistic or not, regardless it is pretty depressing. What I do like about the game is the fact you can purchase things and save up for things. It teaches students wise monetary decisions which is important in life.

Chapter 2 and 3 Podcast Reflection

I had a fun time creating the podcast. I was the facilitator in our group discussion, and I believe I did a pretty good job at it. I felt as if I was a talk show host, which felt pretty funny. I believe our group did a good job as well, everyone seemed knowledgable about the content and no one really had a hard time coming up with things to say.

I liked doing this assignment and I felt it gave me more insiration to be knowledgable about the assigned chapters. I felt as if it were a good motivator, because it is much more personal to demonstrate your knowledge verbally then to demonstrate it on something such as a test. I also enjoy making things such as this (I work and DJ at the school's radio station) so I felt comfortable doing something like this.

I wouldn't mind doing this in my classroom in the future, and I feel it could be a lot of fun for my students to pretend that they are doing a talk show or a radio broadcast. I am a big advocate for teaching using real life examples, and this is something that utilizes a real life situation, in a way.

Self-Grading Tests

I have absolutely no problem with self-graded tests when they are used correctly. If the teacher using the self-graded test is competent and realizes that the answers you type in (if the answer needs to be typed) have to be typed in absolutely correct or you get the answer wrong. For example, what if the answer to question is "frog" and a student types in "frogs"; the test will mark him wrong just because his answer was plural even though he understood the concept. I remember taking tests like this in an intro to art history class in the D2L application; it infuriated the students because the teacher didn't do anything about her self-grading tests having the answers have to be exactly correct. It was the same way in my geography 101 course, which was even more of a problem because it was an online course so I couldn't even see my teacher in person.

I would use self-grading tests sparingly in my classroom, as they can pose too much of a problem with answers needing to be typed correctly. In a way, they are almost more work in the fact that the teacher will have to through and look at each incorrect answer and see if it can be interpreted as correct. When it comes to multiple choice tests, however, I think they are already used a lot in a self-correcting format and that is fine, as there is only one right answer.

Rethinking Education ch. 1-2 response

I think this book has made some very interesting points from what I have read so far. An interesting quote I have pulled from the book is "Enthusiasts argue that trying to prepare students for the 21st century with 19th-century technology is like teaching people to fly a rocket ship by having them ride bicycles." I find this to be a pretty extreme statement; the book argues things such as books, chalkboards, and paper and pencils are obsolete technology for the classroom. It's ironic that I read that books are obsolete from a book. However, I do partially agree with the quote. I think part of the reason schools are so stuck in the past is because of funding. It costs a lot of money to adopt today's technology in every classroom, so it is difficult to eliminate such primitive technology such as a chalkboard. However, it does work to use a chalkboard, a lot of teaching comes from within and not the tools you use. I believe there is both sides to the argument, but regardless, it is always best to have the latest technology in your classroom.

Website Validity

Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus
I decided to Google search "tree octopus" only to find several articles on revealing this website as a hoax. I really couldn't justify looking into the website more to determine if it is real or not.

Martin Luther King Jr. - A True Historical Examination
I find this website to be somewhat credible, as it contains sources in each of its articles. However, it seems to sometimes blend in personal opinion in some of its sections, such as the rap lyrics section. It also appears to be fairly dated, as some of the links go to a website called "the way back machine," which is an archive of websites from pretty far back.

All About Explorers
The website is a little bit confusing as the home page encounters a 404 error. Looking at the website authors page, the descriptions of the website authors seem to be pretty odd. One of the authors is the "staff psychologist and botanist." I take this website as a bit of a joke; the information on the explorers is pretty brief and there isn't much to them.

Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Division
I know this website is a joke; "dihydrogen monoxide" is just another word for water, or H2O. Google searching "dihydrogen monoxide," the website is one of the first to pop up. It is classified as a hoax.

Digital Nation Response

In all honesty, documentaries like this turn me off from technology; it scares me to look at all of those M.I.T. students wired to their technology. Obviously, technology has its benefits, and I would probably be better off embracing it rather than turning away from it. However, I feel that it is becoming a huge crutch for students in a lot of ways as well. We are becoming very reliant on technology and I feel it is a cause for some mental decay amongst all of us, especially students of today. We are less serious about our multiplication tables because of our calculators, less serious about our grammar because of auto-correct, and so on. We're losing the "hard" in "hard work", and I would say technology is a large part of that.
As a teacher I would work hard to incorporate technology while keeping this in mind. While no one is perfect and it would generate more that I would have to do in an already crammed curriculum, I would try to put emphasis on the traditional way of doing things while teaching the new way involving technology of doing it. I also hope to spark this sort of awareness in my students, telling them that it is important to learn how to do things without a "crutch", so to speak.

Podcast for Class

I created a podcast for class this week and used this time article as a resource for my topic, which was discussing using iPads in the classroom. I thought it was a lot of fun creating a podcast, although I must say I probably have a big advantage over my classmates. I work for UWSP's radio station, which has large and expensive microphones and the fancy program Adobe Audition that make recording things such as podcasts a lot easier. Working for the radio station also has increased my communication skills a great deal, so I read the script I made a lot easier then if I had not worked at the radio station.
Overall this project was fun to do, because I take an interest in recording things such as podcasts. The topic of iPads in the classroom was interesting as it made me think about using computers in general in the classrom.

Growing Up Online Response

Technology and the internet seem to be ingrained into the lives of students in this day and age. This video actually seems to be around the same time I was still a student like the ones portrayed. I have always been pretty easily distracted and this could be as a result to instant gratification from media in this time period. Just as "Autumn Edows" is a completely different person from Jessica, today's youth can create a completely different persona from themselves online and portray who they want to be. It is very important to be updated and aware of what is going on online in order to understand the lives of your students.
I think as a future teacher it is most important for me to follow this new wave of instant media and technology. I will embrace it rather than push it away and try to include ways that use new technology to keep the attention of students.

Ch 4-5 Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts Response

Right off the bat I was interested in what this reading had to say. The entire time I was in school I was told not to use Wikipedia because "anyone can edit it." Why is this a bad thing? The internet has changed learning and society forever due to the fact that everyone within the intellectual world now has access to one another. I can learn about things more accurately then I could ever before because of websites like Wikipedia. The more authors there are who can access and edit important articles such as neurology the better. Who should we trust more, a handful of authors of an encyclopedia that becomes outdated as soon as it is off the press, or every possible expert that can edit Wikipedia and make changes as soon as it is outdated? On top of that, as long as you have access to internet Wikipedia is free.
I have never really thought about my stance on websites like Wikipedia until now. As a future teacher, I will boldly push to utilize websites such as Wikipedia. Of course, like every source on every subject, there is a possibility of the source being flawed, so I will make sure to teach my students that before I allow them to use Wikipedia. As a future 4th, 5th or 6th grade teacher, it is also likely that I will be closely monitoring any sources my students use, and I will make it a slim likelihood for there to be a piece of information that will be misrepresented.

Meaningful Student Blogging Strategies

After looking over the 14 Steps to Meaningful Student Blogging blog entry, I would like to emphasize the importance of the first step. Utilizing technology in the classroom is essential as it increases teaching efficiency and teaches students about new technology for themselves at the same time. However, I don't believe that rushing in and teaching students to use a social media service which isn't designed for the classroom is the best idea either. Take Twitter for example; it's great how teachers are figuring out ways to use it and make it work for them, but it also provides distractions for the students and I think in a few ways it is superfluous and unnecessary. There are many free services on the internet that provide what teachers are looking for in terms of blogging in the classroom, many of which could be designed for the classroom. This teacher found a website found Kidblog, which is unfortunately down at the moment, but I am sure it is more designed for teachers like her to use in the classroom. Perhaps one day there will be one website or program that is completely designed for the classroom and teaching students how to utilize technology.

Enduring Understandings for the readings

The enduring understanding for chapter 6 is: Utilizing social media technology can aid in collaboration of students and teachers to outside resources. It creates an efficient way of interacting with experts or other useful resources to create the best possible lesson plan.

• How can you use social networking sites, such as Twitter, to interact with the parents of students?

 Perhaps a teacher can start by posting important information to Twitter for parents to read, and then encourage more communication via twitter. Including fun information such as tweets on how students are doing throughout the day/week could generate interest amongst parents to follow you and read your tweets.

• How can social media sites aid teachers in creating lesson plans?

A teacher in Baltimore utilizes twitter by having his students collect information, have his students keep track of what they are doing, and build up their grammar skills.

Multitasking discussion questions

1. Multitasking could be detrimental to whatever tasks you are trying to accomplish. While it seems obvious to me that browsing Facebook during a lecture is never a good idea, if I am trying to do two things that are important for me to do, such as listen to somebody talk and work on homework at the same time, I can be losing focus on either one and could be doing a bad job listening to the person and a bad job on my homework. It is important that I focus on one task and do it right, rather than juggle several tasks at once and do a worse job on all of them. Plus, if I focus on one task, I can get it done quicker.
2. Laptop computers and any other sort of technology can be a powerful tool to students in the classroom, but also a large distraction. It is important to utilize technology in a way that won't be a distraction.
3. I will make sure that my students are utilizing their time correctly when they use technology in the classroom. If I have students in my classroom who have phones or laptops, I will make sure to stress the importance of not multitasking in a bad way, such as browsing Facebook while listening to a lecture. I will try and promote the only multitasking one should be doing while listening to a lecture: taking notes.