Bloggedy Blog BLog Blog

Upon entering this class, Blogging had no educational meaning to me.  The only type of blogging I knew about was Livejournal.  When I was in college, I had a personal blog, as did my friends, that kept me connected with people on a daily basis.  It was a great way to update friends that went to other colleges on my life at Geneseo.  Even after starting this blog for class, which was similar to the blog I used to have except talking about class instead of my life, I didn’t make the educational connection until now.  This week’s class and readings showed me just what I can do to utilize blogs in an educational setting.  I thought it was great how the students were able to use blogs to communicate with other schools.  In college, one of my classes became pen pals (e-mail pals?) with a 4th grade class in the same county, communicating through e-mail.  We wrote in a Word document, e-mailed it to their teacher, she gave it to the student, the student added to the word document, and the teacher e-mailed it back to us, and the cycle started over again.  That sounds complicated, huh?  Looking back, it would have been much much much easier if we had used a blog, and just added to the blog or commented on what our pen pal (blog-pal?) wrote.

Even putting the class website together as a blog is something I never would have thought of, but its definitely something that I will use.  Websites (unless there is a comment/contact section) never allow for discussion or comments.  To be able to post the students’ work and have people comment on it is phenomenal; such a self-esteem booster.  Teachers could even use the blog as a place for students to creatively write, no judgements, or corrections on spelling/grammer.  I’ve even noticed reading some classmates’ blogs that people get caught up in the typing when you really have something on your mind, usually causing multiple spelling/grammer errors.  Using a computer, spelling and grammer become pushed into the back of your mind as you let loose all of the thoughts that are being held hostage in your brain.  Since typing is much quicker than writing (well, for most of us), allowing students to type rather than write gives them an opportunity to let their mind run wild for a while, rather than consciously thinking about what word they are slowly writing next.  To me, this is a great way to get students to learn to love to write.

Who is teaching?

Something that was mentioned right at the end of class during our discussion of Web 2.0 really struck a chord with me.  Instead of the teacher standing in front of the classroom and lecturing, we are now presented with all of this new technology.  Is this really a good thing though?  If we don’t know what to do with it, it can be a very dangerous prospect i feel.

Though I rarely knew a student who actually read the ENTIRE textbook (even what wasn’t required), textbooks have an ending.  They have restrictions as to what you are learning.  For a child to be able to explore whatever most interests them about a topic is great.  Then again, it can be dangerous.  Say for example, in a high school or middle school class the students are told to research a particular person in history.  After writing a paper, the students will include their resources on where they retrieved this information.  The information that the child is learning could be completely false.  Unless the information they are writing is completely obvious (like the lice/holocaust situation) the teacher will most likely have no clue.  Her students could be walking away from class with a bunch of incorrect information.  Don’t get me wrong, I am all for integrating technology into the classroom.  But until we can figure out a safe way of controlling what our students are researching (possibly giving them certain sites that they are restricted to when doing research that we know contain true facts) then I think the Internet shouldn’t be used as a research tool.  If we continue to use the Internet as our only source of reading/researching, what will happen to the thousands of books in the library?  Why would we even need a library; why not just have a room filled with computers and call it the Research Lab…?  Books may be restricting, but is it better to be restricted to accurate information or given an unlimited source of questionable facts?

Technology at its finest

Today I experienced one of the Internet’s most annoying features.  You know, when you’re at an important part of your Internet search and all of a sudden that box pops up that says “Internet Explorer is shutting down – – ‘Send error report’ or ‘Don’t send error report.'”  I think that box is dreadful.  I was about 47 minutes through that one hour Will Richardson speech when that happened to me.  Of course it couldn’t happen 13 minutes later when I had finished watching the video.  Personally, I think that the video was very poorly made and I couldn’t hear/see what was going on very well.  So, afterwards I decided to read parts of Will’s blog, since I am more of a visual person than an audio person anyways.  When you click on ‘ed blogs,’ it’s amazing how much information is in there.  This can be so helpful to a teacher who is interested in learning more about how to use technology in the classroom but doesn’t know where/how to start.  I think that every school needs someone like Will to present to the school’s educators and give tutorials on technology in the classroom.  Our society is becoming more and more technology based…why not our classrooms as well?

Inspiration

After browsing through both Inspiration and Kidspiration, it was obvious to me why Kidspiration was created.  Although both programs have similar features and accomplish the same goal of organizational webs, Kidspiration was a lot more fun to play with.  I used Inspiration only once in my undergraduate experience and it was just basic web creation.  We didn’t really get a chance to play with the colors and different features; which is disappointing because that is what makes Inspiration such a great program.  It does so much more than just create web diagrams. 

Even in the 10 minutes or so in class when we had a chance to explore Kidspiration it was apparent to me that this program could be very addicting.  I can totally see how kids could get distracted by the cool features and fun animation.  I think I spent a solid 5 minutes using the drawing tools to make a funny looking man with a mustache when I could have simply chosen a preselected graphic.  But that wouldn’t have been as much fun.  When given Kidspiration as a tool, students most definitely need to be given explicit instructions ahead of time as to what is expected of them.  Otherwise, they will spend all of their time drawing funny looking men with mustaches…

Microsoft Excel

Its funny, but in class today it almost seemed as though more people were familiar with Microsoft Excel (the basic features) than Microsoft Word as we used it last week.  Excel has always been a program that has sat in my “Microsoft Programs” folder and rarely been touched.  I can only account for one time that I have ever even used it in the classroom:  during student teaching I had to incorporate technology and I chose to use Excel to have the students enter data such as height, length of arm span, and how far they could jump, because they were working on a measurement unit.  This was a first grade activity so they seemed to enjoy watching me explain how to enter the data (similar to what we did in class with the M&M’s) after they had collected it and watching the graphs compare/contrast the different measurements.  Since I do not have my own classroom yet, I haven’t been able to use the different features of Excel, but I guess that I should probably learn more about what I can do with it, so that when the time comes, I will be prepared.   It’s true, what was said in class, Excel has always been viewed as the “nerd” program, used only for accounting and math.  I had that misconception as well.  It was great to be able to hear about all of the different things that we could use it for, in subjects other than math.  Students probably have that misconception as well, so as long as we clear that up, Excel can be a great tool for them to use.  Who knows…maybe in a few years, elementary students will have mastered the Excel program and it will no longer have that label.

Microsoft Word

As much as I love using the computer, Microsoft Word is not really my thing.  I use it for writing papers or other simple tasks, but that’s pretty much it.  This week’s class was kind of a refresher for me.  I have not used those features of Word in a very long time.  Anytime I need a worksheet or flyer created, I use Power Point.  Microsoft Power Point is my go-to program.  I find it easier to use for those kinds of things because everything is by itself; the text boxes, the graphics, etc.  There is no confusion like in Word where you have to change the picture to wrap around the text, or you get frustrated because you inserted something and all of a sudden your Word document looks completely different than it did two seconds ago.  I have a feeling if I took the time to understand Word more, I would begin to use it for brochures and ditto sheets more often, but for right now, I’ll stick to Power Point.

Growing Up Online

To anyone who hasn’t watched the PBS special Growing Up Online yet, you definitely should, because I just finished watching it and it is so mind-boggling; in a good way.

I would like to point out that the video showed a teacher who commented on the fact that we need to “entertain” students.  This baffled me.  I understand incorporating technology into our teaching for the sake of benefiting our students’ learning, but we shouldn’t feel as though we need to use technology just to entertain our students.  Students are in school to learn, not to be entertained.  If we felt it necessary to “entertain” the students with our teaching, then we should be rapping/singing our lessons instead of lecturing.  We should be break-dancing while reading aloud.  Our first and foremost concern should be making sure the students are learning as much as they can.  Technology should be an added bonus that makes the teaching process and the learning experience easier on both teachers and students. 

And another thing:  While technology can help make the learning process easier, it should only make it easier for students to understand, not easier on them personally.  If that makes any sense.  We should view technology as another way to present the material, not necessarily as a shortcut to find the answers; which I’m afraid is how most students view it.  Looking up answers online, copying/pasting to write papers, and using Spark-notes instead of reading is not what students should be doing, although unfortunately its a known fact that they do.  To quote one of the students in the PBS video: “I can’t remember the last time I read a book.”  As a teacher, that comment is devastating to hear.  I was watching Rachael Ray this week and there was a segment on “Re-dos,” talking about what people would re-do in their life.  One of the assistants on the show confessed that in college he bought a paper online and submitted it as his own.  Some schools have programs to find out when things like this happen, but what about the schools that don’t?  Or what about when students outsmart these programs and can suddenly get away with getting an A on work that really isn’t their own…?

Day One

After last night’s class, I started thinking more and more about how technology has changed over the years.  One statistic that really caught my eye during the video we watched was that a very large percentage of children by the age of four have already used a computer.  I think the reason that statistics like these, and others that show how young children are accustomed to technology these days, are scary is that this type of technology was not around when we were young.  On the other hand, I have had a computer in my home ever since I was born, and my parents tell me I used it as young as four or five to play games; since there was no such thing as the internet yet.  My earliest recollection of using the internet comes at about age 12 or so, which is a lot older than children these days that use the internet, but probably a lot younger than the age other classmates may have began.

Computers are not the only technology that has expanded over the years.  Cell phones, for example, are something that continue to surprise me.  I got my first cell phone at age 17-18, and it was one of those pre-paid TracPhones.  I didn’t get a Verizon cell phone plan until I was 20.  It is semi-understandable for my 14 year old cousin to have one, so that he can call his mom after sport’s practices to pick him up, but my cousin that is 7? Why does she need one?  Who is she even calling…Bert and Ernie?  When I was 7, I played with a $12 set of Lincoln Logs, not a $200 IPod or a $300 cell phone.  It’s things like this that scare me to think of what 20 years from now will be like.