Technology Autobiography 2.0 (A cheesy way of saying the updated version)

I spoke with a friend of mine who is in his first year teaching elementary in New York last Thursday when we did not have class. As old college friend he and I have spent a lot of the past year talking (and grumbling) about our first couple of months as teachers. Unsurprisingly as the pace of the year has picked up I have spoken to him less and less and since about a week before this course began I had not spoken with him at all.

I spoke about the course quite a bit (and positively too) which took him by surprise. He knows I am generally happier on a 5-day backpacking trip miles from civilization than in front of a computer…which isn’t the case for with him. In his bewilderment, he asked “Can you tell me why you liked the course?” I started talking about the class again. Then he says “I still don’t get it. Is it that you are actually learning or that you are going to be using the stuff in your class?”

I guess the answer, which I have yet to tell him is that it is a little bit of both. I really fell empowered by the amount of things I have learned in the class in the last two weeks. I am not saying this to make a good grade in the course and I feel many in the class or my following will agree that sometimes college courses just feel like a hoop to jump through, not a learning experience. With this class I can walk away with a tangible set of tools that are pertinent not only to my job as a teacher but also my personal life. For example, after showing “our” movie (see below) to my sister, we decided to scan pictures from our childhood with our grandparents and share it with them as a wonderful grandparent’s day gift.

I also believe unlike some of the other “pie in the sky” things I have learned in U of L, that the technologies-blogging, Flickr, podcasting, Moviemaker,etc. are actually things that are practical to do in the classroom. They aren’t expensive, they were quite easy to become skilled at, and most importantly they are important tools to teach kids. I think over the course of the class I have realized more and more that incorporating technology isn’t just a way to lure kids into doing work or entertain them. Using technology in the classroom, and more importantly getting kids to use it teaches them valuable skills they will use in higher education and the job market.

Ultimately, I still do not believe we should turn away from using tangible experiences in the classrooms. Moving totally toward a virtual “world” is no substitute for getting your hands dirty or talking to a real person. Our students need social skills acquired from interacting with real people and the dexterity and problem solving skills developed in setting up and performing labs. Like all things technology in the classroom should be used in moderation ( this article talks about the downside to kids having too much screen time http://health.usnews.com/blogs/on-parenting/2009/02/03/television-and-adolescent-depression.html).

I do not feel however the tools presented in this class were meant to be used as replacements for other types of learning experiences. They have often been introduced as ways to present or publish learning experiences instead of take the place of them. Others, such as trailfire and gardenquest do become the learning experience, but they keep students from wasting time on the internet thus making their experiences more productive.

A Note to the Administration (choose your tool)

Mr. X-
I am interested in installing a software called trailfire on the three internet ready computers in my classroom. As I know that we are trying to keep from cluttering our computers or getting viruses on them by avoiding downloads, I thought I would let you know what the software is and why I think it would be helpful in my classroom. Hopefully, you will see the utility of this software and allow me to install it into my room.

Trailfire is completely free software that can be downloaded from the web (http://trailfire.com/). This software is referred to as a “social bookmarking tool” because it allows its users to make groups of bookmarks to related sites under a single title. While this concept may seem confusing when put in words it is simply a way of keeping records - for example instead of looking in a shoe box for a receipt it might take a long time but if you had them organized by month of store in file folders it would be very simple. Thus, instead of searching a topic through search engines that bring up lots of stuff, you can narrow it down into a single “file folder” called a trail by using trail fire.

One of the neat features of this in the classroom is that you can narrow down the amount of inappropriate material students come upon on the internet while still letting them see a variety of sources on your research topic. It also prevents off-task time by not allowing students to have any excuse for stumbling upon websites not pertinent to their research. Additionally, the teacher (or whoever set up the trail) can tag questions, comments, or information which makes it’s a great way for students to do assignments on the web.

Not only is this tool great for the students but I can also use it for professional development by hooking into other science educator’s trails in which they have narrowed down sights they really like on the web. This reduces the need for other higher cost programs such as netrekker that also clusters sights together for educators. Check out this trail marked for 7th and 8th graders http://trailfire.com/mbeisch/trails/62753.

I know this concept is difficult to understand via this memo and would love to have the opportunity to show it to you should you be interested. I think after having seen it you will be very excited about the way it can revolutionize the way we use computers in the classroom. Just contact me if you or the whole faculty would be interested in seeing how to use this tool. Thanks for your consideration.

Chapter 9- What it all Means

I enjoyed the format of Richardson’s last chapter of the book-it describes the big shifts in how we can best teach children in order to prepare them for the future. I know each of my readers have read (or are getting ready to read) the section so I won’t bother to summarize each of the “big shifts.” I will however say that I agree, with many of his ideas like learning being collaborative, writing no longer being limited to text, mastery being products, etc. All of which brings up a question in my minds and hopefully yours- if U of L subscribes to this idea enough to have made it a course then why haven’t we seen more of our courses using these types of technology? Why haven’t our methods course been filled with the latest techie ways to present materials? I am frustrated to think of all the Powerpoint’s I have made to present material on education theory, simple reflections I have handed into instructors, and lesson plans that I have placed on Livetext that have not incorporated the types of technology we should be using in our classroom. (Not to mention what a waste Livetext seems to be now that I understand there are tons of FREE ways to put portfolios online and share them.)
I believe that if we owe it to our children to teach them to be responsible, literate citizens in the world of technology U of L should not teach this course in such isolation. Classes that are to train teachers must teach them the skills that society wants passed on to our students. So here is a challenge to U of L make this course a prerequisite to many of our other classes then require us to podcast our assignments and include blogging and updating wikis in our lesson plans. In doing this we will be perfecting our training before we are sent out to train others.

Podcasting and Screen Casting- A Reflection on Chapter 8

First a confession-I may be the only person under 25 in this class, or maybe on this campus, or possibly in the city of Louisville that doesn’t have an Ipod or other MP3 device. They became popular my freshman year of college and I will be the first to say I certainly thought about buying one. After all- those 20 minute walks across campus would be more pleasant if I were able to jam to my favorite tunes, right? At least that is what everybody else thought. What people began to miss out on as they walked “plugged in” to their own little bubble was the opportunity to meet new people, to talk to people outside their major or social circle. I can’t tell you how many times I would be walking the same path with a student and say hello in order to strike up a conversation with them only to be ignored. Then, I would see those little white tubes feeding into their ears.

The same thing has happened on planes (for those of you that don’t like to talk on planes this is your warning never to sit by me) those who are plugged into their Ipods might as well be in a sound proof box- they have no intention of interacting with you even when you are politely asking to get into the aisle to find the lavatory. I am not saying I am opposed to entertainment on a plane- I began and finished a John Irving novel on my way to Thailand. It just seems that those with a book in hand don’t seem to mind talking with you about their career, reason for traveling, etc. while Ipods seem to make people very anti social.

I think we have already established that I have some real issues with people ignoring the world around them wrapped up in technology frenzy. The bottom line is that I don’t think anyone should leave their office where they have sat in front of a computer all day and put their Ipod in for the ride home, then go turn on the television or another computer. I am not implying that this is the intention of the author but it does seem that he probably spends a hefty portion of his day checking his RSS, getting updated, then seeking out the news or blog that has most recently been published.

To give Richardson credit I do think podcasts are an interesting way for students to publish. I have several students that can verbalize answers but cannot or choose not to ever write anything. I think by using a tool such a podcasting we could capitalize on those students’ skills instead of constantly making them struggle to work at their weakness.

Wikis, Blogs, Podcasts and Chapter 6

Taaaa-daaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!! I made my very first Podcast (and surprise it is about podcasting) tonight. We used a software called audacity to make our podcasts. It is a FREE software that is fairly simple to use once you get the hang of it. I am exited to put this to use in my classroom to "publish" the results of our experiment...what a great way to be real scientists. I also have teacher friend doing the same content and staying on a similar module schedule and I think sharing our podcasts (that is assuming he is interested in doing this with me) would be a great way to rev up the competition and the quality of our work!

Why didn’t anybody tell me about Furl as an undergrad?!?!?! I can’t believe there is a way to bookmark pages, save them in categories, and best yet export them in MLA. I had my own complicated system of emailing myself links that I thought I might use for research paper or sometime I would loose links and have to start my searches over using a search engine. I might just get evangelical about this tool and share it with all my friends still in college.

As stated earlier, this is a tool I can buy into, because it actually makes your use of technology more efficient rather than suggesting you use it more often and in other forms ( i.e. RSS podcasts). I am currently not on my computer in location without internet access (this post will be saved in Word prior to its publishing), but if I were I would already have an account. I can certainly see this as a valuable tool for my classroom and my professional life. (I personally like the format of Furl better than del.icio.us.)

In My Classroom
(Blush-this is how old-fashioned I am) I am currently having a couple of the students in my literacy class explore good literacy websites and write down the Title of the site and a brief description of what it was about and why they did or did not like it. I was planning to compile a list and use them next year in class to make literacy more fun for my middle schoolers who hate reading- from books. Using Furl it looks like I will be able to streamline this process. I also plan to have similar folders for supplementary links to each of our lessons-sometimes for webquest purposes and other times just for student who complete their assignments and need enrichment material.

In My Professional Life
Richardson, the author, mentions how great Furl can be as a PD tool. I mentioned in an earlier post-I believe in response to Chapter 1-that I think it would be amazing for the teachers in JCPS (or around the country) that are using a particular module to create a library of enrichment links that supplement each of the investigations. I know in my brief searches I have found neat games, applets, and short videos online that go along perfectly with investigations- but to collect and make a library of these links as a group would be awesome. It would be a great way to find quality material and to save time! Why have hundreds of science teachers doing the same work when you can streamline the process?

I am hooked on Furl, as you can see but my final thought on the chapter is how interesting a reversion the idea of “Folksonomies” are. He says that “back in the old days we relied on librarians and others to sort and classify information for us” (pg.92) but actually in the older days in terms of taxonomy at least lots of people were classifying information in lots of ways and we purposely went to set standards of classification in order to clarify and make a universal system. I studied science in college and took a graduate level taxonomy course so our classic example was what if three people were calling three different plants “snakeroot” one was highly toxic, another harmless, and the other somewhere in between. The consequences of mix ups when using this plant for medicine, food, etc. are endless. The moral of the story is that it could be very dangerous to not have one set system of classification.

The Films

I was amazed tonight during class to see the variety of films created- those about friendships, births, core content, vacations, cooking instructions, cars, etc. Each person added an artistic element unique to what the film revealed to be their very own personality.

Personally, I was most interested (not that the rest weren't great) to see the ones that provided instructions and content. These provided examples of how I can use MovieMaker in my classroom.

Podcasting and Screen Casting- A Reflection on Chapter 8

First a confession, I may be the only person under 25 in this class, or maybe on this campus, or possibly in the city of Louisville that doesn’t have an Ipod or other MP3 device. They became popular my freshman year of college and I will be the first to say I certainly thought about buying one. After all- those 20 minute walks across campus would be more pleasant if I were able to jam to my favorite tunes, right? At least that is what everybody else thought. What people began to miss out on as they walked “plugged in” to their own little bubble was the opportunity to meet new people, to talk to people outside their major or social circle. I can’t tell you how many times I would be walking the same path with a student and say hello in order to strike up a conversation with them only to be ignored. Then, I would see those little white tubes feeding into their ears.

The same thing has happened on planes (for those of you that don’t like to talk on planes this is your warning never to sit by me) those who are plugged into their Ipods might as well be in a sound proof box- they have no intention of interacting with you even when you are politely asking to get into the aisle to find the lavatory. I am not saying I am opposed to entertainment on a plane- I began and finished a John Irving novel on my way to Thailand. It just seems that those with a book in hand don’t seem to mind talking with you about their career, reason for traveling, etc. while Ipods seem to make people very anti-social.

I think we have already established that I have some real issues with people ignoring the world around them wrapped up in technology frenzy. The bottom line is that I don’t think anyone should leave their office where they have sat in front of a computer all day and put their Ipod in for the ride home, then go turn on the television or another computer. I am not implying that this is the intention of the author but it does seem that he probably spends a hefty portion of his day checking his RSS, getting updated, then seeking out the news or blog that has most recently been published.

To give Richardson credit I do think podcasts are an interesting way for students to publish. I have several students that can verbalize answers but cannot or choose not to ever write anything. I think by using a tool such a podcasting we could capitalize on those students’ skills instead of constantly making them struggle to work at their weakness.