Edubloggers and Blogging

What I was surprised the most with (but perhaps I should have expected) was the discussion about using blogs in the classroom. I mean, these are bloggers were talking about so obviously they're pro blogs, I just wasn't anticipating the large discussion that was taking place regarding the use of blogs in the classroom.

What I read I tended to agree with. I had already begun to think about the use of blogs (for all types of classrooms but specifically my future English classes) on a regular basis in the classrooms. My mentor teacher has asked me to begin to think about how we can utilize technology in a traditional English classroom next semester (I'll be teaching a women's lit course.) One of the first things that came to mind was using blogs.

I've just been thinking about how I can motivate my students to write, and I know it's not going to happen if they're just writing essays to me throughout the semester. I was thinking about how excited my journalism students get simply because their creations are being shared with their classrooms and the world. How can I incorporate this into a traditional English classroom? Blogs! And it appears I'm not the only one.

Some of the things that have been discussed include making sure that blogging is done on a regular basis, and using blogging as a gateway to understanding other types of technology.

Of course it's important to make sure that blogs are utilized on a regular basis. If they're only used sporadically throughout the semester students won't see the value in them, or feel as large of a sense of ownership over their blog as they would if they posted every week. The second item of discussion, using blogs as a gateway for understanding other technological tools, is something I had honestly not thought of. I guess I don't consider myself technologically savvy and I don't always consider all of the possibilities. But really, teaching students how to post links, photos, and videos can add a whole new dimension to their blogs. Instead of just writing, they can add other elements to demonstrate their knowledge of a concept which allows for differentiated instruction.

Hopefully this helps spark another conversation about how to get students to take ownership of their work and how integrated we want technology to be in our classroom!

Tech in my Placement Survey

Earlier this semester we were asked to look into the technology available at our placement schools. Perhaps it was because my mentor teacher is extremely tech savvy and likes to integrate technology in the class as much as possible, but I was unsurprised by the results. Well, I was surprised about one question in particular but I’ll talk about that in a little bit.

As a Journalism class (one block focusing on print and one block focusing on the web-based newspaper) we spend a lot of time using technology. Students spend the majority of the class on brand new Mac computers, editing using InDesign and other tools I’m not quite familiar with. The students use cameras, video cameras, and recording devices (cellphones or iPods) to add auditory elements to their articles and so that they can record their interviews. Needless to say technology is a huge part of our class, all of these tools are available to us every class period. Students can also rent or checkout cameras from my mentor teacher for use when they’re not in class.

However (there’s always a however) the majority of these resources aren’t available to students when they’re not in class. The computer lab is locked at all times (teachers are the only ones able to unlock it) so students don’t have access to printing or working on the computer during their free times. The aspect that I was surprised about was actually brought to my attention by some of the students and I mentioned this on the tech tools in use survey, the library at the school is not “open” during hours that the students feel would be most beneficial to them. I’m not as familiar as I should be with the structure and hours of the library but if the students have felt the change in its availability then I must tend to agree.

Overall, completing this tech survey was useful. I do wish that I could have heard from classmates in other schools to see what the availability was, how much they use technology, and how they think they could implement it. It would have been interesting comparing our different experiences.

Podcasting in Class

While I found all of tech tools in use presentations helpful and insightful to some degree, the one I was most skeptical about in the beginning was the use of podcasts in the classroom. However, after watching the group present and reflecting upon how I could use this technology in my class in some way, I definitely can see how it would be beneficial.

            I suppose my idea came the other day in ED 402 when we were discussing how to help struggling readers (although someone probably already mentioned this already). Wouldn’t it be easy to record yourself reading and offer it up as a resource to those students? I’m sure you could find some audio versions of books on tape that you could post and have available to the students, but for those (especially shorter stories) a podcast might be an option for helping struggling readers.

            There are a few things that I would want to practice with and evaluate before utilizing this tool in my classroom. There are the obvious concerns, such as the availability for students. There are also concerns for me as an individual, such as time and literacy. When it comes to understanding how to actually create an exciting and informative podcast I feel I’m probably lacking. I have to ask myself, how much time would be devoted to this project and in return how much would my students utilize this resource?

            Overall, I feel like this could be a very useful tool when used the right way. I see it used best for struggling readers as an accompaniment or supplement to reading. While I can also see it as a fun tool for projects I don’t envision myself using it frequently for activities other than supplements to reading. What did other disciplines find? Are there benefits to this device that would outweigh the time and effort it takes to create it?  

Flipped English?

Throughout his entire presentation I was enthralled by the dedication and professionalism that Jon Palmer exuded through his videos. I completely got it. I know that I, as a student would prefer this method of learning as opposed to a lecture on physics. As a teacher though, I am a bit stumped when it comes to figuring out how to integrate this method into the classroom. The majority of class time is already spent having discussions or allowing students to work independently on their own work while we, the teachers, answer individual questions and check in with each student one-on-one. 

What I gathered from our class discussion after the presentation was that the entire point of a flipped classroom was to get students to take ownership of their own learning. I would argue that the class I am currently in already does this. Students are given three weeks to conduct interviews, write a rough draft, edit, and format their page for publishing. During class time they work on whatever stage in this process they are at. Some student’s conduct interviews in the hall, some work on editing their peers’ work, some take photographs for their article, etc. My mentor teacher and I are there to answer questions and check in to see where everyone is in the process and what help they need, if any, for moving forward. However, ultimately it is up to the student to finish this entire process within the three-week deadline so that their article can appear in the next edition of The Communicator. The thing about this process is that students want to see their article in the magazine. To see the page they themselves designed all glossy and colorful and out there for the world to see. 

So far in the school year we are about to publish the first edition of the magazine. Out of the 36 students that are enrolled in the class only one has not finished their page and article. The consequence for this will simply be that they will not have a page in the first edition of the new magazine, in addition to their grade suffering. Is this bad? Is there something else we could have done to help this student succeed? Or did we provide enough support and time for this project to be finalized that the responsibility is all on the student? Could there be a different format for teaching this material and these skills that would work better for all students? Or should we accept that 35 students were given this responsibility and succeeded and that one student might not be ready to take responsibility and ownership for their own learning? 

These are the questions that have been floating around in my head since the presentation that Jon Palmer gave. I'm interested to see whether or not my peers took away the same points. I think that the real idea was an alternative way to get students to take ownership of their learning, and I believe that this doesn't necessarily mean that a classroom has to be flipped to achieve this (it just appears to work really well in a physics classroom). My question to you, the reader, is this: what about the students who don't take the responsibility and ownership when every opportunity is given, the students who don't take advantage of the support and guidance that we offer? How can we help them achieve; or is what we're offering sufficient and it is now time for the student to take responsibility upon themselves or suffer the consequences? 

First Post Back

In celebration of the first blog post this semester I've decided to do a little recap of what I've been doing in the classroom with my mentor teacher. As I said early on technology is not one of my strong suits, but it is quickly becoming one. The class that I am interning at this semester is all about technology. A majority of the classes begin with the use of the projector. We either watch a video clip, listen to an audio snippet, or show the students new resources that have been posted on the class Edmodo (I'll get to explaining that in a bit). In addition, roughly fifty percent of each class period is spent in the computer lab. Needless to say I am becoming very comfortable with new types of technology. So with that being said I think I'll break the rest of this post up into two components: what I've learned thus far, and what I would like to learn.
As I said I've learned quite a bit about Edmodo this semester and that goes hand in hand with Google Drive. I can keep all documents, quizzes, survey's, spreadsheet's, and more all organized on my Google Drive. I share them with my mentor teacher and can also upload them as posts on Edmodo. All of the things that I upload are also saved on Edmodo under my "library." This library function stores everything that I have added as a file onto my Edmodo site. I can then organize different files into folders and share those folders with specific classes. This way students have access to all materials from class, how-to worksheets, and more at all times. There is also a calendar on Edmodo that allows me to but  various events into it. Students can also view the calendar. We've used this function to sign students up to bring in snacks for Forum throughout the semester. Students can just look on the calendar to see when they're signed up to bring in snack.
There are a couple things that I haven't quite gotten to learn yet in my host classroom. To explain, that classes that I take part in are advanced journalism classes. The students create, edit, and publish their own articles using peer editing in addition to designing their own magazine pages and formatting the pages for the online newspaper. So I guess what I really want to learn is how to use the different programs (Wordpress and Indesign) that the students use. These two programs just seem completely different from everything technology based that I've learned about thus far. I'm excited to get to use them!

Below is a screenshot of Edmodo from a student sign-on. It show's how students can upload their own documents into their "backpack" to stay organized. It also links up to their individual Google docs and to the folders that their teacher creates and shares.

The Last Day... (of summer semester)

Looking back on the time spent in this class, and on my post from the first day, I can conclude that my opinions regarding this class have changed. While I initially held reservations about this class, and technology in general (I think I rated myself a 3 on the initial survey asking how tech savvy we were.) It's not just because of this class that my opinions have changed, it's from the whole summer experience in general.

Before the summer semester even started I met with my future host teacher for the upcoming school year. Through talking with her it became clear that she wanted to use more technology in class (set up the school paper online, have the kids start using edmodo, along with other things.) While it sounded interesting I have to admit, I became a little nervous. But throughout this summer I've gained a better understanding of just how much technology influences everyone in the modern world. Our middle school mentor teacher made us all quite clear on his opinion: technology is here to stay, and it is our duty as educators to prepare our students for the world, this includes technology.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm no longer so nervous about using it. I might actually even be a little bit excited to start using some of these new tools. While some of the websites and applications we looked at didn't seem to be extremely useful for my discipline, and it could be a little frustrating having so many different sites for all these different uses, there are still things that I will definitely utilize.

I'm also reflecting upon my own opinion of BYOD. Obviously I still have a lot more to learn about the issue and how it's working in places where it had been implemented. I don't think I'm completely sold on BYOD and it will certainly depend upon the percentage of students that have smartphones and other  portable devices in the school that I'm at. I'm still not sure how I would incorporate BYOD, I'm much more comfortable with contemplating how I will use computers in my room but it is definitely something that I'm thinking about.

My Reaction to an Edublogger

So for this post I read a few posts from a blog titled "The Tempered Radical." It's written by a sixth grade language arts teacher from North Carolina. Well, after getting past the first post in which he says he will be leaving the forum I continued on to a couple topics that have been hot buttons for discussions in a few of our other classes. In these posts he describes the issues of testing under the new "race to the top" initiative, and also whether or not college is the right path for every student.

I'll start by talking about the blog itself first. When I first heard about the assignment I'll be honest, I wasn't exactly enthused. I've never really been a fan of the whole "blogging trend" and just for some reason envision a lonely person pouring their heart out on an online diary. But this edublogging thing is kind of different. I got really excited by the third post and realized that this guy was talking about all the issues that are going on in his class right now, that we're talking about in our graduate classes. I think it was just last week that we had a long class debate about standards and their pros and cons. In his blog this teacher describes how these new tests are having a direct effect on his teaching, the time he has to cover each topic, and what material he is giving his students. It's really interesting to read and theorize about these topics in class and then get online and read about how they are actually impacting teachers in the real world.

Another topic he mention was whether or not college is right for every student, and what the purpose of high school then is for those students. This is something that has been brought up repeatedly in our small discussion groups for another class. I noticed that the blogger didn't really have an answer to the question. He ends his post by asking, "How important is college?" In our groups we've discussed that high school might just be an avenue for preparing students to become active citizens in a democracy. Not everyone will go on to college, and that's O.K. What we need to do as educators is make sure that our students leave school with the problem solving skills, critical thinking skills, and self-confidence to become active citizens and excellent at whatever they choose to do in life (would anyone else add another skill to this? disagree? agree?) In this way I am reassured that we are learning more about the field of teaching and the different questions that are being posed within this realm. It's comforting to know that I'm gaining more and more knowledge about the issues surrounding this profession and also learning how to make educated responses and theories about these questions.

Primary Pad

So working in groups...

The first thing I want to address about group work is how interesting it is to hear and see all of the different perspectives and ideas about a given assignment. Like for this weeks assignment, there were members of our group that were looking at a variety of different aspects of BYOD. I can think of a few off of the top of my head, how technology would change various classic works (by either adding technology to a given passage or taking it away), we also talked about the possible inequity that technology can create in the classroom and how we might find literature that would fit this specific purpose, we also discussed different texts. What kind of literature should we use? Articles on BYOD? Fiction? Nonfiction? Futuristic? Literature with zero technology such as "Hills Like White Elephants" or literature jam packed with technology?

Needless to say the class period went by very quickly and lots of ideas were thrown around. It was difficult to figure out what kind of lesson plan we would create, barely knowing what text we wanted to use and what question to focus on. This is where Primary Pad and technology itself came in handy. We simply decided that we would each write our own lesson plan. We each focused on what we thought the assignment was, BYOD. We were then able to have every single idea down, in writing, visible to see, no longer abstract. That was the most helpful part of Primary Pad, instead of us each talking about our ideas out loud and trying to understand each idea and how they would play out we actually had a tangible representation of how that idea would play out. We were then able to pick and choose parts of each lesson plan, putting aspects together with a chosen text to create one coherent class period. We were each then able to give our approval.

Primary Pad was able to save us a lot of time that we would have spent discussing vague concepts. It gave us a chance to set a deadline for when our ideas were to be in by and a chance to finally comprehend each of the ideas. Class time just seemed a little bit chaotic between trying to understand what exactly the assignment was, how we would tackle it, and what ideas we would use. Through Primary Pad and e-mail we were able to correspond and organize our thoughts. The actual assignment on BYOD aside, this was a helpful exercise and taught me a lot about the benefits of technology for group projects.

Video Games

The controversy over video games is a strong one. Each side has good arguments for their perspective. Personally I've never played video games, my parents didn't but them for us and we were always told to go play outside instead. My cousin on the other hand was practically addicted, he had just about every video game you could imagine. We are very close in age and went to college at the same time. While I made friends quickly my cousin took longer. He spent the majority of his freshman year in his bedroom on his computer. It wasn't until his sophomore year that he got a job, branched out and began interacting with other people.

I think that there are a lot of pros to video games. They help give great problem solving skills and help enhance the imagination. People can get really into them and develop online relationships with others who play the same game, working together and challenging each other. However, I do think that there is something to say for losing personal and face-to-face interaction.

However, I think this can be overcome by regulating the time someone play a video game and at what age they begin to play them. I feel that at a younger game the same problem solving skills and imagination growth can be instilled and created through outdoor play. Plus there is the added bonus of kids getting out their energy and working on face-to face interactions. I know we have been talking a lot about losing face-to face time and those relationships because of technology and I think that video games definitely play into that idea.

While I'm not against video games I do feel like they are something that should be done in moderation, like watching T.V. and eating sugary foods. Video games are a great way to think strategically, problem solve, and think outside the box. They are not however a great way to enhance your ability to work face-to-face.

Teaching About Technological Tools

This past class a few things occurred: first, we discussed in small groups the uses of technology resource we researched and second, we played twenty questions. The beginning discussions and explanations of our resources were extremely interesting. It was fascinating to hear about all of the different tools available for people to “organize their online life.”

           

I had originally gone into class thinking that my website, Gooru, was really cool and useful, (as you can see from my past blog post), but when I heard from M and D about their tools, Diigo and Evernote, I realized Gooru left a little to be desired. To begin with it focused mainly on subjects centered on science and math. I think it would have been much more useful if I were not an ELA teacher. Second, the platform seemed to allow for a one-way transmission of information from teacher to student. Basically what you were able to do was create folders of different resources (videos, lesson plans, etc.) you could then share that information with your students so that they could view it. You could also type up assignments or quizzes (I wasn’t able to figure out how to make a quiz) for students to do.

What you COULDN’T do was upload your own lesson plans or outside videos to your folder, so that all of your information could be in one place. You also couldn’t upload your own assignments for your students to do, and your students also couldn’t upload anything for you to see. Like I said, it seemed very one sided with the teacher just blindly giving information to the students.

The other tech. tools I learned about though happened to be very useful.  I downloaded Evernote and have been using it to take notes all week. I plan to fiddle around with it some more and figure out more things I can do with it when I have some free time. I also downloaded Diigo. I really like this program for reading online texts for class. I can highlight and take notes all on a website and then save all of my websites and pages to one spot so I have them for later (when I need to reference them for an essay or project.) Overall what our group discussed was that all of these tools have very different aspects that are useful but you still have to have three different tools to be able to do these things. It would be even more helpful if this all could be done in one place.

I have to be honest and say I wasn’t a fan of the twenty questions game. I understand its purpose and think it’s a great way for students to think about the kinds of questions they want to ask when solving a problem and how to strategize when solving that problem, but I think our class was a bit large for it. It was kind of frustrating to have to discuss and argue about every single question (especially the first five!) I would implement it in smaller groups so that students still have that time to think aloud but allow for decisions to be made at a faster rate.