blog #8 - Blogging Reflections

I have used blogs before in the classroom to update parents on things that are going on in class and to use for students. Even though the use of blogs was not new to me, actually updating a blog regularly with my own thoughts and reflections on educational topics was a very beneficial learning experience. Having to weekly stay updated on specific educational topics has been good for me professionally. What a great way to ensure that I am staying on top of current practices in education. I have to admit that after this class I probably won’t regularly update my blog but I could see myself doing so on a bi-weekly or monthly basis. The main reason for doing so is that if I am going to have anything to say that would be worth somebody reading I would need to do my research first. In doing my research I would be able to always find new and exciting ways to better reach my students and help support their learning.

The use of blogs in the classroom is a tool that I wish I had the option of using in my current classroom. It isn’t really and issue with blogs themselves, it is the ability to get my students to computers so that they can utilize the benefits of keeping a blog. My old school had a mobile laptop cart that allowed me to give each student access to a computer on a regular basis. This made blogging very easy and students loved it. I was able to use it for keeping journals, writing book reviews, posting hypothesizes is science, or even the who scientific method for an experiment. The best part was the interaction. After students post their work their peers or even better their parents can review it. . Knowing this usually provides motivation for reluctant students because they put a little more time in effort into their work when they know their parents and classmates can easily see it and make comments on it.

Blog #7 Second Life

http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/students/learning/lr1grorg.htm

Second Life is a novel opportunity to engage students in active student learning. In this digital age it is a new learning experience for students that has a lot of potential. Two of SL’s greatest attractions for education would be online learning and a active student learning. The pseudo real-life experience provided in SL gives the users the feeling of being apart of a real community. As stated in the slideshow, a major downfall of online education is the student’s feelings of disconnectedness as a result of a lack of face-to-face collaboration. In general people are social creatures. Interaction in SL gives online learning the feeling of community and belonging that is missing from most online learning.

With only a small percentage of educators even aware of SL and an even smaller amount using it as a learning tool there is amazingly a large amount of content in SL that is valuable to learning. It seams that higher education is the area of education that is making the most of SL. There are hundreds of colleges and universities that have spaces and conduct classes in SL. On Facebook there are 3,390 members on the Second Life for Educators Group, which shows that many people are curios about the possibilities of SL. What SL has to offer that gets people so excited is the opportunity for students to explore words in a digital setting, almost like a field trip, that would give them and understanding of placing and ideas that wouldn’t be possible any other way. For example students can explore Rome and ride a chariot or walk though Greek architecture and see things first hand (kind of).

With all its legitimate possibilities there are some major concerns with SL. One of the major ones is adult content. There are many places and people in SL that are like walking down that certain street in town. No educator wants to subject or even give student an opportunity to see this kind of material. There isn’t a whole lot of control for the teacher with whom students decide to speak with and where they decide to travel. The other difficulty is learning curve that is necessary for working with SL. This makes it almost unusable for corporate training. In the school setting, even if you were to use the Second Life teen addition the bandwidth needed to support a whole class in the computer lab logged into SL is too much for school networks to handle.

Second Life is a great tool that can be used well in education. Is it going to be an essential learning element in years to come? There really isn’t any evidence that it will be headed there. If it suites the needs of your setting SL could be a great asset that will engage and motivate students. If it doesn’t work in your particular situation your students won’t be falling behind.

The following link describes one school trial of SL and working through the concerns of SL.

http://www.westleyfield.com/ithought/2007/03/concerns_about_.html

SecondLife in Education

Here is a handy slideshow of useful locations in Second Life.

blog #6 - Communities of Practice

Last year I was awarded a technology grant in Washington State, it is called Enhanced Education Through Technology or EETT. One of benefits of the grant is money to be spent on technology for my classroom. I love that part. The main point of the grant flows from its use of the Peer Coaching Program sponsored by Microsoft and its Innovative Teachers Network. The idea is that we learn most of what we do in our classrooms by our peers anyway, so why not intentionally train our fellow teachers in a structured environment about something we have learned ourselves. This makes a lot of sense. How many times have we all gone to an amazing conference with all these ideas that we were ready to implement in the classroom, only to have only done little of what we wanted or none at all. Why? There is no follow up from someone who cares to ask how are you doing? What can I do to help? When there is true collaboration, things get done. The coach and peer teachers have personal investments in what is going on. Not only do they see the benefits in their own classroom but also they know it is going to help the entire school community. “Professional development that includes peer coaching, study teams, or peer visits to provide opportunities for collaboration, feedback, and reflection, has a clear impact on classroom practice” (Innovative Teaches Network). The table bellow demonstrates the success of peer coaching compared to other types of training.

Type of Training	Knowledge Mastery	Skill Acquisition	Classroom Application
Theory +	85%	15%	5 – 10%
Practice +	85%	80%	10-15%
Coaching, Study Teams, Peer Visits	90%	90%	80 – 90%

This table was adapted from research on the impact of professional development (Joyce & Showers, 1994; Showers, Murphy & Joyce, 1996).

Blog #5 - Social Media

What is a teacher’s primary goal? To be the sage on the stage who craftily pieces lectures together in hopes to magically impart information into student’s brains through osmosis. Or is it to be the guide on the side, who orchestrates a learning environment from which students have the opportunity to create, explore, think, collaborate, act, achieve, and learn. Of all the new trends in this digital age the one that has the greatest possibility to change the landscape of education is social media. With the ability of the Internet and Web 2.0 students have access to people and organizations that can help them learn more about any given topic in the classroom than their textbook or their teacher alone. All other new technologies basically boil down to some great tools that can be used in the classroom to help motivate learning and make some processes easier. They don’t really change the dynamic of the classroom. Social median however, is a game changer. It is an opportunity to move from a teacher-centered classroom to a student-centered classroom.

The following video is rather long but very informative on social media. (You may need to download Microsoft's Silverlight to watch this video.)

Who is going to have the hardest time with this type of change in education? Teachers. Many teachers feel like they are going to lose control of their classroom. They aren’t losing control, control is still kept by the teacher, but more importantly the control is also given to the student. “A student-centered classroom isn’t a place where the student decides what they want to learn and what they want to do. It’s a place where we consider the needs of the students, as a group and as individuals, and encourage them to participate in the learning process all the time. The teacher’s role is more that of a facilitator than instructor; the students are active participants in the learning process. The teachers (and textbook) help to guide the students, manage their activities, and direct their learning” (Jones, 2007). Social media will be one of the greatest assets to the student-centered classroom.

Jones, L. (2007). The student-centered classroom. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Blog #4 - 21st Century Skills

Like any new trend that travels through the landscape of education, 21^st century skills are a reality but should definitely not become the new goal of education. No student learns the same; they all have different learning styles. Just because one is a digital native does not mean that they would be capable of listening to a lecture in real life, on video in real time, and checking their email at the same time. It is great to use these new tools and let our students work in groups to solve problems. This needs to be done in conjuncture with other styles of teaching that compliment each of the different learners in the classroom. In Jay Mathews article in the Washington Post, The Latest Doomed Pedagogical Fad: 21^st-Century Skills he recalls his experiences in college where he worked in a group to solve a real world problem for his science class. When his group finished, they turned their project in; he received an excellent grade and learned no science. 21^st Century skills, the ability to collaborate, design, problem solve, create, etc. need to be taught seamlessly with traditional math, science, reading, history, reading, and language skills.

21^st century skills should be used to enhance student learning beyond the norm. Once the basics have been covered and mastered. Then it is time to take it to the next level. As in Bloom’s Taxonomy; analysis, synthesis, evaluation, and even create are levels of thinking that we should aspire our student to achieve. They are also at the end of the spectrum. Knowledge and Understanding still remain at the bottom from which the other levels build on. Teachers need to be wise. Think critically about new pedagogical ideas and how they need to be applied to education. 21^st century skills shouldn’t be ignored but they also shouldn’t be the crux of the classroom while other skills or methodologies are left in the closet until they become in again.

Blog #3 - Media Literacy

If literacy in the 21^st century is going beyond reading, writing, and presenting on paper and moving toward language in a multitude of mediums; educators have their hands full with keeping up with what is new and still give students necessary skills to produce “cogent arguments on paper”.

In order to prepare students for this new trend in literacy, where thoughts and ideas are presented more often in images and sounds in our multimedia culture rather than the printed word, the primary focus needs to be on communication in general. The form of communication for which students share their ideas would be the secondary element. Kathleen Tyner states in her book Literacy in a Digital World that media literacy or media education is more about education than it is about media. What this means is that the goal isn’t so much the study of the different medias as it is about how we can teach our students to interpret the information they are receiving today and how to create their own information in a way that allows others to understand what they are trying to communicate. Different mediums for communication can all be learned but learning how to formulate ones ideas, organize them effectively, develop strong points of emphasis, and presenting them cognitively requires no digital skill. If you are given a tool with no background in which to use it, the tool is useless. This digital age in which are students are native to, provides many new and exciting tools for which to enhance their level of communication. In order for them to utilize these tools they must first be grounded in literary skills, which will provide a solid foundation for utilizing media to produce beautifully created literary pieces.

By embracing the idea of literacy as the primary goal of education and then focusing on the mediums of sharing our thoughts and ideas educators will be able to balance the need to still embrace literacy on paper as well the multimedia of the 21^st century. There is not one size fits all method to education that so many “experts” would like the world to believe.

For this to be a reality, teachers need to first embrace the idea of a constructivist classroom. This means curriculum, classes and activities must be designed to engage students in problem solving and discovery, in learning how to learn. Secondly it also means providing students with proper scaffolding from which students can build upon in their problem solving and discovery. It is okay to lecture (only for ten minutes) and provide practice and drills from time to time as long as they have a purpose in the bigger picture of a student education. Teachers shouldn’t be afraid to do what works in the classroom. That usually means a variety of different things that get students motivated to learn.

blog #2 - Learning 2.0

If our students are “digital natives”, then why is it so difficult for schools to understand that this is a new learning style? The ways in which we teach need to be adapted to reach this type of learner (which is theoretically everyone). Unfortunately in the traditional school environment students aren’t engaged with their learning. They come to school, play their part, and then go home, often with little understanding of what the learning objectives where that day. Whether teachers like it or not it is paramount that student are able to connect with their learning and find it relevant to their lives.

In this digital age students are more stimulated outside that classroom than in. They are constantly being bombarded with information from the T.V., Internet, and cell phones. Most of this information often has an audio/visual element to it and students are able to interact with the info. No wonder they aren’t interested in reading the social studies textbook on Ancient Rome. What happens for many students (who are not naturally intrinsically motivated) is they become disconnected with school and learning. Then their teachers put this stigma on them as unmotivated. This is our responsibility now to motivate them in a way that is relevant to their learning culture, not ours.

In the following video it discuses the idea of using cell phones in the classroom. I know in my school there is a big push to ban the use of cell phones from the classroom. We even spend time discussing what the new rules and punishment should be for offenders of this rule. I understand the principal behind many teachers disdain for cell phones in school. What they lack to understand is that in our student’s culture the cell phone is as necessary as a pencil was to them when they were in school. Instead of taking away this tool let’s find ways to utilize it. Be creative!

“These teens were born into a digital world where they expect to be able to create, consume, remix and share material with each other” (Pay Attention Video). Technology allows this to happen rather effortlessly. Lets use a blog for example. Instead of keeping a paper journal to write reflections on the days learning use a blog. With this digital tool students know that it isn’t just going to be their teacher who is reading their thoughts and ideas, it will also be their classmates, maybe their parents, or even a professional in the field they are studying. This will provide opportunity for discussion that will take their learning way beyond any single objective. When they are writing their journal they will also have the option of adding visuals that to help represent their thinking. Videos could also be added as resources to further enhance their understanding.

The time of the institutional school system has ended. Schools need to be redesigned so that students are learning beyond the walls of the classroom. Lets start providing students with opportunities that will motivate and engage then in learning. No more “blocking the future”; rather embrace it, reinvent it, edit it, manipulate it. The traditional ways of doing things aren’t irrelevant or even worthless. They just need to be redesigned with new things such as Web. 2.0.

Blog Posting #1 - Web 2.0 in the Elementary School

The methods we teach with need to constantly be adapted to meet the needs of the current culture. Now more that ever information is being shared at a rate never seen before with the use of technology. Is this reflected in our classrooms? Why not? Should it be? If so, how? These are the question educators, administrators and parents need to be asking.

Todays students are unhappy with a school system that was designs hundreds of years ago. They learn differently that the schools they attend are set up to teach them. Who needs to conform? The business or the consumer? If I have a business that is no longer meeting the needs of my clients, I am going to go out of business. "Kids expect to be able to interact with or at least partially control their own learning" (The Elementary Educator). If this is what they want let's give it to them. The standards can be taught in a variety of ways, so as long as we are teaching to them, it shouldn't matter the method being used.

The use of Web 2.0 in the classroom will allow students to become more involved with their leaning and give them a greater ability to collaborate with their classmates. For example, student can keep a blog where they post reflections to a lesson in class. Then other students can read their reflections and comment on their thought and begin a discussion on their learnings. When students interact this way with what is being taught they become engage and an active participant in their learning. Brain based learning research shows that this type of activity is much more beneficial to students. The School Matters - Thinking Skills: Brain Based Approaches video shown here, demonstrates this idea in greater depth.

It's not a new idea that teaching is done best when the methods are relevant to the learner. Thanks to new technology there are so many ways to make learning more meaningful to students. Lets step up as educators and challenge ourselves to move out of our comfort zones and do what is best for our students.