Well, it’s the day after Thanksgiving, which means that the semester is almost over. As the semester comes to a close, and ENG 310 comes to an end, it is now time to reflect on my blogging experience.
First up for discussion is what I have learned about my topic. I entered into this project with very little love for technology, and, well, I leave this project with the same feeling. However, I am now aware of many more uses for technology and computers in education than I was before. And, whether I like it or not, the use of technology in education is going to become more frequent and not less so; meaning that this information will probably end up being useful in my future classroom. Technology can help to motivate students, can make the teacher’s job easier, and can connect students from different areas to make for interesting group projects. In short, technology can help to improve education and make it more effective.
The second topic up for discussion is my experience with RSS technology. For this blog, I used several RSS feeds to search for and find all of the articles that I used in my posts. I had never used anything like Google Reader before this, although I was familiar with what RSS feeds were because we talked about it in my ED 205 class. RSS technology is useful because it saves a lot of time by putting everything that you are looking for in one place. For instance, there are a few news websites that I usually check every morning after I get up while I am at school. Instead of going to each of these sites individually, RSS feeds allow me to look at new information from those sites all in one place. RSS definitely makes for a more convenient and slightly less time-consuming internet experience. If I had had to go to all of the different websites that I used for this blog seperately to look for articles, it probably would have taken me a lot longer to find what I needed. RSS technology is definitely a nice addition to the world wide web experience.
I have enjoyed my writing my blog and have found it to be a learning experience. I hope that you all have found my blog to be interesting.
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
I recently read the article ‘Playing the Market’ Gets New Meaning at Schools by Jennifer Buske in the Washington Post. This article discussed a way of using computers in the classroom that concerns the simulation of a real-world situation, in this case the stock market. This article talked about the Stock Market Game. According to Buske,
The program, created by the nonprofit Foundation for Investor Education, allows students nationwide to invest virtually in stocks and market funds in a real-world simulation.
For the game, students are divided into teams of four and given $100,000 of virtual money. Teams use the Internet and news updates to monitor and research stocks, invest and determine when to buy and sell.
I thought this game was interesting because I think that most students have done a similiar type of activity sometime during their school career. My experience with a stock market activity did not involve computers. When I did a similiar activity in my high school class, we had to check the newspaper in the classroom everyday to pick stocks and see how the stocks that we had were doing. We didn’t do any research on the stocks, either. We just picked them based upon whims. For instance, I “bought” stock in Boeing without even knowing what it was. So, this computer game sounds a lot more involved than the stock market game that I was involved in. The game also has another interesting aspect to it. According to Buske,
Students compete on a regional and statewide level, Powell said. The top three teams in the state, selected based on total equity in their account as of 4 p.m. Dec. 5, will be invited to a ceremony in Richmond. Powell said GMU will also recognize the top three elementary, middle and high school teams in the Northern Virginia region, inviting them to the campus for a reception.
I think that this computer game definitely could help kids to get more excited about learning economics and help them to learn more about the stock market. The fact that the game allows students to compete with those at other schools adds an interesting element to it that I think could make the game even more exciting for students. Granted, this game applies mostly to an economics/social studies classroom, but I could see similiar simulation games being created that could be useful in different subject area classrooms, kind of like some of the video games that I discussed in an earlier post that tied games to reading.
Article: ‘Playing the Market’ Gets New Meaning at Schools by Jennifer Buske.
The Washington Post, November 20, 2008.
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
Lots of people use their cell phones to send text messages. (Personally, I’ve never done it, and I don’t really find it very appealing, but that’s me.) Texting in the classroom, however, is usually outlawed. Despite this fact, I recently read an article about classrooms that do just the opposite and require their students to use texting in the classroom. The article Texting in classrooms may become the norm by Alison Pugh hails from New Zealand and talks about a new teaching tool called Activexpression. According to Pugh,
The device, called Activexpression, allows teachers to ask questions on the board via a computer, and students can then text their answer through their Activexpression cellphone.
The software instantly produces a graph or chart on the board displaying the students’ answers, allowing teachers to gauge the class’s understanding at a glance.
The positive aspects of this technology are that it allows the teacher to have a better idea of how students are understanding the material that they are learning very quickly. It also is something that students would probably have fun with and would enjoy.
However, I can see some negative aspects to it as well. First off, I’m willing to bet that this is probably a pretty expensive technology. Buying every student an Activexpression cell phone plus the software sounds like a very expensive endeavor. Secondly, when I picture a classroom where all of the students are bent over their cellphones texting away, I can’t say that it seems very appealing. It doesn’t encourage a lot of interaction, in my mind. I also don’t really know that its purpose would be worth its expense. There are much cheaper methods of doing things like this, like having students write their answer on a white board and hold it up for the teacher to see, or just plain good old-fashioned homework. Granted, these methods are not as fast or convenient as texting, but they accomplish their purpose.
In short, while I think that Activexpression is an interesting idea that could be fun to use, I don’t know that it is really needed or that it would really be worth what it costs.
Article: Texting in classrooms may become the norm by Alison Pugh.
The Dominion Post. October 7, 2008. Stuff.co.nz.
Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments »
I recently read a post on the blog Digital Writing, Digital Teaching by Troy Hicks that talked about his trip to the NWP/NCTE 2008 conference. What caught my eye in this blog post was the mention of wikis, which I actually had to do a project about for my ED 205 class that I took over the summer. As Hicks says in one of his links (Writing with Wikis) from his post,
As we invite students to compose and collaborate in online spaces, wikis have emerged as a primary tool for writing. While wikis sometimes have a negative connotation in academic circles — any discussion of Wikipedia will assuredly bring out a range of emotions in teachers and researchers — the basic principles of wiki writing offers students many opportunities to draft, publish, and revise their work. Moreover, wikis provide opportunities for students to develop online communities, embed additional web-based media into their writing, and monitor their own work over time.
When I first started researching wikis myself for my ED 205 project, I really didn’t even know what they were. I was only familiar with the term wiki as it related to Wikipedia. So, I had to embark upon a quest to find out just what a wiki really was. According to wiki.org, a wiki is
…a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser.
This means that anyone can add content to a wiki and anyone can edit what others have added to the wiki. A wiki is therefore a collaborative web page built by many different users. There are many different websites where people can go to start their own wikis, three of which are wetpaint, wikispaces, and pbwiki.
This relates to writing in that wikis can be used in English classrooms for writing projects. Students working on a group writing project can post lists of tasks, peer edit each other’s work, give each other links to resources, and ask and answer questions. Wikis can take a project that would otherwise be done through dozens of e-mails, and put it all in one place that is accessible to everyone in the group. Hicks notes three different types of collaborative writing that wikis could be used for here, where he also includes a lot of interesting links about wikis. His blog post also talks about a lot of different technology topics discussed at the conference as well that would be interesting to read for anyone who is interested in the topic.
Sources:
San Antonio, Tech To Go, and Back to the Snow at Digital Writing, Digital Teaching by Taylor Hicks.
Writing with Wikis by Troy Hicks at aceworkshop.
What is Wiki at wiki.org
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
I recently read two articles on the New York Times website about how video games can be incorporated into the classroom. The one that I will be focusing on is “The Future of Reading – Using Video Games as Bait to Hook Readers” by Motoko Rich. In the article, Rich talks about many different ways that people have been using video games to get students more interested in reading.
One of these ways is by simultaneously creating a book and a video game that follow the same story line. According to the article, PJ Haarsma did just that:
The online game that Mr. Haarsma designed not only extends the fictional world of the novel, it also allows readers to play in it. At the same time, Mr. Haarsma very calculatedly gave gamers who might not otherwise pick up a book a clear incentive to read: one way that players advance is by answering questions with information from the novel.
Apparently, Haarsma is not the only one who has done this. The article also lists off several other examples of coupling a book with a video game. I think that this is a very interesting concept, but I’m not really sure how effective it would be. While many students out there are far more interested in playing video games than reading (my brother being one of them), I don’t know if a book coupled with a video game would produce the same quality reading experience. Students may be inclined to simply skim the book for the answers to the questions that they need to answer and spend all of the rest of their time playing the video game. However, if this was a monitored experience within a classroom, maybe it could be pulled off a little better, with the students reading the book with motivation from the video game.
The next way that the article mentioned about video games being used to promote reading was through libraries. I had heard about this before. Apparently some libraries host video game tournaments in an attempt to get kids into the library. Once they get them into the library for the video games, they hope that they will check out their surroundings and hopefully find books that they would like to read. While this is a nice idea, I’m inclined to believe that most kids who come to the library for the video game tournament probably aren’t going to be leaving at the end of the day with a book.
The article also brought up a way that a video game could be used in a social studies classroom:
Such ideas led Lyn Lord, a social studies teacher at Kimball Union Academy, a boarding school in Meriden, N.H., to introduce students to Civilization, a role-playing game in which players build and lead cultures like the Aztecs or the ancient Romans through thousands of years of historical development.
Holly McLaughlin, a senior at Kimball who played Civilization as a sophomore in Ms. Lord’s class, said that at first she failed at the game, choosing to develop culture and religion at the expense of roads and the military. Playing, she said, helped her gain a deeper appreciation for why leaders made certain decisions.
In short, I find this concept of involving video games in the classroom to be an interesting, but tricky, one. On the one hand, getting to play a video game in class would definitely be a motivator for a large number of students, and could help otherwise disinterested students to have more interest in a subject like English. On the other hand, I think that it is very hard to make certain that having the students play video games really is a learning experience and not just a fun activity. Hopefully, as time goes on and people experiment more and more with this idea this really will become an effective classroom learning tool.
If you are interested in how video games can be used in a math classroom, click on the link to the other article that I discovered: “Video Game Helps Math Students Vanquish an Archfield: Algebra” by Winnie Hu.
Article: “The Future of Reading: Using Video Games as Bait to Hook Readers” by Motoko Rich
The New York Times, Published October 5, 2008
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
On Friday, September 26, I attended The Underground Railroad in Michigan: A Decade of Discoveries Conference at Grand Valley State University. I attended Sessions A and C and and saw part of Keynote Speaker Karolyn Smardz Frost’s presentation, as well as that of Christopher Paul Curtis.
In the morning on Friday, I first attended Session A and then stayed for a half hour of Karolyn Frost’s presentation. I could not stay the whole time because I had to leave to go and do some tutoring. Session A, entitled “Abolitionism and Underground Railroad Resistance in Michigan” was led by a panel of three speakers: Roy Finkenbine of the University of Detroit, Owne Muelder of Knox College, IL and Debian Marty of California State University, Monteray Bay. Finkenbine started the discussion of the history of the Underground Railroad by telling the story of the fugitive slave Giles Rose who escaped to Detroit. Muelder discussed the Underground Railroad in Illinois, while Marty discussed Michigan’s role in enactment of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. All three were good speakers who provided valuable information on history of the Underground Railroad, and all of them shared stories that would be interesting anecdotes to share with a class of history students. While I only got to hear a short portion of her presentation, Frost talked about her journey trying to discover the history of the Blackburns, a fugitive slave couple that escaped to Canada. What I did hear of her discussion gave valuable insight into what it can be like for a historian or archeologist to search out information on past events or people.
Once I returned to the conference after tutoring, I attended Session C: “Quarlls Watkins Heritage Project, Detroit” with Kimberly Simmons. Simmons told the story of her great great great grandmother Coroline Quarlls Watkins, a fugitive slave who travelled the Underground Railroad. This was another interesting story that would serve as a good story to share with students in a history class.
The final session that I attended was “Writing the Underground Railroad Story for Children” with speaker Christopher Paul Curtis, the author of several children’s books, among them Bud, Not Buddy, and Elijah of Buxton. This was the session that would have the most relevance to an English class. Christopher Paul Curtis was a very good speaker who discussed writing his newest book, Elijah of Buxton and read portions of his book to the audience. Curtis talked about various aspects of his own writing decisions, like the fact that he prefers to write in first person because he feels that it is the best way to connect personally to the characters. He also talked about how his desire to write a book that dealt with slavery conflicted with his need to make the story appropriate for and enjoyable for children. When reading his story, he demonstrated that he was clearly a skilled writer. His unique use of language (for instance, he described students as being “quiet as a dead squirrel”) and creativity helped to get his point across while creating a lot of humor (for instance, two of his young characters in the story confused “Familiarity Breeds Contempt” with “Family Breeding Contest”). Curtis demonstrated that he was very good at taking a very serious topic like slavery, and incorporating it into a story that was written for children that would help them to better understand the topic without being too traumatized by it. Curtis’ consideration for his audience in the way that he wrote is definitely something that could be taught to students in a secondary classroom, and was something that I myself found very enlightening.
All in all, the Underground Railroad in Michigan Conference was a valuable experience that taught me many things that would be useful in both a social studies classroom and an English classroom.
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
Throughout the history of the school system, students have always found ways to cheat at their assigned tasks. Taking a peak at their neighbor’s paper, hiding answers up a sleeve, writing answers on the desk, etc. One thing that it has always been a little harder to cheat on, however, is writing. Students can pull an essay off of the internet, but if the teacher suspects foul play, they can easily be discovered. Students can recruit someone else to write their paper for them, but it’s often hard to find someone who is willing to write papers for someone else. In short, cheating on writing assignments can be difficult. However, technology can often make this easier.
I recently stumbled across an article that introduced what could be a new way of cheating on writing assignments: outsourcing to India. I discovered this unusual way of getting something written through a column in the student newspaper at Penn State, The Daily Collegian. In the column “With outsourcing, I can write while I sleep” and the follow-up column “Column shows outsourcing is easy, cheap” by Ryan Pfister, Pfister explores how writing can be outsourced, and actually outsources his own column to India. According to Pfister,
Thanks to the Internet, outsourcing is no longer the domain of the rich, famous and corporate. Instead, Indian outsourcing companies now offer to do pretty much anything for the right price, from setting up appointments to writing advertising copy to doing research. The idea is to “follow the sun” — to have an Indian assistant work while you sleep and have the results waiting for you in your e-mail inbox the next morning.
Pfister found several companies who offered writing services that ranged from travel writing, to article writing and blog writing among others. Some companies even offered ghostwriting services. One very interesting option that some companies offered was creative writing. According to Pfister:
Editing Writing Services…probably has the most comprehensive services of the group, including a very interesting “creative writing” section.
According to the service’s description, “Give us the smallest or the simplest of story ideas and we will develop them in a manner that will leave you surprised and surely asking for more.”
In the end, Pfister hired the site contentwriter.in to write his column. It only cost him $28, and the product was really not all that bad (to read the column written by the outsourcing company, click on the link to the second article “Column shows outsourcing is easy, cheap”). The column that he had them write gave credit to the real author.
I thought that this idea of outsourcing writing was a very interesting one. While these companies are not marketed towards students, I could see how something like this could be used by a student to get a writing assignment done. If a teacher were to learn that their student had paid someone in India to write their paper for them, I imagine that they would be very suprised. Just a few years ago, doing something like this would have been impossible. While technology can bring a lot of benefits to the classroom, it can also open up a lot of new doors to more creative ways of cheating.
FYI: From this point forward, my blog will be written by someone from India. (Okay, not really. I’m too cheap.)
Articles: With outsourcing I can write in my sleep and Column shows outsourcing is easy, cheap by Ryan Pfister.
The Daily Collegian Online, Published October 6, 2008 and October 13, 2008.
Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments »
I recently happened upon the article Don’t Buy That Textbook, Download It Free by Noam Cohen on the New York Times website. While I realize that this is more of an issue that pertains to college students, I thought that this was something that could eventually have some impact on secondary education as well.
It has often been my personal opinion (and many other people’s as well) that textbooks are way overpriced. I find it especially annoying that the companies will make minimal changes to a textbook and then release a new edition, making the books even more expensive. I really don’t think that the textbooks that I buy are worth all the money that I pay for them. Thus, my interest in this article.
The article talked about textbooks that are available online for free or for a subscription. One of the items that I found most interesting, however, was this:
A broader effort to publish free textbooks is called Connexions, which was the brainchild of Richard G. Baraniuk, an engineering professor at Rice University…In addition to being a repository for textbooks covering a wide range of subjects and educational levels, its ethic is taken from the digital music world, he said — rip, burn and mash.
Unlike other projects that share course materials,…Connexions uses broader Creative Commons license allowing students and teachers to rewrite and edit material as long as the originator is credited. Teachers put up material, called “modules,” and then mix and match their work with others’ to create a collection of material for students…
One of the most popular Connexions contributors is Sunil Kumar Singh, a production engineer from New Delhi… He explains physics for precollege students, using the feedback from readers who e-mail from all over the world.
“It is a two-way process,” he wrote in an e-mail message. “I, for one, have experienced difficulty during my formal study years with the best of textbooks around.” He said the new system “gives me opportunity to respond to the editing needs all the time.”
First off, I have to say that, not being a technology whiz, I don’t necessarily completely understand all of this. Regardless, I think this type of thing is very interesting because it provides cheap access to textbooks that are just about as up-to-date as they could get. It also allows teachers to adjust texts for their classroom use, which I think is very interesting and could be very beneficial for students. Probably nearly every textbook I have used in school has had chapters in it that the teacher had us skip. I have also often read chapters, only to be told afterwards that I could disregard certain parts of what I read because the teacher didn’t consider it to be important. I think something like Connexions could probably cut down on issues like this.
However, on the negative side, I have to say that I personally really don’t like reading things online. I greatly prefer having something in my hands that I don’t have to be staring at a computer screen to read. But – let’s be honest – if reading books online could save me a few hundred dollars every semester, then I’m sure I could get used to it.
Article: Don’t Buy That Textbook, Download It Free by Noam Cohen
The New York Times, Published September 14, 2008
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
Whether or not laptops and desktop computers are being used effectively in the classroom is something that many people have been debating. Some believe that the use of computers helps to get students more interested in things like writing. Others see computers as something that can easily be misused by students. The article Pencils, schmencils, I need a laptop by Tralee Pearce in the Globe and Mail (which is Canadian) looks at the use of laptops in the classroom and these different negatives and positives.
First, I’ll look at the positives. The article states that:
Laptops can have many positive effects on literacy and children’s life skills, says Linda Cameron, associate professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. The portable technology has been targeted in schools toward kids with difficulties in motor control – which would affect holding a pencil, for instance – and to children with learning disabilities such as dyslexia and disorders such as Asperger syndrome….
In some schools, kids rotate into laptop labs for research – at the teacher’s discretion. Others use laptops for innovative projects such as real-time pen pals or exchanges with adult authors.
I think that computers as a tool to help special education students is definitely a positve. Computers are also good as communication devices. Being able to speak with someone like an author or a pen pal online is something that could be a very valuable learning experience. Students in the U.S. could even have pen pals in different countries. They could even plausibly send each other files and work on a project together. I think that this is something that could be very useful in an english classroom.
Using computers in the classroom can also have negative aspects, however. The article first expresses concern about students’ access to sites that are not related to education (games, inappropriate websites, myspaces, etc.). They also cited Mark Bauerlein, author of the book The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future, who suggested that overruse of technology could have other negative effects:
He says that today, while college students come to class armed with more laptops, their vocabularies are shrinking. The skill of reading a complex text and analyzing it has become extinct, he says. “They’re very good at information retrieval, pretty poor on analysis and reflection.”
In a recent survey Dr. Bauerlein cites, college professors said that only 6 per cent of their first-year students entered class well prepared in writing. As a result, remedial writing courses are on the rise. For those who miss the boat, he says, corporate America now spends $3.1-billion a year on remedial writing training for their employees.
Dr. Bauerlein says there are no studies to suggest that the current use of laptops in education is benefiting students’ achievements on the whole. What’s more, technology is moving too fast for schools to keep up.
“The computer is an empowerment tool,” says Dr. Bauerlein, who is also a professor of English at Atlanta’s Emory University. “It’s very quickly responsive to users, which means it is pushing the activity of the kids beyond the control of the teachers.” One teacher he spoke to says he’s turned from being a teacher into a learning monitor, on the lookout for porn and MySpace pages.
I think that some of these points are very interesting. I don’t really know if always working on the computer would really cut down on a student’s ability to write well and analyze what they read, as Bauerlein seems to suggest. On the other hand, I can see how having so many shortcuts like spell check could maybe cut down on a student’s ability to do certain things as well as they would be able to do otherwise. For instance, there are some relatively simple multiplication problems out there that I once knew off the top of my head. Now, however, I have to think about them a little more because I’ve always used my calculator so much. I can see how this could possibly apply to computers and their effect on a student’s reading and writing. I can also see how being able to police students while on their computers can be a problem. When I used computers in high school there were definitely times when I played solitaire or online games during class. I have also seen students using messenger or checking their e-mail during class. And, unfortunately, in my high school computers class, I also had a guy who sat a couple chairs down from me who constatly plastered his desktop background with pictures of naked (or practically naked) women. All of these are real problems that can be hard to monitor in a class where there are thirty students and one teacher with just one pair of eyes.
Despite these problems, I think that laptops and desktop computers are really something that need to be used in the classroom because they are very valuable tools that every student should use. However, students should also know how to do things without a computer, like being able to edit papers without the help of a computer or being able to do research in places other than the internet, like the library. Students should also know that visiting prohibited websites will have consequences. I think that a good classroom will incorporate technology while teaching students how to do things the good old fashioned way at the same time.
Article: Pencils, schmencils, I need a laptop by Tralee Pearce
From Tuesday’s Globe and Mail, September 2, 2008 at 10:34 AM EDT
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
