In Conclusion...

First Rita, thank you for both your time and patience. Technology both fascinates me and frustrates me. I learn slowly but once I learn something, it stays with me. So thank you, thank you, thank you!

Two ideas came out of my working on the project. The first is I can really give my students a platform to express their ideas, feelings, and even possible solutions to issues relating to genocide and its effects on our world today. They need to talk out and share their thoughts and feelings in this class. It is often hard to find the time to complete course content and give them time to sort out all the thoughts going through their minds during this intense course. Now they will be able to do their assignments, share their concerns with me and share their thoughts with their classmates. While most students find me very approachable, somtimes they believe that all this is "old hat" for me and that I don't understand what they are going through with this course. In actuality, I understand very well what many of them are feeling or thinking. The content of this course is much for them to process. However, if expressing this to other students helps them in any way, great! This give and take is a wonderful learning/sharing platform and probably a good emotional release as well.

Secondly, I have been looking at the wiki sites and I see a grat opportunity, if I can figure it all out, to create a wiki which will allow me and my students to create a learning/sharing space of resources including but not limited to newspaper articles, films, books, web sites. local speakers, exhibits, survivor networks, TV programming, etc. to help them find whatever it is that they wish to learn. This course often attracts students who wish to go beyond the classroom requirements and I sometimes have problems keeping up with their requests. It isn't unusual for other students to step in and help each other find resources. The interactiveness of the wiki could certainly broaden the depth of resources avalable at any give time in a semester. It would also give me some leverage to monitor some of the resources they are sharing to warn them of some of the "junk" that is also so readily available, particularly off the web.

One interesing note for my researching: Rita suggested checking out some of the "twibes" for Twitter which might help me in creating a PLN. Just out of curiosity I was browsing some areas of interestand and looked up holocaust from twibes. I found two. The first was an American Indian Holocaust twibe with some very interesting tweets. The second, however, was a Russian based Neo Nazi twibe. Just some food for thought.

Lost on the borders of the cyber world!

So I read all about Twitter and PLNs and I still don't get how it is done. I understand networking with others and tried for years to find people who were truly interested in educating and education but most of the people I talked to were either interested in their paycheck, their summers off, or complaining about students, other teachers, or the administration. The few I enjoyed working with focused on content learning within their fields. I, on the other hand, wanted to understand the process of learning, the engagement of the student, motivational techniques, fair and equitable grading--things textbooks expound on and never really quite get to for the "frontline" teacher. So I learned by doing, experimenting, trying new approaches, reading articles on learning styles.

Suddenly, here is a tool to connect to others (albeit late in my career) who, perhaps feel the same call to really try to connect, make education meaningful to every learner who truly is seeking something from his or her education, and I don't understand how to start. So, I sign up for twitter and then what? I don't want to be on the computer or my cell phone 12 hours a day. I don't want to tweet 250 people every week. I want to share good ideas and get good ideas and help my students achieve the success they need or want to go out in the world and feel that what they are doing is satisfying or important or financially rewarding, whatever they are striving for. I learned quite a long time ago that what I do as a teacher has nothing to do with my expectations but rather what tools I can give students that they will see as valuable in the scope of their lives. Can this be done using Twitter or whatever else is out there? How do I find others who understand that subject content is the easy part, and that finding tools that help students connect to their education and delivering that content using tools is what the real challenge of education is, paticularly today, when education is only one of the competing responsiblities our students juggle? And, yes, I think I have much to offer in the realm of experience and personal education to others if asked but, again, I truly feel lost about beginning. So--now what?

Voice thread example

Today I tried, first, embedding the VoiceThread into my blog which Rita had us look at on Tuesday. The most confusing thing about doing this is understanding all the terms presented when requests for information pop up, like Blogger user name and Blog. The first is easy once you realize its the user name you used to originally sign up for the Blog. The second is the URL. I forgot to put the final back slash so it wouldn't work. Obviously, I figured it out. Sorry to bother you in Chicago, Rita.



Then I decided to see if I could use this for my Communication Skills I class when we work on visual communications. Teachimg them to critically evaluate visuals in a world which increasingly depends on visuals and visual cues requires me, as the instructor, to engage them in looking beyond the obvious. With the VoiceThread I can have them begin the process of evaluating visuals with a series of pictures to which they can briefly respond. They can respond to each other and, once back in class, we can really discuss the story behind the picture. This was originally set up as a Power Point picture show. ONE LIMITATION YOU NEED TO BE AWARE OF: you can only use the phone option for one or two slides. Then you must pay for this feature. Sneaky!

To Google or Not

Google obviously has so much more to offer than I realized. It’s a great manager of information for specific application, a class, a special project, an information sharing space but, frankly, I feel I can do most of these things on Blackboard or my computer manager or even a wiki if I ever figure out how to create one. I can see as a tool as a teacher for sharing teaching strategies or dealing with student issues. I can’t see using it for actual class application overall. I do have one possible use for this which would eliminate the students having to use so much paper. All of my Communication Skills students are required to keep journals about their classroom experiences. If they could all create blogs and then iGoogles to keep track of all the individual blogs, they could share ideas and suggestions as well as concernswhich they could reply to and which I could also reply to so everyone could see. One problem I see is sometimes students write journals they want to keep private, which is always an option I give them. Can this be done?

Another problem I have at this point is the amount of time it would take to teach them to use these technologies for the class. I already feel that time is an issue with these basic skills classes. In time probably most of my students will know how to do these things but I polled my class this summer and only two of twenty knew how to blog or even exactly what a blog is, although all had heard the term. None had heard of iGoogle. This is a slightly older group but I wonder just how tech savvy our students really are.

Maybe I just have to have a situation arise where the tool actually is needed for the project abnd then I will feel comfortable applying this to that project. I wish I could be more specific but maybe inexperience makes me very tentative.

Sixth Sense

First WOW! I can’t help but wonder what this means for education as a whole in the future. Obviously, the technology being described to us and which is actually in development goes way beyond anything that traditional classrooms can offer. As it is, we have access to so much information all the time that certain traditional components of the curricula we have taught for probably a century or more is no longer necessary for the tech savvy student of today. In fact, I have changed focus over the last few years when teaching research techniques to English I and Communication Skills II students from seeking out resources, although I still do teach this in part, to teaching students to critically evaluate all sources. computer generated or not. I suspect in the near future students will learn critical analysis, critical reading, critical thinking, and critical writing skills as early as, perhaps, third grade in order for them to navigate the resources intelligently which they already know how to access.

I picture a totally different classroom in twenty years. Students already “plugged in”, outfitted in computer fashion wear, sending signals to each other by looking at the person and transmitting silent signals which only that person can hear, except, of course if another “hacker” student is able to break the password or whatever and transmit it to the entire class. Imagine the little love trysts in the high school classroom with this scenario. I can also imagine the curriculum. “Good morning students. Today we are going to begin a unit on creating differnt types of relationships outside of the home, such as how to meet and talk to another child playing in the sandbox or asking someone how to use the cyberphone when the help screen is down on your pocket computer. Now remember last week when we talked about how to ask your parents face to face if you could go to Danny’s virtual party….” So in these future classrooms we will teach communication skills in face to face relationships instead of subject content which will be literally with them all the time. A few of my students could already use such a class.

Having attempted to show my mother a computer a few years back I can also see a whole new career choice for students. Teachers and advocates for people whose age or simple disinclination to learn further technolgy prevents them from being able to function in society. This is a real possibly with the speed at which we are moving with technology. Exciting, but for those of us who are getting older, also a little scary.

Where are our students?

I once had a teacher in high school who told me a teacher’s job was to take students from where they were and bring them to a higher plain, higher even, if possible, to the plain the teacher was on. I didn’t quite get that when I was younger and just trying to figure out how to reach students but today I do understand that when we reach out to our students we are offering whatever expertise we have as a gift which we need to understand that they may choose to take in part or whole or not at all. I also now know that I am not better or smarter or even more educated then most of my students, that they, indeed, have life experiences and both formal and informal education I will never have from which they draw a frame of reference to include, again, in part or whole or not at all, whatever I offer them in the classroom. Selling the importance of what I am trying to teach them is one of the great dilemnas. But here I digress.

Every teacher who cares about his or her students struggles with how best to present and convey the information students need to take from the class in both an effective and efficient way. We draw on tools of the trade and often borrow from other professions to help us engage our students in the educational process. But often we also rely too heavily on the tools to do our jobs for us. Several students approached me one day after class to express their frustration about another class they were all taking at the same time they were taking my English 201 course. They complained that the instructor they had used Power Point in virtually every class, reading the Power Point, expounding on the Power Point, and testing based on the Power Point presentations. My gawd, how disheartening for the students. All I could do was remind them of the short time they would need to put up with this and that in life sometimes we just need to hang on to get through.

Today the big move is to use technology to help us reach our students where they are at. Their and our lives are innundated with technological advances. My partner and I are avid campers who love to leave the hectic pace of city life to reconnect with a far more natural world. We are tent-campers and except for carrying cell phones for emergencies and electric lanterns for inside the tent, we leave most technology behind when we camp. But in the past few years when we walk the dogs in the evenings around the campground, we increasingly see people chatting away on cell phones, playing on their computers, plugging into iPods. and even using generator powered dishwashers set on the picnic tables. I shake my head and return to stare mindlessly and joyfully into the campfire while listening to crickets, frogs, and the occassional pack of young coyotes on the prowl for adventure.

In the classroom I do use technology, Power Point, Internet sites, visualizers, Blackboard, films, even iPod recordings fed through the computer to stimulate writing or make a point about literature. It is a tool to help engage my syudents in the learning process. That is also why I want to learn more about what my students use to learn when what they are learning for their own pleasure or enhancement (Please don’t tell my students they actually choose to learn stuff on their own. Some would be horrified). The point is all these technologies are TOOLS. But tools must fit the project. Because I bought myself a new drill driver which is super cool, high powered, and really advanced does not mean I will use it on every project or even most projects I work on in my home. I will use it when the time and project is appropriate.

In one of the articles I read this week the instructor of statistics is trying to find ways to use Twitter to engage her students in learning statistics. WHY? Select the tool and then the project? Engaging students is about finding the right tools to get the job done. The more tools in your arsenal, the better able you are to find one or a combination to get the job done. But to force the use of a technology just to use it to engage your students is ingenious and the students know it immediately, particularly if you are uncomfortable with the tool in the first place.

Two other thoughs come to mind as I write this. One very important lesson I learned from teaching small children, which I continue to do even today, is variety and change of teaching strategies is critical to all learners. The average adult attention span is between 7 and 9 minutes. We can’t possibly teach in 9 minute increments but we can be aware that no one strategy, technological or not, will engage our students for long periods of time. Variety, interactive teaching strategies work best overall but even these get tedious if overused.

I recently read an article about technology and teaching and the author made one very good point. Our students, because of TV, videoes and repetitive type computer games have become paasive learners (although this has always been true to some extent). Technology has often, not always, made getting the information they seek too easy, too accessible, too easily forgettable. They listen to technology passively; they watch technolgy passively; they encounter technology passively. By using technological advances indiscriminately, we will only reinforce the passivity our students are often prone to already.

TOOLS for learning? ABSOLUTELY! Indiscriminate and uncritical use of technology in place of personal and caring teaching strategies? NOT IN MY CLASSROOM!