Education and Technology

I’ve been working a second job sine the beginning of the year which has cut down on my free time. With the cut back in time I’ve had to prioritize that time between doing my blogs or spending it with my family. Of course my family has won that battle, so I have not been posting for the last month as the second job has started taking off with more work equaling less free time.

I do get a chance to read my RSS feeds and wanted to share some of the best reading that I get to do during lunch or late at night. Here is my list of the top 5 feeds I like to read:

1. Problogger
2. Zenhabits
3. Weblogg-ed
4. Zero Day
5. Education IT

The above are my 5 must reads from the 31 feeds that I have in Google Reader, but I do have 2 other favorites that I like to follow so I would like to share them also….. Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub and the “The Official Dilbert Website.”

Enjoy

Technorati tags: Education, Technology, Blogging

I wanted to take the time to point to some others who blog about education. I’ve either had these folks in my blogroll or have added them recently. They have either commented here did a trackback to my blog or I have found them in my wanderings of the blogosphere about education.

1. Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub (History, accuracy and education) by Ed Darrell
2. JD2718 (Education, Math, Teaching, New York, Bronx, Union, Language, Travel) by JD2718
3. Happy Chyck Wonders by happychyck
4. Lets Play Math by Denise
5. 2 Cents Worth by David Warlick ~ David is a great source of information on Web 2.0 and blogging in the classroom
6. Weblogg-ed by Will Richardson ~ The best educational blogger I’ve read

Thanks for the commentary and words about something worthwhile……

Technorati tags: Education, k12 Education, Web 2.0

 We’ve had some interesting commentary on my last blog about teachers coming into the 21st century with their teaching methods. I thought long and hard about some of the reply’s, emails and even a trackback about the post. So, as I was reading Will Richardson’s Weblogg-ed blog today, this quote from his post on Tuesday, October 10th struck me with interest.

“We need to keep teaching writing with pen and paper if for no other reason that the kids need to have the physical strength to handwrite the 90 minute Regents exam.” (Comment heard during a recent workshop.)

That might be the most depressing thing I’ve heard in a long time, but it epitomizes, I think, the depth of the resistance that many teachers are feeling about the shifts that are occurring. It’s a legitimate concern, I know, in an environment where passing the test is at the end of the day what it’s all about. (Even though you know that in a few years, the Regents and the SAT are going to have to start providing kids with digital ways to take tests.) Our resistance, our inability to see new ways of learning is going to get us into very desperate times.

Please take the time to read Will’s blog. He is one of the most respected educators in our country today, you will not be disappointed.

That’s what I think….What about you?

Are we creating cars or are we teaching are kids how to grow, learn, be inventors, or most importantly to think for themselves and be creative. As we have added a multitude of tests, mandated reading and writing blocks are we taking away from the creative process of teaching and learning? That’s what it looks like from my vantage point.

We are teaching to the tests because that is what the local school board, the state and the federal government are looking at for Adequate Yearly Progress. Our kids are being asked to learn the test, not be creative. They are becoming machines, clones, a car that knows the same thing, does the same thing. Where do you add podcasts, wiki’s, blogging, all forms of collaborate learning when you are restricted to blocks and what you are supposed to teach? Where do you fit the technology in when you have to teach to a test that leaves creativity out? David Warlick makes an interesting point along these lines in is 2 cents worth blog…

I frequently use a manufacturing model to describe our education system. Our students roll down the assembly line where we install math on them, and we install reading, and science, and social studies, and at the end of the line our quality control engineers measure each product to make sure that it complies with the blueprints — to make sure that every student knows exactly the same things. Source: 2 Cents Worth » Becoming the Machine

It might be nice that our kids should know the same things, but it doesn’t allow for the genius of creativity or expression of different ideas. Growth dies in a system that you standardize. The United States will never gain a place as one of the best educated nations by producing clones. Children are not machines that should be run down the assembly line of k-12 education. Teachers need the freedom to choose creative lessons within a loose framework of guidelines and expectations for student progress. We are going to lose more ground to other nations if we continue down the road of standardization in teaching and mandated testing.

That’s what I think….What about you?

Will Richardson had an interesting topic for his blog the other day and it caught my eye as some of the idea’s that I’m trying to get started at my elementary school. The five topics that Will asks about are:

1. Wikipedia–as in teaching kids about the collaborative construction of knowledge.
2. Cell phones–as in teaching how to use them effectively as tools for “just in time learning.”
3. MySpace–as in teaching the safe and effective use of the Internet to build networks and publish content.
4. Martinlutherking.org–as in teaching the skills necessary for navigating a world where editing occurs post publication.
5. Google–as in teaching the skills to find the information we want.

What other “basics” would you add?

Source: Weblogg-ed » What’s in Your Curriculum?

Now lets take these 5 items as I see them in our school district. These are in no particular order other than what I considered most important when I read them.

First of all MySpace is blocked by the websense filters as I believe it should be, but there is no reason to not teach Internet safety. I believe you can create a teaching situation that is behind the firewalls that you create a social networking site for the kids that teaches how to interact, publish and be safe at the same time.

Secondly, I see Google as a great source of information. We have already used it to research a 5th grade project called Heritage Day. The students Googled their family names, got relative background and coat of arms, came up with some background from their parents and put it all together on poster boards for an evening program for their parents. Teaching about Google as a media, new library source is the way to give children the step up into technology that they need.

Thirdly, I feel that cell phones have no place in the learning environment. With the latest technology kids have learned how to take pictures of answers, sent them to friends, text answers back and forth so well that it makes for too much of a temptation to cheat. “Just in Time Learning” is “Just in Time Temptation to Cheat”.

Fourth on this for me is Martinlutherking.org, which Will has pointed out to me in his comment below is a learning experience in what is not good in our society. This site rewrites history in an extremist view, and that this site even tries to influence our kids should be an example for us to teach that these views are the extreme minority of society. I can’t stress enough that after looking at this site any reasonable adult will see the hateful nature of the site and why we need to teach our kids why it is wrong to feel that way.

Lastly, Wikipedia and wiki’s as a whole are going to be one of the greatest tools in learning that has come to the front in technology. Wiki’s can be used by a class to create a complete lesson on any topic with everyone contributing what they have found in the course of studying. Wiki’s and blogs are where teaching can make great strides in a very short period of time.

It’s a lot to think about, but that’s what teaching is all about. Thinking, learning and adapting.

That’s what I think….What about you?

As I walk through classes to fix a computer I see a lot of teachers using CD’s to learn on the computer. After taking the time to look, the programs on these CD’s are written mostly for use with Windows 95 or 98. They only work with the CD in the drive or don’t work correctly with Windows XP. A lot of the teachers using these CD’s have been teaching for over 10 years, most 25 or more. I see this as an opportunity to educate our teachers that there are many more resources available on the web. These web based resources lead to more effective learning with the students. Let’s see how….

The first way is by letting a group or class of students use the same resource at the same time. When you are using a CD to teach, for example numbers, only one student can use it at a time in a classroom setting while working on the classroom computers. While on the other hand, in the classroom you can load the site on a teacher laptop, plug it into the video projector and put it up on a screen or an ActivBoard depending what you have available. You are then engaging a whole class at one time, seeing who is learning and who isn’t. You get to see a bigger picture than you see when each child has to wait to use a CD. Yes, you can load the CD on the teacher laptop, but these CD’s tend to run slow while having to access information versus a broadband connection of a web based application.

Another way web based activity is a better way to learn is when you have multiple computers in the classroom and the students are doing stations during a reading or writing block. the students on the computer station can all load the reading web site to work on the same assignment. This gives the teacher a more streamlined lesson plan that they can follow with the students on the computer station, the same as with a reading station at a round table. The teacher can discuss the same reading assignment with these students, instead of having to ask different questions for different CD’s.

To me this is just better use of time and learning material. At our school the Instructional Technology Coach, K1 lab instructor and myself have gotten together and found many sites that we have added to our Technology web page. The links are from a variety of teachers, but everyday we are looking for more. Please check out our links, maybe we have one you don’t. If you have one that you think would be helpful, please drop add a comment to this blog for me.

These are just two examples, there are so many more…Podcasts, blogs, Wiki’s, student online newsletters and the list goes on…..

That’s what I think….What about you?