Just another Edublogs.org weblog
I suppose I am missing something as I take part in the stream of thoughts known as twitter. I usually don’t understand what is being said because I don’t speak the language. I also am not quite sure how this is a useful tool although I did enjoy watching twittervision. Here’s another opinion about twitter from David Jakes.
I, being a veteran of face-to-face instruction, am not quite so comfortable just writing my thoughts down for the world to see. I try not to give my gut reaction to questions or even to other people’s posts. The written word is so different in my mind than talking. I do not want to offend, overreact, or be misinterpreted. So anyway, I’ve been thinking about some of the questions and topics presented to us over the last two weeks and I think this is what I’d like to say or contribute to the already in progress discussion.
Homeschooling
I never thought this would be such a hot topic. I have had the experience of losing students to be home-schooled and gaining students in my classroom from being home-schooled. In my experience, I can see positive and negative attributes of homeschooling. I have seen students fall behind in the eyes of the school after being at home for a period of time. I have also seen students pulled from school because of the parents’ concern about the quality of education their children were getting and the social influences they believed were negatively impacting their children. I can’t really say I am totally for or against homeschooling. I certainly don’t want to talk myself out of employment, but I do want what is best for kids. Most parents do know what is best for their children and they have the right to make that decision.
I equate homeschooling with distance education courses. You really don’t know what you are getting into until it’s too late! The instructor guides you through the material and you make of it what you want to make of it. Homeschooling is no different. But really, public schools are like that too. You make of it what you want to. You get out of it what you want to. I think I am digressing…on to the next topic.
Technology and learning
Technology is a tool to help you do something easier or faster. Just like a calculator at times can help you get the answer faster than paper and pencil, technology is an assistant to a student, any student. Using technology doesn’t make you smarter, but it certainly adds to the motivational level of the learner, adds interest to the lesson, and allows the student to learn more than just what they are supposed to be learning.
Why teach?
This question has really made me think. I do believe teachers help students learn. Without the teacher, yes, some students would learn, but would they learn what we think they should? I have written about the purposes of education and I think those same purposes can be used to explain why we teach. First and foremost, we preserve our culture through teaching. We benefit society by teaching cultural norms, acceptable behaviors, and literacy. We produce people who can work so that our economy is maintained. We teach more than just content areas. We teach social skills, teamwork, time management, problem solving, and an accepted value system. We teach others so that we too gain deeper understanding. We teach our past so we learn from our mistakes and not repeat them. We teach literacy so our citizens can effectively communicate. We teach tolerance and awareness of individuality so we can live peacefully. We teach students how to find information so they can make informed decisions. We teach to improve the lives of our people and the people of our world. We teach so we can live and sustain this life that we all value so much.
Professional Development
We have all experienced pitiful wastes of time masked by the title “Professional Development” as well as very rich and meaningful opportunities under the same name. As Pam stated in her blog and as was stated in Ch. 11, professional development is a key element in school reform. I have had the opportunity to have some wonderful experiences this year involving a Math Cadre of regional teachers sharing their best kept secrets and tools that work for them as well as ongoing activities that incorporate the use of a Smart Board in the classroom. Both of these learning opportunities have truly changed how I teach.
An important element that must be present in quality professional development is choice. When I choose to attend a workshop, I tend to get more out of it. I want to be there, I have an interest in the topic, and I would go regardless if I was getting credit for it or not. When I sit at the computer I have a choice of what I do with it. It certainly can be a source of excellent pd opportunities. (Tapped In has some great opportunities that I’ve enjoyed.) So just like students in our classrooms, we too want to learn what interests us and motivates us to learn.
In researching the purposes of education I discovered this PowerPoint Presentation which describes four purposes for education in America.
This same presentation went on to discuss The Seven Principles of Education designed to set forth goals beyond just preparing students for college.
The presentation goes on to list several issues of concern today for educators in thinking about what is important for students to know and be able to do. It suggested the following abilities that students today should gain from education.
In another PowerPoint Presentation, the same four major purposes of education are listed.
So education serves society in that it does produce citizens that can think, work, contribute to society, and preserve our culture. It serves as the vehicle for success in that it teaches students how to solve problems, how to work with others, what is acceptable behavior, and how to manage many things at one time.
I have finished the book by Papert, and I am glad to be finished with it. Although he made some great points throughout the book, I felt like he was totally bashing school without offering any real solution. Yes, he provided excellent examples of learning opportunties from his own personal experiences to those of real students, but I just don’t think these are examples of the ultimate learning process. I think learning really is a personal issue in that each student brings with them unique talents and interests and preferred ways of learning. That’s one reason why teaching a classroom of kids is so hard. We ( I mean teachers) classify every lesson as one size fits all, and obviously that is absurd. I do believe many of the things that are done in the classroom are motivated by state and national guidelines and assessment data. Papert was right when he said that much of what we learn is not on the state assessment.
One of the most important points Papert made in the whole book in my opinion was on p. 123 when he said, ” Knowing that one can exercise choice in shaping and reshaping one’s intellectual identity may be the most empowering idea one can ever achieve.” This is something not understood by my students nor their parents. In a recent blog by Clarence Fisher, he talks about how important it is to give students the opportunity to be in charge or at least part of the what students learn and how they learn it. He says, They (students) must become evaluators and creators of information; active and critical consumers and collectors, but the fact is that they need the opportunities to do these things and in classrooms, they aren’t often given. I think this is one route to the mega-change Papert speaks about.
I have joined My Space and I do have mixed feelings about the use of it. On a positive note, I have been able to connect with friends from high school and college and family members around the world. This is nice. It’s great to just hang out with these people and see what they’re up to. I enjoy looking at their profiles and their friends list. It’s interesting to see who people have in their list of friends. My space certainly doesn’t have all the bells and whistles that other pages have, but I know I could spruce it up a bit. It is a great way to network with people you know and may not be able to see all the time. It’s also a great way to find other people who may have similar interests or questions as you.
On a not so positive note, I believe that My Space is no place for kids. I think in the Boyd interview she said that social networking sites such as My Space were created with college students as the intended users. This is appropriate in my opinion. As I add my ten and eleven year old students to my friends list though, I find that their profiles contain a lot of false information about themselves. In looking at students I’ve had in the past, they too mislead others in the information they list in their profiles. I also have a problem with the fact that although my intent is to hang out with people I know, I have access to a whole lot of people I don’t know. Many profiles are available for me to look at that contain filthy and vulgar language, offensive lyrics to songs, and content that just isn’t appropriate for kids. I believe many parents have no idea what is in their kids’ profiles, in their friends’ profiles, or in the profiles of strangers that may be accessed with ease. I really think the site is inaappropriate for kids to use without parental supervision.
After reading this chapter, I think of the word authentic. How many authentic reasons do we give our students to learn? Are students learning things that interest them? Why is it that Johnny never turns in any of his work? I think Johnny needs to see a real reason in knowing whatever it is I want him to learn. I think of my own children, 5 and nearly 2 years old, and how many minutes they will sit in front of a video game. I have argued with my husband about this because I see it as such a waste of time. He sees it a challenging learning experience. It drives them to want to learn more and more. It’s pretty amazing to see. Imagine having students in your classroom with this same kind of drive.
One interesting point in this chapter that I must mention is the fact that the author says technology can support mega-change in schools by shucking off the technical nature of School learning. Learning is a natural occurrence, but it isn’t described as such at school. The very thing that could help bring about change in school is turned into another interference. When he describes in this chapter about how taking the computers out of classrooms and putting them into a lab with a curriculum did the students no good, I have seen that in other areas of school as well. We have many resources that we miss the purpose of and end up losing their benefit on student learning. He really made some interesting points.
After reading Chapter 2 and several occasions in which the author described some of his own learning experiences, I began to think about some of my own experiences. I remember in 4th grade thinking how much fun school was. Up to that point, I don’t think I knew that school could be fun. My teacher in 4th grade though taught me that learning doesn’t have to be something that happens in your seat in front of a textbook. We had many opportunities to learn that year and many learning moments in my mind were just plain accidents. I really felt like I was just playing most of that year. After that year though, learning meant sitting in my seat and receiving the knowledge the teacher would allow me to have. And just like a deposit in the bank, once I had learned it, I moved on to a new topic. I didn’t use it. I didn’t really know I was supposed to.
The next time I really remember a learning moment was in high school in a Calculus class. The teacher really was hard but that meant he really made me think. Up to that point, thinking at school was minimal. School was more like a script. The teacher talked for a while and then I regurgitated what he or she said on some kind of paper or worksheet. My Calculus teacher though changed that. He answered my questions with another question. “Why was he so mean?” I would think to myself. Why can’t he just tell me the answer or tell me how to get it right? Well getting it right was not his concern at all. He was more driven to teach me to think about the problem and possible solutions than just getting it right.
College classes also gave me thinking experiences. Although I had taken Calculus in high school, I really didn’t feel like I could do it. I took Algebra as my first math course in college, and finally developed a moment of real understanding. I had taken Algebra as a freshman in high school and here I was taking it again in college, but I was so glad I did. I finally got it! I could not only do the problems but I understood why I was doing them that way. I have always appreciated that moment.
So for me learning has meant 2 very different and independent things. At times it has meant doing something and getting it right. That would be the school definition of learning. However, a few teachers out there have not cared if I got it right or not. They wanted to see evidence of my thinking skills. So I ask myself, am I asking students to do things to get the right answer? When was the last time I asked them to think? Do we expect students to really think? I don’t think I really want to know the answers to these questions.
Throughout this chapter I kept trying to classify myself as either a schooler or a yearner. I so badly want to be totally yearner, but the truth is I’m a hypocritical mesh of both. What I say I believe comes from the yearner perspective, however what I actually do looks a lot like a schooler. I say I take a constructivist approach to learning in my classroom, but I am explicit in my directions to students on what they should learn each day. I believe change can help make bad situations better, but I know change is sometimes difficult and do not embrace it. I say I do not want my students to simply be consumers of education, however, I teach as if that is what they are. When I am unable to be at school, I want a substitute that can do all the new methods utilized and use the technological toys in my classroom and I think this will be difficult to find someone to maintain the amount of normalcy in my absence. It isn’t. Retired teachers to brand new ones can pull off what I do without a hitch. And to think I thought I was different….
I remember my first year of teaching. I went in to that definitely believing I was a Yearner. In fact, I was not only going to change my classroom and school, I was going to change the whole world. I remember thinking of things I would not do as a classroom teacher. Now 9 years later, where is that ideology? Reality has made me see that school wasn’t that bad. I mean look at me. I turned out ok, didn’t I? I truly have never seen anything other than school work so it is hard for me to picture the flip side of it.
Is it though just a flip side? Can teachers take on this approach or another? It is actually deeper than that. When you think of change, schools experience it all the time, so we say. We have school improvement plans that do things better for this next class of students. We have school-wide and district-wide initiatives that change how we’ve been doing things. But do these things actually change anything? When it comes down to it, teachers fill their classrooms and do what they want to do, what they are comfortable doing.
So Papert has written an excellent first chapter. He’s got me hooked. I so want to learn how to change what I do to allow students to learn better. I want to fly!
Educational settings can do many things do address the issues found in the article Silicon Ceilings: Information Technology Equity, the Digital Divide and the Gender Gap among Information Technology Professionalsby Andrea M Matwyshhn. This article describes how the digital divide among men and women is prevalent and growing not only in terms of access to consumers of information technology but also in terms of access to producers of information technology. The following list gives suggestions as to what schools can do to close this gap:
These are suggestions that would address the gender issues surrounding technology equity in educational settings.
The effect of technology on a culture can clearly be seen when looking at the young people of that culture. What we do, how we do it, and how we communicate is greatly impacted by technology. Danah Boyd described technology has being fluid with the youth she studied. I guess I would compare technology has being a rocky hillside to many of the adults in our culture! As she said in her interview, teens do not see technology like IM as an interruption. On the other hand, a phone call would be seen as such. For example, my niece is much more apt to talk with her friends on the computer rather than by phone, unless of course she is texting them! Conversely, she only contacts me by phone (cause she knows that’s how I can be reached!) Likewise look at all the businesses, like coffee houses and restaurants, making access available to their customers. People are always available today (and want to be) via technology.
Another analogy Ms. Boyd gave in the interview that really speaks to where we as a culture are heading is how as children, our parents would send us out to play with instructions to return home by dark. I would go play with all the neighbor kids around my block and as I got older, I could hang out as far as two or three blocks away from home. Parents today do not do that anymore out of fear. The equivalent to kids going to hang out after school is the social networking sites. Teens and even younger kids go “hang out” in places such as My Space and Facebook with their group of friends. Of course adults go hang at these places as well, but their intended audience was college kids and that has trickled down to teenagers and younger kids. Like the Hula Hoop when most kids could do it better than their parents, I think the social networking sites like My Space are used more easily by kids.
So my future, being directed by those youngsters that fill the seats in my classroom today, will bring new ways of doing a whole lot of things. Communication, entertainment, education, job opportunities, and medicine will be greatly influenced by technology…technology we don’t even know about yet. We technology natives must learn to embrace it rather than resist it.
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