Room at the Top

Walter: http://kimw.uniblogs.org/

Shakura: http://www.weathesh.uniblogs.org./

Ashley W: http://wrightas.uniblogs.org/

“Schools need to teach children to not only live in this world but to thrive in it. Reading skills and math skills will always remain important, but we must also focus on problem-solving and expose our children to the technology that they will rely on in this ever-changing world.”

            If I could I would copy and paste about twenty quotes from the website that I found off of Google Reader. They support my ongoing thesis with every sentence that has been written. This of course doesn’t make the issue of writing about it very hard, but I do have to find a way to bring Christensen into the whole mix. I want to stick to Chapter 3 because that is what interested me most. Let’s try out Essay’s With An Attitude because I liked this section, and because it seems like it would be a little bit more challenging to tie into the technology world. The article online goes into depth about how students now are able to access news, articles, everything they can think of with the click of a mouse. Okay so we can say that students who have access to the internet at school, or at home, can look up endless information for research. I flipped open to page 68 in Christensen and did a quick re-read. Christensen talks about how she doesn’t teach introductions anymore. The problem was the kids didn’t have enough evidence to back up their opening which took so much of their time. Instead the kids write about an issue that peaks their interest, and are told to back it up with evidence, with examples. Say one of your students wants to write about a serious issue like rape or gang violence because it really hits home for them. Hopefully they don’t have a personal example; if they do, let them use it, if they don’t, get some examples. They go to Google, cnn.com, anything, and within a matter of minutes they have multiple examples. Is this possible in the library? Well I guess it is if there are computers in that library. What I’m trying to get at here is technology, which is not just social networking but everything from the internet to the iPod, changes the way kids write today. Educators need not only to teach math, science, and English, but technology as well. It is the future of all subjects. Math is done on computers now instead of calculators, scientific research, well, I don’t know anything about science but I mean come on, its science, I’m sure that’s on computers now too, and English (writing) moves deeper into the web everyday with newspapers switching over to websites, and blogs are popping up everywhere. We cannot allow our students to fall behind the movement that is technology, and as long as there is a computer handy, a teacher should be able to blend the two in some form or way. We just proved that we could do it with essays with attitude didn’t we?

Source: Google News: postcrecent.com

Author: KathyWalsh Nufer 

Title: Education Advisory Panel: Technology can be Blessing and Curse

Link: http://www.postcrescent.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071023/APC06/710230595/1036

I sit down in my chair after a run to start writing. I flip open my laptop, turn on the television (HBO On Demand, Lord of War, to be specific), start searching, and my cell phone starts ringing. I answer it, talk for ten minutes, sit back down, and finally get to work. Wait, first I’d better check my email to see if my uncle wrote me back. Alright now I’m ready to get going. An article pops up on my Google Reader account, “Protecting The Hyper-Connected Kids.” I start reading.

Picture this: Fifteen-year-old Lucy comes home from school and sits down on the couch with her laptop to do her homework. She turns on her beloved iPod, flicks on the TV and opens her Web browser to check her e-mail. Sure enough, her mom has just emailed from work and is asking if she got home OK and will she check the landline for any messages. Just as she’s getting up to do that, her cell phone rings and the distinctive sounds coming from her laptop alert her to a slew of instant messages.”

I did not make this up. It’s a little scary. I don’t know what to be more concerned about; the fact that I am part of this new-age tech world that I continue to write about, or that I do the exact same things that a fifteen-year-old girl does. What I do know is, the activities that the tech world entails will become apart of life for the kids upcoming. Downloading the new pod cast will be like brushing your teeth, laptops will be like putting your pants on, and TiVoing your favorite show will be like eating.

Alright to the point. I’m starting to sound like a broken record with the technology stuff, so I tried to take a new angle at this article. Hopefully I didn’t drag on too long. The point of the article that I found on Google was the idea that technology, Facebook and Myspace included, are beginning to fill the daily schedules in student’s lives. The author goes on to talk about the time issue of school work and all of this other stuff; will there be enough time to get that English or Geography assignment done when the students are replying to all of their messages that come from, well, where don’t they come from? I can testify from personal experience that school work is very hard to get done, and done well when you are on the internet, the phone, and the t.v. all at the same time. What is that again, televisaphonernetting? Something like that.

I cannot get to the point; my ability to ramble is getting the best of me. A new paragraph was all I needed. The question that needs to be answered after listening to all of this mumbo jumbo is what can teachers do for students to help them get their work done at home with all of these distractions. This is where I introduce the idea of an open forum. We are going to be teachers, we are going to be dealing with Facebook and Myspace, so we better have some ideas to use to introduce to students. And we can’t just say, “um, I’ll have the kids write to each other and have info online and network and stuff like that.” That doesn’t work; we should be more specific at this time in our education. How about doing something along the lines of a book report, or a movie report, something done in class. Separate the kids into groups. Give them a topic, and make them choose their stance on that topic. Allow them to argue about it on a discussion board online. That way when they fire up the Mac or the Dell, they can open one more tab and get this done as well. Or maybe you could allow for students to post a personal essay online, something with the same philosophy as the “This I Believe Essay,” and really open up. maybe to allow for maximum potential you could allow the students to leave their name off of the paper, and hand in a hard copy to you with your name. comments would then be required, which, is starting to sound pretty familiar all of as sudden.

I am starting to develop a pretty obvious theme, and that is social networking is so prevalent that educators are better off adapting to it rather than separating it from their classroom work.

Source: Google News

Author: Stephen Balkam

Title: Protecting the Hyper-Connected Kids

Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-balkam/protecting-the-hyperconn_b_68649.html

It’s become rather difficult to pick an article when I roam through Google Reader. There are simply too many to choose from, so what does that tell us? Facebook and Myspace are taking over schools; oh who am I kidding, the world!

A recent article that I found discussed the steps that the Darlington School District (South Carolina) is taking to bring Facebook, Myspace, and YouTube into the classrooms. Their goal is to enhance learning in and out of the building. I have become rather torn over the issue of Facebook and Myspace in the classrooms. There are advantages and disadvantages as I have pointed out both, but I understand that as educators we need to be realistic about this situation, and realistically, Facebook and Myspace are only going to get bigger and better.

So, as the old saying says, “if you can’t beat em’, join em’.” Darlington has decided to join them, and students will interact with their teachers and fellow classmates right along side of posting on walls, listing their favorite movies, and changing their profile song. The site will allow for students to ask their teachers questions from home, interact with classmates from home, and accomplish assignments from home. Notice how all of this is done from home, which reminds me of that dreaded, dirty work. You know it, “homework.” Every student hates homework, but I truly believe it is crucial to a student’s learning experience. The challenge is to get students to complete it, and if it is on Facebook or Myspace, chances are the students are too. That means they just might get their homework done, and maybe even enjoy it. This all means that the learning won’t stop when the bell rings, which can only be a good thing from an academic perspective.

The district claims that subjects like history will now be able to be brought to life. I can see this being done through interactive web pages, discussion boards, and pictures and videos. This sounds a little bit more interesting than the old globe and pull down map. So what can be done with English? The obvious options come to mind. Discussion board, posting stories and essays would all be good uses of the web. What about something a little more creative? How about something all students love, music, or even movies (Dan Modderman)! Students could post their own lyrics, write a scene from a movie script, whatever it may be, and share it online. It doesn’t really matter what the students are posting, that isn’t the point right now. The subject matter is the fact that students will feel more comfortable posting their work rather than standing in front of a class of their peers and reading it aloud. It seems that the student would produce a more personal, better piece of work this way. I know when I was in high school I would regulate what I wrote so that it didn’t get too personal if I had to read it in front of class. Students will feel more comfortable writing responses as well, meaning students would be, you better believe it, interacting, the “holy grail” of most educators.

Back to the article now. Darlington would be preparing their students for the world that is rapidly becoming more technologically based by the day. This is good. Their students will likely be spending more time on school related subjects after school hours, another plus. And finally, students might feel free to express themselves on a more personal, meaningful level and then interact because of this. I’m speechless. School districts have to learn to harness the power of online social networking in their classrooms, and if done successful, great things can happen.

Source: Google News: News Channel 15: Myrtle Beach

Author: News Channel 15 Satff

Title: Schools Look to Social-Networking Websites

Link:http://www.wpde.com/news/viewarticle.asp?view=7170