Facebook’s Future

Will Facebook continue to be the go-to site for social networking? Will it have another face in the future? According to a recent New York Times article, Facebook Exile, Facebook has reached its peak and is seeing people sign off for a variety of reasons. As of today, September 2, 2009, 85 comments were posted to the article. The topic remains controversial. What role does Facebook play in defining the new sociology of online social networking? Will it see the same kind of decline that sites like MySpace have experienced? Are young people signing on? What about the generation of students in the K-12 population? How does their time on Facebook affect their learning in school? What does their membership on Facebook imply for classroom teachers? Let us know your thoughts, and check out the NYT's article and some of the commented posted about the article. Post any links to other articles you have read about the future of Facebook or its impact on student learning today.
Image from By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN, from the Aug. 29, 2009 NYT article.

Do Cell Phones Fry the Brain?

According to Australian researchers, cell phones make children more impulsive and quicker but not better thinkers. However, use of the phones does not fry the brain. To read more about the study, check out Dennis Baron's blog post on The Web of Language: Cell Phones Make Kids Faster, Not Smarter. Let us know your thoughts after reading the blog post. (image 1: Baron's blog; image 2: Science.hq.nasa.gov)

Students Speak Up

Back in April, I posted a Blog "What Students Want." Now, listen to a video to learn more. In it, students speak out to President Obama, telling him how they believe schools should be reconfigured. Watch the short video, and post your comments.http://www.tomorrow.org/DearMrPresidentVideo.html

Are Computers Killing Literarcy Skills?

A major study out of Stanford University suggests the reverse. In fact, computers are helping to build literarcy skill, especially writing skills. Lunsford traced students' writing skills and habits over time. Read a synopsis of the study in an article from Wired magazine: Clive Thompson's on New Literacy. Also, check out this article that appeared in Intelligent Life: We Are All Writers Now. Post your responses.

American History Websites

If you teach American history topics, check out this page from Education World for Sites to See, and post your responses to what you find online.

Reading for Points

Have you heard of the Accelerated Reader program in which students earn points for books they read? Books like the Harry Potter ones receive more points than many classics. The Potter books receive anywhere from 35 to 40 points while Hamlet earns 10 points and Sense and Sensibility garners 30 points. Accelerated Reader is a computerized management program intended to motivate students to read. Students earn a specific number of points for books read outside of school once they complete an online multiple-choice quiz to test their comprehension.

Apparently, the program is used in 75,000 schools nationwide, according to a New York Times article (August 27, 2009). The article notes that program “helps teachers track student reading through computerized comprehension tests and awards students points for books they read based on length and difficulty, as measured by a scientifically researched readability rating.” The site offers 125,000 quizzes on literature.

In your estimation, is a computerized program that assesses students’ reading comprehension and awards points a valuable contribution to education and the promotion of literacy skills?

Access the New York Times article for more information:
Illustration by Ahl & Company

Digital Media Replace Standard Textbooks

Two months ago, on May 30, I posted a blog about California schools going green and phasing out textbooks. Now the trend has gone national, and it is not just a matter of textbooks losing their value, but the technology invigorating the curriculum in ways that textbooks simply cannot. In Vail, Arizona, at the Empire High School, students go online to access lessons, complete homework, and listen to teacher podcasts. In the same district, at Cinega High, students retrieve via the Web English, history, and science lessons.

Check out Beyond Textbooks to learn how teachers share online lessons, post PowerPoints presentations and videos, and share links to Internet resources. With students wired 24/7, the push for online technologies in educational arena is natural. Students are regularly using social networking sites, iPods, blogs, wikis, and a host of other interactive tools. Rather than buck the trend, teachers need to embrace technology's promise. Although not all students have access to smartphones and iPods, grants and government sources will with time put mobile technologies into the hands of those who cannot purchase these soon-to-be basic instructional supplies.

In California, where adoption of a textbook is traditionally statewide affair, Pearson publishers has submitted four options for its flexbooks, online supplements to textbooks. In a August 8, 2009 New York Times article, reporter Tamar Levin wrote educators believe "it will not be long before [textbooks] are replaced by digital versions—or supplanted altogether by lessons assembled from a wealth of free courseware, educational games, videos, and projects on the web.”

How soon do you believe textbooks will be antiquated? Are you ready for a shift to digital, interactive learning environments in lieu of flat-page textbooks? What advantages do you envision in interactive technologies supplanting standard textbooks?

Photo credit: Heidi Schumann for The New York Times with caption: "In California, high school interns try out digital "flexbooks" created by the CK-12 Foundation." Information in this post taken from Tamar Levin's article "As Classroom Go Digital, Textbooks May Become History." Second photo from the Beyond Textbooks site.

Just A Click Away: Instant Student Response

Imagine teaching a lesson, asking a question, getting an individual response from all students, and being able to have a record of all those responses! With clickers in the classroom, all students are participants, and engagement in the lesson increases.
Here is an example. A teacher presents a math lesson in her fourth grade class. Her PowerPoint slide poses a question. “What fraction is represented by the shaded part shown on a grid?” With clickers, all students input their answers. The responses are instantly displayed on a color-coded chart the teacher views. The teacher knows immediately if she needs to review a concept and where her students stand on understanding concepts being presented.
As we all know, in the old-fashioned system, only some students were inclined to raise hands to answer a question. Even though a quiz can tell who understands a concept, with clicker input the teacher can carry on the lesson and have responses ready at hand. Clickers also ensure all students are participating and actively engaged.
In an environment in which students are accustomed to mobile technology, use of clickers in the classroom and other mobile technologies is just on the horizon. We can expect to see more use of mobile technologies, including cell phones for texting answers, in the schools, and schools will need to revisit their cell phone banning policies.
For now, clickers work best in situations where multiple choice and similar kinds of responses, such as yes-no-maybe, are required. They won’t necessarily result in lively, in-depth class discussions, but they do enable teachers to gauge how students are doing and help to keep students actively engaged. To date, they have been mostly used in math and science classes, but are finding applicability to social studies and other disciplines. Though initially used in large lecture classrooms in colleges, they are now increasingly finding their way into elementary and secondary classrooms. Time will tell if their use becomes widespread, but so far, they have already been linked to higher test scores. For instance, a Digital Directions’ article reports of one Colorado school system: “After a pilot study of middle school math classes found a test-score bump for students who used clickers in well-planned lessons, the Boulder Valley district bought sets of the devices for all math and science classes in its 12 middle schools and began yearlong training for teachers.”
Information for this post was taken from Digital Dimensions’ article, “Student Response Systems Provide Instant Classroom Feedback” (June 2009), by Kathleen Kennedy Manzo.
To watch a video about how clickers are being used in one class, check out this USA Today video that aired on network news: Classroom Clickers Grab Students' Attention
Post comments, please.

Image one from: http://www.unf.edu/; image two from:news.cnet.com; image three from:www.ucs.ed.ac.uk

Blogging Connects Hometown Soldier with Hometown Middle Schoolers

Blogging connects an American soldier in Afghanistan with middle school children from his hometown in Ballard County, Kentucky. A seventh grader at the Ballard County Middle School helped to design the blog in December 2008 including a picture of an ice storm in January. Since, pictures of the middle school have been posted to the blog, and the National Guard Aaron Connor has been writing posts about life in Ghazni City, Afghanistan where he is stationed.
According the Ballard County School District website, “A blog has been set up where students can ask Connor, 26, questions and the soldier can respond. The public can visit at http://aaronafghanistan.blogspot.com. Many questions have been added to the blog, as well as photographs of sixth-grade activities. Connor, a gunner on a transport vehicle, has been asked about anything from his dogs, to the weather, to what he does for fun. He already has responded to many of the posts, and is in the process of answering the questions in three parts: his daily life; Afghanistan; and the dogs. On the blog, students can also comment on things that are happening in their daily lives, as well.” You can read more about Connor’s blogging, emailing, and phone calls with the students by scrolling down on the district website at: http://www.ballard.k12.ky.us/New/After reading about the blog at the district site and skimming the blog, comment on ideas that you have for using blogging to forge international connections. (Image from Aaron's blog shows sixth graders at the Ballard Middle School.)

No More Paper Textbooks

Free digital textbooks hit California Schools. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced plans for digital math and science for the 2009-2010 school year. Faced with budget woes, it is not surprising that the Gov. opted for the change. Schwarzenegger sees the plan as way to encourage collaboration among school districts. Plans call for compiling a list of digital textbooks aligned to state standards. A few questions come to mind: Will digital textbooks improve student learning? Are teachers ready for the change? Will digital textbooks be more up-to-date than regular ones? How soon can we expect most textbooks to be digitalized? To find out more about digital textbooks, read this article in Curriculum Matters, California Going Digital with Math, Science Textbooks. What do you see as the pros and cons of textbook moving to the digital format?

E-Portfolios: E What and E Why?

An interest in e-portfolios has filtered into the K-12 setting. Keep up with the trend. Access this article from Education World and use some of links in the article to find out more. http://www.education-world.com/a_tech/tech/tech111.shtml Teachers on the K-12 need to understand this phenomenon that is sure to impact their teaching in the future. Here is a link to also learn more about how e-ports are being used in Minnesota not just for all residents but also all students K-12: http://www.efoliominnesota.com/ To see samples of college students' eports try this link.

Post your comments. What do you see as the value of e-portfolios? To what extent do you think they will catch on in the K-12 environment?

Speak Up

Last week, I posted a Blog about What Students Want. This week, listen to this video to learn more. In it, students speak out to President Obama, telling him how they believe schools should be reconfigured. Watch the short video, and post your comments.
http://www.tomorrow.org/DearMrPresidentVideo.html

Image from Speak Up at http://www.tomorrow.org/Speakup/

What Do Students Want?

By now you know about all the money that the Obama administration has earmarked for public schools. A survey completed by students indicate what they want in their schools is more mobile technology. Take a look at this story which reports on the results of the student survey, and weigh in on what we as educators are learning from our students. Do you really think teachers are on the same page as their students? Are we missing the boat? How do you think the money from the Obama stimulus package should be spent.

Photo from the story page found in eSchool New, Wed, Mar 25, 2009 .

This additional story from District Administration, April 2009 will tell you about how funding can be used to enhance teacher professional development activities focused on classroom technology integration. Basically, the author claims, "learning is not just technology -- it's the teacher know-how to integrate technology and 21st century skills into students' learning. Take a peek, and feel free to comment on this article, as well.

Sites for Teachers

Check out this website to find a host of sites that are useful to teachers. Let us know in particular what sites you found that you would consult in the future and why. http://sitesforteachers.com/

Free Rice

If you have not used the Free Rice site lately, or never checked it, now is the time. Free Rice, which started as a vocabulary site, now offers math, foreign language, geography, and other subject areas. It is an easy site to use, one students will enjoy using in their free time. Best of all, for every correct answer, 10 grains of rice are donated through a United Nations relief agency in an effort to end world hunger. Spend less than 5 minutes checking the site and trying the questions. Although the questions follow a simple multiple-choice format, the intention is to attract users, and with that goal in mind, the format works fine. After all, the more questions answered correctly, the more rice, donated. This site is both educational and philanthropic. Over 62 billion grains have been donated to date. Spread the word, and please comment. Here is a direct link to the page that lists the subject areas.

http://www.freerice.com/subjects.php?t=448289129472

Image is the Free Rice logo, taken directly from the website www.freerice.com

Merit Pay: Friend or Foe?

President Obama has suggested merit pay for teachers. To weigh in on this situation, check this Vblob, Is Merit Pay the Right Way to Go?, which is a combination video and blog, and post to the Vblog itself as well as here. Feel free to copy and paste what you post on the Vblog here, or if you don't want to post to the Vblog, at least after listening to the video and reading some of the blog posts, share your comments by posting to our course blog. You can also let us know what you think of aVblog versus a regular blog. Do you think a Vblog would work well as a teaching tool, for instance. Why or why not? Have you seen other Vblogs? Okay, now you have several options for posting a comment: views on merit pay, views on a Vblog versus a standard blog, and Vblogs in teaching. After viewing the Vblog and posting a comment, you might want to check the HotChalk site further for teacher resources in general. Here is the link to the Vblog, or feel free to use the embedded link above.

http://www.hotchalk.com/mydesk/index.php/teachers-matter-hotchalk-blog-by-edward-fields/618-vblog-is-merit-pay-the-right-way-to-go

Remember to post a comment on the course blog regarding any of the above questions.

Jeopardy for Review

I am sending along an lesson plan and article to review that a teacher wrote explaining her procedure and purpose for using a PowerPoint Jeopardy game to help students review course material. She claims that the use of the game helped students improve their performance and understanding of course concepts significantly compared to students in former classes who did use the review method. You will notice how she arranged the lesson plan with the students creating the game, truly creating a constructivist approach to education. Check out her plan, and let us know what you think. As some of you consider your own teaching, how can using PowerPoint to create games, Jeopardy or other games, be used to make learning interactive, participatory, and hands-on, appealing to a variety of learning styles? Here is the link to the article: http://oncourseworkshop.com/Learning043.htm

Image from: http://www.scsc.k12.in.us/SMS/Teachers/Martin/jeopardy.htm

6th Graders Blog and Wiki

Using the link below this post, check out the first page of a blog created for 6th graders. In addition to the class blog, you will notice that all students have after their posts, a link to their own blogs. Check the main page, see the tabs to access other information, read some of the students' blogs on the class's main blog, and connect to a few of the students' own blogs to get a sense of how this project is working. The class project was featured in a story in The New York Times, under another blog called Lesson Plans. I am posting both the URL to get to the class's blog as well as a link to the New York Times story. Take some time to explore the potential of blogging for our students grades K-12. A former SJC student demonstrated one day at a workshop how her 3rd graders in a local Hartford elementary school were also using blogging, primarily as a way to post their creative writing stories. Think about how you might use blogging in your own teachings, for students to create a collaborative one, for you to create one for your students to read, or for students in your class to go to get information and ideas related to what they are learning in your classroom.

Here is the link to the class blog:

http://www.tellraven.us/denali/

Here is the link to the Times article with an excerpt from the teacher:

https://webmail.sjc.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://lessonplans.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/29/telling-the-raven/Excerpt:September 29, 2008, 9:00 PMTelling the RavenBy DOUG NOONFor each of the past three years, my students have published their writing on our Tell the Raven Web site. It is a writing space where we share our ideas with one another, and with other interested people around the world. Traditionally, school teachers have been the primary audience for student writing. But now, Web publishing software offers us a platform from which we can tell our stories toanyone who cares to pay attention.

TeacherTube

In the event you don’t know about TeacherTube, be sure to check it out. The authors of the site write: “Our goal is to provide an online community for sharing instructional videos. We seek to fill a need for a more educationally focused, safe venue for teachers, schools, and home learners. It is a site to provide anytime, anywhere professional development with teachers teaching teachers. As well, it is a site where teachers can post videos designed for students to view in order to learn a concept or skill.”

The site explains: “TeacherTube was the idea of Jason Smith, a 14-year veteran educator. Jason has been a teacher, coach, campus administrator and district administrator in public schools. He asked the question, "Why can't teachers, students, and schools utilize the power of the read/write web for learning?" To overcome barriers, he decided to just create a site and get started trying to help. He turned to his brother, Adam, who is a younger, digital native, with technical skills. Adam used his skills to develop the site and found a web host. Soon, Jason's wife, Jodie, joined the team to start populating the site with videos and help improve the communication. She too has 14 years of experience in education as a classroom teacher, campus technology integrator, and district curriculum coordinator.”

TeacherTube claims among its benefits the following:
Upload, tag and share videos worldwide
Upload support files to attach educational activities, assessments, lesson plans, notes…
Browse hundreds of videos uploaded by community members
Find, join and create video groups to connect with people who have similar interests

Schools generally sanction the use of the site, and as the authors note: “TeacherTube staff review flagged sites and will remove any inappropriate posts. With more collegial commentary and discussion through messaging and responses, the quality of this resource will only increase.”

Please check the site for more details: http://www.teachertube.com/ and let us know if you find the site useful and if so, how.

Image: site logo

Teaching Writing in 21st-Century Demands Change

At a recent press conference in Washington, "Writing in the 21st Century," the National Council of Teachers of English promoted a new literacy based on omnipresence of technologies that demand adjustments. Kathleen Blake Yancey, a chief spokesperson for the organization, advocated for incorporating in the curriculum new modes of communication, such as Facebook, Twitter, and blogs. She stated, today we write "with new audiences, for new audiences, and to new audiences," and called for the recognition of modes of communication that have relevancy for our students in this century. Yancey’s report, "Writing in the 21st Century," proposes that educators formulate curricula and teaching methodologies that prepare students for the multifaceted, multimedia ways in which communication will emerge in this century. Skim her report, and post your responses regarding her plea to teach writing in new ways. Do you believe shifts are essential? If so, how might your teaching require adjustments in respect to your discipline and target population?

www.universalworkshop.com credit for image.