Final Blog Entry

Ah so here we are... My final blog entry.  This term I have learned so many new things. Some things I will take with me and use in my future career(s), whatever it may be. Wix is a tool I learned so much about this term, my dad wants me to build him a site for his company using it. Somethings I thought I already knew about, such as GoogleDocs, I now have discovered  many new uses. I've learned how I can find new resources to help me with future projects. I believe the most important thing I'll take away from this term has two parts:
1) You don't need to know everything, you just need to know where to find it
2) If a task or goal seems impossible, then you don't have the right tools

All in all, I have many many more tools and tips in my bag of tricks then when i started this course. I am very confident that the things I have picked up will help me in my future.

Literature Article #2!

Title: "E-Readers:  Get Ready for the Revolution"
Author: William M. Ferriter
Periodical: Educational Leadership, Vol.68, Issue 3, p.84-86
Link:   http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership/nov10/vol68/num03/E-Readers@_Get_Ready_for_the_Revolution.aspx

This short article described the author's experiences introducing his students to his Amazon Kindle e-reader. He believe that e-readers will eventually find their way into schools and replace the need for not only classroom libraries, but maybe even entire school libraries.He cites two schools; Cushing Academy and a school in Scotland as already having replaced their school libraries with digital media and e-readers. He believes that e-readers are perfect for classrooms because they only have access to books, so that eliminates students looking at things they aren't supposed to. He also claims that an e-readers ability to change font size of text can help struggling readers to read more clearly. He ends the article with four questions that you can ask yourself to see if your district is ready for e-readers:

1. What academic purposes do you have in mind?
2. Is your school's infrastructure ready to handle new Internet traffic demands?
3. Can you partner with local libraries?
4. Will devices help you comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act?

This article is worth checking out if you own an e-reader or are thinking about getting one. More uses = better value for your money. I believe the bottom line here is that the technology is still relatively new, and very costly to a school to ready for this "revolution". I don't disagree that schools won't eventually get to this point, but I think it's still years away from me going to my high school and downloading a math book.

EdTechTalk....................LIVE!

This week I participated in a live session of EdTechTalk. The session featured Alex Ragone, Vinnie Vrotny, and Arvind Grover. The special guest they featured and talked to was Bill Stites, Director of Technology at The Montclair Kimberley Academy in New Jersey. Bill spoke in detail about how his school progressed over the last five years from hard wired internet to wireless. This switch inevitably led to faculty using laptops more and then students eventually brought in theirs. This transition led the school to buy-in to a one-to-one laptop program for all their students.

I want to keep this blog short and very open ended, so I pose a couple questions to everyone else, would you want your school to give every kid a laptop? Should all schools have a program like this?

Literature Article #1

Title: "Cell Phones as Teaching Tools"
Author: William M. Ferriter
Periodical: Educational Leadership, Vol.68, Issue 2, p.85-86
Link to Article:  http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/oct10/vol68/num02/Cell-Phones-as-Teaching-Tools.aspx

This article very briefly describes how, in the authors opinion, cell phones can be used as tools in the classroom instead of distractions. With broad, non-cited statistics to back up his findings, such as 75% of all kids ages 12-17 have cell phones, and 75% of all students with cell phone have unlimited texting plans, the author states that there are only two steps you need to take in order to use cell phones in classrooms as tools.

The first step is  to "Make cell phones visible". By this he means instead of fearing what students might be doing with their phones  hidden underneath a desk, have all your students keep their phones on their desks so you can see when they go off.The author believes that this will cause students to act more responsibly with their phones in school. I don't believe this because I feel that you can never make anyone act responsibly. The only thing i believe this first step will cause is even bigger distractions because the teacher will not only hear it going off in the middle of a lesson, but see them all texting back "I'm in class right now call me later".

The second and final step the author outlines in his article is titled "Show colleagues and administrators one convincing classroom application". In my opinion, he means "Convince the people that sign your paychecks that cell phones can be useful in class". The example he uses to demonstrate this point is a polling application that is web based called Poll Everywhere. With this program the teacher can set up questions and polls that they display to the class, then the class has to text their response to the website for data collection and results. The problem i see with this is that their are many other ways to poll a class that doesn't involve possibly charging their parents for texting. I foresee a few angry emails from parents asking why their student was forced to text even though they don't have an unlimited plan. In short, I believe this author needs more research and better examples to really convince me that cell phones are a useful tool in a classroom setting.

Equal Access...?

In class last week we discussed in small groups what we thought equal access means to technology in schools. I could understand what people were saying, but I believe that equal access to technology in today's classrooms really boils down to two main points:  funding and alternatives.

Funding is something that is out of the control of both the teachers and the students, however the administration plays a role in influencing district and government funding. Funding can greatly affect the degree to which technology is available in a classroom, as well as how easy it is to access any form of technology. Of course funding greatly varies from district to district, and state to state, but the fact is that it does play a role to defining equal access for today's learners.

Alternatives is something that I discovered more about during my undergraduate studies in college. If you wanted pizza one night you had like 568 different options(an exaggeration) but you could always find a place to get more pizza for less money. In terms of equal access, finding alternatives is a responsibility that falls upon the teacher, given proper authorization and support from his or her school. So maybe your school doesn't have a laptop for each kid, or smart boards in each class, but maybe you can assign a group project requiring library time so kids without computers can work with ones who have them. Building your own smart board and getting it approved is also an alternative.

There are many ways to provide equal access to all of your students, some of the more obvious ways require significant funding and support from your administration and district, but the key to finding all the alternatives you can and ensuring  that each and every student can learn from and with technology, is the one ingredient that often separates extraordinary teachers from ordinary ones; creativity.

Homework: The Ipod Touch in the Classroom by Kern Kelley

When i first saw this article, I was excited to see all the ways the iPod Touch, or iTouch, could be utilized in a classroom setting. But sadly after viewing the entire video, I came to the conclusion that based on Mr. Kelley's presentation, the iPod Touch is not very useful. As an owner of an iPod touch, I love discovering all the ways i can use the technology. Mr. Kelley spent half the video describing step by step how to open and set up your iPod, then once he got into the "meat and potatoes" of the usefulness in the classroom, it came out more like "tofu and instant potatoes". All of the applications and uses he described in the video were simply generic tools for the teacher to replace efficient devices (mouse, computer, grade book) with an iPod. To put it simply, he didn't make a strong argument for using an iPod at all in a classroom. He showed us how to create more work for teachers when it is completely unnecessary to. Why would a teacher spend all night typing up grade book entries into GoogleDocs just to use a second application to stream them to their iPod, to them mark attendance in class next day? Wouldn't writing in a book be easier? or even just using a grade book program on a computer?

Check out the video for yourself and decide for yourself... (link below)

http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=464

"Google and the Guitar" with Adam Contois

I was looking through the past EdTechTalk web casts and I came across the show EdTech Brainstorm. This show was from September 26th, 2009. It was titled "Google and the Guitar". The featured guest (Adam Contois) was a colleague of the host and he is a Systems Administrator and an avid guitar player. The discussion was centered around the idea of using Google applications in a school environment. They focused on using Gmail in schools, mostly high school and college.  The integrated chat feature in Gmail could save teachers and professors a lot of time by making chain emails unnecessary. The other benefits they highlight include Google's use of their own servers instead of the schools, so no network bogging down.

Check out this video if you want to learn more about the benefits of using Gmail as a school email program.
Here is the link:  http://edtechtalk.com/node/3794