Directions: In this activity we will be exploring many ways that mobile devices can be used to access information, communicate, share audio and visual files, and enhance classroom lessons. We will be focusing on creative and forward thinking possibilities. This is a “jig saw” approach to an activity. Instead of all of you researching and reading all five topics, each group will become experts at one topic.
In today's 21st Century Classroom, a critical component in this skill base is that of digital storytelling. We have the technology to create and tell stories in a wide variety of ways, with new techniques and tools emerging all the time. Our project looks at podcasting and the speed with which this form of communication has spread. And, we figured what better way to explore podcasts and podcasting than to make one ourselves!
Please use this link to download our 'enhanced' podcast.
Our Show Notes can be accessed via a shared Google Doc by clicking on this link: http://tinyurl.com/7qewva9
Directions: By definition, Emerging Technologies are becoming available all the time, with promising educational possibilities for the classroom and useful tools for your own productivity. Together, we will put together a collection of very brief reports on a variety of gadgets, one for each of you. Sources of information will be websites, blogs, videos, and other resources. This assignment will focus on gadgets and devices, rather than website resources.
4. Description:
Western Digital (WD) has made a name for themselves making external hard drives that are portable, durable, and reliable. The ‘My Passport’ series is designed to be highly portable and provide fast data transfer speeds. Because the My Passport is “bus powered,” meaning it has a single cable for both data and power, it is an attractive choice for laptop owners who need something that doesn’t have extra cables to fumble around with.
5. Classroom Possibilities:
As we continue to innovate and integrate new technologies into the classroom, so too do our students continue to create more and more digital content that we must then collect. Some may argue against a portable hard drive in favor of a USB flash drive because they are small, cheap, and have average storage capacities. The downside of a USB flash drive is they are small (easy to loose), cheap (can break easily), and have average storage capacities (can’t handle a whole classroom of users). A My Passport drive was salvation for me when I assigned my students a project whose final product would be either a podcast or iMovie. These types of media love to eat up storage space, and when I multiplied that by 18-24 students in each of my eight academic blocks it was clear a USB flash drive just wasn’t going to cut it.
Another use to keep in mind is that of for teacher’s personal use in backing up critical files, projects, and other data. The common rule-of-thumb in the digital world today is to have three copies of all of your critical data: i.) on your local computer, ii.) on an external storage device, and iii.) in a virtual storage device (i.e. cloud-computing). As teachers create more media-rich and tech-heavy lessons and activities, they need storage to keep up with the size and complexity of these projects. Finally, both of the major manufacturers of computer operating systems, Apple and Microsoft, have provided built-in backup software into their OS’s that will automatically configure your external hard drive for automatic backups, with plans to provide procedures to destinations in the cloud soon.
6. Screenshot:
7. Additional Resources:
http://www.g-technology.com/
G-Technology provides storage solutions for Windows, Mac, and portable devices via USB 3.0, thunderbolt, and WiFi.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2358135,00.asp
From PC Magazine, this article walks you through different drive types, connector and cable options, and how much attention you should pay to drive speed.
http://desktop-external-hard-drive-review.toptenreviews.com/
Top-Ten Reviews provides a side-by-side comparison of 10 of the most popular hard drives currently on the market based on categories such as price, performance, security, ease of use, and design.
http://www.apple.com/findouthow/mac/#timemachinebasics
This page contains a video tutorial guide on how to use the application Time Machine which comes pre-installed on all of Apple’s desktop and laptop computers. (2:47)
Directions: Plan to create a cyberbullying "workshop". You will take the information that we have studied and apply it to your situation, whatever that may be. So, you'll be planning a short workshop for any constituency that you choose. As all good workshops, you'll include a plan, a presentation, an activity, and supporting materials (even though I've called this a "workshop," you may choose to do this within your classroom - and in that context, it will feel more like a one or two day class).
*This presentation is designed to be part of a larger curriculum unit currently being refined and polished on Internet Safety. You can view this unit by going to: https://sites.google.com/site/ecomp6106is/
We continue our tour of the landscape of the impact of technology on our culture, including our schools, by way of articles, talks, radio stories, and online videos. There are so many sources which means you should be able to find some things that particularly interest you. Select TWO articles (ONE of which is a TED Talk) from the link READ/WATCH/THINK list to read, watch, or listen to. Write up a short commentary on each of your selections.
Ken Robinson talks about creativity and how we are educating our students out of it and as a result are doing both them and our future a huge disservice. As examples, he refers to several stories about how young children have used creativity to help make sense of their world, from the 4-year-old who tried to understand what frankincense was to the little girl who was drawing a picture of God. If you look on YouTube, you will find dozens, if not thousands of other examples of children being similarly creative because, as Robinson puts forward, they not afraid to be wrong and take risks.
I see a lot what is talked about in this video resonating within my own sphere of education. The idea that taking risks is okay has become so foreign to our students at the middle school level, that the “risk-taker” component of our IB Learner Profile is constantly promoted and referred back to in our lessons and activities in an attempt to help them unlearn this fear of being wrong. At lunch, a common them I hear from the two 6th grade math teachers is that the Everyday Math program is so structured, so spelled out, so tight in its plan that it doesn’t leave any room for them to be creative. When I introduce to them an interactive math website that I think students would appreciate, their response is too often, “Thanks, this looks great, but I don’t have any room in the EM program to integrate it so that it will do any good.”
I think one of the reasons why education has shunned creativity is because it is not something that can be easily quantified or measured using some form of a standardized test. And, if something can’t be measured on a test then it get put on the back burner, shoved into the corner, or thrown out altogether with the bath water. How sad is that?
Finally, Robinson talks about several people who became quite famous as adults and asks us to think about them as children (e.g. Shakespeare at age 7). This part of the discussion caused me to ask the question, “What would the teachers of famous scholars, performers, innovators, etc. say about them as students?” It makes me wonder if, within the 22 students of my Day 4, Block 5 class there sits the next Albert Einstein or Amelia Earhart? And then I think, am I doing right by them as a teacher, as a guide to help them realize their talents? Obviously, there is no way for us to know what the future holds for our students. However, I think it is important for all of us to constantly ask the questions that Robinson asks in his presentation.
My first thought as I starting watching this video was, if these students are “digital natives” of the 21st century then why are they using dry-erase boards for their messages, a technology from the 20th century? Why are they using iPads? Granted, the iPad/eReader technology explosion hadn’t happened yet when this video was produced, but tablet technology did exist in 2007. I guess what I’m getting at is, I wonder what these students would have come up with had they been asked how they should communicate these words and phrases to the audience?
One of the slides in the presentation I have to take issue with. At approximately 3:13, the students ask us to let them use the World Wide Web Whatever, Whenever, Wherever. Having just completed a curriculum unit in our previous Lesley course on Internet Safety, I can’t say that I agree with this concept. Just because a student is a digital native or 21st century learner or “plugged in” doesn’t mean they know how to use technology and the Internet safely. I mean, we have adults who are apparently still lacking in some of these skills. Just look at the number of adults who have gotten themselves into trouble because of the choices they’ve made about posting content onto Facebook. Then again, perhaps these concerns were not as apparent in 2007 as I believe they are today.
In the end, I think this video shares a similar message with that of Ken Robinson’s presentation about the death of creativity. Students need to be free to be creative, take risks, and explore their potential. Teachers need to act as guides and help students nurture these skills in a safe and supportive environment, not to mention being allowed to be creative and take risks themselves. And administrators need to see the value in this approach and provide support to both students and teachers so that they can be successful, and one way they can achieve this is by being creative themselves.
The biopoem project can be used in classes and courses across the curriculum, as we did, as an kind of ice breaker activity where students have the opportunity to learn some basic facts about their peers. For students, this will kick off the making of connections between one another. For the teacher, this will help foster the development of the classroom culture. Biopoems also provide teachers with the opportunity to integrate a potentially new piece of technology, like Glogster, as a possible choice for students to express their knowledge and understanding.
Teachers could also use this concept with students so that they will construct another biopoem, but this time the students get to do a little role-playing. In language arts class, for example, students chooses a character from a book they're reading for class. In social studies, students do their writeup on a pharaoh they've been studying from Ancient Egypt. When we get to science, students must create a biopoem based on an element form the Periodic Table. Teachers could also use the biopoem project and turn it into a game of "Guess Who?" where students must use of their detective skills to figure out who the poem is about. The possibilities may be limited only by one's imagination.
For our first of two final projects, it was uncanny how the timing of this assignment synced so well with the introduction of a student into my school who suffers from tonic-clonic seizures. It gave me the perfect opportunity to sit down with the school nurse and construct an informational resource for teachers, administrators, and support staff. Where knowledge is power, now we as a staff know what tonic-clonic seizures are and what to do if the student experiences one. In addition, we have learned how to incorporate this disability into our school culture so that the student can have as much of a normal middle school experience as possible while also being ready to give aid when it is needed.
In class we had an opportunity to see some of the accessibility features built into the operating systems of today’s computers. We also saw a variety of assistive technology products that allow students with or without disabilities to perform better in the educational setting. All of these things provide accessibility; but what about the World Wide Web? How accessible is it, and what is being done to improve accessibility?
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Web accessibility is a topic that has been around for a while. I remember the topic coming up back in college when I began designing my first website using Netscape Composer. Even then such webpage editors were including prompts and fields to encourage the writer to make their content more accessible, such as alternate text when adding an image. Today, more and more web editors are working to provide accessibility options for web designers; I noticed several extra fields in my Wordpress blog editor just last week. These extra fields were prompting me to include additional information that would help visually impaired users of the Internet to be able to consume the information on my blog easier.
As I watched the two videos from WebAIM I sympathized with the students and recognized their frustration and disappointment in the Internet. I got to thinking about some of the websites that I’ve visited that I found difficult to navigate in and thought, if I am frustrated with this site how would a person with web accessibility issues feel? It seems like, as more and more websites move to flashier pages with animated graphics they are also leaving behind people who could be potential consumers, customers, and/or contributors. What it really comes back to is a very old yet very relevant concept: know your audience. Once you have that nailed down, you can adapt your content or message for maximum coverage and distribution.
I think many of us take the Internet for granted with respect to how the information found on it is communicated. I was really impressed with what Curtis Radford, who is hearing impaired, said when he described himself in the first WebAIM video. He can think, he can read, he can write, and he doesn’t see himself as having a disability…he just can’t hear. So why shouldn’t he be able to consume and contribute to the wealth of content that the Internet provides?
Recently our IT director re-designed all of our school websites and made them more “interactive” with animated flash graphics, embedded Google calendars, and Twitter feeds. I decided to take a page out of my cohort colleague Chad’s handbook and tried to navigate the middle school homepage without using my mouse. Okay, I have to admit that it took less than a minute to cheat, but I had use my mouse in order to bypass the animated flash graphic at the top of the homepage. After that I tried again and, while I was moderately successful in navigating to where I wanted to go, it sure did take a long time to get there without a mouse. And I remember when computers didn’t come with a mouse and all of your navigation was done by keyboard commands…how times have changed.
It seemed fitting that, as my cohort and I continue to move forward in our latest Masters course on assessment, that this video clip debuts. My thanks to Denise for finding and sharing this video with our cohort group and giving us some "food for thought" on teaching, teachers, and how we assess our students.
Created by two history teachers from Honolulu, Hawaii, HistoryTeachers has over 50 music videos that cover such topics as Napoleon, The French Revolution, Shakespeare, Pompeii, Vikings and more. Their YouTube channel has been going strong for almost 3 years now with new videos being uploaded about once a month. Below is their video about William the Conqueror and the Battle of Hastings. I will never forget the year 1066 again!
