Category: K-12 Education

Rubber Duckies Heading for British Coast

I find this story to be interesting for several reasons. First, the mental picture I have of these toys washing overboard and floating around the world for the past 15 years makes me chuckle. Second, our children think this story is hysterical. Third, it’s cool that technology has made it possible to track these floatees as they’ve trekked the oceans of the world.

I know of examples of students tracking the migration patterns of whales, severe weather, earthquakes, sea turtles, sports teams, things in space, etc. but these rubber ducks bring an entirely new element of fun to such an activity.

What are your thoughts about this?

Rubber Ducks

Use of Technology in Classrooms for Simple and Complex Functions

GUEST BLOGGER
Rachel C. Lees

As educational technology stands today, there is a heavy push for the usage of technology in classrooms for both simple and complex functions.

Standpoint 1: Technology is a wonderful tool for expanding students’ grasp outside the classroom and into new worlds. It can make tasks easier and it can take a lot of the manual drudgery out of everyday tasks that can free teachers up for what really matters: the substance of the lesson and the conceptual mastery.

Standpoint 2: If we integrate technology into the “manual drudgery” of classroom tasks, isn’t there a risk that students will lose their most basic skills or, worse yet, not develop them at all? For example, why should students use the dictionary or thesaurus when they can easily find those on websites? Why should they learn spelling and grammar when the “spell check” does it for them?

For Discussion: Wouldn’t it only be dwelling on archaic, outdated lessons if we pushed for the use of “analog/book” technology? Why would teaching these skills be necessary? After all, we had to give up one-room schoolhouses at some point. If we are truly moving into the age when the computer dominates our basic skills, are we doing ourselves a service or a disservice?

About the Author
Rachel Lees recently graduated from Ithaca College with a B.A. in English and minors in Classical Studies and Art History. She’s currently earning a Master’s degree in childhood education and pursuing teaching certification in first through sixth grades. When asked to briefly describe herself Rachel stated, “I’m from a military family in New England, and I live in Ithaca now with a cat and a lot of books on my shelves.”

U.S. Secretary of Education Requests Feedback on Technology in Education

The U.S. Secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings, is seeking input and feedback on the role of technology in education. According to the USDE’s Office of Educational Technology‘s site…

Secretary Spellings would like to hear your ideas on the integration of technology in education. Please take a moment to provide feedback on the following questions:

  1. In what ways has technology improved the effectiveness of your classroom, school or district?
  2. Based on your role (administrator, parent, teacher, student, entrepreneur, business leader), how have you used educational data to make better decisions or be more successful?
  3. In what ways can technology help us prepare our children for global competition and reach our goals of eliminating achievement gaps and having all students read and do math on grade level by 2014?
  4. What should be the federal government’s role in supporting the use of technology in our educational system?

I’m not sure that these are the questions that we need to be asking, but at least there’s the possibility of some dialogue emerging from this. I do think we are at an important juncture with regards to education and technology (and I’ll be blogging about this in the very near future) and I encourage you to please provide your feedback via the online survey.

Here are a few interesting conversation about this topic.

Steve Hargadon

Classroom 2.0

Around the Corner

COMING SOON: Moving the Discussion Forward

I’ve been wrestling with the idea of how to move the whole discussion of technology integration forward.  After 10+ years of work in this area I really haven’t seen much change in what people are talking about or how we are looking at this topic.  It seems like most are in agreement that technology should be integrated with teaching and learning, but here we are 10 years later and most still aren’t certain about how to proceed.  It’s almost as if we’ve all agreed to go to the bus station, but no one is getting on the bus.  I, for one, am ready for this adventure to begin!!!

I’ve been/I’m currently trying to clarify and articulate my thoughts about all of this for myself.  It was time for my mission statement to be updated…if you will.  My plan is to share my thoughts on this topic in a series of posts.  Look for them soon…and please share your thoughts and feedback.

Another Example of the Possibilities of Technology in Education

Here’s another outstanding story. There are several things that this one makes me think about.

  1. There are people of all ages making amazing use of the Web 2.0 technologies on their own. There are folks that are blogging, producing podcasts and vidcasts, creating slideshows and presentations, producing movies, etc. about things about which they are passionate. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that they are often able to bring these tools and skills or their passion into the classroom. I’d really like to see what happens if students were routinely given the chance to do so.
  2. The Web 2.0 technologies potential impact on teaching and learning blows my mind and gets me pumped.
  3. Obviously this specific story occurred outside of the classroom, but couldn’t teachers easily design a project that resulted in this kind of experience?

13 Yr. Old CEO of Innovative Educational Gaming Company

Anshul Samar is the CEO of Elementeo, a startup company seeking to combine fun and learning. This article provides an overview of the company’s goals, video of Anshul’s CEO speech, and a description of the company’s first game which teaches chemistry through a role-playing board game.

This is interesting to me on many different levels. Watching the video of Anshul’s CEO speech gives me the impression that this may have actually been a class project. Regardless, couldn’t a student activity like this be the jumping-off point for effectively integrating technology with teaching and learning?

  1. How many content areas/topics/objectives/skills would this kind of activity include? I’ve noticed 1) math, business and economics, 2) science/chemistry, 3) art and graphic design, 4) language arts, 5) perhaps copyright and patents, 6) ……???
  2. If this was a class project, do you think that the teacher could have ever imagined that this would be the result?
  3. Elementeo is seeking to put the fun back into learning. Has education taken the fun out of learning? It seems that these students think so. What does that tell those of us that are teachers?
  4. If this is not a class project and Anshul and his friends did this of their own initiative then perhaps we, as teachers, should reconsider what it is that we have our students doing. I suggest that a traditional lesson/unit on entrepreneurship would likely not teach students nearly as much about the world of business (and the other aforementioned content areas) as this activity likely did.
  5. While students weren’t necessarily playing games but rather developing games, this could be an example of effectively bringing gaming into the classroom and integrating it with the curriculum.
    1. Let’s begin to consider all the elements of effective teaching and learning (according to today’s research) that might possibly be identified in a class project like this. Such an activity might include 1) problem solving, 2) discovery learning, 3) legitimate peripheral participation and/or authentic/situated/contextual teaching and learning, 4) communities of practice, 5) collaboration, 6) project management (for those instructional designers among us), 7) ……???

    I think this could be a rich discussion. Please, please chime in.

    iQuiz Maker for iPod

    Neil Hokanson has an interesting post about using iQuiz Maker to create your own quizzes to be used on iPods. The possibilities for use in the classroom are intriguing. What are some of the possible educational uses that you can envision?

    ITM’s Show and Tell

    The Infinite Thinking Machine has put together another compilation of “amazing examples of how students are using a wide-range of innovative tools in the classroom.” Here’s a blurb from this episode’s show notes.

    Dive into our Virtual Open House! We can talk all we want about “cool tools,” but it doesn’t mean much until we see how it impacts kids. So, this episode is all about students: what interests them, how they understand and generate knowledge, and the amazing things they can do when we give them the right tools and guidance. It’s time to let the kids show off!

    I encourage you to visit ITM’s post related to this episode to view all of the associated resources. There are some really outstanding ideas there.

    Technology in the Classroom

    I ran across an interesting blog post by Leah at Tech in the Class. She sets out to build a justification for the use of technology in education. I especially found the research findings at the end of the post to be intriguing. See what you think….

    Technology in the Classroom

    There have been several people who have asked me “What does technology in the classroom really offer? Don’t most teachers just use technology in the classroom as a means to entertain and or stay in touch with their audience?!” Ok, so, sure I have my biases (technology in the classroom is not a trend, nor is it simply a good thing to do for efficiency reasons, it’s a must because it provides students tools to problem solve, critical think, learn more in depth, do more effective research, express their creativity, provide them access to a greater spectrum of information and knowledge, get them involved in the international community, etc.), but a recent article in the USA Today outlined the exact reasons why technology is needed in classrooms. The article reported several detrimental issues found in elementary schools that I believe can potentially be solved by integrating a few educational technologies. For example, here are a few quotes from the article, where I feel, had the schools/ teachers been using (or had access to technology) the learning environments and teaching performances would have been more effective: “The typical child in the USA stands only a one-in-14 chance of having a consistently rich, supportive elementary school experience … they found just as many signs that classrooms can be dull, bleak places where kids don’t get a lot of teacher feedback or face time… Fifth-graders spent 91.2% of class time in their seats listening to a teacher or working alone, and only 7% working in small groups, which foster social skills and critical thinking. Findings were similar in first and third grades… In fifth grade, 62% of instructional time was in literacy or math; only 24% was devoted to social studies or science… About one in seven (14%) kids had a consistently high-quality “instructional climate” all three years studied. Most classrooms had a fairly healthy “emotional climate,” but only 7% of students consistently had classrooms high in both. There was no difference between public and private schools.” If you don’t know how, or don’t believe how technology can rectify any of these issues please contact me – I would be more than pleased to talk to you about the detriments of only teaching “Reading, Writing, and basic Math” sans technology.

    Originally Posted by Leah at Tech in the Class

    Technology Integration Blogs

    I’ve been looking around for blogs that discuss the integration of technology with teaching and learning. I’ve used a myriad of search terms, key words, categories, tags, etc. but have been disappointed with the scarcity of conversation in blogdome on this topic. Do you know of any? Please share suggestions in the Comments section.