This week is NECAP testing. The class is now working an on-line research project that will be created in thinkquest.com. The full instructions have been posted on my thinkquest site as well as on the student’s sites. The goals of this unit are to help students differentiate between valid and invalid information on the Internet, create a properly formatted works cited, create an effective multimedia presentation, and practice using keyword searches.
Dangerously Irrelevant
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Posted: 22 Sep 2009 11:02 AM PDT Terry Moe and John Chubb say…
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Students are working on Internet Scavenger Hunts. Thursday and Friday, September 24-25th-Vista Fall Overnight Trip.
http://www.edutopia.org/ten-top-tips
There is also a link to this in PDF form on the KRMS website. Go to “Our School” and click on the “Middle School”.
Thoughts at the beginning of the 2009- 20010 school year
By Rick Davidson
During the past two years, I have done a lot of thinking about the best way to integrate computer technology into all curriculum areas. I have read articles on what 21st century businesses are looking for in employees and and I have talked to friends and acquaintances who are business owners or in management. It is very clear that computer skills are no longer optional. They are mandatory not only in the workplace but also in the home. The Internet has become and will continue to evolve as the focal point for finding information, entertainment and socialization. It is also clear that much of what students learn today will be obsolete in the near future. I can only think back on my evolution as a photographer. How many years were spent mastering both still and motion picture film photography only to find that in less than ten years those skills became “old-fashioned”
One of the repetitive themes in business publications, educational periodicals and books is that todays students need to be comfortable with collaboration. They need to know how to effectively and ethically work with others on line. Employers are looking for employees who can create both written and visual media for an audience. The ability to create effective videos is no longer just the province of the professional movie maker. Today, there are tools on every computer that are far more sophisticated and easy to use than what was available to the professional only a few years ago. We have reached a point where the question should no longer be how do you use a given program. The question should be how can you use that tool to best fit your purpose. Likewise, it is no longer enough to show students how to click on links on the worldwide web. They also need to know how to evaluate the relevance and the truth of what they uncover. Web 2.0 has transformed the web into an incredibly powerful interactive tool. World wide collaboration is at the finger tips of every computer user. Mankind’s knowledge base is only a click away. The traditional concept of the “Sage on the Stage” doling our wisdom and knowledge needs to be questioned.
I have been reading a number of books and have been particularly intrigued by “Comprehension and Collaboration” by Stephanie Harvey and Harvey Daniels. This book echoes much of what I have been reading in “Edutopia”, “The Journal”, “Educational Leadership”, and on on-line blogs.
The following is from “Comprehension and Collaboration”:
| Inquiry Approach Versus | Traditional Coverage Approach |
| Student voice and choice
Questions and concepts Collaborative work Strategic thinking Authentic investigations Student responsibility Student as knowledge creator Interaction and talk Teacher as model and coach Cross-disciplinary studies Multiple resources Multimodal learning Engaging in discipline Real purpose and audience Caring and taking action Performance and self-assessments |
Teacher selection and directionRequired topics and isolated facts
Solitary work Memorization As if/surrogate learning Student Compliance Student as information receiver Quiet and listening Teacher as expert and presenter One subject at a time Reliance on textbook Verbal sources only Hearing about a discipline Extrinsic motivators Forgetting and moving to the next unit Filling in bubbles and blanks |
| “Comprehension and Collaboration,Stephanie Harvey and Harvey Daniels, Heinemann 361 Hanover St, Portsmouth, NH 03801 Page 56 |
I am going to periodically present ideas from educational thinkers on my blog in the hope that we can all consider what will work best to help us live up to our KRMS vision statement and to prepare our students for life in the 21st century.
I am also including two blog responses to Smart Boards. I would welcome responses to these varied points of view.
1. From: Jim Beal <bealj@somonauk.net>
Jeff,
Not surprisingly, Smartboards are aimed at the current paradigm of
instruction: “chalk and talk, sage on the stage,” or more accurately
objectivist based instruction. While it is true that they can be used for
constructivist instruction, they are limited in their ability to provide
this. In addition, like most educational tools, they do not encourage
teachers to change to a constructivist approach. What they really do is
enhance presentations.
One of the problems with these is synaptic. Engaging students to most
teachers is having them pay attention to them. This makes the teacher
feel that students are learning and it maintains discipline. However,
students may be “paying attention,” but still not learning. Learning
engagement refers to cognition, not behavior.
Appealing to the most common/popular paradigm of instruction is lucrative
for SmartBoard, but does not improve learning enough to offset their
costs.
_______
—
Edtech Archives, posting guidelines and other information are at:
http://www.h-net.msu.edu/~edweb
Please include your name, email address, and school or professional
affiliation in each posting.
2. From: Memberships- CShively <poman@davidshively.com>
The only way to engage the students with IWBs is to do inservice so
teachers do
not fall into Vanna White syndrome. They need to see and hear models that use
the whiteboard as a tool for STUDENTS to interact with content: moving words,
manipulating writing, highlighting, and creating on the whiteboard. It is a
fantastic tool for kinesthetic and visual learners and should not be used
as a
fancy projection screen or teacher-magic device. KIDS should be operating the
board. They learn it faster, anyway. Explicate poetry, do collaborative
revision of writing, drag and drop to categorize or match terms, prioritize
vocabulary words by connotation, write cloze-style main idea sentences as
reading comprehension below a passage on the board, experiment with word
choice, sort types of equations by slope, etc. All can be done with the
students doing it ON the whiteboard and the class arguing about where things
should go. ONe of the best lessons I ever saw was a class activity in
calculus
where students had to rank a group of functions by some characteristic or
other
and the CLASS received the same grade for their decisions. Have you eve
seen HS
kids scream at each other over curriculum concepts?
Don’t throw out the device for lack of inservice.
Candace Hackett Shively
Director of K12 Initiatives
The Source for Learning/ TeacherFirst.com
cshively@sflinc.org
blog: http://blog.teachersfirst.com/thinkteach/
twitter: @cshively
—
Edtech Archives, posting guidelines and other information are at:
http://www.h-net.msu.edu/~edweb
Please include your name, email address, and school or professional
affiliation in each posting.
This week students will continue to work on word Processing projects and letter writing. They have now received their thinkquest user names and passwords and will be able to create their own websites and maintain links to school projects on their websites. You can read more about thinkquest by clicking on think.com on this blog.
Some find The Shift dangerous. And in a way, it is. It’s dangerous to the educator who controls the classroom with an iron fist and wants all the answers on the test to be things he or she said in class, repeated word-for-word. It’s dangerous to educators who have assigned the same report on Gandhi over the past 20 years and haven’t started to require synthesis or analysis of information. It’s dangerous to teachers who physically stay in one place – the front of the classroom – and move only to write on the chalkboard or whiteboard. It’s dangerous to educators who don’t want anyone to “read ahead” or to “think ahead.”
It’s dangerous to educators who view themselves as the most knowledgeable person in the room and are personally invested in staying that way. It’s dangerous to teachers who haven’t paid attention to their unengaged students and keep covering the material anyway, they way they think it ought to be covered, believing students should adapt to their approach.
1-to-1 Learning: Laptop Programs That Work.
Pamela Livingston
My B block Vista Class is working on word processing projects. They are practicing basic Layout design. They are now making up a flier for a fantasy product.
School has started. August 24th is the first day of school. Beginning on August 25th, the students in the Vista Computer Class will start by designing their respective dream houses using Microsoft Paint. An on-going coverage of what the students will be doing will appear in this blog. Projects will also be posted on the students’ thinkquest.com sites once the students have received their thinkquest accounts.
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Additions by AJV:
How important do you think knowing how to use technology will be in your future? Are you good at it now? Explain.
I think it is very important to know technology in the future. I am okay at using technology now. I think it is good to know technology in the future because it is going to be used a lot in the future and if you don’t know how to use it then you won’t get a good job.
I think when I am older I will have to use a lot of technology but I am not so good with it right now, but I think I am getting better. Especially since we did this project.
I think if you don’t know how to use technology in the future you are doomed. I think it is very important because almost everything these days has to do with a computer or palm pilots etc. I think I am good at using technology. I know enough to get by.
I think that it is really important because you will have to use it for most jobs and you will have to use it in high school. Right now my understanding of technology is better than when we started this project.
I think that knowing how to use technology is very important because everything is getting harder to use. I am not good with technology right now, if I saw how to do something over and over again, then I could be good at it.
It will be very important to know how to use technology like this because the future seems pretty technologically dependent.
I think knowing how to use technology will be very important in the future because it will become more advanced so you will want to keep up with it. Also, everyone will be using technology, and teachers will want you to do more assignments on the computer, I am not very good at it right now because it confuses me sometimes, and I’m not very patient with the computer. Sometimes I rush and stuff doesn’t get saved.
I think that knowing how to use technology is very important for my future because I would like to go to Brewster Academy and they use computers for homework when it is assigned. It wouldn’t be good if I didn’t know how to use technology because I would not be able to do my homework. I would also be helpful for when I go to college.
I think knowing how to use technology is very important for the future because I’m sure that I will need something like this again in the future. I think I’m pretty used to it now and I think that makes me good at it.
I think that being able to use technology will definitely help in the future. I think you need to know how to use it because you will use it for many different things, like typing papers for school and work and there are many jobs where you will need to use a computer. I am good at using a computer now because I am a very fast typer. I know how to use many programs including Microsoft Word, Excel, Moviemaker, the Internet and other programs. I also can usually figure out how to do things and how to fix things on a computer too.
I think it is very important to know technology in the future. I am okay at using it now. I think it is good to know technology in the future because it is going to be used a lot and if you don’t know how to use it then you won’t get any good jobs.
Knowing how to use technology not only prevents silly mistakes like deleting something so knowing this, my next project will come out better and faster. Technology also speeds up the project. I did not know how to use technology so I made a lot of mistakes proving I’m not very good with it.
Well I think that using the computer to make a movie is good for us. It will help us in future projects in high school or whenever we need to use a computer.
Most likely everything in the future will be hover cars and robots. Technology will be important. Right now, I think I’m pretty good with it. I use the computer a lot so I know how to work with one.
I think it is very important because we wouldn’t have been able to do anything on this video without technology knowledge. I think making this video taught me a lot about technology that I didn’t know yet, like how to convert videos.
I think that being able to use technology will be extremely important in the future because technology like computers are able to tell you everything that you need to know. No, I am not very good with any technology but video games. I don’t really know how to make a decent movie off the top of my head because I ‘m not sure on how to download and upload things without assistance.
Using technology is important because most of the jobs out there now involve working with computers.
It will be very important because technology is getting so advanced. Yes I am good at using tech. I know how to now make a movie and now I can do a lot more on the computer.
I think technology abilities will be very important because eventually that will be all there is. Currently I ‘m pretty good with a computer.
When I go to college, technology will be in common use helping me with my studies. With papers and notes to take, (and my handwriting not being that good) it’s the only way to make sure my work is presented well. Not only in college, but when I get a job, most likely an engineer, use of a computer and machinery is a key essential, so I better start learning the basics. Yes I do think I am good at it now for my grade level, but I’m only at the tip of the iceberg. There is much more I need before I can call myself a pro.
I think knowing how to use technology is extremely important for the future. You will probably be using it everyday depending on your job. I am good at it but I have a lot to learn.
Being able to use this technology will most definitely come in handy in the future for personal and business projects. I do not think I am very good at making videos or using technology in general. I have good, effective ideas, but I’ve always had a bit of a problem when it came to computers, sometimes it was the computer and sometimes me. Either way, things never seemed to work out the way I would’ve preferred them to.
I think technology is pretty important now because it makes a lot of difficult things very easy. I think it will be very important in the future because it’s improving every day and soon people are really going to rely on technology to get things done. I think I’m ok at using technology. I’m not a tech wiz or anything but I’m good enough to get by.
I think it’s important to know how to use technology in our age. Seeing as our age is known as the technological age it should be second nature how to use most technological objects. I’m not half bad at using our technological these days seeing as I use my computer almost everyday and technology like a calculator and objects like that.
