Concluding Assignment

What do we mean by the "21st Century Classroom?"



To begin with, in our text, Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology, John Hagel and John Seely Brown make an excellent statement concerning the current state of the growth of technology in our classrooms when they remark that, "the edges of our schools will reshape and eventually transform the core" (Collins & Halverson, 122). I fully believe this to be true, however, for this transformation to take place we as educators, the administrators in our schools, the parents of our students, and the students themselves must all work together. Being an avid student of the American Civil War, when I speak to groups about the war, I explain to them that the extreme amount of casualties and loss of life in combat was due in a large part to the fact that technology was way ahead of the tactics. Although a shift is now occurring, the current state of our schools would indeed fit into this same analogy. We are kind of stuck in a sort of awkward phase, where our schools are still focusing on the old types of rote learning and memorization exercises while at the same time there are a multitude of new tools and technologies available that could open up limitless possibilities for teaching and learning.



For the first time in history we are in an era where the children are more able, knowledgeable, and comfortable than their parents about an innovation so central to society. The majority of what children learn and experience, is now taking place outside of the classroom, however, they can integrate this knowledge and know-how mentality into how they themselves learn inside the traditional classroom setting. As Collins and Halverson state in the text, "the convergence of peer and popular culture through technologies presents possibly the largest threat (and opportunity) for schools and parents" (Collins & Halverson, 125). We need a strong leadership base from innovative educators to make sure that the new system encompasses our society's main goals for education. These goals include strategies that provide access to these new educational resources and technologies for everyone in society, and give people the drive to take advantage of these resources. Students will create their own learning experiences, and mold their own curriculum based around what their individual interests may be, and what skills they will need in order to work and function properly in our society. Children are now being given more control over their own learning as well as being encouraged to seek out their own ways of learning. This idea of "learner control" is being fostered by providing students with tools to support their own learning, such as access to the internet, machines for toddlers that teach reading, and even computer-based games that encourage deep knowledge and entrepreneurial skills. Students are being taught how to think critically in this new technological age, and more importantly, how to find both the knowledge and the resources to accomplish important tasks.



There are now a myriad of options available to students that were not there even a few years ago. For example, the authors of our text explain that, "as an alternative to continuing on to a traditional high school, a student might take online courses at home or in a learning center, enter an apprenticeship program, take courses that interest them at a local community college, or attend a career academy, like those we see in cities such as Oakland, California" (Collins & Halverson, 141).



Finally, this new system of education will foster the idea of the individual as a lifelong learner. As these new technologies and tools continue to advance and change, we as educators will be forced to adapt and learn these new systems and tools ourselves, and how we can integrate them into our classrooms. They will continue to allow for more equality in education, creativity and innovation on the part of the individual student, and will keep students more engaged and motivated to learn.


How do we apply technology tools in ways so that we can more easily achieve meaningful teaching and learning in the 21st century?


Much of what I just previously stated would also apply to the above question. The application of all of these new technology tools will push growth in the areas of non-traditional education such as home schooling, workplace learning, distance education, learning centers, technical certifications, and with the theory of lifelong learning.

Home schooling usually involves taking online courses and can also include a form of online tutoring as well. Parents can now play the role of more of a facilitator as internet curriculum materials have helped to organize learning content. Virtual charter schools have also served to provide curricular structures to support home schooling through distance education. Today's home schooled students also tend to use more computer and video-based materials than those students in the traditional classroom setting.

Technology has certainly caused many changes and innovations as far as workplace learning and in workplace environments. For example, according to our text, the major corporation Canon "has developed a simulation program where technicians must repair simulated copier machines that have different faults inserted in them" (Collins & Halverson, 74). The military has also spent billions of dollars developing simulations that put learners into virtual worlds where they practice the skills that they will need to carry out their jobs.

Distance learning allows for students to take courses online over the internet from an institution that might be located halfway around the globe. Students are able to work in teams right over the internet and can hold discussions and post responses at any time of their choosing. This is particularly helpful to busy professionals who decide to enroll in distance education courses to advance their own job status or just to simply keep their minds engaged. Many school districts are even experimenting with virtual high school programs, where teachers at different schools offer online courses to other high schools in the state.

Recently, major companies such as Microsoft, Novell, and Cisco, are offering online certification exams that certify technical skills in computer-related occupations. As stated in our text, "These types of certification programs provide an alternative to technical degree programs for students who may struggle with the academic focus of high school and colleges" (Collins & Halverson, 87).

It is no wonder, that with all of these fascinating technical innovations now available, that educators are now stressing the idea of living our lives as lifelong learners. We will need to continue to educate ourselves and stay up-to-date with current educational practices and new technologies that develop almost as fast as we can learn them.

Engrade

This week I chose to investiage a tool called Engrade, which is an online gradebook and organization tool that has a myriad of uses that could be very useful particularly for educators. Engarde is currently the number one online gradebook and has more than 2.4 million members, including 270,000 registered teachers. The site is extremely user friendly, has an excellent and very informative tutorial that walks you through how to navigate and use the site, and is also 100% free to registered users. I signed up for a teacher account and was able to peruse the tool and create my own "mock" classroom, in order to see how the tool worked exactly. I created a U.S. history course classroom, added some students, created an attendance book, a custom grading policy, and even my own online quiz.

With this tool, teachers are able to record grades and attendance, schedule and post assignments, build classroom materials such as lessons, quizzes, and flash cards, create, share, and assign wikis or lessons, and even print out grade reports for students. Another great aspect of this tool is that it allows you post classroom information online and to communicate with students and parents directly. This could alleviate the problem of students missing assignments and other work due to illness or other reasons. With assignments, homework, and even quizzes being posted online, the students are able to access these things right from their home computers. With all of these tools available on one site, teachers could be much more organized and efficient, and could then spend more time developing interesting lessons and expanding their students' educational horizons.

100 apps for tech savy teachers (Footnote App)

Our group chose to look at a website provided by Rasmussen college, it is a listing along with brief descriptions of 100 applications that tech savvy teachers could use in the classroom. Included among the listing are quite a few tools that we have looked at in our class already, as well as many quite useful tools that we have not yet explored. There are tools with which you can create and generate online tests and quizzes, administrative tools that could be used for filing daily information such as attendance, grades, assignment tracking, etc., a myriad of research tools, online curriculum pages, lesson planning pages, virtual debating forums, and many many more. We each chose to focus our attention on one particular tool, I chose an online historical document tool called footnote.

Footnote.com is a research tool that contains more than 70 million original historical documents and photos. Being an avid lover and student of history, I certainly know just how important it is to have reliable sources from which to pull research data. With footnote.com, many of the historical documents are from such renowned institutions as the National Archives, and the Library of Congress. Information on the site in bundled by sections or by historical eras, such as the Civil War period, The Holocaust Collection, World War II, Vietnam, Native American Collection, Black History, A Newspapers Archive, and an Interactive Census Project. The Interactive Census Project is particularly interesting in that it allows you to find and search information pertaining to census data all the way back to the year 1860. This particular tool could be used in math classes, geography classes, government/political courses, and particularly history courses.

Perusing through the site, I myself was able to search military and pension records from the time of the second world war, and find three separate documents detailing enlistment information and other data pertaining to my grandfathers' brother, my great uncle, who was killed in action flying a B-29 Liberator over German skies in 1944. It was incredible to be able to print this information out and show it to my grandfather, as well as to now be able to add it to all of the original military documents I have from my grandfather.

The Newspaper Archives section I found to be equally as interesting. There are literally hundreds of thousands of articles listed from newspapers all over the country. If a student wants to research the political views expressed in the New York Herald during the Roosevelt Administration, the information is only a few clicks away. You simply type in keywords or phrases, individual newspaper names or search the entire archive, and period of time you would like to search. This will bring up any article which would contain pertinent information to your search. I really liked that it shows you an image of the exact article, almost as if you are holding the actual newspaper right in front of you, and it even highlights the information regarding your search, allowing you to zoom in and out on the page. I encourage all of you to check this site out for useful information to use in your digital textbook chapters, I certainly found a wealth of information to include in mine.

Podcasting in Education

Over the past few years, the use of podcasting in education has increased quite steadily. The use of podcasting is an excellent way to supplement lesson plans and the overall learning experience. In 2004 for example, Duke University made headlines when they distributed 1,600 recorder-equipped ipods to their incoming freshamn and a handful of faculty. The students were then able to download leactures, songs, and historical speeches, as well as produce their own content. According to the University's findings, students reported that the ipods enhanced their learning experience, with 75 percent of freshman students using at least one ipod features for academic purposes. Faculty reported greater students engagement and interest in class discussions, field research, and independent projects incorporating ipod use.

Other examples of classroom use of podcasting - At Drexel University, a chemistry professor assigned archived lectures that the students could then listen to for homework, then using his class time to review problems and spend time on other atcivities. AT Winter Park High School in Florida, the Orchestra creates podcasts, including some with video, to distribute sound clips, news and information about their award winning music program. It certainly is exciting to see such creative and innovative ideas stem from these new technologies.

On the other side of the spectrum, there has been some concern about whether students will stop going to classes in which the professors post their lectures using podcasts. Why should they go to lectures when they are available on the web for them to listen to whenever they choose? Duke University's ipod experience study revealed that the faculty did not find that lecture attendance decreased significantly with recorded lectures. The University of Washington conducted a similar podcasting program and the results also noted a negligible impact of podcasting on class attendance.

My brother, who teaches earth science for the Souderton School District, uses podcasting on a regular basis with his students. He podcasts his daily lectures and classroom activities so that any student who may have been absent can then simply check out his podcast to see what they might have missed. I firmly believe that the use of podcasting will only increase in our classrooms and will definately benefit the learning experiences of our future students.

Thinkfinity

My group and I chose to explore the online tool Thinkfinty. There are numerous excellent features available to use for multiple disciplines in education, but this tool would be especially helpful to history/social studies educators. Some noteworthy areas I explored were; In your state, From our Community (discussion forums), Today in History, Blogs, Education News, Lesson Plans, and Interactive Tools. Interactive tools included a letter generator, with which students in grades K - 12 can practice formal and informal letter writing, which I though could be extremely helpful for many teachers. On the bottom of the page there are also a multitude of links, including, National Geographic Expeditions, which had great material for geography as well as social studies lessons, and a link we focused much of our attention on, Smithsonian's History Explorer.

This specific tool was designed and developed by the National Museum of American History, and includes multidisciplinary content for all subjects in grades K - 12. ALthough it has a wealth of material, one of its limitations is that it is geared mostly for history/social studies educators and learners. Along with this, it concerns strictly American History. This tool includes literally hundreds of lesson plans/activities, Interactives/Media, Professional Development, Web Links, and an excellent tool which allows you to view photos and descriptions of hundreds of artifacts in a Virtual Museum. It is also extremely helpful that you can search for resources by grade level, resource type, or historical era. I found this tool very easy to navigate and I believe that both young students as well as High School students would find this tool of immense help when researching topics, or developing a lesson plan.

I explored this tool with a friend of mine who is an American Government teacher at a local high school. He found an excellent lesson plan that coincides with his current topic of the landmark case Brown Vs. the Board of Education of Topeka. With this lesson plan, students would examine both the integrationist and segregationist arguments from Brown vs. the Board of Ed. through role play and explore the impact of the Supreme Courts' decision through a primary source photographic analysis activity. He will be using this lesson this week in his classroom and I am very anxious to see how well it worked out for him. I will certainly update this post at the end of the week as to the results.

How People Learn (Post #2)

I believe that a major part of learning, in the past as well as in the present, is through a process of trial and error and making mistakes and then learning from them. An excellent quote from Gandhi is posted in the article concerning great quotes about learning and change; he states, "Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes. Certainly a multitude of great inventions and wonderful ideas have come from people making mistakes and thus learning from them and improving on them. I personally find, that in the classroom, many of the kids use these methods of trial and error and problem solving techniques. Learning through these methods will help the students to retain more of the information, and for a longer period of time as well. In the article on "How People Learn," the editors bring up a good point when they state that much of what people learn, often is from mass media reporting and from people’s own experiences in schools. Sadly, much of what we see through the media, is often misconstrued and biased.

The future certainly holds unbelievable changes concerning technology, and their implications on how we grow as a people and how we learn. Today's children have more information available at their fingertips than our grandparents could have ever dreamt of. Foreign languages are now being taught in the schools as early as the first grade. The world as we know it has become so much smaller, yet so much larger and open at the same time. It is a fact that technology, and computers in particular, have become permanently ingrained in our schools, and they will only become more entrenched each school year. Through technology, our young students are learning more and at a faster rate than ever before, and hopefully this trend will continue.

In the article titled, "Clive Thompson on the New Literacy," it is stated that young people today are writing far more than in previous generations, due to technology and online socializing. They found that 38 percent of this writing is taking place out of the classroom. This type of socializing and open communication is teaching our young people many new skills that would have been previously unavailable to them. However, I personally believe that although communication and socializing has grown immensely, grammar and structure is lacking in many cases. Many people have become accustomed to texting and abbreviating far too often. I still think that old fashioned reading books, improves grammar and vocabulary ten-fold. The article on literacy also made a good point in that students today almost always write for a clear audience. It goes on to say that students of the past were less enthusiastic about their in-class writing because the professor was the only audience, and that their only motivation was for a good grade. Now their work can be available to the world wide web in an instant, and can thus open up debates, chats, etc.

My Co-operating teacher for my field experience last year at Liberty High School used technology in his classroom very effectively. The class was 12th grade advanced placement American Government, and each student was supplied with a laptop computer which they used individually at their desks. Each day they had to post a current events article on their class web page, that had to do with politics in America. They would write a brief summary of the article's main points and then the class would have a discussion period where a few students would talk about their articles. The kids enjoyed this warm-up activity very much because it kept them engaged and also allowed them to discuss their own ideas and thoughts with the rest of the class.

Experiences as a Teacher/Learner

By far, one of my greatest learning experiences was spending many days of my youth, learning from my grandfather in his rare and antique book shop, which was located in Tatamy Pennsylvania. For me as a passionate student of history, it is immeasurable as to how important it is to be able to do research using primary sources, and to be able to actually hold and use first edition sources, some dating back to the fifteenth century. My grandfather himself, was a history teacher for the Nazareth School District for 35 years. He started out teaching at a one room schoolhouse at the foot of the blue mountains and ended up in what we would consider a modern educational facility. His insights into education and how children learn provided a framework for how I myself view education. His mind to this day is still incredibly vast, if I ask him a question dealing with any topic, he always seems to know something about it. I still visit him regularly and he still helps me find excellent research material from his personal library of rare books, antiques, and ephemera. With his help, my personal library has swelled to over 5,000 volumes, which for me as an educator is invaluable. A book dealing with just about any topic imaginable is directly at my fingertips whenever I should need it.
Growing up in a museum, I was able to learn not only through books, but also through hands-on interaction with literally thousands of artifacts. By the age of 10, I was giving full fledged tours of our museum and its contents. By being immersed in history all of my life, and having access to all these wonderful things, I believe that it was in my blood to become an educator. To see a child hold an artifact that was expertly crafted by our ancient ancestors almost 10,000 years ago, and to see them find their own inner vision of what they imagine life was like during that time, is simply priceless.
I as an educator want to be able to reach out to my students and connect with them not only a professional level, but also on a personal level. I do not want them to feel like they are simply another number, or a body filling a desk. I believe that it is important to know each of their strengths as well as their weaknesses in learning and to address them properly. We as educators need to always remember just how much of an impact we can have on the lives of our students and on their educational footprint. With increasing societal preasures, and an ever-growing technological world, it is imperitive that we understand what our students are facing and to prepare them for future obstacles that they will have to oversome.