Thoughts on teaching & educational technology

This is a very simple way of getting your technology to work for you, instead of you for it. RSS feeds are great means of getting and keeping students informed. Many of you may already be doing this, but it surprises me how many otherwise tech-savvy colleagues are completely unaware of these, to say nothing of how they work or how to use them. I use a blog for lesson description and reminders in my history and government classes. My students can access their assigned readings, participate in discussions, and listen to my lectures if they want or need to. I have also posted my syllabus, various course-related materials, and numerous links there. Pretty standard stuff.

Our students use iBooks, and the only browser they can use on them is Safari – which has a great, built-in RSS reader. Firefox does, too. I have no idea about the newest version of IE — I replaced my Dell over the summer with an iMac. Anyway, I have my students bookmark the course blog homepage RSS feed — Safari and Firefox both show the RSS icon in the URL window, and clicking on it reveals the feed for that page. So I have the kids bookmark those on their Bookmarks bar — that way when I update my blogs my students are automatically notified — in a place that is front & center on their screen when online — that something is new. I also have them do this for my class wikis. Even if your students don’t have laptops, you could provide the how-to information to your students for home use.

I prefer to use theoe browsers for the RSS feeds I read most often. Bloglines works well for things that I want to check daily or weekly, but for those things — like the news — that I check throughout the day, it’s most convenient for me to have those feeds bookmarked right on the Bookmarks bar, making new posts obvious.

Virtually none of my students — maybe 1 in 20 — knew how to make this happen on their own. It took a few minutes of a lesson one day, and now my motivated kids are getting on with their work without me needing to tell them. Some show up for class already having perused our work for the day, and they get started right away. It’s a building process, of course, but one that is paying off already. Anything I can use to help my students become more self-sufficient is good.

As I said, maybe this bit of advice seems silly for many of you out there — and believe you me, I am Mr. Junior Blogger in Training, still trying to make trackbacks work right. But don’t fault me if you think this is too obvious; others don’t, and when we assume that they — our students, their parents, our colleagues — know about the latest *stuff* without being sure, we’re creating problems for them and ourselves.
Thoughts?

jdg

After reading Will Richardson’s 27 OCT post, I got to thinking about finding and cataloging information online, which was a springboard in my head to one of my greatest priorities in selecting and sticking with software and other systems; this latter piece is what this post is about.

First, some context. I recently had an interesting meeting with the president of a relatively prominent K12 online subscription service. I know that sounds cryptic, but I don’t want to drop names, and I don’t want to seem like I’m taking shots at something that others may find useful.

Anyway, some years ago my district bought a subscription to a web-based system that made a great many promises, and looked very promising — but after fiddling with it for a month or so, I determined that its clunky interface and (IMHO) unreliability made it a waste of time for me. So I stopped using it. Many other teachers did the same. When we were in the final planning stages for Empire I looked at it again, having read about all manner of improvements and such and such — and found it to be the same clunky, unreliable dog. So I decided to ignore it henceforth.

Last week the president of the company visited our district, and Empire, to talk to our IT people, administrators at various levels, and some teachers about how the system could be improved. So while my student teacher did a great job with one of my Government classes, I found myself sitting in a conference room explaining, along with another teacher, why we didn’t like the product, and therefore why we didn’t use it. It boiled down, in large part, to these two issues: the interface & organization weren’t intuitive, and required too much clicking and checking and clicking again — so that made using the system irritating and unnecessarily time-consuming. And second, the product of the system was not always delivered in a form that we found useful, and sometimes was not available at all — hence my comment that it was unreliable.  We chose (and still choose) to not use the system at all.

The president listened, and took notes, and asked some questions, and then started to tell us how “easy” the system was, and how well it worked….to which I responded that if it was so easy, we’d have figured it out already. I don’t think this individual got it — you’ve all had that, right? You just know when the listener does not really understand what you’re saying, and what your comments really mean. I, and other teachers on two campuses in our district, had mostly agreed that the system was not easy to use — case closed…regardless of how “easy” the president thought it was, we disagreed. I don’t think that sunk in.

My issue with the service was, and is, this: whether it works or not is irrelevant at this point. I already sunk time into it, and couldn’t get it to do what I needed, in a form that made sense to me, so I dumped it. I have long since found an excellent resource to take its place — and this one is intuitive, reliable, and flexible. So why waste my time? If the technology isn’t transparent, I just don’t have time for it.

When I first started using a computer, it was pre-DOS. The first computer I owned was an Apple IIc (w/128k RAM!!). I remember the non-GUI computing world — I programmed in BASIC and Pascal. I remember word processors that had a steep learning curve to climb before any papers could be typed.

Happily, those days are gone for most users — computers are supposed to be easy for the non-techie. I am a teacher first, and so anything that takes time away from that function, when I need to perform it, is bad. I’ve taken just enough Econ to appreciate the concept of opportunity cost. Thus, my need for transparent technology: tech that’s so intuitive, flexible, and reliable that it fades into the background so my students and I can get down the real business at hand.

I think it’s easy to get caught up in trying to find the latest tech for the classroom — and lose sight of the students in that classroom. If the tech truly improves the quality of the experience and the outcome, use it. If the tech absorbs more resources (in time and effort, at least) than it can add on the end, why bother?

Thoughts?

jdg

I just read an interesting post about the struggle between freedom and uniformity in teaching. The author made the point that the best and worst teachers seem to want to same degree of freedom — for obvious reasons. Those in the middle, I’d assume, are happy with a lesser degree of freedom because its absence comes with some amount of pre-packaged (read: mindless) content, lessons, and outcomes.

If teaching inputs — that is, what teachers do and how — are a prime mover in determining student output (hopefully learning!), then this is an important issue, and alongside it the issue of teacher freedom in the age of hyper-accountability and top-down regulation.

What do you think? I don’t have time at this moment to add more, but I will within a day or two.

jdg

I just commented on Cathy Nelson’s blog on the issue of keeping up with current tech trends and possibilities — especially those presented by Web 2.0 technologies. I got to thinking about how I try to do just that: demonstrate to students the value of the technologies, and their potential, by using them myself. I think, however, that we’re putting process before product if we just focus on the technology — it needs to be leveraged to create better learning opportunities, which in turn should lead to greater learning on the part of the students.

I realized that my very recent foray into 2.0 tech (about a month and ticking) is just that — well, at least I think it is. I’m using a Wiki to help my advanced students (in a dual-enrollment American history course) write a college-level research paper. In order to model both use of the technology and research skills — as well as the creation of a final product — I’m going through the same process they are, and am writing a paper along with them. By using the Wiki, I can easily post updates, and they can all see that I’m working through the same steps they are, at the same time. Additionally, we’re using the individual Wiki pages within the space as workspaces for my students to research, draft, revise, and finalize their papers.

Check it out if you’re interested.

jdg

First off, I’m not going to answer that question, because I don’t know the answer — and I don’t think anyone else knows it, either. What is achievement? And how is it measured? Is it test scores? Class grades? An internal sense of accomplishment by students? A subjective “he knows what he’s talking about” nod from a teacher? I don’t know, for sure, and I’m not going to go into what I think right here.

What I am going to comment on is the notion that computers — especially in 1-to-1 programs like that at Empire High School where I work — make for a better school. After all, Empire is an ‘excelling’ school, according to our test scores, and we’re only in our third year. Isn’t it because of the computers, and the fact that every student has one?

Apple will tell you it does…well, only if you use their products, I suppose (and note that I do use Apple computers, but I have not had a sip of the Apple koolaid). Some university researchers last year said computers don’t improve achievement (of course, they didn’t really define achievement, either). And here’s another perspective.

What do you think? I’ve got my hunch — what’s the prevailing attitude out there? What’s your evidence?

jdg