Sunday, September 23, 2007

Annoying Cliches and Automatic Toilets: Touchstones for Technology Integration in the Classroom

Perhaps you, like me, are sick of the constant cliche being bandied around, the sudden, phenomenal discovery of "this changing world we live in,", as if it just appeared, and hasn't been a subtle growing thing in the past few decades. Technology has sneaked up on us, worming its way into every aspect of our lives, affecting everything we do, from how we travel to how we pee. There are automatic toilets, doors, taps, lights and navigating systems. These are things we barely notice now - they've been integrated so well, and with the sole specific purpose of making our lives easier.

I think, as educators, this is the context we need to think about when it comes to integrating technology into our classrooms. What is our purpose in doing so? Is it to make learning easier? Or are we veering off the mark, so enchanted by all the bells and whistles that we forget the real purpose?

Good technology integration was explored in the article:Linking Technology, Learning, and School Change Feldman, A., Coulter, B., & Konold, C. (Dec-Jan 2001). Linking technology, learning, and school change. Learning & Leading with Technology, 28 (4), 42-47. In the article William was able to integrate technology in a way that supported the learning of ecology using the idea that technology should help students learn, not hinder them. As a future teacher, it’s important for me to remember. For example, if one of my aims was to bring cultural awareness to my students, I could not only begin a novel study with a book based in a different country, I could set up an E-pal program (Pen-pals over Email) with another class in a that same country, which would enable personal connections not only to the literature, but to the culture itself.

Problems with integration seem to occur when Teachers lose sight of that initial aim: making learning easier. It’s like watching a great commercial - everything is bright, catchy and captivating. Soon enough, you're calling the 1.800 number and shelling out the first of two easy installments of $19.99 for a glorified mop. You haven't stopped to question if what you're buying into is something you need, something that will help you, or just clutter up your closet.

When people forget that touchstone aim for using technology in the classroom, to make learning easier, assignments, lessons, and everyday teaching gets cluttered like your broom closet, filled with things you don't need. The article's teacher, William, used technology to enhance students' understanding of ecology, by showing them the broader patterns that influenced their area. He brought the academic home, and made it real. If he had been caught up in the 'razzle-dazzle', he might have instead gotten his students to watch videos on how the weather patterns of monsoons in Australia affect the glacial system in Tibet. It's still dealing with patterns of ecology in the wider world, but what it isn't doing is bringing it back down to an approachable level.

While our touchstone thought for integration might be simple, there is often complex problems surrounding integration. School districts might lack money, or not understand the vision. However, that on-rushing cliche, "this changing world we live in,", will keep pushing educators to surmount the challenges they face, to change with the changing world, and produce a system where students can learn easier, adapt easier, and suceed.

Monday, September 10, 2007

A Drop in The Pond


Introductions are terrible things. One tries so desperately to make them provacative, or epic, or at least funny, and most of the time, all One succeeds in producing is a few wilted, awkward sentences, more evocative of past-its-due-date cabbage than anything else.

So, I've decided to keep this short and simple, so you can spend more time on the important stuff, and less time fumbling through rotten vegetables.

I'm a 20 year old student in Education who aspires to be both a teacher and a writer, with a penchant for the written word and British Television (because I find it witty.). My major, which I think you've probably guess by now, is English Language Arts. I'm an active environmentalist, and an advocate of social justice. I also love movies and Yoga. Never being much of a journaller, it may be considered odd that I have been an active blogger for a while, with blogs dedicated to a variety of things, Yoga, Enviromentalism, reviewing movies and books, and even blogs showcasing some of my own pieces of writing.

I thing Blogs are great teaching and learning tools, especially in the English classroom, where creativity and imagination are so highly esteemed. Blogs, when discussed and outlined properly in class, provide for students with a healthy source of anonymity, which tends to breed less inhibitions when writing. It can also foster the production of higher-quality work, since One has the ability to showcase pieces to the entire population of the World-Wide Web. On the same vein, it opens up the possibility for class-wide critique, which can be a great sounding board, but which, when used negatively, or when not properly regulated, can be as much a disadvantage as an advantage.

Blogs can also be used in the english classroom for students as a means of communicating the reflective and subjective aspects of the class, subject, or material itself. It can be a non-threatening way to raise questions and broach certain topics that One is uncomfortable speaking about in class, as well as documenting One's personal journey through a text or class itself. Blogs can be a useful tool for enabling both teacher and student understanding.
Integration itself, I think is the key to making blogs a successful technological tool. Like Yoga, it can be tiring, hard, or incomprehensible at the start, but the more you use it, the simpler it gets. The farther you stretch it, the more flexible it becomes, and the more helpful, until it's just another tool in One's teaching repetoire.






"Never regard study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to
know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own
personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work
belongs
." -Albert Einstein