Cutting Edge: Technology in the Classroom

Online MLA Tools

2010-12-29T14:40:00.006-06:00

I'm currently subbing in an English department near me. Just before the winter break, I taught a lesson about how to make an MLA works cited page. When I first started teaching, only six or so years ago, 11th grade English had a min-unit about how to do this. At the end of the unit, students were given various sources to document on as a formal assessment. Today, students have Easy Bib and Citation Machine. In about 30 minutes, I walked students through the book entry for their novel, which included a few idiosyncrasies. Most students now have the ability to create a works cited entry for almost any source. No manual needed, no memorization. The student does still need to double-check formatting and accuracy, but the "heavy lifting" is done for them.

Easier still, when students use articles from research tools like EBSCO and Proquest, they can select which style guide they need to use and the site will generate their works cited entry for them. With a fairly small amount of work on their end, the student has all of the relevant data, in the right format, ready to use almost instantly. I'm of two minds about this.

One side thinks that students are currently able to correctly document their research in an easy and quick manner. These online tools take the guess work out of documentation and reduce the amount of time needed to complete the task. Rather than skipping the assignment, students just have to do a little bit of copying and pasting and they're done!

The other side worries that the limited need to actually learn the type of information needed for documenting your sources will result in a limited understanding of the values and relevance of the publication information. If you don't need to find the date of publication, are you really thinking about the currency of the information? Teaching critical thinking is and has been one of the greatest on-going challenges of the English discipline, but it has been added by the exploration of source documentation.

On a related note, we teach students to document sources because of the importance of intellectual property. We teach students to give credit to the creator of the ideas. Do online tools enhance the value of this lesson or limit it? Food for thought.

Prezi

2010-06-11T17:05:00.007-05:00

A friend at work recently introduced me to Prezi. The site has a nice educator package, so I thought that I'd give it a try. My Honors 9 Communications (English) class created digital poetry for their unit final, which allowed for a great last day of school! We munched on treats and watched our poetry unfold on the board. Lovely!

Anyway, back to the purpose of this entry: using Web 2.0 in the classroom. Prezi is an interactive presentation site. Much like PowerPoint and like software, the site allows you to enter text and images, then animate their entry onto the screen. Unlike the software programs, Prezi functions online and uses Flash to animate more visually-interactive presentations. As with many Web 2.0 tools, you can share content, both in editable and non-editable forms.

So, I made a Prezi in lieu of a handout for our project. Because prezis can be imbedded in blogs, I've included it below. My students then made their own and shared them to our Honors 9 group. I would love to share some of their creations, but I forgot to ask them to give me editing rights, so I can't remove their names... . Perhaps I'll get ambitious this summer and track down a few students about sharing theirs publicly.

The students were very responsive to this project, and maneuvered through the site fairly well. I did some direct instruction about how to use the site, but I only covered the basics. While this put the more tech-savy students at an advantage, I felt that the purpose of the project was to play with communicating a poetic message in a new medium, not mastering the medium itself. Overall, the students did a nice job of working with constructing visual- and movement-based meaning. Some dug in deeply, which lead to very rewarding content in the classroom. :-)

Overall, I think that Prezi has some great academic potential, although I don't feel that it is a "must use" tool. Besides this, it is quite fun!

Intellectual Property & Technology

2010-03-04T19:35:00.006-06:00

I have been very quiet for quite some time. Today, however, inspired me to ponder a "technology in the classroom" question, so I decided to do so where others might offer some insight.

At what point does a student's class-generated ideas become intellectual property to be protected? Is an essay always theirs? Is there a point when it becomes "public domain?" I ask because I use Turnitin and have a parent who is concerned about privacy & intellectual property. I don't have any answers, as I've never considered this side of things. My intent with using Turnitin is to reduce accidental plagiarism in our easy-to-access-anything world. It is also to reinforce the value of finding your own ideas & your own voice. However, in using the site, students are submitting their information to the larger, potentially unprotected, world. Yet, they do just that whenever they blog or make a wiki or post on Facebook. What is the role of the school in the Web 2.0 era? Does the concern about privacy negate the value of the learning tool? Again, I have no answers, just a lot of questions.

Thoughts?

How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live

2009-09-02T13:30:00.002-05:00

One of the teachers in my building brought an article from TIME Magazine to my attention recently: How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live. We plan to use the article as part of our Fahrenheit 451 unit, which is focused on technology and society. I am curious to hear how my students feel about this topic, both before and after reading this and other related materials. One of the things that I want to draw their attention to is the fact that our district is now on Twitter. While I am a bit of a technology nut, I have chosen not to join this 140-characters-or-less publication site. I wonder how many of my students "tweet," and if it is meaningful for them, or for their parents, to follow their school on Twitter. I know that this short post is a bit disjointed, but my ideas are still forming. School starts in a week, and my brain is still spinning. We'll see how this unit goes! :-)

Blogging in the Classroom

2009-07-08T10:26:00.003-05:00

As I reflect on the last school year and prepare for the next one, I find myself considering how blogging did and could work in my classroom. This past year, all of my Media Lit. students blogged. I tracked their posts in Google Reader and assigned standard journal grades. Here are some of the things that I noticed:

I did not see a marked increase or decrease in the number of students who did the work. Most of my seniors wrote something, although there were still those who just didn't do it.
I did find that it was easier to have students make up missing blogs, as all of the topics were posted online. At the end of the semester, I had two students who had not written a single blog post, even after several interventions. Both students were going to fail without this semester long assignment, so I called home (again) and gave them one more shot. It was really nice to be able to say "go to X address and email me when you've responded to all of the topics." Upon receiving their emails, I simply logged into to Google and read their posts. They both passed, without a single "I don't know what to do" or an exchanged paper.
There are a lot more students who don't know how to use blogging sites than I expected. I spent more time troubleshooting with some students, which bogged down things on my end. However, once they figured out how to blog, it simply became a "normal" assignment.
Students paid no more attention to their writing skills than they did on paper.
Some students really got into using the online tools. They personalized their sites, inserted links to relevant sites, found images to include, and actively commented on their classmates posts. :-)

This brings me to a major snag. One of the key factors in using blogs in the classroom is the interaction between students that it creates. I assigned commenting, which some students did do. I read some very insightful, engaged comments. A few students even ended up with threads of conversation, as intended. However, Google Reader does not track comments made on Blogger--at least not as far as I have discovered. This means that I can't easily track who is and who is not commenting, which makes grading comments very, very time consuming and difficult. Without the tangible incentive, most students don't bother to do the extra work. Honestly, I don't blame them.

So, how do I use the blogs as more than just an electronic journal?

One thought that is still stewing in my brain: Create cohorts within or between classes. Blogger allows you to have more than one administrator, so a team of four or five (larger? smaller?) could have one blog. They could rotate who is responsible for the initial post, then converse about that post. I would then track less blogs, which would make grading comments easier.

Another thought: I could play more with WordPress, as the comments posted there do show up in Google Reader. I am much more comfortable with Blogger, and feel like it is more student user-friendly.

I need to do more research about what other teachers are doing to make blogging an effective educational tool, as well. One thing that I think is invaluable about blogging, regardless of the other dilemmas: If my students don't know how to use Web 2.0 interfaces, or if they only see them as social networking tools, they will be at a disadvantage in the work force. If nothing else, teaching my students to blog empowers them to use the communication tools of the online age.

"First" Blog: Inside the White House

2009-01-22T17:45:00.005-06:00

At noon on the 20th of January, a new president was sworn in to office. At about the same time, the White House's website updated to mirror the ideals of the new resident of the most iconic house in government. This, in and of itself, isn't very interesting. However, the blog that takes up a reasonable amount of space on the home page is fascinating.

I wondered how the Facebook Campainger would adjust his technological style once taking office. Some have commented that his stint online would be stopped, due to security issues and such. I wonder no more. The generation raised online threw their weight behind the candidate who meet them where they were. Now, his office will speak to them where they still are: online. This is the Web 2.0 president. Whether or not he will live up to all of the hopes and dreams of Americans desperate for change or not, he will at least move the White House fully into the Information Age!

A bit of a leap, but related nonetheless

2008-12-19T17:05:00.004-06:00

Yesterday, my students read David Foster Wallace's commencement address to the 2005 graduates of Kenyon College. Today, I read a friend's blog entry that happened to be expressing very similar sentiments. While this is neat, it isn't necessarily a "technology in the classroom" topic. Then again, it is. Kenyon College is in Ohio, I'm in Minnesota. The speech was delivered orally in May of 2005, roughly three and a half years ago. Were I teaching ten, fifteen years ago, I would not only lack the transcript-from-a-video-recording, I wouldn't even know the speech had been delivered. The Internet may not be a "latest and greatest" topic, but it is certainly one that brought a relevant, real-world text to my jaded, yearning-for-a-break (we still have two days of classes) seniors. My students had substantive, thought-provoking discussion this morning because the internet brought a college commencement address into their world. Sometimes, it's the "simple" things that enrich the classroom the most.

Wikispaces as storage

2008-12-18T14:33:00.002-06:00

I've recently been contemplating the challenges of working without a laptop at school. While the larger screen, separate mouse, and full-size keyboard of a desktop computer is wonderful, it's hard to beat the portability of a laptop. Although I do have a flash drive and the ability to email myself documents, I wish that I had better access to my files. During a discussion about class websites and storage, a friend reminded me that you can upload and download files via a wiki. Her suggestion was to post class materials on the wikispace that I've already created, which led me to think about using the wiki as a way to make my files more accessible. So, I created a "Documents" page, where I post files that I may want at home or elsewhere. There is much refining to be done, as the comment about posting files for students is also valid. We'll see where things lead....

Mind Meister

2008-11-25T20:56:00.004-06:00

While brainstorming reading strategies for my lesson cycle on "Civil Disobedience," I tried out Mind Meister. I started a map for Thoreau's ideas about taxes. Now, however, I have a dilemma. How does this help students? Do I simply use it as a glorified organizer on the SMARTBoard? Do I spend the time having the students set up accounts and then working on the map at home? A little bit of column A and a little bit of column B? As with all new technologies and Web 2.0 tools, I struggle with the balance between enhancing student learning and playing with fun, flashy toys....

YouTube & Censorship

2008-10-24T10:34:00.003-05:00

A colleague and I spent some time grumbling this week about YouTube and censorship. While there is a lot of content on YouTube that isn't school appropriate, there is also a lot of content that can supplement learning. However, our system is set up so that no one computer has a consistent IP address (no permanent logins to sites like Google Reader). Therefore, my computer can't be granted access to a site that is otherwise blocked. As an emerging Web 2.0 educator, this frustrates me. However, there are enough other things occupying my time, so I have choosen to not explore solutions.

Until today. Thanks to Dana Swier Huff for posting a solution on her blog! There are free, legitamte ways to access the appropriate material, even without work-access to the blocked site.

Wow!!!!!

2008-10-22T21:59:00.001-05:00

If you follow this link, then I won't need to say anything else!

Digg Attempt 1

2008-09-25T12:32:00.003-05:00

I tried Digg yesterday. While I found some interesting bits of information, it felt very crowded with random, useless-to-me content. It was annoying to sift through the flotsam and jetsam of the internet, even though there were gems here and there. While I know that there have been some insightful observations about how this might work in the classroom, I'm not sure that I'm ready to figure yet, let alone teach, a system to filtering all of the vast quantities of information. Besides, if I find something useful, I have to save the link (which I already do) to show that content to the class, because it will be further (perhaps by quite a bit) down the page/site. Digg is still in its early days, so there is time to find uses for it, but I'm not ready to tackle this particular technology in my classroom. I might, however, show it to my Media Lit. students. :-)

WIkis in Education

2008-09-25T12:24:00.004-05:00

I started using wikis last year, when I stole the idea of wiki book reports from SWC Geek Girl. You can see my ninth grade students' work (of the expected variety in quality) by visiting the AVHS-Omega-English wikispace. This individual/interlinked project went fairly well, while the tenth grade literary group discussion pages where less successful. A blog site would have been a better starting place for the group discussion project. Both sets (9th and 10th) linked their pages to the master index. My current twelfth graders are using a wiki page as a links bulletin board for their individual blogs. The set up was a bit rocky, but it's now helpful for finding each other's thoughts.

I still haven't figured out how to best show my students the ins and outs of the wiki. How much do I, as the teacher, show them versus just cutting them loose to figure it out on their own? I tried setting my senior loose, but they struggled with lost material due to overwriting each other. In the end, the content made it up for everyone to see, but I still feel that there is (as always) finessing to be done with the creation process.

Facebook...

2008-09-24T07:24:00.004-05:00

As mentioned earlier, social networking and I aren't buddies. However, a friend shared this article with me recently. While I'm not sure that I like the idea personally, I am pleased to see that people are exploring positive ways to use Facebook (and similar sites) in the professional sphere. As a public site, it provides employers and potential employers with a lot of seemingly private information. Here is an opportunity to shift the "My boss fired me because of the pictures on my profile!" problems to "I got my dream job because of my ad!"

What next? :-)

Starred Items in Google Reader

2008-09-22T13:05:00.002-05:00

As I've been looking at student work, I've found many blog posts that I want to highlight as examples of good work. I've "starred" several entries in each section, but didn't know what to do from there. So, I dug a bit deeper. It turns out that I have a public page that shows what I've starred. Check it out!

Advantage for students: Many of my young bloggers have asked about grading. "How long should the entry be?" "What will earn a good grade?" and so on... Now, students can see which blog entries caught my eye.

23 Things: #6

2008-09-17T22:11:00.004-05:00

I've heard a lot of buzz about del.icio.us, an emerging Web 2.0 tool/site. As a conscientious objector to social networking, I find social bookmarking to also seem... uninteresting. On the one hand, knowledge is power (Thank you, Francis Bacon for a fantastic phrase!). The more sites that del.icio.us sends me to, the more knowledgeable I am. On the other hand, I am not keen on the larger, less-known world knowing which sites are "regulars" for me. One of my students raised this issue in his first class blog: the danger of expanding technology is the loss of true human contact. The generic, all-encompassing "we" would rather send a text than make a phone call. I can bookmark a page socially, rather than make direct contact with particular people.

On the other side, email could have the same fault found within it. Why call when I can email? Why write a letter when I can call? Why visit when I can write a letter? As we shrink the time it takes us to communicate across distances, are we expanding the gap between each other?

In other words, I'm not quite ready to step outside of my comfort zone and use del.icio.us. Perhaps I will try "digging" things (23 #7)... After all, my husband reads Digg.com every day and often tells me fascinating things....

Research Tracking Online

2008-09-14T17:53:00.002-05:00

While waiting for a friend to arrive, I spent some time catching up on other teachers blogs. I found a great MLA format handout, which I'll modify a bit (it's a few years old) and use in my research unit. Then, Zotero caught my eye. I have not tried out this research tool; in fact, the link imbedded here is just to the blog (HuffEnglish) where I found out about the tool. However, my interest is piqued, especially in light of my focus on internet tools in my Media Lit. courses. Has anyone tried this tool out? If so, what did you like and dislike?

Google Reader

2008-09-06T23:12:00.002-05:00

I started using RSS feeds about a year ago, as the Mail program on my Mac has a built in reader. I have a few friends who have blogs, so I keep track of their comments with via RSS. Another friend uses Google Reader, which I played with a little bit a while ago. Now, at the prompting of the 23 Things project, I've played around a bit more.

Google's applications are very helpful, but their directions are very unclear. I am excited about keeping tracks of blogs and other websites in one place. However, whenever I want to change, personalize, or explore a particular feature, I find it hard to figure out how to do so. I consider myself a fairly savvy technology user, but struggled with using Reader features that sounded cool.

I plan to follow my students' blogs via my Google Reader account. I'll keep each class's links in it's own folder, making tracking, grading and general usage easier. I will be able to see when they post and comment, without having to visit every one of the 170+ sites. I'm not sure that I want to require my students to use RSS feeds to follow each others blogs, but I may suggest it in class. I think that it would be neat for a Social Studies class to use a reader to follow specific news sites. Perhaps they could compare The New York Times and CNN online, in order to look for the particular biases present in the news.

An Academic Adventure

2008-09-06T13:34:00.003-05:00

Exciting news! After hearing about my Web 2.0 classroom adventures, a friend pointed me to a learning community that is exploring this very topic. SWC 23 is a local group that will spend nine weeks working on the different aspects of modern, internet-based communication. In light of my last post, concerning my media classes, this seems like a perfect opportunity for me. Let the adventure begin!

Media Lit.

2008-09-04T15:15:00.001-05:00

My Media Literature classes are going to journal online this semester. While writing with pen and paper is very valuable, so is mastering the art of communicating online. Therefore, each student will keep a blog.

To those in my courses (and others who have educational projects), remember to leave out personal information, like first names and hometowns. Even saying the name of a school creates a potential security and safety issue in our modern era. While we want to trust the world, we must be cautious about how much we reveal to the global audience of blog.

On the other hand, blogging is an opprotunity to sound out ideas on a much larger scale than ever before. Put your best “foot” forward, express your ideas, and respond to the thoughts of others.

An Article To Read

2008-03-20T13:19:00.001-05:00

A colleague at work sent this NYTimes article out. It doesn't connect to technology, but it certainly related to our broad discussion. Check it out...

Website Number Three

2008-03-16T21:43:00.006-05:00

Julia's reference to the BBC in class reminded me of a site we used school-wide last year. During the weeks leading up to the 10th grade MCA-II Reading Test, we needed to help students review. The block schedule means that some students take English in the fall & winter terms, so by April they can be a bit rusty. Our Reading Specialist found the BBC Skillswise site, which has "factsheets, worksheets, quizzes and games to help improve your [English and maths] skills."

It is simply, yet interactive.
It can be used by the whole class via an LCD projector, or students can spend time working on their own.

As I haven't used the popular Study Island software, I don't know if this site would be "up to snuff" in comparison, but I like it. Besides, it exposes kids to the fact that education standards are global, not local. It also, at least for English, shows students that vocabulary (math vs. maths) and spelling vary from region to region. They need to use context clues to understand language in all settings, not just in the classroom.

A Related Book

2008-03-05T22:53:00.002-06:00

Do a quick Google search for Clay Shirky's book Here Comes Everybody. I read a short review of it in this month's edition of Wired today, and it sounded right up our alley. Check it out!

Website Number Two

2008-03-05T21:34:00.007-06:00

As I researched my project topic, I came upon tinyurl.com, which appears potentially useful. If you're teaching a lesson in a lab and want students to go to a specific site, you could create a shorter address for them to type. Granted, I tend to send my kids to my (teacher) homepage and then click on the link I previously added. This site is very limited in its information, which makes it seem less credible. All of the links on the side of the page are for the single page that you could scroll through. Other than the contact button, none link to a new page. Furthermore, as more people use it, the "short" URLs will become longer and more random. This presents clarity issues: my new address contained a z, k, e and s--all hard sounds to clearly communicate aloud to a group. I'm not sure that I'll find a direct use for this in the classroom, but it does bring up some ideas. We'll see....

UPDATE 7 April: I received a Tiny URL link from my tech. staff at work today! People are using this handy, if random, site!

Website Number One

2008-03-02T02:27:00.003-06:00

Webquest Project

This is actually a link to a page of my own that has several related links. Each of the sites already contain casual evaluations, designed to help focus research for a project my 9th graders complete during our unit on the novel To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I came across the various sites primarily through an undergraduate reading course that contained a "technology and reading" lesson. One of the original sites disappeared, so I went hunting for a replacement, which is when I found the "Reminiscence" site.

My students often struggle with pulling information from the two "Growing Up" sites, as the content is dense and unfamiliar. However, the audio clips on the "Federal Writer's Project" site grabs their attention. The material they pull is not as helpful, but their engagement in the site helps lead them to a basic understanding of life in the '30s. If others have sites containing primary source information about this era, I'd love to expand the project's possibilities.

An aside: I created my site using iWeb, after I found out that I would be changing schools. The site existed through my first district's server. The transition from one system to another provided an excellent chance to update and revamp the project. At some point, I'd like to create a new domain, one that doesn't connect to my personal site (which is password protected, currently).

First Go

2008-03-02T02:09:00.001-06:00

The initial process was a bit confusing, so I ended up loosing my "offical title" for class. Therefore, I took advantage of my unique name and used it for my URL. I'll see if I can fix that later... As I tell my students, something is better than nothing and you always need to do more than one draft!

Granted, the unusual insomnia could be a contributing factor to the initial difficult; I'm not generally up doing "homework" at 2 AM. Perhaps, now that I've run my brain through a few academic paces, it will shut down and allow sleep to settle over me. Thank goodness tomorrow (today, to be precise) isn't a school day!