New Technologies Link Ancient Cultures by Ken Ellis

http://myweb.wwu.edu/huhd/podcastarticle

Ellis, K. (2002, June 06). New technologies link ancient cultures. Edutopia, Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/new-technologies-link-ancient-cultures

Critical Issue: Using Technology to Enhance Literacy Instruction Ann Holum and Jan Gahala

http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/content/cntareas/reading/li300.htm
Holum, A., & Gahala, J. (2001, October). Critical issue: using technology to enhance literacy instruction . Retrieved from http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/content/cntareas/reading/li300.htm

Technology Reshapes America's Classrooms by Jason Szep

Summary: The article is mostly about how enrollment in online classes is expanding in the US. The beginning of the article talks about a middle school in Boston that received a grant for 650 laptop computers and how they use them instead of textbooks.  Attendance at the school went up by over 90% and office referrals went down by 30%. The author talks about several other changes the school made such as providing parents with instant messaging software to parents so they they could contact teachers if they encounter problems while helping their children with homework. Then the article talks about how enrollment in online high school classes is going up in general and could be as high as 50% by 2019. The article points out that virtual classrooms are cheaper than regular classes but the benefits might be greater academically for students.


Reaction: I think this article makes a lot of good points about using education in classrooms. Although I don't think that he can compare online classes with using laptops in class. Overall I think this model of using online classes instead of physical classrooms isn't very good. It may benefit the student academically but it also takes away from all of the social aspects of school. I think the first part of the article where they talk about using laptops instead of textbooks is good but I do not like the rest of the article that talks about replacing schools with online classes.


Szep, J. (2008, July 7). Technology reshapes america's classrooms. Reuters, Retrieved from http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/07/07/us-usa-education-technology-idUSN2547885520080707

Real-Life Teaching in a Virtual World by Denise Harrison

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2009/02/18/real-life-teaching-in-a-virtual-world.aspx
Summary: This article discusses possible of ways of using the game Second Life in an educational setting. The article mostly emphasizes combining different aspects of learning such as role-playing, collaboration, many others, and combining them all into one package. This allows students to have an experiential learning experience unlike anything else that we can accomplish. Second Life also allows educators to get together and collaborate together in an environment where no one needs to travel to see each other. Basically, Second Life allows a class to do everything they can do in a physical classroom and more. Students can get power point presentations, open links, copy entire lectures to word, and all for free too.

Reaction: I played Second Life for a bit last year so I'll add in my own opinion. First, I would hardly consider Second Life a game. Games have some kind of goal. Second Life is more like a 3d chat program like IMVU. While people do have fun there is actually a lot that goes into playing Second Life before they can actually start. Choosing a viewer, or user interface is important but a lot of the better ones have spyware embedded in them. It also takes a long time to customize an avatar. Hair specifically is extremely hard to customize. I also found it quite hard to find education communities in Second Life. The one I did manage to find turned out to be some type of sexual fetish community. Other than that I do think the article makes a fair point about all the advantages in using Second Life in the classroom. I believe that there would be too many obstacles in using Second Life for younger students though. I think this should be suitable for upper high school or college students. I also believe the best way to fully utilize Second Life would be combining whatever class you want to teach with a visual arts class because a lot of the customizable features in Second Life are created by normal people using scanners and Photoshop. Students who create items using this can also sell them in the Second Life store for game credits that they can use to buy various items that are also created by other users.

Harrison, D. (2009, February 18). Real-life teaching in a virtual world. Retrieved from http://campustechnology.com/articles/2009/02/18/real-life-teaching-in-a-virtual-world.aspx

Avoiding the 5 Most Common Mistakes in Using Blogs with Students by Ruth Reynard

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2008/10/avoiding-the-5-most-common-mistakes-in-using-blogs-with-students.aspx
Summary: In this article the author talks about five mistakes that are common when having students do blogs in the classroom. The first mistake is not contextualizing the blog correctly, or having students not understand what a blog is for and how it will enhance their learning. In this case, the main point of the blog is for self-reflection and thought process assignments. Mistake two is unclear learning outcomes. The teacher needs to have clear learning outcomes because blogs tend to help with higher learning processes such as synthesis and analysis. Not being able to utilize this effectively with a clear learning outcome will waste a lot of potential. Mistake three is misuse of the environment. Other people can comment on blogs but they cannot contribute like they can with a wiki. It is mostly published so that students can see their classmate's thought process and have that help guide their own thought process. Mistake four is not having a clear rubric for grading. Students need a clear idea of what they need to publish in the blog in order to benefit from it and not feel like they are being arbitrarily graded. The final mistake is inadequate time allocation. The author suggests leaving blogs available to write until the course is over so students that need more time to gather their thoughts can have it.

Reaction: I am not so sure about leaving the option to blog open until the end of the course. Some students may benefit but others may just choose to leave it until the last day and that means less students will be able to benefit from reading their classmate's work. Other than that this article seems pretty solid. Reynard seems to write a lot of technology articles for some reason. I would agree that a lot of these are common mistakes with doing blogs correctly. I'm sure if I just randomly said that students should start doing blogs about a certain subject I would get some who do it correctly, others who don't post anything, and others who turn it into some type of diary. Overall I think using blogs in the classroom is a good idea for certain subjects and assignments.

Reynard, R. (2001, October 01). Avoiding the five most common mistakes in using blogs with students. Retrieved from http://campustechnology.com/articles/2008/10/avoiding-the-5-most-common-mistakes-in-using-blogs-with-students.aspx

Tools for Teaching Cyber Ethics by by Linda Starr

http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/tech/tech055.shtml
Summary: This article is about how a lot of students don't understand that a lot of the things they do with the internet is illegal. This is because they've grown up with the technology so they don't realize there are legal limits to what they would consider ordinary activities. This problem goes beyond the realm of hacking and investor fraud and go into pirating with things like movies, games, and music. The author states that it is very important to lay out the ethics of using technology on the first day they get it. If the students don't get a clear idea of what they are allowed to do and what they should do then they will just learn it on the street, so to speak. The author suggests making parallels between the real world and the cyber world and to work together with the students to work on a code of ethics for using the technology, similar to classroom rules. It is also extremely important to not model inappropriate behavior. The author then ends the article with a quote about how the internet is much like a Pandora's box, and it should be opened. There is also a 10 commandments of computer rules.

Reaction: The story that the author told at the start of the article about the student who invested in penny stocks and then went to an investment chatroom to jack of the price is pretty funny because just recently a famous rapper named 50 Cent got into trouble over that. He bought a large amount of penny stocks then went to Twitter and told people to invest in it. It worked and he made a lot. I believe that he did not get into trouble over that. All he had to do was post something else on his Twitter saying that he is not a professional and that everyone should contact their broker for stock advice. Everything else seems pretty solid. I am not sure about the Pandora's box analogy though. As I recall Pandora's box contained every evil thing in the world and only had one good thing in it. I also thought the point about porn not being a big issue with technology is also interesting. Oklahoma is under a lot of scrutiny because their public schools have software that blocks websites. This normally wouldn't be a big deal but it seems the software bans atheist websites too which many feel suppresses freedom of religion. The reasoning that was provided was because they didn't want to promote fanatical religions but atheism isn't actually a religion and it has been my experience that atheists are much nicer and more sensible than religious people.

Starr, L. (2005, August 04). Tools for teaching cyber ethics. Retrieved from http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/tech/tech055.shtml

Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants by Marc Prensky

http://www.twitchspeed.com/site/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.htm

Summary: This article is about how technology has fundamentally changed the way people act and process information and how our current education system is not readily equipped to handle this new change. The author states that our brain structures have changed to adapt with all of the information and stimuli we have coming at us and we need to change our teaching methods to adapt to that change. He then states that we are digital immigrants coming to a new world that our students are native to, and it is up to us to adapt to this new world. The author also states that immigrants shouldn't dismiss different ways of learning and processing information for the natives just because their immigrant brains can't process things the same way. The authors conclusion is add more experiential learning to classrooms and have that experiential learning reflect subjects and methods that the students are interested in. The example he used was teaching students to code so they can create their video games about a subject.

Reaction: I think this is a very good article. It reinforces the fact that teachers are there to help students. This article also shows my age because of the usage of words. The author says that the word singularity refers to the large dissemination of information that has been happening in the last few years because of new technology, whereas I have understood the word singularity to refer to an event sometime in the future when robots gain self-awareness. Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451 both dealt this subject decades before their time. Both books stated that in the future there will be too much information, and issues like censorship of books won't be seen as important because for the most part interest in reading books has died off because of new technology. In Brave New World specifically, people are bombarded with so much information that it is impossible to process all of it, so the people just pay attention to things that give them pleasure, rather than information that will educate them. Overall, I think this article is very useful and just reinforces the fact that our primary goal should be to educate students first and that can only be achieved by knowing our students and the best way to teach them.

Beyond Social Networking: Building Toward Learning Communities by Ruth Reynard

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2009/07/22/beyond-social-networking-building-toward-learning-communities.aspx

Summary: This article is mostly about social networking websites can be used to facilitate learning in the classroom. The author gives reasons why social networks should be used as well as tips on how to utilize it effectively. The strongest argument the author makes for using websites like Facebook is the concept of social networking and collaborative learning. Instead of just limiting students to small groups, they can use these social network to automatically build connections and share information to the entire class almost automatically. The author stresses that while the students can use this media to interact socially with each other, teachers should only use it in a professional capacity when using it with students. Like with any other type of learning and thinking the teacher must be there to scaffold learning. She also states that it is important to constantly update and keep track of the information on the social network site all the time and not just from 9-5. The author points out that students in this generation are good at multi-tasking, but if the scope of the information is too broad they could get lost, so using multiple platforms with a narrow topic is good. The author then points out that many skills that teachers try to traditionally teach can be enhanced by using modern tools, such as discussion skills.

Reaction: I agree with this article for the most part. I sort of feel that for younger kids there needs to be a clear separation between personal life and school life, which can get blurred if you use social media this way. It is also difficult to ignore how valuable social media is in the professional and academic world. If these students go to college they will be expected to know how to use social media to synthesize ideas and do academic work. When working with middle and high school students though, there can be good things and bad things with blurring those lines. Those lines can and will get blurred in college and in most knowledge based professions, so in a way, starting will just give them more practice later on. Overall it is a complicated issue and really requires a teacher to examine their students and figure out what is appropriate for them.