http://www.newsweek.com/id/70983/output/print

Article Title: The Future of Reading

As the time left of my Thanksgiving break is dwindling quickly, I squeezed in some time last night to read the latest Thomas Perry novel that I picked up from the local library. At the same time, my husband sits at his desk browsing through the ebooks he has been downloading this week. We talk about the differences in what we read, he skims articles about photography while I sit curled up with a work of fiction.

This particular article is a device being offered by Amazon to bring together the best of both worlds. It is a device called the Kindle, which will allow users to download books to it so that they can read whatever is of interest to them.  Here is a description of the device:  The Kindle (named to evoke the crackling ignition of knowledge) has the dimensions of a paperback, with a tapering of its width that emulates the bulge toward a book’s binding. It weighs but 10.3 ounces, and unlike a laptop computer it does not run hot or make intrusive beeps. A reading device must be sharp and durable, Bezos says, and with the use of E Ink, a breakthrough technology of several years ago that mimes the clarity of a printed book, the Kindle’s six-inch screen posts readable pages. The battery has to last for a while, he adds, since there’s nothing sadder than a book you can’t read because of electile dysfunction. (The Kindle gets as many as 30 hours of reading on a charge, and recharges in two hours.) And, to soothe the anxieties of print-culture stalwarts, in sleep mode the Kindle displays retro images of ancient texts, early printing presses and beloved authors like Emily Dickinson and Jane Austen.”  One can change the font size, too, for ease of reading.

The cost of the device is $400, and books can cost up to $9.99.  The most appealing part of this device to me is that I could carry around 200 books in something the size of a paperback book.  I know the way technology is, the price will come down dramatically in the next year.

If price were no object, would you buy one?  Why or why not?

Source:  http://www.teachandlearn.ca/blog/2007/11/16/conversation-with-pre-service-teachers-teacher-as-learner/

In this blog post, the author discusses his approach to “giving up”the role of the authoritarian teacher and showing his students that he is still a learner, too.  It does require an interesting bit of psychology.  A teacher does not want to give up the sense that they are knowledgeable of their subject matter, but at the same time, they want to encourage students to learn by modeling the behavior of a learner.  His approach of showing that he is willing to learn more about his own subject area would work well in most instances.  It is a hard balance to achieve, as most of the respondents to this blog entry indicated, and it does require us teachers to let students know something about us personally.

I am the kind of teacher who loves to attend workshops and conferences as part of my continued learning.  I let my students know that I am still learning things.  I talk with them about the classes that I am taking, math activities that I have found on the web, and so on.  What I have learned as a fairly new teacher is that if the students don’t make a personal connection with you of some sort, they are far less likely to put their efforts into learning what you have to offer.

I was browsing through the OLDaily entries and found this one about math textbooks which is very alarming.  Basically, there are an unreal amount of computational errors in the texts being reviewed for adoption in 2008.  I wonder if they are just clerical or if textbook authors are this careless.

Source:  http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/education/stories/111607dntextextbooks.268c6c7.html

http://www.e-mentor.edu.pl/_xml/wydania/21/467.pdf

Title: “In Search of Student-Generated Content in Online Education” by John Sener

I picked this article because it connects topics we have discussed this semester, such as student-centered learning, online education, constructivism, and connectivism. The concept the author is researching is student-generated products as it relates to online education. Although the author finds little on this topic, he does site some great examples of student generated work from educational institutions, things like journal articles, podcasts, and encyclopedias.

He brings up a really good point that even though student-generated products are beneficial to the learning of the student, most educational practices still support the lecture and learn approach. Hopefully, with the success of programs like Web 2.0 and its tools, the educational community can be swayed into investing the time in the student-centered learning approach.

The article also points out the negative reasons why student-centered learning is not catching on: cost and lack of motivation of students. He brings out the point that by switching to a student-generated product, more work is placed on the student and less on the instructor. Many students are happy with the status quo, you lecture and I will learn.

The article ends on a very positive note discussing the prosumer.  This is a student who produces the educational product, and then consumes it.  It sounds good on the surface, but putting it into best practice is going to be time consuming.  Only time will tell if this idea catches on…

Source: http://mt.middlebury.edu/middblogs/ganley/bgblogging/assessment/

First of all, I am in love with the photographs that Barbara Ganley has put on this site. I am a big nature lover and found her pictures captivating. This particular entry is about teaching an online class. She brings up a question that all classroom teachers think about–how do I adapt my teaching style to fit the group dynamics of my new class. She talks about getting to know her students and letting that fit how she evaluates them.

My favorite quote by her is:  “I design assignments and experiences for the collective which the group shapes and revises as they get accustomed to having a real hand in the course design. We read one another’s work and get excited (hopefully) about what it could mean to be a part of this learning collective.”

She definitely has created her class design as student centered.  She uses their input to improve her own teaching.  Her online course design sounds like it is effective because it has created a community of learners who communicate, elaborate, and create.  She uses the blogs to keep them connected.  Yet, she also realizes that not everyone will be as enthusiastic as she is about the class.  I have some classes that seem almost fearful of learning math versus classes that find math exciting, and love learning new topics.

This week’s lesson has brought about the point that to have effective evaluations, we need to have student involvement.   A lady at my math leadership meeting said that she gave her students the opportunity to create their own test questions.  She said that her regular students came up with better questions than her honors group, that they had put more thought into the process.  She said she believed this is true because the regular students invested more time and thought into learning the concept than the honors students.  If anyone tries this, please let me know how it went for you.  I am going to try it next semester.  I have two big projects this upcoming six weeks and don’t want to detract from them.

Source:  http://remoteaccess.typepad.com/remote_access/2006/05/blogs_invitatio.html

Title:  Blogs = Invitations into Lives

In this post, Clarence Fisher talks about the value of using blogs.  He says “blogs are doors to the rest of the world.”    His purpose for using blogs is to allow his students to describe their world to others and for them to read about the lives of others around the world.  He is teaching his students to be good communicators as they post comments to the blogs they read.  In other articles that I read about Clarence Fisher, he has created a network of schools that are part of an international blogging project called the International Teen Life Project.  Source:  http://teachersteachingteachers.org/?cat=67.  In this project, students communicated through the blogs, podcasts, and photo essays, to give insight of their lives to others in the connected schools.  I clicked on the following link which was a podcast made by the students on their experience.  It is really worth listening to:  http://web.mac.com/lbaber/iWeb/Teenlife/Podcast/5CACB32F-6201-4EF7-A747-445DFFD71294.html.  The students talk about issues that affect them, like terrorism and teen suicide.  The two students in the podcast tell why this project is helpful to them.

Source: http://remoteaccess.typepad.com/remote_access/2007/10/learning-rememb.html

Reading this article at Remote Access was very thought provoking. My definition of learning had been relatively short term: Teach students a foundation of knowledge, help them build on the foundation, and hope that the knowledge stays with them for state testing and college entrance exams. What I really need to be teaching them is the process of learning so that as they go out into the world, they can be self-sufficient learners. I need to teach them to be resourceful–how to find the information that they don’t know. This year, I am trying to teach my students through more modern means, Internet research projects, building models of geometry concepts, and relating geometry concepts to construction. I am in my own experiment, testing a hypothesis of giving students ownership of their learning, trying to reach a goal of making them better learners and thinkers.

It will be several years before I begin to see the results of my curriculum changes. So until then, I will keep this learning experiment running, until the data from the future becomes the present, and I know if I am on the right track.

George Siemens’ article gives some insight into a new concept of learning (for me) called connectivism. Source: http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm. Whenever I am commenting on articles of interest, I like to pick one statement from the reading that is meaningful to me. This time, it is “Informal learning is a significant aspect of our learning experience. Formal education no longer comprises the majority of our learning. Learning now occurs in a variety of ways – through communities of practice, personal networks, and through completion of work-related tasks.” So the challenge to teachers is to provide more learning opportunities for students of both varieties.

Lastly, the “Future of Learning” manifesto (the long version) really brought about a state of confusion for me.  Source:  http://thinklab.typepad.com/think_lab/2007/01/the_future_of_l.html

If this is how my students think, then do I, as a digital immigrant, have any hope of really reaching them?  Do students find any value in what we are trying to teach them?  Can we, as teachers, be taught to make a connection with a students?  I would be curious to hear what others think.  Are the ways I mention above a step in the right direction?

Source:  http://www.edutopia.org/teachers-and-students-meet-middle-learners

The article titled “Teachers and Students Meet in the Middle” brings out a good point in that sometimes the teacher becomes the learner in their own classroom.  It does bring about a sense of goodwill when a student can show a teacher how to do something new.  In my math classroom, I have had students show me a faster way to solve a problem, and I then became the learner.

Yet, because of the way our schools are structured with content that needs to be covered, there is little opportunity for students to become teachers.  Most classes don’t frequently go to the computer lab, nor do most teachers even use technology to teach in their classroom.  When schools become more technology oriented, there will be a shift towards students becoming the teachers.

I think the best opportunity for teachers to become learners is through online courses like this one.  Because of the way we have access to each other’s blogs, we can learn from our professor and from each other.

Source:  http://www.districtadministration.com/pulse/commentpost.aspx?news=no&postid=48341

In this week’s readings and postings, we were to pick a story from the gator, look at teachers and their roles, and write about it.   I chose this article for the heart of its message–Caveman learned by example, and we are still like cavemen.  At first, you are thinking about the years of evolution, our civilized societies, modern advances in housing, transportation, and technology, and feeling a little insulted at being compared to a caveman.  Then, the author makes this point:  “Why does it matter that cave men did not have classrooms? The existence of classrooms is based on the assumption, an assumption that is never discussed but always assumed, that people can learn by sitting quietly and listening. We imagine that people learn by being told the truth by experts and practicing to take tests to see if their minds can retain that truth.”

The role of a “teacher” in the caveman era was to show someone how to hunt, how to survive, and history was passed down orally, sitting around a campfire.  The role of the modern teacher has been to tell students what they need to know while they sit quietly, give them lots of busy work to show that they know the material, and grade them on how well they can remember.  The author of this article, Roger Schank,  calls this the “mass compulsory education.”

Now, educational learning theory is favoring the hands-on approach, cooperative learning, learning by doing, getting our students more actively involved in their learning.  Schank sums it up pretty well with these sentences:   “If experience is separated from knowledge, if what we teach is not about doing at all, then we teaching to the conscious. Conscious people may make good intellectuals, but those intellectuals are unlikely to become practitioners.  Call me crazy but I think we have plenty of intellectuals and the ability to train more. Teaching people to work together, reason about new situations, achieve their goals, just as cave men did, is what education should be about.”

This week’s assignment asked us to look for innovative course design.  I did a Google search using the phrase “innovative course design high school” and after looking through several pages, I came across a name that I am very familiar with–the Massachusetts Department of Education.  I have extensively used their public domain state testing questions as they are very similar to CATS questions.  The link for those multiple choice and open response questions is http://www.doe.mass.edu/mcas/testitems.html.  The main part of the page has 2007 questions, but there are hyperlinks on this page for 2006 and years before.

Their innovative course design is for improving mathematics scores.  The link to the article is http://campustechnology.com/articles/50670/.  The program they use is called Simcalc Mathworlds, and there is a link at the bottom of the article to the download site.  What I like about the program is that it is available in three formats:  TI-83/84 calculators, computer program, or TI-Navigator (a networking system for TI graphing calculators).  The computer download is 100 megabytes.  From a glance, it appears that it teaches students about different types of graphs (linear, quadratic, exponential, etc.).  I will play and post my thoughts this week.