Joe Science’s MEDU603 Blog

If you read Jim’s blog, he comments about our web 2.0 knowledge.  As of July 6,2008 there has been talk of web 3.0.  My question is what is going to happen to all of the web 2.0 tools that are out there.  I went to a few sites while are were working on our spreadsheet and they did not work the way they were supposed or said error contact the webmaster.  When web 2.0 makes the shift into web 3.0 how much is going to change with it?  How many are going to expire because they cannot keep up?

I also cannot believe the vast amount of resources out there on the web.  I never thought there were so many things out there.  There are so many web tools out there that can enhance learning and so little time.  We could search for hours and still not see and try out half of them.  Now for the questions.  What is blocked in my school?  What can I do?  I am looking forward to implemeting these tools because I will have fun teaching them to my studnents and I think that they will have fun using them.  My only thoght and fear is that I will be told to use that God-aweful study wiz program that does not work half of the time.  I am excited to work with the kids with these; i hope I don’t get shot down.  I would suck the wind out of my sails after taking this class.

In one of my blogs, I stated that I was a Mindset 1 teacher.  Having students with a 1-to-1 laptop initative, my thoughts were very stagnet.  My mind was stuck in processing and creating.  My thoughts were typing notes, spreadsheets on a lab, powerpoint or comic life on a project and internet research for a paper or essay.  Occassionally, I opened up to web animations with worksheets and also picture notes.  Looking back on it now, I was not thinking about change due to time constraints, not really wanting to deal with technology, and also lack of knowledge of different tools.  This class has really opened my eyes to what I can do with my studnets in the classroom with the tools that are out there for Web 2.0 and our 1-to-1 laptops.  I also realize that there are teachers that have to scrape together time and materials to do things like this with there students where I have access to this everyday.

I am going to shift gradually into the Mindset 2 category.  I will have to teach the tools demonstrating their implications and also crack down on management with clear expectations.  Students are going to use the technology that we have to collaborate with each other and share information.  I also want to engage them more with some things that might interest them more.  The google docs spreadsheet listem some sites that allows for unlimited creativity.  I am going to have them search, organize, and process information and then let the express it creatively through a project.  If we are allowed to blog, they can express their thoughts and feelings.  I will also add in collaboration and social interactions into the mix as they are important life skills to posess.

The only questions that I have are ones that cannot be ansered until I try it.  Will my studnets like it and/or appreciate it?  Will they use it to the fullest potential?  What will the management issues be?  How will the administration react and are there restrictions?  TIme will tell and hopefully, I will be able to blog about it, answering these questions and have some examples about what I did using Web 2.0 in my class.

I am not sure on this one.  I like the idea, but how much use is it going to be for me.  My world crashed and my hear sank when Randy announced that most districts block these types of sites.  So, does that mean that I am now back to bookmarking solely on my MacBook and every printing my bookmarks weekly should a mac-bomb hits or a laptop crash happens?

HOWEVER, I have been keeping a small notebook of sites that I have used for teaching.  It would be very nice to have a place to keep them so I would not have to store a paper copy of things.  That is where I would find this useful.  If the macbook crashes, then I can go to the website and rebuild my bookmarks on that particular machine.  Another affordance that I see being a good thing the idea of “fake-collaboration.”  What I mean by that is I can see other science teacher’s bookmarks and get some cool sites and materials from them and vice versa.  It is like the collaboration without actually getting comments or chatting with them.  I will take all the resources that I can get my hands on for teaching…and several heads are better then mine alone.

This is something that I am definitly going to use in my class.  The Code Blue wiki is something that really peaked my interest.  It is used for variety of things as we have seen from our research.  It is used as a starting place for the students to access information.  I also saw that students and the teacher were adding ideas and brainstorming some ideas for the diagnosis activity.  Seeing a wiki in action like this is really cool.  I do CSI activities where the students have to solve crime scenes and explain potentially what is happening near the scene causing the scenario.  I also have to teach human biology for a good portion.  There was a lot of nice info dumped there for me to access in the future.  I just hope that Wikis are not blocked at my school.  If so, I will be crushed. 

The one thing that I like about the wiki process is that it is a collaboration.  I hope that I can collaborate with my students and engage them enough to participate.  I am also looking forward to collaboration with other science teachers who may find my wiki helpful and also add some things that would be helpful to me and others.  I would love to be part of this “club.”  I am always looking for new ideas and I love to share my ideas.

The only constraints that I see happening is the students not really taking it seriously and just dumping any type of info that they want.  The other idea is that an individual student that might post something really great may not get the credit deserved for the post and then his/her work quality goes down.  I really think this is a useful tool, better then a teacher web page on a district website.  In my situation, I am going to really use wikis to my advantage.

I really loved learning how RSS feeds work.  I always hear about and see it but did not know how it functions.  I liked seeing how it worked in class.  It really makes life easier to get updated information on most websites.  I like what it did just for us with our blogposts.  I cannot wait to see what other sites that I visit have feeds to keep me in the loop.  Being a science teacher and wanted to be current on all the trends, I want to be notified of what is coming in.  I am very happy and excited!  This is something that I am definitely going to use on the future.

I don’t mean to go philosophical but with the blog questions, it poses the questions about what needs to be done and also if it is a really good tool to use.  Before I go ahead and answer the questions, I would like to say that I from today’s class I really liked researching the nature of blogs and what they are truly about.  I think that it is a great tool to utilize and I hope I can use it in my classes.  It really can take skills from other classes and blend them together in a class and really create a social environment.  I like the social interactions and also the critical thinking behind it.  Another thing that I like is that it boosts creativity and innovation to a lesson that hopefully will engage the students and also boosting the richness of class with offering ideas for projects and other topics.

Now on to the questions:

1.  The affordances that I see out weigh the constraints.  I like the way that blogs open up the sense of community with their other classmates and me.  If the students can comment back to each other and analyze and collaborate with ideas, they truly learn from each other (distributed learning/cooperative learning).  Outsiders can read the blogs and they can comment on the blogs and give feedback and offer some knowledge on a given concept.  Another area that I like is participation.  This might engage my students more and also allow participation to those who are too shy/embarassed to raise their hand in a discussion.  Finally, the last comment that I have about the affordance is that it allows the teacher to assess the students with their social skills and critical thinking.  Also, it serves as an archive of work for kids to show off as a progression.  It also show the parents what is going on in class.  The constraints that I see is that anyone can get into the blogs, and we all know that there are some really strange people out there.  The students can use it as a free gab session and some students will lose their privilages.  Another one that is obvious is management for appropriate of content and staying on task.  There is going to be alot of management issues that can arise.  Also, what if the parents do not approve and they start complaining. 

2.  The skills that the students have to know are vast and I do not know if I can hit them all, but I will tell you what the majors are.  The first is going to be acceptable use of the computer and the reason for the blogging.  The other thing that I will have to really stress and model a few times is the social skills and social interactions that are needed to connect.  With my alternative students, I really need to tell them to lose the street and gang attitude aside and to get serious with the task at hand.  For about 80% of my kids, this will be a new skill.  Finally the last thing that I need to teach is analytical/critical thinking.  I want my studnents to be expressive, but I want them to know the how and why they are going through the motions and how it applies to our world, our class, and how it can relate to them (I do a lot with out environment).

3.  I was all set to be on of the people Randy mentioned in class.  I want to be one to throw all of the technology at my kids and let them dive into it and start all of this.  I know that before all of this, I will have to teach the skills I listed in #2 and have the studnents develop automaticity with the skills.  Once the skills are developed, we can apply them to the technology we are using.

4.  As we saw in class, there are various ways to use blogs.  I would like to start out to use the blogs for the students to respond to a posting that I put up.  Eventually, I will have students write their own blogs and have the students react and comment to each others ideas.  I would like to use it as a collaboration tool with others outside the class to really make it interactive.

As it is sown, there is a lot to doing blogs in class.  I say that the good out-weigh the bad.  There is a lot of preparation to it so the students have the basic skills to do it.  What is cool aobut the idea is that these skills are essential to everyday learing and one that are essential for life.  I hope my turn out is good as a web tool for my class.  Stay tuned for further details.

My girlfriend and I were playing the game of…”What is the first word that pops in your head when I say this.”  So, I thought that I would answer the question about word that describe the 21st century classroom.  My three words are engage, construct, and assessment.

There are so many options out on the web, our students who have access to computers can do anything and the sky is the limit.  I will admit as I stated earlier, I was a mindset 1 person.  Now this school year I will be shifting into the mindset 2 catagory.  I am going to use many of the tools that we are learning about in class and also ones that I read about in the Web 2.0: new tools, new schools book.  I am going to try to engage my students more than before and also use our technology for more than pumping out products.  I will allow my students to explore and construct both their own knowledge and projects to allow for creativity.

The idea of assessment fits into me as the teacher and them as the students.  WIth regards to my students, I can assess the content and also I can assess things that I could not before such as social interactions and critical thinking more accurately.  The other types of assessment is more of evaluation.  I can have students look for information and/or an openended topic and have them determine its value and creditability and react and respond to it.

Parts of Chapter 2 from the New Literacies¹ book put thing in perspective for me as a teacher that has a 1-to1 laptop initiative.  In my first year, looking back on it, I was in the Mindset 1 category.  The chart on page 38 really gives a nice summary about how people take to learning, education, and society.  I focused on the individual using technology to produce things such as a paper or a comic.  I forgot about the social and global interactions that the computer can offer the students.  I also learned in the last two classes that I can perform authentic assessments and gauge my students’ abilities such as critical thinking and social skills.  The Mindset 2 category explains that the focus should be on things such as collective intelligence, fluidity, and using tools for remediating and relating.  I see this now as a way to cut down on management issues.  I need to push for the idea that I am an expert but not the only one, making me a resource.  Students need to touch base with others [experts or evaluated sources] to construct their own knowledge and share it with others.  This is learning on a optimal digital level and network.  There is distributed learning because of a hybrid or resources and instructional methods.

There is an idea on page 59 about the new technologies allowing people to multi-task.  The idea is that too much time was spent on one task and that now students can learn better and at a greater pace because they can multi-task easier and faster.  I am not sure if I agree with that idea.  I feel that if we as teachers urge this premise, then some concepts will not be truly learned and some things will be passed over.  I can see having the students do research for a project and completing a blog or a worksheet at the same time, but not doing a lot at once.  I tried doing a lot at once and

Towards the end of the chapter pages 55-62 really offer some good ideas about how technology really has the benefits in the class as an alternative to pencil and paper activity.  That is really the idea behind a 21^st Century Classroom. I now see the shift that is taking place for education and I am looking forward to integrating it into my classroom and curriculum. I feel that my students will enjoy learning this way and it will be easier to plan a lesion, have student center instruction, and engage my students better.  This is my ticket into the 21^st century.

¹Lanshshear, C. & Knobel, M. (2007). Nw Literacies: everyday practices & classroom learning (2^nd ed.). New York: Open University Press.

Today’s class was excellent way to explore exactly what the 21^st century classroom is looking like.  The two groups took very different approaches to setting up and displaying their concept maps.  One group defined and described what the classroom is starting to look like.  This group also added key points such as what tools are utilized, what methods are used, and how the students will be assessed.  It gave a refreshing outlook as to how the teacher can design the class and know exactly what goals are going to be met and levels are going to be achieved. 

The other group did a compare and contrast mapping about the 21^st century class and style of education.  I really liked that map.  In fact, I think that every administrator should see that chart.  It explains what the groups are (natives and new-comers) for technology in the classroom.  The part I really liked was the portion of that map that showed schools need support and programs for learning for the teachers.  Us [teachers] have to be ahead of the curve so we can adequately plan, utilize, and troubleshoot in our classes. 

Even though the nature of the maps was in some ways different, the consensus was the same.  The classroom will grow with the technology. There is much to gain from this. The big thing is social and global interactions which can take place is a true eye opener and great for our students to have. The ways that students can get and organize information plus evaluate is of great value.  The greatest thing that I have seen is when the students can present it and show off creativity and content at the same time.

I gave this title a question mark and an exclamation mark because it is a question and a frustration that I have.  I am getting the sense that 21st century learning in a way that is outside the box and style of traditional learning. It a llows our students to utilize technology to get outside the four cynderblock walls of a classroom using a book, pencil, and a piece of paper. The students can go for information at different sites. The best part is the interactions that can be made. Students can interact with people of different backgrounds with different knowledge. Students can use technology to see what would be impossible to be seen or made in real-life. The other aspect is creativity. Students can show off who they are and who they want to be by utilizing different programs and resources available to them or one they find to organize and demonstrate their knowledge of content.

The problem with this is students are knowing this.  Therefore, I am seeing that the students are using technology not just as a tool but as an excuse, or as Jim said a “crutch.”  I have students tell me that they do not have to memorize anything because they will always have the means to look it up on the Internet.  I also have the problem that if a student has a laptop taken from him/her, they will tell me that they cannot complete the assignment because they do not have their laptop.  It seems that they do not want to do anything out of a book and/or they do not want to memorize concepts.  That is the frustration part! 

SO, the question remains, how far should we go with technology and what should we expect from our students.  Should we expect less or change our expectations?  My answer is NO, I set the bar high and set clear and high expectations.  There are things that I want memorized because they are concepts that are set within the state standards but also there are also those times where there is a time where, “you never know.”  There are going to be some situations where you will not have the means to look things up for whatever reason.  That is why it is essential to not just look up things but committ them to memory.  My personal snake story is tribute to that and I tell my students that so they have an example how the importance.  I am glad to be a part of this 21st century learning and style of teaching, but we as teachers need to be careful about what we really want our students to achieve beyond learning and demonstrating basic skills.