November 21 post

Technology in Social Studies Instruction (Ch.12)

I was very surprised to learn that of all the curriculum areas, Social Studies has likely been the most heavily affected by advances in technology. The reason is not because of software specifically designed for Social Studies instruction. In fact, the text explains that because social studies mostly falls by the wayside (due to the fact that it’s not usually included in statewide assessments), most technology resources are directed away from it and toward math and language arts (heavily tested curriculum).

Social Studies has been affected by technology in that students are more connected to the world around them and have a huge amount of information available to them. Many students are finding information online that is contradictory to the teacher and/or the text and are challenging what is being taught. I think that this is actually a good thing. It provides the opportunity for relevant discussion of social studies topics and students become invested in their learning. It also makes necessary deliberate instruction in information literacy. Much of the information available online has a heavy bias or is just downright wrong. Students need to learn how to examine information they find online and evaluate it for biases and erroneous information.

Technology can be integrated into the social studies curriculum in the following ways:
1. Simulations – designed to immerse students in problem-solving scenarios where they must apply what they have learned to make decisions and solve problems.
2. Graphic Representations – using graphing software and spreadsheets to help students analyze information and see trends more easily; timeline generators; and interactive maps
3. Virtual Field Trips – students visit sites via the internet. These can take the place of travel or supplement trips they do take by providing prior knowledge.
4. Student Telecollaborations – email and internet-based projects that allow students to work with more diverse people.
5. Digital Storytelling – using images and audio to tell the stories of lives, events or places.
6. Digital Information Critiques – analyze information for accuracy and bias
7. Electronic Research
8. GIS (Geographic Information Systems) – houses information about the surface of the earth and allows students to view, manipulate, and analyze that information
and
GPS (Global Positioning System) – geocaching (which I love to do)
9. Practice of Factual Information – drill and practice of social studies content such as states and capitals, important dates, maps, etc.

November 7 Post

Integrating the Internet into the Curriculum (Ch.8)

I am very interested in learning about how to use the internet in the classroom. When I left the classroom in 2003, students at my school did not have access to material on the internet at school. As a result, I only used the internet as a productivity tool.

In chapter 8, I learned that I do need to be careful about my eagerness to integrate the internet into the classroom. I learned that it is very important to think about the relative advantages of internet use in teaching because web-based activities take a lot of time to develop and implement and because they are difficult to make accessible and useful for instruction. To ensure that the internet is not misused, teachers should make sure that the instructional activity meets the following criteria.
1. The web activity should meet a regular curriculum objective so that computer use is a means to an end and not the end in itself.
2. The web activity should require students to do something with the information they find on the internet (requiring higher level thinking and skills). The activity should culminate in the production of something new that shows what the students have learned.
3. The web activity should be "doable" in a timely manner and with the resources available to the teacher.
4. The web activity should be something students can't do without the internet. In other words (as I learned from early readings about affordances), if you can teach the lesson without the computer, do it.

The text discussed many good reasons for using web-based activities in instruction.
They include:
1. To support student research by providing sources of information.
2. To motivate students to write by participating in activities like epals and electronic publishing.
3. To develop collaboration skills through cooperative research projects, electronic publishing, problem-based learning, and social action projects.
4. To provide opportunities for multicultural experiences through virtual field trips and social action projects.

I also appreciated the WebQuest Rubric as a good tool for evaluating the quality of web-based activities and for choosing the best activities to meet student needs.

October 24 Post

Max's Sandbox (now Max's Toolbox)

When reading chapter 4 in out textbook, I was very excited about the little sidebar concerning Max's Sandbox. It is a tool to help younger students and students with special needs use Microsoft Word, Excel, and Power Point applications. Several comments in the lesson plan critiques mentioned concern about the ability of younger students to use the specified technology to complete the learning activities. This tool is a great solution!! Even when teaching older students, there are often children in the classroom who are fuinctioning far below grade level and are mainstreamed in for science and social studies. This would allow them to participate!!

So, I got online to do some research on my own. I learned that Max's Sandbox was developed and tested by an Australian company, eWord. The developers worked closely with early childhood educators to make sure that the software would be suitable for use with kindegarden and early elementary students and children with special needs. The program includes children's templates for producing documents and presentations, sound recording capabilities, and a talking bird that helps even non-readers create projects.

After all this, I was so eager to actually see the product!! I found a place where you were supposed to be able to download a free trial, but it wouldn't work!! I was so frustrated!! I went around the internet looking for a way in, but just couldn't find it. Finally, I went back to the company web page and found an email address. I decided to use an affordance of the internet, and sent an email asking for help. After corresponding with a representative of the company, I learned that the name had been changed to Max's Toolbox, but was still available. (I copied the reply below.) Anyway, for anyone who wants to take a look, the address is www.maxstoolbox.com. The site also has lesson ideas for teaching students how to use the software. I look forward to using this tool in my classroom to help make technology available to all students!!

An extra note of thanks to David Howell from eWord. He responded to my email quickly and graciously!

Hi Sonja,

Thank you for your enquiry about Max’s Sandbox. Max’s Sandbox was actually upgraded to Max’s Toolbox a few years ago! You can get to the site here: www.maxstoolbox.com

www.maxssandbox.com was supposed to go to the same site, but it wasn’t working! Thank you for bringing that to our attention. We’ve fixed that now.

You can download a trial version that works with Office 2000+ from the site above.

If you have any problems or questions, please email me.

Cheers,

David.

October 10 Post

Teaching with Word Processing, Spreadsheet, and Database Software

Because it is used by teachers and students across all subject areas, word processing software is the most commonly used productivity tool. Affordances of word processing include saving time for both teachers and students, enhancing the appearance of documents and reports, and ease in sharing and editing documents in collaborative work. I learned a new way to use word processing to aid instruction in writing. One activity in the book was called "Using Color". It involves having the students hilight things like topic sentences, supporting details, and conclusion sentences when writing. It could also be used to teach the elements of poetry (alliteration, similies, etc). Teachers could ask students to compose poems with these elements and hilight or use a different font to show where they occur.

Spreadsheets are most often used for math demonstrations and teaching business education concepts , but they can be used as a part of science and social studies investigations as well. A new affordance of spreadsheet software I learned is that it increases student motivation to work with math, thereby solving the instructional problem of students finding math boring. Instructional strategies discussed include using spreadsheets to do a demonstration of numerical concepts, to enhance student reports and presentations, to help students focus on mathematical problem solving by doing the number operations and allowing students to focus on higher-level concepts, to sort and analyze data, and to motivate student effort by teaching them how to project grades.

Databases are used more for teacher productivity, but students can use them to find relationships among pieces of information that they might not otherwise be able to perceive. I had never thought about using databases in instruction, but the textbook gave several ideas which interest me very much. The first suggested activity was to have students create a database of information pertaining to U.S. Presidents. It would include information like party affiliation, prior leadership experience, state of birth, and the number of states in the U.S. at the time. The students could then use the database to find answer to questions like the number of years each party was in power and the how the U.S. grew. Another great database activity idea was collecting information from the tombstones of a cemetary. Then the students could answer questions about life spans during various time periods, infant mortality, family size, etc. I will definitely try to find more ways to use databases and data mining in the classroom!!

Sept. 26 Post - Instructional Software

I did not really realize the differences between Drill and Practice software and Tutorial software, so I spent some time focusing on this information from chapter 3.
Here's what I learned. . . .

According to our text, Drill and Practice software is "the most maligned of the software activities." I would have agreed before looking at how to better integrate this kind of software into my teaching. The reason this type of software is so maligned is that it is so misused. The function of drill and practice software is not instruction, but PRACTICE. If used in this way, this type of software has many benefits including opportunity for the effective practice students need to retain new learning, immediate feedback, motivation, and saving teacher time. If teachers use drill and practice software in place of worksheets and/or homework assignments and to help students prepare for tests, they can be of great benefit for students. This type of software doesn't really lend itself toward the constructivist theory of teaching, but it would be helpful in helping teachers meet the student testing standards imposed by No Child Left Behind.

Tutorial Software is a self-contained unit of instruction rather than a supplement to instruction. Students use the software to learn the material without any other help or materials. Most of this type of software is geared toward older students and adults who read well. There are not many good tutorial software programs available because it is so difficult and expensive to design and develop. Criteria for selecting good tutorial software from what is available include programs that
1)require lots of student interaction, 2)allow students to control the rate text appears on the screen and review already viewed material, 3)are able to provide appropriate feedback to short answer responses by students and provide opportunity to try again, and 4)provide good record-keeping and progress reports for the teacher. Tutorial software can be integrated into teaching by providing self-paced reviews of instruction for remediation and independent learning for advanced students.

September 12 post

I agree with the author of our textbook that both constructivist and objectivist approaches to education are necessary to best serve learners and teachers. My tendency would be toward the more cooperative and creative approach that focuses on learning to learn and is more natrally motivating to students. But, in today's world of teacher accountability and student testing, an emphasis must be placed on direct instruction where required skills are systematically taught.
Technology can be helpful in making a merger of constructivist and objectivist teaching happen in the classroom. Students develop specific skills through drill-and-practice, instructional games, and tutorials as a part of objectivist learning activities. Multimedia technology and simulation software are best suited for helping students and teachers work cooperatively and creatively in constructivist learning activities and experiences. Technology can also be supportive of either model by creating motivation to learn, making the most of limited personnel and resources, removing physical/logistical barriers to learning, and developing information literacy and visual literacy skills. The text looks to the work of Tennyson (1990) as a guide to dividing time between objectivist and constructivist teaching. He suggests that about 30% of learning time should be spent in direct instruction of skills and procedures and about 70% be spent on the "employment of knowledge (contextual skills, cognitive strategies, and creative processes)".

Blog entry for Aug. 29

Reading in chapter one of the textbook, especially the discussion on where we've been in the past with educational technology, got me thinking about how much has changed during my relatively short lifetime. I think that it will be an excellent exercise to reflect on that past history and the changes in educational technology that I have experienced myself.

In the beginning years of my schooling, the only technology used regularly in the classroom were television, film strips, and record players. It was not until I reached high school in the late 1980s that use of a computer became a part of my coursework. I took a computer programming course where we wrote programming code in BASIC. We learned how to create graphics, sorting mechanisms, and simple games like "Guess the number". We did not have a computer in the home at all, although my parents did purchase a typewriter for me that stored a line of text at a time. On the audio-visual side of things, the schools were still using film strips but had added tape players (both audio and video) to the technology used.

I started college in the fall of 1987. For my coursework in education, I was required to take a computer course - again a course in programming in
BASIC. As a part of some of my later education classes, I used and evaluated some educational software that was mostly designed for student drill and practice - mostly MECC software. In fall 1990, as a part of my methods block, two of the professors planned on setting up email at each of the schools where we were doing month-long practicums. We were to turn in assignments - journal reflections, lesson plans, etc. using this method of delivery. The plan was to give each school a computer for the university students to use. For reasons of which I am not aware, this never came to be. But I remember thinking what an amazing tool this could be.

I began my teaching career in the fall of 1991. The technology available in my classroom included a film strip projector and an audio tape player with 5 sets of headphones. I had access to an overhead projector, television, VCR, and a reel to reel projector (16mm?). The school office had one copy machine, and class copies of papers were made with a purple mimmeograph machine (my fingertips were constantly purple).

During the next few years, each classroom was equipped with an Apple II e computer and a printer. This was mostly used for basic word processing (mostly by me) and some drill and practice software for the students. Within a few years, the school began to use standard copy machines for all copies.

Sometime around 1997, our school made the transition from the old apple computers to the I Book (I'm not sure if that's the correct name). These computers were used still mostly by the teacher. I took many training courses on the computer and began to create and use Hyperstudio in my teaching. I also learned to connect my computer to a large television monitor and created many teaching presentations. Around that time, our school began to keep attendance records on the computer network. We posted our attendance each morning. At this point, that was the only record-keeping done via computer. I loved using the computer to create and file materials for use in the classroom and for communication with parents. I almost forgot - it was at this time that the students began to use computers to take AR (accelerated reader) tests. My students and I had to share one computer for all of these functions. Sometime during this time frame, the school also purchased a class set of Alpha Smarts that could be checked out and used by teachers.

A couple of years later, the school system went to keeping grades on the computer. We had a crash course in using the STI system during one of the inservice days prior to the start of school. A second "student" computer station was added to each classroom. That year we also got internet access in each classroom. Our principal began to using the computer network for staff announcements and reminders. Checklists for courses of study, room inventory, textbook inventory, and other teacher-centered forms and materials were available on the school network.

I have been out of the regular classroom for five years now, but technology has continued to change and develop. Now the school and the teachers have web pages that parents and students can access to check on announcements and assignemnts. The school has added a computer lab as well.


To relate all of this reflection back to the text, I can see some important take-aways:
1) That technology isn't a cure-all or quick-fix for all the challenges faced by today's teachers.
2) That we as teachers must expect constant change in technology use and continue to invest time in exploring the best ways to implement that technology in our teaching.
3) That good teachers are more essential than ever - to evaluate technology for use in teaching, to decide which "pieces" work and which need to be adjusted or changed, to invest time in learning new technologies, and to match technology resources and methods to the needs of our students.