Never the teacher, but always the help.

Although this article seems to be not only focused on Social Studies in that its conclusions will apply to all disciplines, it is very helpful and tends yo run along the sames lines as most articles I have read advocating technology in the classroom. The main conclusion always being, the computer can never be the teacher, but may only serve as supplemental to regualr curriculum and will never suffice for good ol' fashioned teacher-student interaction.

The authors state that the research makes, "the assumption that successful computer integration into classroom teaching is less associated with computer literacy than it is with exposure to various methods of instruction which use computers. " This is key, that the computer is only an effective tool when it is used in a variety of new and interesting ways. If you are using the computer in the same way students use it at home or at the Library, then you have suddenly lost all of your foothold.




The Article concludes very concisely the four important points of the research results,

"This implies the need to provide pre-service and classroom teachers with opportunities to develop teaching methods for computer integration..." IS this not what we are doing in our Instructional Technology Class...okay good. Check.

"Secondly, within a constantly changing technological environment, teachers will need to constantly review their teaching practices and use professional development monies and programs to explore possibilities for improving their teaching with new technologies..." Ah yes, what any good educator should practice, Professional Development. Alright, what else do the authors have to say?

"Thirdly, teacher education programs should provide pre-service teachers with computer related courses, methods-related courses, demonstrated instruction, and a course on the history and philosophy of technology in education, as they impact those teachers' use of computers for both instructional and classroom uses..." Okay Western, I think we are on the right track.

The last recommendation they make says, "We are in a time of great change that is both exciting and challenging for teachers. Education will not be improved by technology, it will be improved by teachers who develop creative methods and strategies for using the technology in their classrooms. An approach to technology integration, therefore, embraces the teacher as pedagogue focusing on teaching first and technology second." Ah-HAH. The general theme in all technology in education. Technology can never become a crutch. It must remain a tool in our tool belt, waiting for that perfect lesson to be integrated into.

This research article was useful, in that it put technology in the classroom to the test. And alas, it revealed similar conclusions we have seen all along.



Beaudin, Lorraine, & Grigg, Lance, "Integration of Computer Technology in the Social Studies Classroom: An Argument for a Focus on Teaching Methods," Canada's National Social Studies Journal, v. 35, no. 2, 2001

Media Overload.

In the article " Podcasting & VODcasting; A white Paper," the author Peter Meng discusses the new flood of alternative media forms, and how there will soon be need for a centralized media organization system in order for people to be able to sort through and decipher what they wish to look at.



He offers basic definitions of both, "To define it: Podcasting is the process of capturing an audio event, song, speech, or mix of sounds and then posting that digital sound object to a Web site or "blog" in a data structure called an RSS 2.0 envelope...RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication." p.64

"VODcasting...the "VOD" stands for "video-on-demand" ...almost identical to podcasting. The difference is that the content is video versus audio." p. 64


Personally, my mother knows more about Podcasts then I do, for some reason I have always steered clear of these foreign files that seemed to big fo me to bog my computer down with.

However I could see their budding usefullness for our modernday classrooms.

Mengs goes on to say, "Both of these technologies are evolving rapidly and will become significant players in media distribution.As the tools to capture content become more prevelant and easier to use variations on the theme will occur at a surprising rate." p. 68-69

This insight will most likely holdtrue when one can observe the common trends with media that are similar to pod and VOD casting. The author argues that this new technology is not a fleating fad, but a form of file storage that is here to stay. They are very efficient and easy to store, access and share. So this means that teachers should become familiar with these forms of technology.

Meng ends his article saying, " The portable and on-demand nature of podcasting and VODcasting make them technologies woth persuing, implementing, and supporting." p. 69

Even though I can easily see these forms of media making their way into my daily curriculum, I think it may be a difficult adaption for all techer to make. Especially since even though SMART classrooms are seen as a necessity, they are not as common as one might hope.


Meng, Peter, "Podcasting and VODcasting: A White Paper," Computers in Education, Annual Editions, 12th ed, 2007, McGraw Hill, pp. 64-70.

A more meaningful test?

I read the article "MISSES: Web-Based Examination, Evaluation, and Guidance," written by Zuhal Tanrikulu. (MISSES- Management Information Systems) The authors identifies the objective as an equalization of classroom information. the author writes, "Students should be able to access the system from anywhere and at anytime, and instructors should be able to upload course documents, handouts, exams, class notes, and questions without constraints." (p. 148) This concepts fits into the ideas of Social Justice. This allows for all students to walk to the library and get that extra study time, e-mail that extra question to the teacher that they were embarassed to ask in class.

The author lists the goals as:

"1. Making classrooms more geographically and demograohically available.
2. Providing a mechanism for distribution of the courses over the internet
3. Accessing all the MIS courses at the students' request
4. Converting all types of classical exams to electronic types in a short period
5. Increasing the students' knowledge of the course material." (p.148)

This is concluded as a unique system because of its testing style. The requirement of a pool of questions, and then after the students takes the test, they are shown the content material they need to study further. This provides a more comprehensive grade for the student so they not only get a letter, but then begin to understand their weaknesses. This task is not easy for an educator to do alone when they hav five class periods with 20-35 students in each class.

It is the way to avoid the ambiguity of the letter grade by providing additional assistance for students. The authors writes that this could be an important tool, however accessability and user friendliness are key. If these MISSES programs are to be used successfully, they must be easy for the student and the teacher to use.

Could this be the solution to the short-comings of the letter grade, a common debate in educational philosophy today?


Tanrikulu, Zuhal, "MISSES:Web-Based Examination, Evaluation, and Guidance," Computers in Education, Annual Editions, 12th ed, 2007, McGraw Hill.

In my dream world of being an educator...
I would be in the intercity, teaching students with low SES. I would have a small class, they would all get their own laptops funded by the school. Each student would have their own textbook, they would get breakfast and lunch everyday for free...So, reviewing this article fits into my dreamworld...by that i mean it is technology in its dream state.

This article recommends how to use technology to create a better learning environment.

From T.H.E. Journal
Using Technology to Enhance the Classroom Environment By Lawrence E. Levine, Ph. D., Stevens Institute of Technology

Larence writes, "The first thing to realize is that a laptop classroom is actually two facilities in one. With laptop lids down, it is an ordinary classroom; with the lids up, it is a computer laboratory. Instructors can move seamlessly between these two scenarios and exploit each to their advantage. " This is important. The classroom can suddenly become a mutli-functional room with endless possibilities for you curriculum planning.

This is reinforced by Mark Warschauer, David Grant, Gabriel Del Real, and Michelle Rousseau's article "Promoting Academic Literacy with technology: Successful Laptop Programs in K-12 Schools."

The authors write that "the promotion of academic literacy involves far more than "teaching English." Rather, it involves offering students "access to the ranges of knowledge, abilities, and forms of language" that will enable the to "lay claim to the social identities that afford them a participant status" in academic communities, and provide scaffolding and supportive environment necessary for attainment of these." (p. 161)



However, in this article, the authors discover that, "unfortunately...most K-12 teachers in the US have experienced great difficulty in effectively integrating new technologies in instruction of ELLs." (p.161) So although we have run into this small road block, it seems that using laptops in classrooms is a highly effective method for teaching you students. the possibilties are endless.

However, a couple warnings shared by both Lawrence E. LEvine and the authors of "Promoting Academic Literacy with Technology." One being make sure that you have the students close their laptops during any sort of instruction. They note that if they are infront of the computer while you are talking, they are most likely doing something else. Also, make sure you can control their internet access. Because, along the same lines, if there is a way for students to get on MySpace while they are supposed to be working on classroom material, you better belive they will be.

Check out this website: World Computer Exchange

Levine, Ph. D., Lawrence E. "Using Technology to Enhance the Classroom Environment," THE Journal, 1105 Media, 2009, http://www.thejournal.com/articles/15769_4.

Warschauer,Mark, Grant, David, Del Real,Gabriel, and Rousseau, Michelle, "Promoting Academic Literacy with technology: Successful Laptop Programs in K-12 Schools," Computers in Education, Annual Editions, 12th ed, 2007, McGraw Hill, pp. 156-161.

Teachers can change.

Being in my fifth year of college, I am all too familiar with Course Management Systems. They organize classroom materials, provide and online database for students' reference, provide a common ground for fellow classmates to correspond and organize group work. They are really quite ingenious. They prevent the professors from having to bring extra copies of handouts, to coordinate group work, and it provides and outside medium for things such as unfinished class discussion. And I am sure this is just the surface of its capabilities.



Kathy A. Smart and Katrina A. Meyer's article, "Changing Course Management Systems: Lessons Learned," discusses the hazards of teachers switching their course management systems. This seems to be a process. The study shows teacher switching to a new CMS called Desire2Learn. Their website writes, "Founded in 1999, Desire2Learn Inc. is a leader in providing innovative eLearning solutions to academic and other leading organizations around the world."

The authors found that, to their surprise, 80% of the teachers were willing to shift to the CMS. I think this is the key nugget I could pull out of this article. Teachers are commonly portrayed as stubborn and unwilling to change. However, this big shift was accepted by a majority of the teachers participating. There, changes can be made. AS LONG as the teachers are supported by their administration and provided proper training.

This article exposed that shifts in technology can be made easily, however the teachers involved were provided support, training, and were allowed to voice their opinions on the change. That means throwing new technology at teachers and expecting them to adopt it, may indeed be met with quite a bit of opposition.

Overall, I found this article somewhat boring. I am a fan of CMS, however I found the transition to a new CMS un-noteworthy.

Smart, Kathy A., and Meyer, Katrina A. "Changing Course Management Systems: Lessons Learned, " Computers in Education, 12th ed, 2007, The McGraw Hill Company.

Teaching History with...with...TECHNOLOGY??

Okay, I know, this is not quite an article. But the idea struck my fancy.
Us historians are trying oh so hard to dust off our change mechanisms in our brains. We've been pushing the limits of our creativity by using Graphic Organizers and YouTube. We've been waiting for a pat on the back, commending us on our exploration with new teaching methods.




Meanwhile, there are new and better concept burgeoning by the second.

This website:
Teaching History With Technology

This website brings the idea of using technology not only in small doses, but to use technology as a Teaching Aid, a regular addition to teaching methods. The website writes, "The Internet is becoming an increasingly important source of information and young people are the likeliest users of the Internet with 97% of 12-18 years olds reporting Net use..." This is a statistic that many may know, but maybe a few more should pay attention to.

The website goes on to say, "Technology has the potential to change our students’ relationship to history and can facilitate engaging activities and research that would be difficult or impossible to create in a tech-free environment." Concepts that have been dreaded because of their complex and abstract content which is often difficult to portray.

It supplies educators with video tutorials, to help the sticky transitions from bulb-projectors and chalk bords to document projectors and teacher mutli-media centers.

It also includes links to how to make podcasts, wikis, webquests, chats, virtual tours, teaching online, virtual tours (or virtual field trips), and browserpoints.

If any of these terms seem new to you, maybe you should check out this website as well. Although this website does not provide many resources, it has extensive amounts of resources available for teachers to explore and to educate themselves on how to spice up their daily lessons plan.



I KNOW it is not an article, but I found it noteworthy, and very pertinent to our Technology Class.

Teaching History With Technology, 2009, The Center for Teaching History With Technology (http://thwt.org/index.html).

Dyslexia...and technology training?

I have actually known many people with some form of dyslexia, even teachers. Many have either just accepted it, or found ways to adapt in order to still succeed in their everyday lives-school or careers. this article says that 5-17% of "the population" (whatever that means) is dyslexic, that is a considerable amount. Although that causes have been argued, MRI's show that people with dyslexia have"neural disruption in phonological processing." This is shown in the image above.

I read the article 11: "Changes in Brain Function in Children with Dyslexia after Training," by Elise Temple. pp. 47-49

The study examine by Temple was the first to use a fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) is a type of specialized MRI scan. It measures the haemodynamic response related to neural activity in the brain or spinal cord of humans or other animals. www.wikipedia.com) in order to understand the disorder, which was administered in 2003.

It used Fast ForWord Language for training, that "focuses on auditory processing and oral language through an intensive and adaptive computer program." The study compared 20 dyslexic children aged 8-12, who had been confirmed dyslexic by the fMRI, and then 12 "normal" 8-12 year old children. They were both required to participate in the training program on the website mention previously.

The study found notable improvement in reading skills for the dyslexic youth. They improved in both language and reading ability. the study also took a post-training fMRI which also showed "normalizing" and "compensating" changes in brain function.


Okay, so could it really have been so easy all along? has it always been as simple as training focus on auditory processing and oral language? Then, part of me thinks, wow, what a great advertisement. I'm convinced.

On a mre optimistic side, I think this study is interesting, using technology to improve neurological disorders makes perfect sense. Something important, the website also mentions using this program for ELL students as well. This is key, because it seems to be common knowledge in the education realm that repitition is key, and what better tool can be used that a computer? Which takes out the human element to an extent. The computer does not worry about class time, or run out of patience. I see this website/educational program as a possible usefull resource. However, this article did fail to mention the study itself. How long did they do this? What were the time periods. Did they do it for 30 minutes a day? a week? I believe this aspect would be important to the effectiveness of the training.

Overall, I hope we have found a way to help dyslexic people to overcome. The first step, however, is identifying those with dyslexia. I am hopefull that this method of using technology in order to help those with dyslexia.

Not the same ol' dates n' facts.....

"History Education Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow," by Michael Serber.

This article discusses how technology has done amazing things for the teaching of History in the classroom. Now students can seek out primary documents, which before had been an excruciating process that could take month just to develop a research project. Now we have Google imaging, scholarly article databases that are user friendly, online libraries with access to images of primary documents. You can even get translations of primary documents that were previously out of the question due to language barriers.

This article specifically discussed the "Gilder Lehrman Institute and Collection" which has, accoridng to Serber, over 60,000 online primary documents that can be used for free. Including a document of the week, and online exhibitions. An amazing resource at the fingertips of any educator.

Seber writes, "From the slate board to the chalkboard, to PowerPoint presentations, smart boards, and computers, technology has paved the way to greater accessibility. No longer is it necessary to write key provisions of the Articles of Confederation on the board or even to duplicate mimeograph stencils."

This may be a revisitation of the obvious, however it is always something to remember. It is no longer unreasonable to ask a student in Secondary School to conduct a scholarly research paper. The resources are so readily available, that educators should not hesitate to ask this much of their students. They can do it, and it will teach them valuable things they shoul know for either a vocational track, or a scholarly one.

Serber, Michael, "History Education Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow," Organization of American History Newsletter, 36 February 2008, Organization of American Historians (http://www.oah.org/pubs/nl/2008feb/serber.html) accessed Jan. 23, 2009.

"History, the History of Computers, and the History of Computers in Education"

As a history major, my first instinct is to look up the history of computers, and how they have grown in American Society. For myself, I can first remember the apartment in Auburn with my mom and my sister. My mom had a computer, and she would go to picnics with the people she met on the internet. Things have definitely changed since 1992, but to look up the major milestones in technological history would provide an insight.

It is very interesting to see the basic time line of technology in the classroom. It becomes plain that the use of technology is just a baby when compared to other age-old education methods. The first computer was created in 1946 (the vacuum-tube based), that is just 63 years ago. Two generations, and after that everything moved so quickly.

This site says that schools didn't even get computers until 1975, which were for merely educational purposes. It wasn't until 1986 when schools began to purchase computers with the intent of using them for instructional assistance and career assistance. And it has only been within the last 10-15 years that computers are seen as a necessity in each classroom.

One thing that comes to mind is can we trust an instructional method that is so new and innovative? Can just simply training youth on how to use them be sufficient?


Source:

Murdock, Everett, "History, the History of Computers, and the History of Computers in Education," California State University Long Beach, 2004, http://www.csulb.edu/~murdock/histofcs.html, (accessed Jan. 14, 2009).

image: Mishra, Santosh, "The First Computer," The Maya Solution, 2007 http://www.mayasolution.org/ (accessed Jan. 14th, 2009).