I thought the technology standards went along well with Michigan's technology plan. Overall, I like that we have a set of standards as a guide to where we should be striving to have our students by the time they graduate. I am once again struck that I have never seen these standards before this class. It seems like this is something that all teachers should be aware of and able to utilize.
There are some specific things that will be useful in my class though I would like to know how much of these are supposed to be covered in the core classes and how much is supposed to be covered in specific technology classes. I know that at my school we have five teachers in the high school with one dedicated to computers and technology. I am excited though to be integrating some of the technology into my own classroom so that it’s not just in our tech. classes where the kids are being exposed to it, and these standards are a great guide for me to begin doing that. I just taught my technology lesson. When setting up the lesson I used these standards to help figure out what I was going to do and I can already tell it is incredibly helpful to have these on standby. As it stands, I am still just a beginner at integrating technology into my everyday lessons and I think being able to hold ourselves to these specific standards will be helpful.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Michigan's Educational Technology Plan
I would like to start off by saying that I think the goals for Michigan’s Technology Plan are good ones. My biggest question about it is why haven’t I seen this before I was asked to look at it for this class? It seems as though this should be something we are all looking at or else what is the point of doing it? These are good goals for our state but we teachers should be aware of what the state is trying to accomplish.
One of the goals that really caught my attention was goal 1 strategy 3. This was the goal that was focused on at risk students being able to access technology in a way that was best suited to each student. I think this is a great thing for Michigan to be focused on and this is also something I can see happening at my school right now. As a teacher at an alternative high school it is nice to see we are currently offering technology based classes as one of our 5 options for each hour. We have E2020 classes as well which allow the student to complete a class we wouldn’t otherwise offer because we didn’t have a teacher certified to teach it. They can do it at their own pace and with the assistance of a teacher but not the pressure of a group classroom environment.
These goals correlate very well to the national goals and I think the goals involving leadership by the teachers touch on the topic of my previous blog post. Again, I think it is important for our teachers to take the lead on integrating technology into our schools.
One of the goals that really caught my attention was goal 1 strategy 3. This was the goal that was focused on at risk students being able to access technology in a way that was best suited to each student. I think this is a great thing for Michigan to be focused on and this is also something I can see happening at my school right now. As a teacher at an alternative high school it is nice to see we are currently offering technology based classes as one of our 5 options for each hour. We have E2020 classes as well which allow the student to complete a class we wouldn’t otherwise offer because we didn’t have a teacher certified to teach it. They can do it at their own pace and with the assistance of a teacher but not the pressure of a group classroom environment.
These goals correlate very well to the national goals and I think the goals involving leadership by the teachers touch on the topic of my previous blog post. Again, I think it is important for our teachers to take the lead on integrating technology into our schools.
National Educational Technology Plan
I think one of the most important parts of the technology plan was that teaching should be a group effort- that we should be connected in our classrooms to other teachers in our buildings as well as across the country. I think we come from roots of isolation in the classroom where we just shut our doors and go off by ourselves to teach whatever topic we have been assigned, but that’s not the world we live in anymore. When our students are done with us they will enter a world obsessed with technology and they need to be able to connect in a meaningful way in order to be successful.
I think it was also a good point that we as teachers do not involve ourselves in continuing education for technology the way other businesses do. Young teachers probably enter the field with technology at their fingertips but older teachers may not. Also, just because the younger teachers use technology in their everyday lives doesn’t mean they’re using it in the classroom. We need to be dedicated to finding ways to connect our students with technology in the classroom regardless of whether your school has a state of the art technology lab or barely enough computers for the amount of students in the classroom. I think this is one of the big challenges of technology in the classroom and in schools but we need to rise to the occasion.
I think it was also a good point that we as teachers do not involve ourselves in continuing education for technology the way other businesses do. Young teachers probably enter the field with technology at their fingertips but older teachers may not. Also, just because the younger teachers use technology in their everyday lives doesn’t mean they’re using it in the classroom. We need to be dedicated to finding ways to connect our students with technology in the classroom regardless of whether your school has a state of the art technology lab or barely enough computers for the amount of students in the classroom. I think this is one of the big challenges of technology in the classroom and in schools but we need to rise to the occasion.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Review of "Action Research..."
My school spends a lot of time talking about data and how we are going to use it. This year we have started using data director and actually putting all that talk into action. This chapter was interesting because it brought up how important it really is for us as educators to be involved in different types of research in order to best educate our students. I have so far been impressed with the things we can do with the data that is given to us but I also think there are many other things we could do that would be helpful in moving our school forward.
I definitely liked the idea of using evaluation research to determine what programs would be most useful in a school. My biggest concern with this is that it would take a lot of time and organized effort. I work in an alternative program where I have four preps and no prep time. I think it would be difficult to keep my classes going and organized as well as conduct the research during the school year. I think the best way to make this work would be to set up some kind of committee where we could share this burden among a group of teachers.
I think something that was helpful in this chapter was the idea of reflective practice. I don’t know that it always has to be formal where you’re sitting down and going through the list of questions because I think I have always reflected on what I was teaching and how it was working, but it would be smart to sit down and formally evaluate the units after they’re finished so I can remember what needs to be changed or improved upon for the next time I teach it. Overall, the ideas presented in the chapter are good ones. I think it is important to make sure we are integrating the different types of research into our classrooms as much as possible.
I definitely liked the idea of using evaluation research to determine what programs would be most useful in a school. My biggest concern with this is that it would take a lot of time and organized effort. I work in an alternative program where I have four preps and no prep time. I think it would be difficult to keep my classes going and organized as well as conduct the research during the school year. I think the best way to make this work would be to set up some kind of committee where we could share this burden among a group of teachers.
I think something that was helpful in this chapter was the idea of reflective practice. I don’t know that it always has to be formal where you’re sitting down and going through the list of questions because I think I have always reflected on what I was teaching and how it was working, but it would be smart to sit down and formally evaluate the units after they’re finished so I can remember what needs to be changed or improved upon for the next time I teach it. Overall, the ideas presented in the chapter are good ones. I think it is important to make sure we are integrating the different types of research into our classrooms as much as possible.
Monday, September 6, 2010
Wikiality
If you type Martin Luther King, Jr. (a person I did many a paper on in my days as a student) into Google or Yahoo the first website it provides on both engines is en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr. One click onto this site can tell you a great wealth of information about this man and all his great accomplishments. A student can scroll down seemingly forever (from a student’s standpoint) and read more than they ever wanted to know and surely enough to fill a paper for a high school class. The problem is that if you continue to scroll down to look at the “references, further reading, and external links” sections you will find a box stating “This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive and inappropriate external links or by converting links into footnote references. (August 2010)”1 A notable point to the article on Martin Luther King, Jr. is that the page was updated today, the same day I am looking at it meaning something was changed from what I would have seen yesterday.
The best argument against using Wikipedia as the source for your paper is given by Wikipedia itself. They state right on their citation page, “We advise special caution when using Wikipedia as a source for research projects. Normal academic usage of Wikipedia and other encyclopedias is for getting the general facts … and to gather keywords, references and bibliographical pointers, but not as a source in itself. … that anyone in the world can edit an article, deleting accurate information or adding false information, which the reader may not recognize.”2 Wikipedia is able to provide good links and keywords to do research on a topic but it is not the place to stop when doing research for a class.
A big issue I have run into while teaching is that students are so exposed to technology casually in their everyday life that when they are asked to use it in a formal way to do research for a project or paper they don’t have the tools to do so. Just because students have had a computer in their houses since they were born doesn’t mean they know how to responsibly search the internet for legitimate information and then cite those findings in a paper. This runs into the issue from the last blog topic. Students don’t necessarily need to be taught the mechanics of how to use the internet but many need someone to guide them through the rough waters of research and citation. We as teachers need to be aware of the fact that students need to be taught how to do this. You wouldn’t send a kid out into the forest without a compass or other way of knowing how to get through and so we shouldn’t send a student out to do research without arming them with the tools to be successful.
1 Martin Luther King, Jr. (2010, September 6). In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved September 6, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr
2 Citing Wikipedia (2010, June 14). In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved September 6, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_Wikipedia
The best argument against using Wikipedia as the source for your paper is given by Wikipedia itself. They state right on their citation page, “We advise special caution when using Wikipedia as a source for research projects. Normal academic usage of Wikipedia and other encyclopedias is for getting the general facts … and to gather keywords, references and bibliographical pointers, but not as a source in itself. … that anyone in the world can edit an article, deleting accurate information or adding false information, which the reader may not recognize.”2 Wikipedia is able to provide good links and keywords to do research on a topic but it is not the place to stop when doing research for a class.
A big issue I have run into while teaching is that students are so exposed to technology casually in their everyday life that when they are asked to use it in a formal way to do research for a project or paper they don’t have the tools to do so. Just because students have had a computer in their houses since they were born doesn’t mean they know how to responsibly search the internet for legitimate information and then cite those findings in a paper. This runs into the issue from the last blog topic. Students don’t necessarily need to be taught the mechanics of how to use the internet but many need someone to guide them through the rough waters of research and citation. We as teachers need to be aware of the fact that students need to be taught how to do this. You wouldn’t send a kid out into the forest without a compass or other way of knowing how to get through and so we shouldn’t send a student out to do research without arming them with the tools to be successful.
1 Martin Luther King, Jr. (2010, September 6). In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved September 6, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr
2 Citing Wikipedia (2010, June 14). In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved September 6, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_Wikipedia
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