Awesome For All

A professor told my class that from the Sputnik launch forward that public education science classes taught all students as if they were scientists in training. This same professor also showed a graph on the overhead that less than five percent of collage graduets received a degree in the sciences. If technology in the classroom is approached in the same way it will fail. We will fail our students. One of the themes I hoped to convey is using technology in the classroom should transform the ways students should interact with each other, their teacher, and above all else the world.

Swain and Edyburn cite research that home computer use is statisticly insignificant along socially economic boundaries. I have some background in education and science research so I know that the opposite position can also site equally valid research. Despite the circumstances there will be students with limited access to technology. How does a teacher proceed. As I once read, equality means that someone will have to give something up. What can I do?

(PS - Sorry for the epic sounding last post, but it sounded really cool at the time.)

There are ways of getting computers into the classroom, or ways of students being able to take their work with them. Some of these methods could be very educational to the students in the proper context. It can also provide means to equalize technology access at home. In order to do so I MUST know my students, where they come from and the environment they live in. If computers or other technology is the right tool for the right job then it is my duty to create access for each of my students by partnering them and myself with organizations like FreeGeek or opening my classroom before and/or after school.

Both article claim that profficancy in technology is a requirement for obtaining quality jobs in the future economy. This I agree with in the fullest. I was a computer lab attendant at Portland State University so I know how much further we need to go.

Limiting the use of technology because of the access of a few students own limited access is a disservice. How many Larry Pages or Bill Gates or Steve Jobs will never materialize if technology is implemented in my classroom. Not everything needs to be grand scale corporate success. Make Magazine recently ran a blog post on the hobbytrepreneur, hobbyists of the mechanical or electronic engineering sort running successful small businesses online. Technology can be a means to exposing students to concepts and areas that they are interested in that might not be available otherwise.

To paraphrase two Frederick Douglass quotes, it is more easy to build a strong child than fix a broken man and that reading is the way to freedom. Education is the pathway our inheritors will better their lives. Our moral imperative is to pave these pathways for our students, our future, the ones who will be paying for our Social Security checks when we retire. It is by our stewardship that we will be creating our future and saving us from ourselves. Before us in each and every class is a nexus of almost infinite possibility. We are the keepers of Humanity.

So what are we going to do about it?

Helm of Learning, +10 Intelligence

"Fun from games arises out of mastery. It arises out of comprehension. It is the act of solving puzzles that make games fun," wrote Raph Koster in A Theory of Fun. What make games fun is learning. This raises a question. If learning is fun, then what is going so wrong in our schools? As teachers and administrators we can learn a lot from games and game design. The modern form with most relevance to our students are video games.

My experience with education software and games is somewhat limited. Currently I have no idea what products are available on the market. I come from the days of Oregon Trail and Amazon Trail. I recently visited a teacher who used a modifies racing game that students used to collect physics data and the video was projected so the whole class could watch. Some games have come a long ways.

When it comes to learning most educational games miss the mark. They attempt to be teacher replacements and, in conjunction with poor game design, students do not learn. Nothing can replace a skilled teacher. It is their discretion to find the right tool for the job and to implement them in ways to promote student success. This may involve video games, it may not.

Gee's paper, Good Video Games and Good Learning, resonates with the question I posed above. Teachers can, and should, approach the problem the same way a game designer would. Remove the unfun elements. Gee hit the nail on the head with the comparison to biology class. A current paradigm for inquire learning in science is for students to do science and create their own relevant knowledge. All sixteen points raised are things I already value in education or learned from reading A Theory of Fun.

My current collection of games would better serve social studies or language class. The old Maxis games of yore, such as SimEarth, SimLife, and SimAnt, could work, but their age might make them inaccessible to many students. Some no longer work with modern computers. Yet we should not limit ourselves to video games. Board games and table top role playing games all have great potential to be used in the classroom as well while still fulfilling Gee's sixteen point paper. Learning is fun. It can be argued that games go too far into entertainment, but is that not the point?

Citation Needed

Wikipedia is a siren. It lures a poor mortal in with the promise of information and catches them with endlessly interconnected articles consuming any productivity into an infinite circular quest (can you tell I have been playing Dragon Age much?). Fancy metaphor aside Wikipedia is a very interesting source of information that has never existed in history. Before only experts in the field can provide overview information on their own given topic. Without knowing one of these experts the information was inaccessible. This has now changed. Anyone and everyone can view, comment, add, subtract, or alter the database of information. It is a true collective of the knowledge of the people.

When starting a new research project, especially one that I am not familiar with, I find I am often at a loss. Vocabulary is the largest issue. I do not know the terms used in the field, who wrote what or when. For this reason Wikipedia is my near exclusive starting point for research. It scaffolds the basic structure of the topic or builds upon what has been discussed in class. Referenced works is also very critical as it can help point me where to look next for further research.

Research papers are considered the only valid source of information at the collage level. These papers are highly specific, and the language is difficult to access for many students. Its accuracy is equivalent to that of the Encyclopedia Britannica. I find it difficult to develop a sufficient argument on why I should not accept it as a resource. This is not without caveats.

While the articles are just as important the Talk and History sections are very important. Unlike any other source of knowledge the history of the editing process is visible to all. Science education fell short for many, many people in teaching them how to evaluate knowledge claims. This is critical for everyone to learn with the information density we are living in now. If students wish to cite Wikipedia they can, but they will also demonstrate in their research the context and history of the information they cited.

In my humble opinion a Wikipedia article is more reliable than a random webpage. Forever self correcting the probability that it will contain too much bias or inaccuracies remains low. A standard web page is static. It only updates when someone with access to the site updates it. A great deal of analysis is needed to determine the validity of a site. Wikipedia articles are flagged by users if they feel there are issues.

At this time my classroom policy will be simple. For any source cited students will need to provide a few sentences for each site/book/fortune teller why it is an acceptable source and what problems exist with it. Or I can just not assign research papers.

I'm kidding.

Can you learn me now?

My initial impression of cell phones was that they are distractions in the classroom. It did not cross my mind that they possess educational value. This is a new vantage point for me and, in general, I believe that cell phones can be educational tools. There are concerns that must be addressed however and I will need to find a way where they can be a useful tool. I feel that technology is a tool to meet certain ends. If I am unable to find a way to utilize cellular phones in my classroom then I do not plan on teaching technology lessons that have no context to the rest of the content.

The classroom policy for cellphones will need restrictions. It will be a white list. Parents are the most likely payers of the students cell phones. To address their needs I plan on implementing some sort of licensing system. The students will sign a contract of expectation of behavior for cell phone use in the classroom, and parents must also sign that their child has permission to use the cell phone in class.

There will be issues to implement cell phones in the classroom. Josh Allen failed too fully realize his arguments. His most legitimate concern is the financial pressure to make sure cell phones are supplied to all students. Not every student will have a cell phone, much less a plan with unlimited everything. Group projects will be the best level to implement the use of cell phones. Another possibility is to have cell phones be an option in student work but this risks creating unequal learning opportunity between students.

That being said there are possible uses in addition to the suggestions in the readings. Liz Kolb is a strong proponent of student audio blogging, namely interviewing. Many cellphones now have the capacity to record images and videos as well. Students can visually document projects as well as conduct field expedition and communicate with the rest of their group in real time. The importance of cellphones is their use in how we interact with one another. Any academic use of cell phones will need to keep this as the focus.

Cybermeanies

Bullies are like a computer virus; their only intent is to inflict harm. Cyberbullying takes bullying into the digital realm. Due to the unregulated nature of the Internet any "normal person" can become a "total dickwad." I've never been the target of cyberbullies (real life ones are a different matter) and never been a perpetrator of it.

Our schools are in a tough position. Cyberbullying can technically take place out side of the school walls and school hours. Yet the effects can reach inside the classroom environment. It is more difficult for adults to detect than normal rumor spreading especially if it was a private communication. Detecting it requires implimenting what I consider good management practices: know your students so you can detect changes in interactions, know the current whispers in the rumor mill, and have conversations with your students to know what is happening in their lives.

In a perfect world it is the parents responsibility to know what their children are doing online. This is not a perfect world and innocent lives can be lost in defense of ideologies. It is something schools and teachers should talk about with students. It can be reduced by creating digital community in the school with adult presence. This is probably the most preemptive, ideal solution that I hope to implement at the school I work at. Yet teachers can not be everywhere online, or administrators read through all student emails and instant messaging.

Who am I?

I am an American Idol contestant! There is nothing like sharing a name with a famous person to obscure the common person's identity. In my search I could not find a single link in the first 10 pages that relate to me. Even Pipl had issues and could only find my myspace page, which has been set to private for a very long time. I set both my Myspace and Facebook profiles to as extreme privacy as possible. While my prospects on becoming a teacher were a factor in this decision it was not my primary reason.

The link to my Myspace page did betray my alias. This is a very uncommon alias, 6 random letters I used when making my first email account when yahoo mail went free a long time ago. The first page of a search on google links to my personal site, several of my developer sites, as well as accounts I have on other websites. It is a long standing identity. My personal blog dates back to 2003, and my alias goes even further. There is content and associations that I do not mind being public but I do not want parents or students to see. I would much rather delete my Myspace profile than to plow through all the possible places my alias turns up.

It is a sad reality that teachers are held to such standards. If United States Senators can do worse and keep their jobs why can't teachers? Teaching is a profession where everyone is your supervisor and anyone can get you fired. Not just in the work place but outside and in the home.
One important factor that many people do not realize is that freedom of speech is not freedom from judgment. Yet the judgment should not result in loss of employment unless the statement is dangerous to students or school. Danger is a subjective view though.

What baffles me is that so many people do not realize that the Internet is not private. Why would someone post a profile decorated with blood and cuts and not realize that the whole world can see it. It is an exercise I would love to do with students some time where I find out as much about them from their own social networking sites before the first day of class.

Protecting myself will be a two pronged approach. Myspace profile will get the nuke. Everyone knows Facebook is the current king so I have no need for Myspace. The next step is to iterate through six years of blog posts and archiving the more incriminating personal posts. I also don't plan on doing any porn.

Digital Natives - A work in progress

In fourth grade (1994ish) I took a Saturday Academy class on the Internet. Webcrawler was the king of the search engines. A search for Legos only returned a few thousand hits. My family bought our first computer in 1995 and we signed up for the Internet with AOL in 1996. From that point on I have been riding the crest of the wave of technological innovation and obsolescence. I may not be a true native in that I remember a time before having a computer, but I have been here for a very long time.

I have been a student in classrooms with technology in grade school. In the primary grades the computer lab was a set of Apple IIes tucked away in the backroom of the library before the school modernized its labs. The teachers were not well prepared to utilize technology in the learning process. My only memories in the lab involved traveling to Oregon in a covered wagon. Many lives were lost. Other games, such as the Amazon Trail, were so simple to me I was like the four year old child where the learning games "were light years below [my] level, to [my] total frustration and rage." (Prensky, 2005)

The only real use of technology beyond research came into play my senior year of highschool in a college English class. We used Powerpoint to present a controversial topic. It was an excellent preview for my university experience. Not only were they used in almost every lecture, but it became an unspoken requirement that any student presentation must be accompanied by Powerpoint. In both cases the use of Powerpoint slides either enhanced an excellent lecture, especially when the slides could be printed out beforehand for improving note taking, or it amplified the terribleness of a presentation.

One of my university courses was developing web map applications using Google Maps and other technologies. I was a teacher aid for an undergraduate class on healthy communities and was able to teach the students how to develop their own maps for the neighborhood they were investigating with Google Earth*. The rest of the class was discussions on the reading. The class review showed that many students considered that single activity to be the most useful, and best, lesson in the class. It was like the student's professors reading from the textbook (Prensky, Digital Natives Digital Immigrants) in that the students were simply told what to think about the readings.

To be honest the assigned readings and videos did not change my mind about the subject. I am there with them. Prensky used a game to develop training for a CAD application. Let us investigate what is involved with creating a video game as the curriculum. With my current excitement for the upcoming game Dragon Age we will use Role Playing games as an example. Artists are not only needed to create the visual content, but they also need to be able to present information clearly (art and presentation skills) as well as background music and sound effects (more art). A world needs to exist for the story to take place in and it needs to make sense (science and social studies). Let us not forget the story the hero or heroine takes (English and psychology). The game itself needs to be programmed and balanced to make the experience fun as well (lots and lots of math and logic). It is the ultimate lesson plan integrating all the core subject areas. There are so many free or inexpensive tools out there to make it happen.

Technology is not the magic silver bullet these authors make it out to be. Freshman at Portland State University are required to make a web portfolio of their work for their end of year project. Undergraduate teacher assistants are responsible for teaching how to create web pages. The majority of these undergraduate educators are technology phobic and never became comfortable with the skills themselves, much less teaching it. Despite the similar age to myself they are digital immigrants.

Using technology to create and communicate can be amazing. Yet while people may be comfortable using an iPod, making a webpage is a frightening and difficult experience. Giving students the option to work in groups was the best discovery I ever made. Those comfortable with what they were doing could go solo without feeling dragged down. These are the natives who can parallel process and random access. (Prensky, Digital Natives Digital Immigrants) These immigrants, or naive individuals, still prefer content delivered in a legacy fashion individually. As a group they often operate as a digital native enabling me to teach to the natives without cramping the old fashioned style. It can work, and students are proud of their work when they can actually create a product that is meaningful for them.

* I promise I am not paid by or an employee of Google.

Introduction

My name you ask? David Radford, future middle school science educator extraordinaire! As for my favorite animals I must respond with Humans. Out of all the species on the planet they are the most entertaining to watch in their native environment.