I just finished reading the two online articles for the first week in class. I'm struggled with the Waxman meta-analysis of the Effectiveness of Teaching and Learning with Technology on Student Outcomes. I think there were a few reasons for why I did not connect with this article. The first is the statistical analysis. I took stats, once, in college and now it is gone. I was really bogged down and put off by the jargon of statistical analysis. What I did get out of all the statistical discussion is, despite the fact that we are supposed to be having this data driven system with NCLB, there are still very few studies done in the area of education and technology's impact upon it. Also the studies that are done are often not set up or operated with statistical integrity. This does not surprise me very much given my colleagues response whenever a piece of educational research may be put in front of us. Normally it is disdain and frustration that comes out of the fact that the place and conditions of the research projects so often don't look or feel anything like the place and conditions of where we work.
The second part of this article that I was frustrated by was the admission of the wild inconsistencies of the articles they included in their meta-analysis. I was shocked to see that studies that were conducted in the 90's were being included just because the findings had been published in the last five years. Given what the average person knows about the rate of change in the world of technology it seems criminal to include studies from approximately 15 years ago.
The main finding was pretty obvious, that integrating technology will result in a positive correlation with outcome results. I was not really surprised to see this. I was also not very surprised to see that by integrating technology the dynamic in the classroom changed from a teacher led to a teacher moderated classroom. I think this is the appropriate way to manage the class setting and allows students more freedom to follow their interests and to form more natural collaborative units. Of course this structure of student independence does lead to more abuse of privelege by students who aren't capable or comfortable with the freedom and you will see the increase in behavioral issues that were found in the study.
Overall, I wasn't that impressed by the study. I felt it was an overly technical reading for my tastes and it admitted to too many serious flaws. I also felt like the conclusions were pretty obvious from my experiences and I'm guessing most of us in this class would have ended in pretty much the same area based simply on our daily classes.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Week 4 - Online Children's safety
Internet Safety for Kids -
I know this is important, but sometimes I have real problems with parents in our district who get all bent out of shape about kids using their computers at home. In our school we have seen parents call in about students accessing De.lic.ious accounts at home, downloading GoogleEarth, using district served Moodle Forums. I understand that for some of these people they are nervous about the security of their computer and their response is to let their kids do absolutely nothing with them. Even when you try to explain your reasons for requests and comfort them with the knowledge that a Google Download is definitely coming from a trusted site, they still won't do it.
One of the big challenges we are going to be facing next year is to educate our parents and community about appropriate downloads and ways they can actually improve their computer and its capabilities. As ironic as this sounds I think we are planning on having a newsletter (on actual paper) go out about some of these technology issues.
The flip side of this of course is that some of these same parents let their students go on all sorts of sites without any sort of supervision at all hours of the night. They care so much about their computer, but not really what their students use it for. My last story of frustration was a student who came in and told me they couldn't do their homework, online, because they had been grounded. Thinking this was impossible, I emailed the parent. Sure enough they were not going to let their child use the computer at home because of some discipline issue. I'll never understand how someone would tell their middle schooler who was trying to do their homework that they couldn't do it because they were in trouble.
Sorry this post became so negative, but this is a frustrating issue when we do so much to try and protect and guide our students online and it often is lost on our parents, whether it be through lack of understanding or lack of concern.
I know this is important, but sometimes I have real problems with parents in our district who get all bent out of shape about kids using their computers at home. In our school we have seen parents call in about students accessing De.lic.ious accounts at home, downloading GoogleEarth, using district served Moodle Forums. I understand that for some of these people they are nervous about the security of their computer and their response is to let their kids do absolutely nothing with them. Even when you try to explain your reasons for requests and comfort them with the knowledge that a Google Download is definitely coming from a trusted site, they still won't do it.
One of the big challenges we are going to be facing next year is to educate our parents and community about appropriate downloads and ways they can actually improve their computer and its capabilities. As ironic as this sounds I think we are planning on having a newsletter (on actual paper) go out about some of these technology issues.
The flip side of this of course is that some of these same parents let their students go on all sorts of sites without any sort of supervision at all hours of the night. They care so much about their computer, but not really what their students use it for. My last story of frustration was a student who came in and told me they couldn't do their homework, online, because they had been grounded. Thinking this was impossible, I emailed the parent. Sure enough they were not going to let their child use the computer at home because of some discipline issue. I'll never understand how someone would tell their middle schooler who was trying to do their homework that they couldn't do it because they were in trouble.
Sorry this post became so negative, but this is a frustrating issue when we do so much to try and protect and guide our students online and it often is lost on our parents, whether it be through lack of understanding or lack of concern.
Week 3 - Group Projects on tools
My general feeling from this weeks work, was that Google's goal is to create a tool for just about any need imagined while online. If they don't create one, then they buy another and rename it Google... This seems like a great idea because whenever I came across one of the non-Google tools, my first instinct was to see if there was a Google Tool providing the same service. The reason I think this is genius is because once you have become comfortable with the Google operating system and interfaces it just makes sense to keep using the suite. It is the same way with my students, my goal is to introduce a new tool to them. After that I want to build up their comfort level with it until they consider themselves masters of the tool. It would follow that the next tool I introduce should be similar in nature, so they can learn it faster, why start all over again? My only hesitation about going down this road is that Google used to be the little guy, and is maybe becoming 'the man'. I have always had this desire to turn away from 'the man' and embrace the 'little guy'. I just haven't decided who Google is yet.
Week 2 - Noodle Tools
I've used NoodleBib before, but I never realized that they had such an interesting rest to their web presence. I thought the tips that they gave for using particular searches or groups would be a great tool to use. I think that part of the reason all my students automatically turn to Google is that all their teachers automatically turn to Google. We really need to do a better job of finding resources that are more specifically fitted to the job we want to do.
The second part of Noodle Tools that impressed me was the 21st Century Literacies. I've always felt this title is a misnomer, but nonetheless it is something that we have been trying to implement, and standardize into all the curriculums in both grades at my school. I felt that this section offered a wide range of great ideas that could be used for that purpose. I actually recommended the site to a number of people within my committee and we have seen the section as a model for what we would like to create for our district. It will require a lot of altering and personalizing, but it should serve as a fair guide.
The second part of Noodle Tools that impressed me was the 21st Century Literacies. I've always felt this title is a misnomer, but nonetheless it is something that we have been trying to implement, and standardize into all the curriculums in both grades at my school. I felt that this section offered a wide range of great ideas that could be used for that purpose. I actually recommended the site to a number of people within my committee and we have seen the section as a model for what we would like to create for our district. It will require a lot of altering and personalizing, but it should serve as a fair guide.
Week 1 -
Many of you will notice, but this is not week one, but I still wanted to get down my thoughts for the last 4 weeks of our last class. My first impression was that I didn't like having a personal page on the wiki. I really liked the NING pages from our first two classes and thought they did a much better job of allowing each of us to express more about who we were and what we were all about. I know that it is done this way out of consideration of having us only use one application, but I wouldn't have minded using more if one has such a clear advantage in a specific area of functionality.
My second comment on the first week was the web site critique assignment. This was something I was planning on working on during the summer anyway, so I was glad to get a first shot at it here. I've found in my class with 7th graders that they'll trust anything that is online without even a second thought. I'm hoping to find some ways next year to get them to be more self directed in their evaluation of their sources, especially online. I'm starting to think I have a good plan in my with the "fake" websites listed on one of the articles included with the assignment. I believe it was the Shrock Page.
My second comment on the first week was the web site critique assignment. This was something I was planning on working on during the summer anyway, so I was glad to get a first shot at it here. I've found in my class with 7th graders that they'll trust anything that is online without even a second thought. I'm hoping to find some ways next year to get them to be more self directed in their evaluation of their sources, especially online. I'm starting to think I have a good plan in my with the "fake" websites listed on one of the articles included with the assignment. I believe it was the Shrock Page.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)