Dumber? Not by my standards.

This article came out on technology in education making kids dumber (and I got to put my two cents in). As I state in the article, I strongly disagree that technology hinders a child’s education. The point I would have liked to make (had I known the “experts” points of view) is that technology is not a passing phase, nor something that is stagnant and not evolving. Education needs technology, and students who do not have the same exposure to it as others do will definitely suffer in their educational experience.

There are some valid points about student learning without the assistance of technology. I think it’s essential that kids learn how to multiply and do math algorithms without technology, sure. But so long as they understand WHY they are doing it, and not just because they know they need to carry the one or borrow from the 10s column. (And certainly not because they are going to be dumber if they don’t do it in their head! Seriously, where do these people come from??) Teaching route skills like that doesn’t do students any good if they don’t understand that carrying the one is really a ten or a hundred or whatever place value it’s being carried over to. And when I think of technology in the classroom, I rarely think of a calculator. Teach students how to be thinkers and learners, not computation experts. I can think of plenty of adults who can’t help their kids with their 5th grade math homework because they never learned the reason why they had to do a certain algorithm in math, it was just how you did it. It’s a good thing those adults have calculators to help them out.

As for stunting imagination… well… I don’t recall anyone saying that technology was going to take over ALL educational experiences. Students do need to experience life outside of school and outside a computer yes. But can you take an entire group of students from the city to a NASA weather station? Nope. Can you on Second Life? Of course! Will I be to take students to an art exhibit in France on renaissance art? Probably not, but can I show them it through technology in the classroom, be it on a SMARTboard or otherwise? Much more likely. So while I don’t support technology replacing real life experience (and I don’t know that there are many educators that do!), I do support technology aiding education.

Today I was having a conversation with a colleague as we were looking at materials we wanted to buy for our classrooms for next year. I bought a book on hieroglyphics, since I’ll be teaching ancient Egypt. My friend glanced through at the pictures and remarked that I could photocopy some of the really good photographs for my students to use. I responded that I could just scan it onto my computer and put it up on my SMARTboard. Technology doesn’t just make education easier for students. It makes it easier for teachers as well.

Students put too much information on slides for presentations? Well, don’t you think it’s the teacher’s job to teach students how to properly prepare a presentation. I would never expect a student to just know how to do an excellent powerpoint presentation when there are so many adults who don’t know how to. “The truth is, having someone read off slides generally makes for dreadful presentations.” Amen. Someone should tell some of my professors that. If teachers aren’t teaching students how to properly use the technology, then it’s probably not going to be the best quality. If I don’t give explicit expectations (and how to achieve them), I can’t expect to receive exactly what I want, can I? Also, just as a side note, technology is not about powerpoint presentations and note taking in class. I can do a lot with powerpoint, sure. But there are a lot better technology resources for presentations that clearly these professors have yet to uncover.

Here’s another great one. “Years ago, students had to work much harder to find and record information, and by going through that arduous process came to a greater genuine understanding of it.” Yes. Let’s make students work harder to learn more. Because that’s exactly what motivates my students. Why didn’t I think of that. Wow. I mean, I’m really surprised this guy is actually really a professor. In my experience, I’ve found the harder it is to find the information, the better the chance that the student will cheat. And maybe that’s because we do live in a digital age where so much information is at our fingertips! We should be preparing students to be better information seekers, how to distinguish between good and bad information. This is no way shape or form makes them any dumber, if anything they become actually better at decoding information.. and guess where decoding information comes into play? That’s right… every administrators dream… standardized tests. If you asked anyone today a question about a topic that they new nothing to very little about, I’m pretty sure the first place anyone would look would be the internet. No one wants to work hard to find information. And working hard certainly doesn’t increase your retention of knowledge… as that’s only the first step of Bloom’s Taxonomy… clearly nowhere near the final steps which show true learning and higher order thinking. It’s funny, I didn’t see anywhere in the 6 steps of the learning process does it say “make it harder.”

This quote, however, I think is my favorite. “You want students to be able to do anything,” Oppenheimer says. “If you habituate them to using a computer that may be obsolete in ten or fifteen years, you set them back.” I almost fell off my chair. Seriously! I started using the computer for school, social interaction, and early stages of the internet probably 12 years ago (I was a freshman in high school when my family got AOL. I remember it so well). In those past 12 years I think I have evolved with the technology. Is the computer I first experienced my first exposure to internet technology now obsolete? Definitely. Am I any less capable of using the technology now because I learned it on a machine that is now obsolete, 10 years later? I think quite the contrary. Technology doesn’t change overnight. Things develop over time, much like how people learn. Whatever technology is taught to students TODAY will not hurt them 10 years down the road. If anything, if their school system does not fail them and provides consistent technology resources for the students, they will be just as (if not more!) tech-savvy 10 years from now as the teacher prepares them for today.

My only thought is that these “experts” in education and technology, really don’t understand how to use technology. But that’s a catch-22 isn’t it… they don’t want to use technology because they don’t understand it, and they don’t want their students to learn it because they don’t understand it. But students want to use it, and if they are taught properly how to, it’s not something that will make them dumber! I’d love to see someone tell someone in ANY profession, today, that she can’t use technology to find the information she is looking for because it might make her dumber. Or better yet, because it might make her job easier. Or someday, 10 years from now, she might be doing it a different way. We may have better ways to find information 10 years from now, and I hope in 10 years I am teaching my students the NEW way to find information that will prepare them for life, not the way I am doing it today.

New Beginnings

Got a job. Finally. I feel like I’ve been job searching forever. But I did manage to get hired BEFORE the first day of school, so that’s a step up from last time. I will be a 6th grade Language Arts/Social Studies teacher in a working class (read: same demographic as Brooklyn, but not as urban) district in South Jersey. I’m not too disappointed that it’s not a library job, although it will make doing my field experience next semester something torturous. My school has AMAZING resources though. The superintendent asked me if I would take my students into Second Life during my interview. I was a little flustered by that question, but at least I had the experience of having been in SL, and knowing what kind of things really can be done there. I told her I would need to become more comfortable with it but I was definitely in favor of it. She seemed to like that response – I got the job, right? My last principal wouldn’t know what SL was if her life depended on it – it’s going to be such a different experience! So anyway, my school has a smartboard in every classroom, my desktop computer is connected to both my smartboard (which has the projector in the ceiling so it doesn’t take up space!), and a television that is mounted in the front corner of my classroom. There are laptop carts which you can check out, which is all fine and good, but there are also iPod carts, where you can check out 80g video iPods for the students to use. I am so excited. I am actually going to have the opportunity to USE everything I just learned this semester! I’m not sure yet how to incorporate the iPods into instruction, but you can be certain there will be podcasts involved. I’m wondering about the transfer of information to the iPods, and wouldn’t that get cumbersome, and is there going to be one computer that has iTunes installed and all the updating/transferring will have to be done through that computer. I guess I will learn as I go!

Tying Up all the Loose Ends…

And so ends another semester in my quest to becoming a librarian. Only one more semester to go, and by this time in December, I will be a fully certified school librarian. Oh the tools I will have, and the places I can go. It seems not so far off, but it’s hard to imagine this journey really being finished. This summer semester was a bit overwhelming for me, but so informative and I feel like I took the most away from this semester more than any before. Cataloging was a useful course, indeed, and I will surely use the information I learned there in many of my endeavors as a librarian. LIS 460 introduced me into a world of technology that I before I didn’t even consider to be useful in the educational world. I have so many tools now, so much more knowledge to impart in the classroom.

I used to use my webpage that I designed for my multimedia class as a tool that showcased my technology skills. I’m actually too embarrassed to even post that link here, and would much rather show off my innovation project, creating a wiki for a school. I’m sure in a year or so, I’ll be shocked that I thought this was something worth presenting to the world, as technology is so fast to change. Maybe this will look as juvenile to me in a year’s time as my multimedia project does now. Despite that, I hope to remain on the cutting edge of technology, and services like Twitter, and RSS feeds, and podcasts, and everything we studied to help students learn this semester, will help me to stay on the cutting edge of what technologies are available. Hopefully I will continue to consider how to use them in the classroom and to best benefit my students.

I wondered what the fate of this blog would become once this course was over, but I’m thinking I might continue to use it, as a professional blog. I have a blog that I keep for fun, and one that’s more of a weekly (sometimes monthly…) update of my life. This blog would serve me well professionally, and as it’s already begun with my thoughts on technology in the school media center, I can’t think of a better place to continue…

Texting Education

Tonight while I was making dinner, I got a text message from one of my students this year.  I was surprised for a few reasons.  1) I forgot that I had given out my cell phone number to a few students that I thought would actually keep in touch… 2) She had some how managed to get a picture in the text message that was not taken through her phone, but with a disposable camera on the class trip.  I baffled for a few minutes at how this was possible.  I concluded that she may have actually sent me the text message online, and the picture was on her computer. It’s the only thing that possibly makes sense to me.  That, and she doesn’t have a phone with picture capabilities (as of June at least…), so how else could she get a picture on there?  My students amaze me long after I have stopped expecting it.

My students may not have been tech-savvy, but they certainly know how to work their phones… Cell phones were one thing that my students did NOT lack.  As many of my classmate’s have mentioned in their posts, twitters, and Skype conversations – cell phones are not usually allowed in school, so using them in the classroom would be difficult.  However, I really like the idea of using text messages to send out reminders, updates, etc. to the entire class/school.  Had I thought about it this year, I probably would have sent text reminders for assignments that were due, or forms that needed to be returned to school.  I could have sent homework assignments via text messages instead of having my students copy it down off the front board every single day.  I think incorporating technology this way makes the homework assignment a little bit more fun for the students.  It involves something that they are interested in, and they understand.  Like the teacher in Messaging Shakespaere,  I needed to find a way to motivate my students who were not performing to their ability; however, I didn’t have the inngenuity to utilize technology in a way that the students could relate to. 

I think text messaging could be revolutionary in the library.  If I were a student, and I got a text message at 8 in the morning, reminding me that I had a library book that was overdue, I’d be much more inclined to put it in my bookbag and bring it to school than if I just got a slip of paper at the end of the school day (or even worse – the beginning of the school day!), which ends up getting lost in the shuffle of the rest of my papers in my bag and forgotten about… until I get another notice telling me that my book is now REALLY overdue.  Students could text short book reviews to the library, the library could send updates for upcoming events, new releases, etc. 

 Obstacles come about of course with restrictions of having cell phones at school, but if the texting does not need to take place during educational hours, than this should not be an issue. Cell phones are extremely accessible these days,  and I’d say most, if not all, of my students had or had access to a cell phone on a daily basis. 

I wonder…. if there is a program that allows a user to send a message to both cell phones and email addresses (or some online program – like Twitter) - at the same time, because this could be a solution for those students who do not have access to a cell phone.  Students could choose the medium in which they receive the updates/reminders… whether it be text messages, twitters, or emails – so they can stay as connected as possible. 

Another thing I thought about when I was reading the Campus Cells article was how this could revolutionize school safety.  The first thing I immediately thought was the tragedy at Virginia Tech this year.  If campus alerts could have been sent through text message about the shooter on campus, maybe lives could have been saved. Schools can use cell phone technology for safety (as mentioned in the article) but also to keep students alert and aware of potential dangers on campus. 

 I was going to write an tech encyclopedia entry on Dodgeball – which is a text messaging service that alerts your friends where you are so they can come meet you – but I took it down because I really didn’t see it’s place in the school media center.  And while I still don’t think there really is a need for that kind of technology in schools,  I do think the idea of mass texting information and updates is one that students and schools can really benefit from!

Information Seeking Behavior

During my two years at Rutgers, I’ve have not one, not two, but three classes that focus on information seeking behavior in library users.  How people look for information, how they search catalogs, why they give up on searches, etc.  I think this is all vital information to know as a future librarian because my future patrons (students) are the type to abandon a search when results aren’t found. 

 Carol Kuhlthau’s information seeking process (or isp for short) lays out the steps for the information seeking behavior. The stages of Kuhlthau’s model include: Task Initiation, Topic Selection, Topic Exporation, Focus Formulation, Resource Collection and Presentation (Kuhlthau, 1990).  It’s found that usually during topic exploration students (or any searchers really) can meet frustration with their topic and abandon it. Topic exploration is the fundamentals of searching for information on any given topic and students can feel frustrated with the abundance of information that is presented to them or a lack of information.  It can be hard to narrow your search for more specific results or expand your search if you know little about the topic you are trying to find information on. 

 There is an gap in the information seeking process if the user does not have the language to search for information on the topic.  This is one of the reasons why I LOVE the Queens Public Library Aqua Browser!  It provides users with related search terms that can add to their inquiries.  A student searching for books on Mesopotamia may not know to search related terms such as babylonian, assyrian, or sumerian, but the Aqua browser provides these related terms (and more!) to help in the search process.  This is a great tool and it’s visually stimulating as well.  It has links that could help students broaden and narrow their search results.  I like the idea of giving related search terms in a search engine, because there are so many times where users abandon searches due to frustration that comes from just not knowing the right word to search. 

I also really like that the Aqua Browser gives alternate spelling options if the user mispells or mistypes the topic they are searching.  I am a terrible speller by nature, and rely on tools like Googles “Did you mean _______?” to correct my mistakes!  I think tools like these guide searchers towards the materials they are seeking, instead of returning zero results, which only leads to frustration. 

Technology will ultimately change the way that users seek information, and already has via the Internet and online catalogs and databases.  No longer do searchers need to actually go to the library to find what they need, mostly everything can be done remotely from where they are.  Services like “ask a librarian” which allows users to chat via IM services in real time also has changed the way that people seek information.  Information is easier to come by everyday, yet there is still a process that users go through to find information.  It is the job of the librarian to teach students (and patrons in the public library) how to best utilize all the features and options available to maximize search results and minimize search frustration. 

Kuhlthau, C. C. (1990). Inside the search process: Information seeking from the user’s perspective. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 42 (5), 361-371

Behind the Times.

I feel so very lucky to be taking this course at Simmons.  When I was reading someone else’s post (Elisabeth’s, I think.) and she mentioned how she created a wiki for another Simmons course, something really struck me.  Rutgers does not offer any kind of innovative technology course.  Sure, they have a multimedia production course, and you learn how to play with flash and make pretty webpages…. oooh.  That’s it though, and there are no other tech requirements besides the basic IT course (read: HTML coding – and that’s it.) and multimedia.  We touched on blogs, social networking (but only to talk about censorship really), and second life SO briefly in my YA class that I don’t even remember what the assignment was, or what we learned. (Clearly, I didn’t learn much.) There are no other online options (or even on campus as far as I know…) to expand technology knowledge for school media specialists.  When I read the description for this course, I jumped on it as soon as I could, and I was worried that I hadn’t acted fast enough – there were only 3 WISE seats!  I was sure that other students would be dying to take this course, it seemed so innovative to me at the time!  But, from Rutgers as far as I know, it was just me and MaryRose who even tried to get into the class.

So, after 3 weeks of this course, I realize that this is the type of class that should be mandatory for school librarian’s today.  Yes, it’s great that I can build my own website, but really, there are programs that build webpages for you these day, and all you have to know is how to point, click, and type (and maybe upload a picture or too.) Nothing so challenging that a student couldn’t do it him/herself. Media specialists should be at the cutting edge of this technology, we should have to know technology terms, and we should be the ones pushing students into realms of undiscovered technological depths – whether through wikis, podcasts, blogs, social bookmarking/networking… there is so much. 

Today I feel overwhelmed that there is so much out there for me to learn, and it never will end, I fear (and hope…) But strangely, it’s reassuring because I know that when I have my own library and I have a wiki up and running, or students doing podcasts on the school’s website, I’ll know that I’m giving them the best media services that I possibly can. 

Meta-blogging

This blog will be a metablog – a blog about blogging.

As I was reading Richardson’s chapters on weblogging, I could definitely relate to what he described when someone first responded to something that he had written online. I remember the first time I realized that people I didn’t know or were not connected to people I knew were reading my blog. It wasn’t getting that many more hits per day, or any real attention, but it was out there, and it was easily searchable and findable. I was really proud, even though I hadn’t done anything out of the ordinary. A friend of friend of mine got a book deal off of his fictitious blog, Anonymous Lawyer. It’s this potential that blog’s have, to reach the right person, that my blog just might come across the screen of the right person, that sparked my interest in keeping up with my blog when I might have let it lapse long ago. What started as an easy way to keep all my friends informed without having to tell the same story over and over has become so much more. I’m always a little surprised when I am talking to someone and they mention something that was in my blog, but it’s a good feeling. It’s out there to read, so I want people to read it.

I think this kind of quasi-fame that can be found through blogging is something that would really appeal to young writers, especially of the late elementary – high school age. As soon as students are capable of higher ordered thinking, they can start creating and generating ideas about things they are interested in and posting them online. I remember in my class this year, I tried to use posting reviews on Amazon.com as an incentive to get my students to finish reading a book and creating a review to put online. They really liked the idea that their post would be online for anyone to read.

I think there are some dangers with having students blog freely online in a school related setting. I wonder how content and appropriateness could be monitored, or even if it should be monitored? Are there student-friendly blog hosting sites that maybe filter out more questionable content so that it could be more appropriate for school. And if a site like this does exist, does it also limit who can access the material that is posted (like friends only subscriptions). I have some reservations when it comes to students posting freely on the internet. Not because I believe they should be censored, but I worry about exposure of too much identity. I find that most children/young adults can find their way easily around the limitations that are set up age wise (i.e. Myspace – putting in an older age). So if they will find a way to do it anyway, do limitations even matter?

Digital Divide

I’ve been thinking a lot about the lack of technology that my students are exposed to.  I wish that I had the resources to show them all the cool things they could do online, the tools I could use to push their education to the next level.  The digital divide that separates the haves from the have-nots is something I’ve been studying since my first course in my MLIS program.  In my very first course at Rutgers I studied the information seeking behavior in low-income areas and how the lack of technology affects the way they get their information. 

 I see a lot of my students using myspace (scariest thing this weekend when my 11 year old student posing as a 15 year old, friend requested me… even though I’ve changed it so you can’t search me by name.  That kid has some good researching skills…. he should be a reference librarian!), so they have exposure to the Internet, but they don’t have a clue how to use it.  With all the restrictions on social networking programs in schools (understandable, but unfortunate) it’s hard to really explain or broaden their limited knowledge of what they can do on the Internet. 

 What I am wondering is how I can get past all these restrictions – financial (both in my school and in my student’s lives), censoring what can be accessed at school, and the limits that are ultimately placed on my students because they do not have Internet access or resources to get online at home.