Debs Blog

I agree with Basils posting about using World of Warcraft in the classroom.  I refer to my podcast about digital literacy in the classroom, where World of Warcraft was used to explore visual text and creative writing.  Whilst I do think its a great idea to use computers games in the classroom as it makes the learning relevant to our students (especially boys), we may run the risk of forcing gaming upon students whereby it does become a chore.  Perhaps we need to be more cautious about using adolescent culture in the classroom. 

I thought this YouTube video was rather amusing…..I confess, I am a digital immigrant and was initially uncomfortable about using technology in the classroom…although, I would never consider myself “technologically illiterate” and feel proud of the fact!  I think the attached video draws parallels with how some teachers must feel when they are expected to use computers for the first time in the classroom!  We have to start somewhere and provided we get the support needed, there is nothing to be afraid of!  

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After listening to Madu’s podcasts and reading Tracey’s comments I too fully agree that planning for an ICT lesson will be time consuming.  Sadly, most schools are not well enough equipped to make things easier for teachers to introduce technology into the classroom.  On my recent prac, I attempted three ICT lessons which all took a lot of planning in advance and things still did not go quite as planned due to computer glitches!  I can only hope that it does become easier over time with more practice….but how do I overcome the technical problems with the computers themselves…???  In one of my classes, I had prepared a lesson that required students to use ‘inspiration’ to mind map characters in a novel.  Unfortunately, many of the students couldn’t access the software programme because of ‘account issues’ which also made it difficult to use other software too.  Fortunately, I had allowed for this in my lesson planning (which meant more work in preparation!) and the students had a worksheet that they could use to create their mind map the old fashion way with pen and paper!  The learning lesson here for me is to always be prepared – and have extra things ready to go if computers aren’t doing what they are suppose to.  

On Debra Goods blog there is an interesting link about blogging.  I quite agree with Debs concerns about blogging.  Are teenagers reluctant readers of good old fashioned books?  It would appear so given the amount of time they spend online. However, that said, technology in the classroom has its place, we just have to be diligent as teachers and have clear objectives when using it for teaching and learning activities.

In Bruce’s post, “the Big Pencil Case” the article talks about the fact that many students today still don’t have access to computers – in fact they don’t even have the basic equipment for regular classwork – so much so, the teacher comes in with her “Big Pencil Case”.  Whilst this may be true, what about mobile phones! It would seem that almost every student has one.  Mobile phones are more than a phone and can be viewed as a small computer in a students pocket (Prensky).  I find it strange that most kids today in our communities all have gadgets in their pockets (Ipods, MP3, mobiles etc) but can still come to class minus the essentials! Perhaps it is time we take advantage of the fact that most students have a mobile which can be used as a learning tool. Lets face it…students are hardly likely to forget to bring their mobiles to school!

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The link above is a podcast on an article I read recently in the English Teachers Association Journal regarding using computer games in the English classroom.

Teaching English should not be a passive subject.  Students should not only read and write texts, but they should also be involved in active discussion and creativity.  Blogging and wikis allow for this to happen.  It is a wonderful opportunity for studnts to communicate with each other – not only their immediate classroom peers but in other cities and countries of the world.  The English classroom can be made more informative, fun and relevnt to today’s digital natives if blogging, podcasts, wikis and online videos such as YouTube are incorporated.  Seymour Papert said that the bad thing about school is that it’s a paper based system in a digital society.

Wikis and blogs are another great way to introduce collobrative learning. A project developed by  Futurelab looks at combining mobile phones and social networking tools.  This project enabled students to use the cameras on their phones to record and take pictures of activities and then post these onto a website that their peers could access and comment on.  This can be further developed for specific classroom use, for example, if students were studying a specific book or writer, they could then develop a wiki.  This could be edited and added to – the class would then have developed a good resource which could be useful source of information for other classes in the school or other schools.  Wikis are a useful exercise in research skills and to develop writing and communication skills.

During my practicum I was teaching Macbeth to a Year 10 class.  During this time, I decided that I wanted to try using technology in my teaching practice and decided that the students would podcast a eulogy for Macbeth.  The students had already spent one lesson preparing their Eulogys and the next lesson would be creating a podcast.  Before we began, I asked the students if they knew about podcasting or how to Podcast and was very surprised to learn that not one of these students had done this before.  

The acutal podcasting lesson went well (all things considered). True to form of digital natives, these students picked up the idea of podcasting very quickly and with little effort.  What I did learn from  this, is that a lesson that involves technology needs to be very organised and structured.  Even with this in mind, podcasting as a class is very noisy!  Word of advice, always get the students to record first before adding the music/jingles etc as it becomes very distracting!  I was lucky enough to have an IT support person nearby who came to assist some of the students who had difficulties with their computers (another issue of using technology in a lesson – there always seems to be a problem with some computers in the computer labs!).  As for every task we set for our students, they need understand the objectives of the lesson – what was the purpose of podcasting? Its important for students to understand why they were podcasting their work. I told them that podcasting was learning about 21st century communication skills, along with being creative (in this case, creating an atmosphere/ambiance for the task).  Podcasting also allowed students to have an audience.  Overall, the students had fun with podcasting and enjoyed listening to each others work.

Attribution:

On one of the commercial television stations recently, there was an item that caught my attention.  At a local highschool in Sydney, students were using mobile phones in the classroom as a learning tool.  In most high schools in NSW, mobile phones are a banned item, so it came as quite a surprise that they were being used in the classroom.  I decided to explore this further. 

M-learning or mobile learning is the use of mobile technologies to enhance learning.  They include mobile phones, PDAs, Pocket PCs.  The bonus of using M-learning tools is that it can be used anywhere at anytime.  There are many interesting ways to use mobile phones for learning.  This website outlines some of these ideas for using mobile phones.  Check out the other links on this site. Very interesting.

Linda Stone’s article on how digital natives are in a state of “continuous partial attention” is very interesting.  We have seen it often in classrooms with our students who appear to be disengaged with the lesson.  But are they really?  Students today can deal with listening to music, doing their homework and keep in touch with their friends all at the same time! Most of these activities requires a great deal of thought – it is not the ability to “Multi-Task”.   Students in our classrooms have developed new competencies and as a teacher we need to develop new strategies that can continually engage our students.  We need to keep up! View this link for more information on continuous partial attention