Organizing My Online Life

There are two sides to me--the one that loves chaos, and the one that needs structure, that needs to see everything layed out like it is.  It's one of the reasons why the summer portion of the MAC Program drives me insane; half the time I don't even know how many classes I'm actually taking.  Assignments for every course are scattered all over the place, be they actually under the assignments tab (novel idea), on a googledoc, under resources in CTools, in an e-mail, on the syllabus, and so on.  You get the gist.  Chaos, and not the type I like, has been thrust upon me.  Most days I feel like I'm trapped in this:

That would be traffic in India, where lights and street signs are more like guidelines that consistently get ignored.  Anyway, back to technology and how it can be amazing.  Yesterday, we presented in groups of three on ways to organize our lives.  Our lives as teachers, as students, as people trying to figure out the masses of information we've had hurled at us.  Being rather familiar with GoogleDocs, as we past Michigan undergrads have lived with it these past four years, I found Evernote to be highly useful for my life in the moment.  Just today, I utilized it to save a PDF and annotate it, as well as create a checklist.  So much satisfaction arises from checking those little boxes next to tasks.  I can create notes for each day of the week next week, go through the bazillion places I might find my assignments, and organize my to-do lists ahead of time.  It's like an anti-freak-out mechanism.  Why did I not know about this at the beginning of the program?!?  Plus, that elephant icon...I love elephants!  Basically, it was meant to be.

And Evernote was not the only exciting new piece of technology I learned through this assignment.  Blendspace, which I had likewise never heard of before, seems like a great online space for teachers to collaborate with one another.  Lesson plans can be shared with teachers all across the U.S.A. online, and I can view other's online lesson plans to draw from as well.  Teachers across disciplines within a school could even utilize this site to collaborate in ways that were much more difficult to coordinate beforehand.  As a future German teacher, I also find this especially valuable for sharing YouTube clips and audio of native German speakers for the class.  In addition, Blendspace does not only benefit teachers of all disciplines, but also the students themselves through the student-geared side of the website.  Teachers could hypothetically upload technology-based portions of homework to the lesson plan section of the website--it's so ridiculously easy, even I could do it.  

Kind of unrelated to this post, but food for thought, anyway:

Work Those Learning Muscles

I'm not going to lie, my first thought when I realized we were going to read about video games as a way to facilitate learning went something like this: Really?  Those mindless things my guy friends sit around playing for hours?  Playing FIFA can be good for your brain?  I guess I'll read more to find out...

After additional thought, I remembered the N64 my sister and I were allowed to play for 3 hours per week, and the types of thinking required in order to beat her.  Even with games like PacMan, I had to consider layouts of mazes differently, strategize about how to stuff my face full of those little dots without being eaten by the ghosts.  In the same vein, we were allowed to play computer games like Freddy Fish, Pajama Sam and some typing game a couple of hours per week, which also made learning, even learning how to type quickly, engaging to the point that we would forget we were actually doing math.

Some more recent online games I investigated this week were the icivics games, which have both playing and teaching options.  There were many options from which to choose; as an avid watcher of Law & Order SVU, I decided to attempt "Do I have a Right?"  I chose my animated character and had the option to work with one of two partners, thus becoming a member of the Mae and Freepress Law Firm.  Information about my partner, Freepress (who protects his clients' first amendment rights), and our law firm was presented.  Goals include hiring lawyers with different skill sets, letting clients know if they have a case, and, if they do, matching them with the correct lawyer.  Through playing this game, people become more aware of various laws and amendments.  The learner takes on the identity of a lawyer and interacts with potential clients, partners, and, eventually, judges and juries.  

    Because I have not played this game before, it is a learning process; sometimes, the only way to proceed is by making a mistake and starting over. Honestly, it isn't nearly as exhilarating as watching Law & Order, but it is definitely more interesting than sitting in class listening to a teacher lecture amendments and due process at you for the tenth time.  In addition, I now view games (as supplements) as another context in which students could potentially experience the content they are attempting to learn, while engaging their brains in various ways that sometimes fall by the wayside in a classroom environment.

Many other, possibly more fun/educational, games on this website include:

After reading about effective learning through video games, I also stumbled upon this interesting gem enumerating pros and cons of playing video games.  Some food for thought.  Any opinions about utilizing video games in the classroom or as an at home assignment to aid in learning, please leave me a comment!

Online Testing: Why It Isn't the Best Idea Since Sliced Bread

With the increasing technological literacy, policy makers and educators alike have been leaning away from paper-based readings, activities and assessments.  Even in our MAC Program, we are encouraged to do as much on our laptops as possible, such as taking notes, working on group projects, and reading articles as PDFs rather than printing them out and marking up hard copies.  Yet, we just read an article by Mangen et al. on the effects of text read on a computer screen vs. a paper-based text and what implications these had for comprehension; the paper-based text resulted in significantly higher comprehension than when the same excerpt was read onscreen (2013).  Thus, by asking students to take hugely important tests on a computer (ACT, GRE, LSAT, etc), aren't we already disadvantaging them?

Honestly, the only positives I can think of for online testing are those of saving paper and thus saving trees and possibly a bit of money.  However, online tests are not that much cheaper than paper tests and seem significantly more difficult to navigate.  For example, take a look at this bit of the Smarter Balance assessment we checked out in class today:  

When completing answers, I already felt frustrated and just wanted to close my laptop lid and stare at the pretty colors on the cover (usually I'm fairly patient and love challenges).  Why, you may ask?  My generation has grown up with computers; aren't we accustomed to them?  Don't we love using them?  Not for test-taking, and in my case, most definitely not for reading.  Look at this piece about Solar Power.  In order to do the reading portion, the test-taker has to scroll.  Already, this interrupts skimming and makes it far easier to lose where you just saw that extremely important fact that may be the answer to the first question.  In addition, I can't mark up the computer screen.  Sure, the ... bubble exists for note taking, but A) what if I didn't know that, B) what if I didn't know how to properly use it, and C) what if taking notes on the text is the best way for me to comprehend what I'm seeing? (and it is--I really struggle pulling what I wanted out of a text again if I can't annotate).

I dislike almost everything about online testing of this sort, from the splitting headaches that arise after staring at a screen for more than five hours to the absurd rule that one cannot skip a question and go back to it.  And do the policy makers that advocate for these end up having to take them?  No; for many, these types of tests are after their time as students.  The only upside I can really consider is the environmentally friendly aspect of online test-taking, but still...Americans do so much to destroy the environment that this pro pales adjacent to the large amount of disadvantages I see in relation to computer-based tests.

Some interesting research:

Mangen, A., Walgermo, B. R., & Bronnick, K. (2013). Reading linear texts on paper versus computer screen: Effects on reading comprehension. International Journal of Educational Research, 58, 61-68.

Dewey and Thoughts on Social Learning, Psychology, Technology and Teaching

Thoughts on My Pedagogic Creed by John Dewey:

Inheriting culture.  It's a topic that I've seen pop up in psychology, developmental, and anthropology courses.  However, it seems as if culture inheritance is just a piece of Dewey's "funded capital of civilization," one he sees as consisting mainly of social, environmental influences.  In the nature vs. nurture debate, Dewey stakes a claim more so in the nurture side when writing of education.  Up to an extent, I agree, although in as extreme a way as Dewey.  If an incredibly intelligent student exists, for example, in a context with a poorly equipped school with classes of over thirty students, or perhaps with great schooling opportunities but a tumultuous home environment, he or she will most likely not reach full potential.  Yet, if that student has just a few amazing teachers who establish solid, positive relationships, I like to think there's hope. Those social relationships we form are incredibly important.  Students are not in school only to learn content; that content, for some subjects, may change incredibly quickly.  Instead they are learning life skills: the ability to adapt and change, metacognition, how to interact with one another in a culturally and socially appropriate way, how to ask for help.

Something I heard earlier today at Scarlett Middle School struck me: we are going to be teaching students who will have jobs in ten years that do not exist today and will utilize technology that has yet to be invented.  Like Dewey states, it is impossible to prepare students for "any precise set of conditions," rather, I believe we can give them whatever thinking tools we can while building relationships and positive classroom environments and helping to create meaning between information learned in class and the outside world.  Sometimes, technology can help with this meaning-making, but it should not be used merely for technology's sake.  Dewey seemed to place a lot of emphasis on learning through images; again, I would agree that images, ie films, photos from the internet, drawings, etc, could enhance teaching in some instances but not others.  In my experience, using technology is very situational and context dependent.

It's super crazy how Dewey already mentioned psychology in conjunction with education over 100 years ago!  Cognitive psychology has only formally been in existence for approximately fifty years, yet Dewey already writes about how psychology grants a bit of insight as to the mental processes of which we are capable, without explaining enough or in such a way that such knowledge could be transferred to education.  Still today, after we have learned so much more about the structure of the brain and how it works, we don't really know how to apply much to education.  With all of the technology and educated professionals in the world, why not?  Why, with the extensive brain literature we have floating around in journals and on the internet, haven't more studies been conducted that can better be translated to teaching?  

Quotes I love:  "If we eliminate the individual factor from society, we are left with only an inert and lifeless mass."
"I believe that much of present education fails because it neglects this fundamental principle of the school as a form of community life."
--Information can't just be pumped into brains; context is crucial.  Each student is his/her own person with his/her own nuances, yet at the same time they all need to feel belonging, like they are wanted.

Side note: I'm a fan of that mustache.

Thoughts on "On Ed Tech and Dewey's Legacy"

I kind of love Dewey right now.  Who knew he already pointed out how inadequate didactic teaching teaching was in the early 1900s? (had to look up didactic, I won't lie..."inclined to lecture others too much, pedantic").  Yet there are still teachers, albeit the more ineffective ones, who will stand at the front of a class and just spew knowledge without bothering to connect any sort of meaning to it.  Those were the classes in high school where I would either manage to finagle a pass to the art room for the hour or sit and stare out the window at the trees.  Factual knowledge is so superficial without anything else connected to it, it hops in one ear, rattles around for a bit if it's lucky, then wanders right back out.  I couldn't tell you the capitals of every country in Asia anymore if my life depended on it, but I do know a starfish is the only creature that can turn its stomach inside out because I can link it to the starfish I would play with as a child.

Furthermore, Dewey stresses experience as not occurring in a vacuum.  This could potentially be a part of education where technology can be of great help.  In order to connect in-class learning to meaning, teachers could show relevant clips, photos and slideshows.  Other types of technology, such as Elmos and Smartboards, could make it easier to make things like "mind-maps" in such a way that the whole class can see thought processes and contribute.  Crazy amounts of information can be accessed through computers (whether it is useful, correct information is another story).  In addition, such technology can help students visualize connections.  I forget where I heard/read it, but supposedly students need to experience new information in at least seven different contexts before they can remember it.  Technology can add some of these additional contexts.  For example, as an aspiring German teacher, I would love to have access to various audio clips of native speakers with different dialects for my students.  If all they become accustomed to is my way of speaking and one another's, they will be at a disadvantage.  When I was a French student, I had only heard my teacher speak the language.  As soon as anyone else tried to speak French to me, such as my Grandpa, I floundered.  Perhaps they could even use Skype with students their own age in Germany.  But as with many forms of technology, Skyping for class definitely has its pros and cons.

More quoting: "I believe that the neglect of this [experience as key] is a cause of a large part of the waste of time and strength in school work.  The child is thrown into a passive, receptive, or absorbing attitude."