How can we teach with technology?
Preface:
Diverting students from the virtual gingerbread house
Today's youth are often more skilled with computers than their mentors. In their world, "everybody has MySpace." As "digital natives," children are easily enticed into gingerbread homepages, aglaze with hypertext, rife with meaningless content. Yet the virtual world offers many opportunities to enhance learning. Online information allows students to read and write their own questions, organize events with other students, living a Second Life, even using avatars to define their own identity. Many educators, born before the net generation, often experienced classrooms as a grid of students sitting in rows and columns, reading the next chapter out of a book written by educational authorities. Hence the dilemma: designing lessons in the future will be radically different than the lessons our teachers created, requiring new teachers to integrate current technologies into the classroom, like email, if we want pique our students' curiosities.
Too often, students are left to their own plugins in the digital classroom. Many teachers prefer to apply research techniques they used when they were students: walking up a library's marble steps, drifting down dusty bookshelves, the "shushers" behind the desk not so hip as they are today. Some educators, as "digital immigrants," can offer little more guidance than how to log on, or print out a page, adrift in a digital sea of online research. As a result, the "online educational resource" rapidly devolves into a multimedia device satisfying the saccharine, flickering attentions of an adept tweenster: a .mp3 player, a sneakers catalog, an IM chatterbox. We all know the result, schools fine students for cell phone use in class, place "filters" on network access, which digital natives easily circumvent, leading to more and more draconian lock-down procedures, like shutting down access to sites like YouTube and mySpace, or even banning computers altogether from the classroom.
Even if educators are relegated from the "sage on the stage," to the "guide on the side," we cannot abandon our fundamental imperative: framing inquiry in the digital classroom. The Internet is a "technological enframing of being." Without an overarching, organizing pedagogy, students will be tempted to do what you're probably thinking about right now: check your email while I'm delivering today's lesson, chat on AIM, shop on eBay. How can we divert students from virtual gingerbread houses? We can either wave our hands in frustration, moan that learning is dead, accept more and more command-and-control procedures limiting students' Internet access, or, create our own "educational toolbars," that allow us to connect with students, helping to ensure students don't turn down the paths of misinformation, mind-numbing waste, and obscenity so common on the Internet.
Overview:
Upgrading our educational toolbars
Our goal will be to produce online educational materials. More importantly, we, as teachers and students, will collectively experience a pedagogical process that moves beyond the "textbook brick." The topics we will cover, in no particular order, are as follows:
- Educational Research
- Database Queries
(ERIC, EBSCO, Gale, SIRS, CAIRSS) - Standards Alignment
(USA, NYS, NYC) - Document Production
- Regents Based Item Writing
(Word, Acrobat) - Online Collaborative Writing
(Blogs, Wikis) - Student Centered Inquiry
- WebQuests
Let's first excavate some of the archaeological foundations of the World Wide Web, before it became the "Internet." The earliest, easiest versions of Internet content are the "recipe pages," or the "point-and-click" resource guides. Let's look at some examples of this primitive application of educational online resources.
Virtual hieroglyphics:
The rise of the hotlink
The above lists are examples of the most familiar "online educational resources" -- links to other webpages of interest, usually unchanging, very similar to a stack of books in a library. To be sure, the list resource can be very helpful, but once one is created, revisions are rarely made to them, indeed, dead links are often common blights on the "recipe page". More importantly, once a "net gen" clicks through all of the links, their eyes will soon be elsewhere, little learning actualized. Instead of "click and die," where the reader is little more than a passive reader, we should build on the remains of these foundations, making hypertext less linear, more pleasurable. *
Evolving away from the recipe page
I've been in professional development sessions where the above example is about as far as today's question was developed: a static page of information, reflecting all of the work done in the session, but as soon as the class is over, the page grows old, neither updated or revised, an electronic dusty book. A lot of teachers' web pages are very similar, listing outlines of content, sample exams, student rankings, but never showing what is most important in education: how learning new concepts can reshape our understandings and perceptions of the world around us.
Like any professional, educators can stay current with cutting edge trends by regularly skimming online education journals. Here are some of the best ones:
- Innovate – focuses on the creative use of information technology (IT) to enhance educational processes in academic, commercial, and governmental settings.
- Edutopia – The George Lucas Educational Foundation (GLEF) was founded in 1991 as a nonprofit operating foundation to celebrate and encourage innovation in schools.
- EducationWeek – Originally launched as the "Moonshooter" project in 1957, the journal is recognized as “American education’s newspaper of record.” Its primary mission is to help raise the level of awareness and understanding among professionals and the public of important issues in American education.
- Education Review – publishes reviews of recent books in education, covering the entire range of education scholarship and practice.
- eLearn Magazine – published by the Association for Computing Machinery, a not-for-profit educational association serving those who work, teach, and learn in the various computing-related fields. Founded in 1947, ACM's stated mission is to advance the arts, sciences, and applications of information technology, with a special emphasis on teachers, managers, and administrators working to develop educational programs or classes on the Web.
- EduCause Quarterly – EDUCAUSE Quarterly (formerly CAUSE/EFFECT) is a practitioner's journal about managing and using information resources in higher education. EDUCAUSE Quarterly includes articles (written by professionals in the field and peer-reviewed) that relate to planning, developing, managing, using, and evaluating information resources in higher education. Information resources encompass technology, services, and information.
Research Databases
Boricua students also have access to the following databases, at school and at home. You will need passwords to login at home.
I'm still working on making all of the links perfect, but the descriptions for each database will help you choose the ones that will best help you do specific research.
General
- MasterFile Select — full text coverage for more than 700 periodicals covering general reference, business, health, education, general science, multicultural issues, as well as abstracts for more than 2,050 titles. This database also features 35 full text reference and travel books.
- TOPICSearch — explores social, political and economic issues, scientific discoveries and other popular topics discussed in today’s classrooms. Contains full text for over 139,800 articles from 4,800 diverse sources including international and regional newspapers.
- Academic Search Elite — Academic Search Elite provides full text for more than 2,000 journals in nearly every area of academic study including: computer sciences, engineering, physics, chemistry, language and linguistics, arts & literature, medical sciences, ethnic studies and more.
- Newspaper Source — Newspaper Source provides cover-to-cover full text for 28 national (U.S.) & international newspapers. The database also contains selected full text for more than 260 regional (U.S.) newspapers. In addition, full text television & radio news transcripts are provided from ABC News, CBS News, CNN, CNN International, FOX News, NPR, etc.
- Serials Directory— The Serials Directory provides access to the most up-to-date and accurate bibliographic information as well as current pricing structures for popular serials. It contains nearly 212,000 U.S. and international titles, including newspapers; data from nearly 108,235 publishers worldwide.
Science
- Science Reference Center — contains full text for nearly 640 science encyclopedias, reference books, periodicals, etc. Topics covered include: biology, chemistry, earth & space science, environmental science, health & medicine, history of science, life science, physics, science & society, science as inquiry, scientists, technology and wildlife.
- General Science Collection — full text coverage for more than 60 of the most popular science publications including Archaeology, Astronomy, Discover, National Geographic, National Wildlife, Popular Science, Science News, Scientific American, and many others.
- Funk and Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia — indexes over 25,000 records, covering an array of topics. Full text for each record may be easily accessed by double clicking on the topic from the display. The database contains various images, offers brief biographies as well as information in a variety of subject areas.
- EBSCO Encyclopedia of Animals — in-depth information on a variety of topics relating to animals. The database consists of indexing, abstracts, and full text records describing the nature and habitat of familiar animals.
Medical
- MEDLINE — authoritative medical information on medicine,nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, pre-clinical sciences from over 4,800 current biomedical journals.
- Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition — provides nearly 550 scholarly full text journals focusing on many medical disciplines. Also featured are abstracts and indexing for nearly 850 journals. Coverage of nursing and allied health is particularly strong. In addition, this database includes Lexi-PAL Drug Guide, which covers 1,300 generic drug patient education sheets with more than 4,700 brand names.
Business
- Business Source Elite — Business Source Elite provides full text coverage for nearly 1,100 business publications and economics journals, including nearly 500 peer-reviewed publications. In addition to the full text, this database offers indexing and abstracts for more than 1,750 journals. Business Source Elite contains full text from the world's top management and marketing journals. This database includes full text (PDF) coverage dating back as far as 1985, and detailed company profiles for the world's 10,000 largest companies.
- Regional Business News — incorporates 75 business journals, newspapers and newswires.
- Military & Government Collection — current news pertaining to all branches of the military, this database offers a thorough collection of periodicals, academic journals and other content pertinent to the increasing needs of those sites. The Military & Government Collection provides cover-to-cover full text for nearly 300 journals and periodicals. The database also offers indexing and abstracts for nearly 400 titles.
Education
- ERIC — provides access to education literature and resources. The database provides access to information from journals included in the Current Index of Journals in Education Resources in Education Index. The database contains more than 1,194,000 records and links to more than 100,000 full-text documents and
- Professional Development Collection — highly specialized collection of nearly 520 high quality education journals, including nearly 350 peer-reviewed titles. This database also contains more than 200 educational reports. This is the most comprehensive and most valuable collection of full text education journals in the world. In addition to full text, indexing and abstracts are provided for more than 700 journals.
Gale Databases- Custom Newspapers – Search a collection of more than 900 newspapers, both national and international.
- New York State Newspapers – 28 major newspapers published in the state of New York, including the New York Times and the New York Post.
- Health Reference Center Academic – Multi-source database provides access to the full text of nursing and allied health journals, plus the wide variety of personal health information sources in InfoTrac's award-winning Health Reference Center.
- Informe – Una colección de revistas hispánicas con textos completos. Abarca negocios, salud, tecnología, cultura, temas de actualidad y otras materias.
- Gale Virtual Reference Library – database of encyclopedias and specialized reference sources for multidisciplinary research.
- Business and Company ASAP – Providing researchers with information on companies, markets and industries. From market trends, mergers and acquisitions to current management theory and company overviews. Access business and trade journals, newspapers and company directory profiles with full text and images.
- Business and Company Resource Center – Business and Company Resource Center is a fully integrated resource bringing together company profiles, brand information, rankings, investment reports, company histories, chronologies and periodicals.
- Junior Edition K12 – Now with over 330 titles, cross searchable with E-Books, this periodical database is designed for students in junior high and middle school with access to a variety of indexed and full-text magazines, newspapers and reference books for information on current events, the arts, science, popular culture, health, people, government, history, sports and more.
- Twayne's Author Series – Comprises 600 full-text titles from the Twayne Literary Masters series, 200 each from Twayne World, US, and English Authors.
- National Newspaper Index – National Newspaper Index provides quick access to the indexing of America's top five newspapers in one seamless search: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post.
- Health and Wellness Resource Center and Alternative Health Module – Provides instant access to carefully compiled and trusted medical reference materials. Includes nearly 400 health/medical journals, hundreds of pamphlets, over 700 health-related videos from partner Healthology, Inc., and articles from 2,200 general interest publications in addition to a broad collection of Gale reference titles.
SIRS offers several comprehensive resources, including:
- Researcher — features thousands of full-text articles and analysis on today’s hottest and most controversial social, scientific, health, historic, economic, political, and global issues.
- Government Reporter — contains fulltext US government documents, and graphics. Included are Supreme Court decisions, historic documents, National Archives, and more.
- Renaissance — provides dynamic information on the arts and humanities. Fulltext articles and color images are selected from more than 1,200 publications.
- WebSelect — online databases of quality websites on vital issues and topics, evaluated daily for relevance and credibility.
- Interactive Citizenship — helps student learn about every facet of government, economics, and concepts underlying world affairs. In-depth chapter essays, related articles, primary sources, and websites provide both background context and the latest information on key concepts in the social sciences.
And finally, there are numerous Search Engines and Research Databases available free online to help you find information when nothing else works.
One last note, although I went online when Reagan was president, and I've had my own websites for over a decade, many of my pedagogical ideas achieved critical mass when I picked up Will Richardson's book last year. Much of what we will explore this semester can be found in his $30 book:
Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, And Other Powerful Web Tools For Classrooms
By Will Richardson (Paperback ISBN: 9781412927673)
Evaluation
Homework #1
Deliverable #1: Each student will imagine one way that classrooms will be different twenty years from now. Using the above research tools, find three articles that help describe your vision. Summarize the information in those three articles in 2-3 paragraphs. Here are some examples of publications that envision the future classroom:
- Visions 2020: Transforming Education and Training Through Advanced Technologies
- Changing Needs, Changing Models: Instructional Technology Training at Bronx Community College
Deliverable #2: Students will form groups of no less than two and no more than three students. Each group will decide which content area (math, science, social science, art, or language arts) they will research for their lesson plans, etc. Each group will post a comment to this posting, listing their names and content area.
To post a comment, make sure you choose the "anonymous" identity before clicking on the 'Publish Your Comment' button. Include everyone's name in the group so I know who you are, otherwise, I'll just delete the comment.
Note: Once a group has posted their choice for a content area, no other group may choose that content area.
Deliverable #3: Each group will choose an Aim for a lesson plan appropriate to the chosen content area.
Deliverable #4: Each group will identify the New York State and New York City standards that align to the Aim.
Deliverable #5: Each group will use the ERIC search engine and the International Bibliographic Database on Higher Education, (any music lesson can also use the CAIRSS for Music database) to locate four articles that pertain instruction and delivery of that Aim. The research databases discussed above may also be used.
Deliverable #7: Each group will post a comment that includes their names, their Aim, the NYS and NYC standards, and the APA citations of the four research articles to this blog.
Deliverable #8: Each group will use the Lesson Plan Word Template to design and write a lesson plan based upon their ERIC research articles.
Deliverable #9: Each group will produce a 150 word essay that summarizes
- the lesson plan Aim chosen
- how the ERIC research articles helped shape the design of your lesson plan
- the NYS standards that are applicable to your lesson plan, and
- how you plan to implement this lesson plan
APA Citation Format
Citing an article requires including information that will allow anyone (including you) to find the article at a later date. Generally, you must include the author's name, the date of publication, the article's title, the page numbers, and the publisher. Use the following APA Citation Format examples to help create the correct citation format.
Article in Journal Paginated by Issue
Journals paginated by issue begin with page one every issue; therefore, the issue number gets indicated in parentheses after the volume. The parentheses and issue number are not italicized or underlined.Scruton, R. (1996). The eclipse of listening. The New Criterion, 15(30), 5-13.
Article in a Magazine
Henry, W. A., III. (1990, April 9). Making the grade in today's schools. Time, 135, 28-31.
Article in a Newspaper
Unlike other periodicals, p. or pp. precedes page numbers for a newspaper reference in APA style. Single pages take p., e.g., p. B2; multiple pages take pp., e.g., pp. B2, B4 or pp. C1, C3-C4.Schultz, S. (2005, December 28). Calls made to strengthen state energy policies. The Country Today, pp. 1A, 2A.
No comments:
Post a Comment