Worldly Discussions

This week for class we were asked to find a read a blog by a professional, an Edublogger. The blogging world is relatively new to me. Most of my experience includes this class, an occasional travel blog, or my random crossing with one while searching for information on Google. I found it interesting that there are people that essentially do this as a living and that are known for it. However, I've quickly realized that the sharing of ideas and practices among teachers through this medium is fairly efficient. It is a way to share ideas from the professional world of teaching in a manner that is easy to comprehend and not too timely.

After searching through quite a few different blogs, I found the one by Ewan McIntosh  interesting. I originally opened it up because it's description talked about education around the world and being a Spanish teacher and someone who loves to learn about other cultures & norms, I am always interested in the way things are done around the world. I'm not sure why, but I was a little surprised when I opened up his blog and realized that what he was blogging about wasn't actually too different from what we've been talking about for our country's education system: technology in the classroom, student choice, and connecting what students learn in the classroom to a successful life within our society (and whatever that entails - college, career, trade, etc.).

Despite my sadness in not being able to learn about cultural differences in education, I thought it was interesting that this blog was by someone who is both a teacher, a speaker, and an investor, as well as one of Europe's well-known experts in digital media and he is blogging about the same themes we've been talking about. I think it put some of our discussions that we've had into a greater perspective for me. And I felt that it was neat to see the same things we've been talking about come up in a blog that is focused on an international perspective on education.

Playing the Game of Spanish

"How is your teaching content area like a game?"

We were asked this question by our professor in class today. I think that is one of the things that helped me to fall in love with learning Spanish. In my first few years, learning Spanish was like this giant puzzle; I had to take all these pieces I was learning about and put them together to form grammatically correct sentences. It was a game in the sense that I had to build conversations and role play. After 4 years of studying Spanish I went on a school sponsored trip to Spain. Here we toured many different historical sites and stayed with a host family for a few of the days. It was after this trip that the though came across my mind that Spanish is more than a puzzle or game. By being in the country and using the language on a daily basis I realized its true existence as a way to communicate and express a culture. These experiences were more difficult to create in the classroom but became an extremely important part of my Spanish learning career.

The reason I bring up this experience is because of the answer I have to the posed question. Learning Spanish is like a game because of the same kind of "doing" that occurs in both. We talked in class about the way in which the skills used in gaming are similar to those used in learning (collaboration, problem solving, creativity, persistence, etc.). When thinking about it this way, the "Game of Spanish" works like this to me:

• The Players: the vocabulary and grammar structures
• The "Playing": putting it all together and building sentences
• Taking Risks: using the language, speaking, reading, and writing it
• Goal: making connections to culture and communicating

You need to use your players in order to do the playing. You do the playing by taking risks in order to reach your goal.

Like gaming, you enter a virtual world when you learn a language: you put yourself in roles, place yourself in the context of another culture, and role play in order to have a better understanding and further your knowledge. And you use the skills from gaming to help you in this world. Some examples of using these skills in this world include:

• Collaboration: working together with classmates to role play and practice
• Problem Solving: when faced with a verb conjugation, you must go through the different ones in your head and choose one based upon the context
• Creativity: coming up with round about ways to express what you might not yet be able to or what might not translate word for word from English
• Persistence: continuing to try to use the language, even if you make a mistake or feel embarrassment

My original thoughts about Spanish as this puzzle that comes to life, helped me to make connections to the idea of playing the "Game of Spanish" (any other given content area) that we discussed in class today. The act of "doing" (in my case, it was being immersed in a country that speaks the language) appears to me to be a great way of engaging students and getting them motivated to want to learn more about a subject.

Based upon what I've said so far, it can be conceptualized that learning Spanish is like a giant game. But "Could you set up a whole class like a game?" This was the question our instructor after our discussions today. I think it would be awesome to set up a class like a game! It would take a lot of planning, but it gets students really into what they are learning, why not? To set it up like a game, I think roles would have to be defined early in the first days of class (and added as new students come or others leave) and there would have to be clear objectives to overcome based upon each unit. Each unit could be broken up into smaller quests which help them to navigate through the game in order to get to the end (the final exam?). Each quest could have some sort of mystery or challenge attached to it that could be overcome. As I'm writing about this now, I'm realizing it sounds pretty similar to the way I described earlier about how the "Game of Spanish" worked. But overall I think that the idea of setting up a whole class like a game would be an amazing class to be in if done correctly and allowing for learning and experimenting along the way!

Matemáticas en español

This week for class we were asked to play an educational game. I choose SuperSaber, a learning game in Spanish. For whatever reason, probably because I am a prospective teacher of Spanish, I assumed this game was going to be a game where one would be playing to practice and learn Spanish. That is not really how I found it to be though. The game is more set up to be a learning game for those who already know Spanish, or possibly those that are learning in bilingual classrooms. But when I think of teaching in a Spanish 6-12 classroom, these skills needed to complete the tasks are very basic (way lower than the level of these students, especially high schoolers) level. Although the beginning of each game would serve a great purpose in practicing reading Spanish and following directions in the language, because of this basic level students would easily be able to figure out many of the games without even reading the directions. They would take advantage of their "digital nativeness" that would allow them just to play with the program to figure it out, without even using the Spanish. I can attest to this because that is exactly what I did for a few of the activities. For example the first activity that comes into my head in the one for math practice called: Carreras de sumas y restas. I caught myself and realized I wasn't even paying attention to the Spanish on the screen. Instead, I was just trying to get my guy to move down the track by focusing all my attention on the math problem. 

Like I said before, if you are teaching elementary school in a bilingual classroom, this seems like it may be something that could be useful for you. Students would be learning and practicing their math skills in Spanish. But this still makes me wonder about the fact that they are "digital natives." Like me, would they even pay attention to the Spanish? or Even if they only pay attention to a few Spanish words, would the fact that the game is in Spanish be enough to make it an adequate learning game for learning math in Spanish?

I can see potential for some of the games related to spelling words, for example the one distinguishing between whether words are spelled with a 'b'or a 'v' called: Carrera de la 'b'y la 'v,' being used in a typical Spanish classroom though. The 'b' and the 'v' sound very similar in Spanish and so therefore the spelling of words with these letters could be common mistakes. But then again, we would have to have knowledge of whether this is a common problem among students learning Spanish as a second language or mostly just among students who speak Spanish as their first language. 

Overall I think this program was really neat in that it touched upon many different school subjects. I can mostly see it being a tool in bilingual classrooms or classrooms for students who are native Spanish speakers, however, I think a lot of this is due to the structure of how world languages are taught in the U.S. In many places, they are not available until middle or high school. At this point students have more trouble learning a language because they are nearing the end of the critical learning period in which learning a second language is more easily done. If languages were taught at a younger level, then yes, having an immersion game like this where students can learn about other subjects in their second language would be beneficial. But since this isn't typical, and a lot of the games in this program require a decent amount of background knowledge of the students' Spanish abilities and academic level, like any educational game that might be implemented, there should be some discretion or skepticism taken into consideration.

back to school supplies

This past weekend while finishing up my shift at the hardware store I work at, I started to think about our discussions about technology in the classroom. I was completing my regular closing routine of dusting the grills, I started to tune into the commercial that was playing on the radio. It was your typical phone commercial, buy "this" new phone that comes with "this" and you get such a great deal on "this" plan. What struck me as funny was the line "don't forget your new phones when you are buying your back to school supplies!" With this statement, I started thinking about our class, the discussions we had (and what I previously posted) about equity in the classroom and BYOD (Bringing Your Own Devices), and my initial thought on this advertisement:

"Since when did phones become 'back to school' supplies?"

BYOD

One of our first days of orientation in the MAC program, we participated in an online feedback form by being asked to take out our phones and text in our answers. I had never done this before and  this new experience was weird to me. I've always been taught that pulling out my phone in class was rude and usually avoided distractions from it by shoving it into a pocket of my backpack and just kind of forgetting about it. So while sending in the feedback questions and waiting for others to finish answering, I just kept thinking how interesting it was that this was how we were taking survey's now. It mean, it makes sense as everyone had a cell phone and most the capability to text, but something about us pulling out these devices that I've always known to have "to disappear" once class started was just different.

Not too long ago, I was having a conversation with my brother, a high school senior at the time, via texting. There was something I needed to ask him and instead of waiting until he was out of school for the day, I texted him right away so I didn't forget. When I received a response, I was quick to give him a hard time: "What are you doing texting while in class?" I took him just responding sarcastically when he texted me: "We're allowed to." In my mind I was thinking, "yeah right!...nice try."

The next time I was home, I mentioned something to about this and my mom backed him up. "The school changed the policy" they told me. When I was in high school, phones were supposed to be out of sight and off! If a teacher saw you with one in the hallway, or at lunch, and especially in class, it was taken away and a parent had to come and get it from the office for you. Phones were to be off and put away in a locker or backpack/purse during school hours. It was definitely news to me that now the school had settled on the rule that students were allowed to carry their phones with them, and that they were allowed to be on, and use them during passing time in the halls and lunch, just not during class.

I mean, once again, it makes sense. Cell phones, especially with iPhones and other smartphones, have become such a part of our lives. Since I've been in college, I've always had my phone easily accessible and on during classes. In fact, during the moments before class and when I walked home I was usually on my phone. So although it seemed weird that the high school students were now allowed to have this freedom with their phones in school made sense, but since it was so different from my experiences there, I was a little shocked by the rule change.

I thought of this conversation in class the other day when we were talking about if students should be allowed to bring their own tech devices to the classroom. It seems to make sense that this rule would change give the point that we are at with technology today. It makes sense that these devices could therefore be used as helpful tools in classroom. My only apprehension with this at first was that they could and probably would be a distraction as students would use them for other purposes as well during class. I was intrigued by the article and discussion on how they also bring a whole new dimension to the idea of and "equitable classroom." Implementing the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) logic into a classroom posses the follow ideas about equity in the classroom:

• We should let students bring their own devices, because if we aren't letting the students use what they use in their everyday life, how are we being equitable?
• Some students may not have access to laptops or smartphones and may not be able to afford them, so this is realistically not equitable.
• Even if we gave everyone technology, there might not be enough funding to get the most up to date so the school would have to resort to purchasing something more out of date and this might not be beneficial to the students, so is this equitable?

I feel up to this point, I've had fairly strong opinions about why I don't feel that technology is necessarily beneficial to the classroom. I have never thought about it in these terms however, and I found this as a interesting critique.

Gooru

Our assignment this week included creating a "how to" guide for a website dedicated to organizing your online life. My assigned website was Gooru. The purpose of Gooru is to allow teachers to gather resources and materials into a customizable playlist that is called a "Collection." These collections could be used as a way to enhance lessons, share extra materials with your students, find new resources to help you better understand how to approach teaching a subject, or building an online unit for students to complete. Not knowing anything about Gooru at the beginning of this assignment, I found it extremely user friendly! 

Gooru has four main pages that serve with the following functions:

• Discover: This is the place where you can search to find the best educational stuff on the web to use in your Collection. The discover page allows you to preview, learn and see what standards (Common Core or California) the resources align with. You can also narrow your search in filtering by category, grade, subject, website, or Common Core standard.
• Organize: This page allows you to organize your collections. Once you find a resource you would like to use, you can add it to your collection, as well as put comments on how you want students to use the resource or what they should make sure to pay attention to.
• Teach: The teach page is where you create the classpage that your students will use to navigate through the website. This is where you add assignments and share with your students the resources you have found.
• Study: The section is for the students to be able to access their class materials. By entering their code Class Code, that you as a teacher provide, they will be able to see and use the resources

Throughout my use with Gooru, I realized how helpful it would be in organizing concepts. However, when trying to come up with a “Collection” that would somehow relate to my future classroom as a Spanish teacher was difficult. The website seems to be more directed towards science, math, and history than anything else. In order do something related to Spanish, I would have to focus on world history of Spanish speaking regions or something of that sort.

The other thought that kept crossing my mind is that although you could build a unit devoted to something and essentially hit upon many standards, is it beneficial to have students working this way? I would think this is where my skepticism of using technology in the classroom comes into play. I think this is an excellent tool; however, I would be very cautious in not making a unit strictly done through this website. I do believe it is a great place to share with students extra resources (for those that may be really interested in a topic) as well as to assign homework.

Another positive use for this website would be to help differentiate to “gifted” or “talented” students. In our Educational Psychology class we talked about how there are two ways to differentiate instruction for these students: acceleration (giving the students the same material but more quickly so that they are able to do independent work afterwards) and enrichment (students work at the same pace as the class, but are able to delve more deeply into a topic). I think using a website like this, could help teachers whether they use the acceleration or enrichment instruction in order to benefit the students who need this type of differentiation.

in "digital limbo"

Today it’s not uncommon to find a 2 or 3 year old playing a game on their parents’ iPad or phone, whereas growing up, I rarely touched the television. Instead I was out in my neighborhood building forts, rollerblading, or playing a game of capture the flag – those activities my grandparents would refer to as “good old fashioned fun” in comparison to sitting behind a screen today. I’m bringing this point up because it’s not that I was born drastically before the boom of the technology age, but I did have a healthy balance that helped me understand a unique perspective on technology; it is helpful and fun, but it is not the be-all end-all. It is still useful to contact someone via a phone call rather than a text. That sometimes there is something more meaningful and exciting in letter writing and receiving physical mail than just another email in the inbox. And that communicating face to face can remain private, but in social media it is easily publicized.

In class this week, we learned about the concept of a “digital native” from Bill Sheskey. He defines a digital native as students who are “native speakers of technology, fluent in the digital language of computers, video games, and the Internet.” These are people who have grown up immersed in technology and have an understanding of it that enables them to adequately navigate through many different technological systems. Sheskey compares this definition with the idea of a “digital immigrant” or someone who wasn’t born into the digital world but has adopted it. Sheskey comments like people who learn a language later in life, the accent of the past will continue to influence their enculturation into this digital world. He gives the example that these “immigrants” would read a manual in order to figure out a new program, whereas, a “native” would work with the program and let it teach itself.

I’m definitely not a “digital immigrant” as I am familiar enough with technology that with most programs I could play with it a bit in order to figure it out. I think most people would consider me a “digital native” based upon the fact that I’ve grown up with all sorts of new and innovative technologies being incorporated into my life: computers, cell phones, digital cameras, iPods, the Internet.  However, I’m proposing that I’m almost between the two, in a “digital limbo” of sorts. I’m just on the verge of someone who would be considered a “native” as technological advancements have been a large part of my life, and I wouldn’t be one to read a manual like an “immigrant,” but there is a part of me that would rather use “old” ways of doing things (notes by hand, calling instead of texting, etc.) I have been and am in classes that technology consumes, but I also remember first being introduced to using technology for my studies when I was required to take “essential skills” and “keyboarding” classes in middle school.

As I’ve adapted to the use of more and more technology over the years, I’ve never forgot the many things my parents and teachers, those so called “digital immigrants,” warned us about as we learned about it:

“remember, everything you put on the internet is public”

“anyone has access to the internet”

“once it’s there, it’s permanent”

“you can’t trust it”

Although this may have been their “accent” speaking, these are all valid and important things to remember when using technology. We recently talked in class about a student who had been using technology as a means to express himself and vocally display his abuse of alcohol on Twitter without the realization that this was public for all to see. As a Millennial caught in this “digital limbo” I have the understanding of a “native” but also part of the accent of the “immigrant.” My nativeness helps me to be able to figure out and efficiently use technology but the accent of the people who taught the digital ways helps me to stay in tune with norms to use technology appropriately. I think this is the balance that needs to be achieved in our “digital native’s” today. Although they have grown up with technology so easily available and an understanding of how to use it for almost everything, it is sad to know that a student would not understand the social aspects of public-ness that the internet can have.

In my preparation to become a teacher, I am taking a class that addresses these issues, where I can reflect on technology as a positive, but be weary of the negative aspects of it as well. I believe this is something we need to remember to teach our future students or “digital natives.” I agree that technology can have benefits to the classroom and the more I’m in this class, the more I’m warming up to it, but I also think it doesn’t hurt to help students recognize its downfalls—that technology is not the end-all. Rather,  achieving a balance between being a “digital native” and taking the cautions of the “digital immigrant” could better open our students’ eyes to understanding a world that is not completely digitally dominated. I think this is extremely important to remember as these “digital natives” move forward in their lives and their continued use of technology in order to prevent the negative implications that technology could have.

ahead of his time

One could think of this phrase in many different ways: a musician who creates music that is not appreciated at first listen or even in their day (but is eventually respected worldwide), an artist who has a strikingly different technique or style (that doesn’t become applauded until long after their death), a political movement that appears radical when initially taking place (but is large part of everyday life given time), and John Dewey’s ideology that supports technology in the classroom (although what we think of as technology in the classroom did not exist yet).

Okay, John Dewey wasn’t exactly pushing for computers, televisions, and iPads in the classroom, but he had a strong opinion about what would create a better education. To prepare for class this week we were asked to read My Pedagogic Creed by John Dewey and John Dewey: A Significant Contributor to the Field of Educational Technology by Peter Rich and Thomas C. Reeves. When I think of John Dewey, I think of a well-known intellectual, a great philosopher – not one of the ‘founding fathers’ for the ideology behind educational technologies, as the article by Peter Rich and Thomas C. Reeves does.

The point that really struck me about Dewey’s views of education and it’s relation to technology was the same question that keeps crossing my mind:

“Does technology in the classroom take away from the people to people interactions and relationships?”

To my unexpected surprise, the Peter Rich and Thomas C. Reeves article suggested a good viewpoint based on Dewey’s ideas. They talked about how technology should be used to allow for experiencing in the classroom. In My Pedagogic Creed, Dewey expressed that experiences were main components to a better education. When originally reading this, I had thought of experiences as being between people and in nature or the “real world”. One of the great abilities of educational technologies are that they can bring experiences into the classroom – experiences that students may otherwise not have. It was interesting to start to think about technology as an experience too. The article also brings to light the idea that Dewey believed in independent thinking but not the elimination of the teacher. His thoughts are that the teachers are to serve as a guide. In My Pedagogic Creed he states “The teacher is not in the school to impose certain ideas or to form certain habits in the child, but there as a member of the community to select the influences which shall affect the child and to assist him in properly responding to these influences.” Based upon this statement of Dewey’s and the article, it seems to me that technology can be a means for experiencing (or being the influence in the child’s education) and that the relationships in the classroom will not necessarily be lost because the teacher will act as a guide for helping students to navigate these influences (or educational technologies). Thinking about educational technologies from this viewpoint helped to ease some of the apprehensions I have about technology in the classroom.

So no, Dewey had no idea of what the future and technology in classroom would consist of but his beliefs about experience being central to learning appear to be similar to those who design educational technologies today. In this sense, I think it’s fair to say Dewey was ahead of his time.

Technology in my Classroom

Teaching with technology - the first thing that comes to mind was that I would be learning all about using technology in my future classroom. As someone who is pretty set on taking notes by hand, buys hard copies of textbooks instead of ebooks, and always prints my reading, I can't say I was really excited about this perceived notion.

 When we were asked to draw a picture of our future classrooms, I thought of all the things I would include: tables instead of desks-arranged in a semi-circle, the teacher's desk, and a whiteboard in a place where everyone would be able to see it. I then started to think about the different posters and decorations that I would have in my classroom as a Spanish teacher. But then I read the part of the prompt that mentioned to focus specifically on technology. I placed the types of technology that I had been familiar with in my high school classrooms: a television, the teacher's computer, and a projector. And then I struggled to figure out what else to put, so I added a few student computers in the back of the classroom (with a question mark in case I changed my mind). While doing this activity I kept finding myself thinking I'm not really sure what technologies are in a secondary classroom right now and that from my own experience in high school (besides using the library computers for research) they never really seemed beneficial or to enhance my learning experience. My previous experiences using technology while I taught Spanish were also not that exceptional. The few lessons in which I had used technology almost made me feel a disconnect in my interactions with my students.

After hearing about everyone else's classrooms and the ways they had thought it would be cool to use technology, I started re-thinking about my own classroom. Although I still felt like I didn't know what to include, I found the ideas of others interested. I hadn't even thought of using clickers to check for comprehension, iPads as tools for guiding reading comprehension, and interactive world maps. These ideas in combination with hearing our instructors talk more about the course and how we would be discussing different types of technology in the room ( and the good/bad implications of it) among other interesting topics, I have to say I'm excited to learn more about teaching with technology. I'm hoping to learn others' perspectives of technology in the classroom and the ways in which we can do this without it causing a conflict with the teachers' role in the classroom.