Thursday, October 11, 2007
Technology Use In Schools Increasing
The technology use in schools is ever increasing. It seems like just when you think, "Wow, I can't believe they have this ability to do this in a school!", there is something new that comes out. The use of technology in schools goes far beyond what most people think. The typical thing most people think of when technology is mentioned is a computer. Many people think of a student typing a paper or giving a presentation to a class using technology. I would like to find out what things are being used at schools around the world in the area of technology besides just computers. I am interested to hear about things from podcasting, using blogs, wikis and just about anything that helps student learning.
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3 comments:
A great book to look at that contains technology for classrooms is, "Blogs Wikis, Podcasts" by Will Richardson.
Unlike Jay and Meg, I’m somewhere in the middle with the whole “comfort” thing. I keep up a Myspace account for my band and have written in and created a few blogs. I don’t know how to set up Wiki’s or create a podcast, but I am in this class for that reason.
When I create projects for students, I always add a technological choice: create a myspace page for a character and create a blog, create a movie preview for the book using MovieMaker, download songs, create a soundtrack for the book, and burn a CD to bring to class. Needless to say, these are the choices to which most students gravitate.
It’s exciting, it’s fun, and it’s what they are used to doing already. And they do it well! These are usually the best projects I get. The students are so comfortable with using technology, it seems like I just need to give them that choice then get the heck out of the way.
The problem: they cannot work on any of these extremely interesting and engaging projects in school. Even worse, the students cannot present their myspace pages to the class. Instead, they can only print out the pages and show those. It is always an anticlimactic experience, especially since many attach songs, animated backgrounds, and hyperlinks to other pages. Yes, I know that we can unlock certain myspace links, but what a hassle when there are over forty. Also, while some students are in the lab working on their projects, the myspacers and the downloaders cannot.
There is the very understandable issue with bandwidth, virus control, and other techie stuff. Whatever happens, I hope this second forum leads to an opening of some sites for use to use for our kids.
Thank you Dave M. for the descriptions of student work in response to your assignments, and the testimonial that they prefer to use technology and do better work when they are allowed to use it to complete projects.
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