Posted on June 4th, 2007 by
pattycakes726
The future is here. It’s just not widely distributed yet. (William Gibson)
When I read this quote, I immediately though of our class and all the Web 2.0 innovations and technologies we’ve studied. The future may not actually be here, but the foundation has been laid.
None of us can know what the job market will be like in 25 years, or what technologies will have been developed and become necessary in order to succeed. So how do we prepare students for the workplace they’ll compete in? According to this article by The Partnership for 21st Century Skills , we aren’t meeting their needs very well: http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/index.phoption=com_content&task=view&id=250&Itemid=64
Some very basic skills were missing: “personal accountability, effective work habits, e.g. punctuality, working productively with others, time and workload management…The findings show an especially big gap in writing skills. Nearly three-quarters (72 percent) of incoming high school graduates are viewed as deficient in basic English writing skills, including grammar and spelling”
Strong communications skills will always be essential, both verbal and written. I do wonder what ‘formal’ writing will look like in 50 years. Language evolves quickly and as more and more writing is done by IM and email, and between people from all over the globe, I think writing styles will continue to become more relaxed. That being said, I still think strong written skills will be critical to future success.
In Contemporary Literacy: Essential Skills for the 21st Century (http://www.infotoday.com/MMSchools/mar03/murray.shtml) the author, a library media specialist, states “Contemporary literacy skills are too important to our students’ future success to allow them to be ignored in the frenzy over high-stakes standardized testing.” I couldn’t agree more. Many schools (spurred on by government policies and funding restrictions) are bogged down in testing and unable to focus on the skills students will really need to be successful.
These are the skills I believe students will need to be able to compete and adapt to the world they will be working in – whatever that may be:
· Strong verbal and written communication skills
· The ability to effectively search for information
· Critical thinking skills to evaluate information for accuracy and bias
· Ability to work in collaborative teams
· Understanding and tolerance of other cultures
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Filed under: Best Practices
Posted on May 30th, 2007 by
pattycakes726
I have very mixed feelings aboout social networking. I value my privacy and cling to the probably unrealistic thought that I can choose what information about me is available for public consumption. I’m not comfortable having a blog and won’t maintain it after this class is over. I think that kids who have grown up with the internet have a different idea of privacy. They know they are exposed, and encourage that exposure through social networking. What surprised me is while kids understand that their friends are accessing their MySpace and other sites, they don’t always realize that parents, teachers and other adults can also find them on those sites. Some of the stories about this in My Space in College Admissions highlight this attitude.
That same article mentions that some schools ban the use of MySpace not only at school, but completely. I think this is going overboard, and infringes on the students’ rights. I believe the school is also missing the opportunity to help students learn how to be safe online. I agree with the sentiment expressed in More on the So-Called Safety Issue of Social Networking Sites
“It doesn’t make any sense to label them as safe or unsafe. The issue is about education, educators and how the sites are used.”
Which is not to say that there are no safety concerns. My 13 year-old niece recently gave us all a scare. She had her MySpace account open to all and had listed her full name and the (very) small town where she lived. She had attracted the attention of some people we felt were inapprpriate for her to have contact with.
As is also pointed out in this article, it’s futile to try to block social networking sites. They are here to stay and the kids are suing them. As educators we should find ways to help kids use social networking in the safest ways, rather than trying to ban something that is already an established part of life for many people.
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Filed under: Best Practices
Posted on May 28th, 2007 by
pattycakes726
I love YouTube and look at the site all the time – most recently to watch a clip of the Rosie/Elizabeth blow up on The View. (I think that sums up how sad my life is)
When I started reading the articles, I was surprised at how many schools ban YouTube. While it’s true that there is a potenitial for abuse, isn’t that true of all web-based sources? I feel that educators should use existing technology to prepare students for the world, and not seek to shield them from it.
Most YouTube videos are quite harmless and less than ten minutes long. And there is so much available! During the last Best Practices course I found a terrific video about global warming to use in my lesson plan. I found it in just a few minutes and it really made a difference in the lesson.
I like the approach of Eltham College, outlined in YouTube Course is a Class Act. School administrators feel that “one of the jobs of a teacher is to help kids make sense of the world they live in”. Class projects include creating videos and uploading them to the YouTube site, and monitoring the popularity of each over a period of time.
I don’t teach at school so I don’t face the dilemma of deciding whether or not to flout a YouTube ban in order to use a great viseo in class. I hope that in the future more schools will have a positive view of this resource.
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Filed under: Best Practices
Posted on May 11th, 2007 by
pattycakes726
When I first looked at this topic, I was surprised that IM was even a technology that would be considered a teaching tool. We use it in the office. My nieces and nephews use it to keep in touch with their friends. But in the classroom?
My initial reaction was puzzlement. Why would any teacher encourage the use of IM? It seems like it would be more of a distraction than anything else.
“IM – Collaborative Tool or Educator’s Nightmare?” mentions several possible options for using IM in the class, including virtual office hours, opportunities for collaborative work groups and virtual mentoring. The biggest drawback the article mentions (several times) is time – lots of online time for the teacher.
While allowing students to IM the teacher during virtual office hours is one use I would consider, and that I think would be very helpful to some students, I see potential drawbacks. Students would come to expect the teacher to be available 24/7, or resent that the teacher wasn’t always available. That’s a standard I don’t want to have to maintain.
I’m very willing to keep an open mind about IM and its potential educational uses. Maybe I just need to ruminate on it more. I don’t want to be closed-minded about any new technology, especially one that 76% of high school students use, according to “Instructional Uses of Instant Messaging”. For the time being though, I’m not convinced that it’s a technology I’d embrace in the classroom.
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Filed under: Best Practices
Posted on May 8th, 2007 by
pattycakes726
I’ll start off by saying that I love Wikipedia and use it all the time. I generally use it as a starting point to learn a bit about a topic before deciding if I want to do any ‘real’ research. It’s quick, easy to find and usually gives me the basic information I’m looking for. I’ve never been overly trusting of the information I find on Wikipedia, but on the other hand, I’m no more skeptical of it than I am any other internet source. So it came as a pleasant surprise to me to learn that a recent study found Wikipedia to be come close to the same level of accuracy as Encyclopedia Britannica. The results of the study are detailed in this article: Wikipedia and the nature of truth
“The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three.”
The article illustrates that no single source is perfect. They all contain errors and inaccuracies. Since I haven’t taught in a number of years, I’ve never needed to consider whether Wikipedia is appropriate for classroom use. I feel that as educators one of our most important responsibilities is to teach kids to be critical thinkers and to learn how to judge and evaluate sources. With that in mind, I would allow Wikipedia into my classroom and would use it as a means to help students become more discriminating about sources and the information they obtain online (though I think the same could be said for traditional sources as well, but that’s another post).
I loved the activities recommended by Andy Carver in his article Turning Wikipedia into an Asset for Schools. He suggests assigning teams of students to review specific Wikipedia entries. They review the sources cited for their assigned entry and report on its overall accuracy. Student teams may also choose to edit an entry.
Wikipedia is here to stay, at least for a while. My opinion is that we should find ways to utilize it ways that help students become more savvy consumers of online information.
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Filed under: Best Practices
Posted on May 1st, 2007 by
pattycakes726
I really have mixed feelings about blogging – at least as it applies to me. Blogs are not something I ever envisioned myself participating in. Prior to joining this class I rarely read and never commented on blogs. I’ve never enjoyed keeping a journal, but I least I was the only one reading it! Putting this on the web for all to see feels very strange. I’m glad to have the opportunity to try it within the confines of this class. Education is all about taking risks and trying new things. It will be interesting to see how my feeling about this medium evolve over time.
I don’t currently teach, so this blog will not be shared by students at this time. If and when I teach ESL again, I’d be curious to try it with a class. While teaching a few years ago, I had my students maintain journals throughout the class. Most students didn’t enjoy the exercise much and wrote the minimum required. At some point I began allowing them to submit the journals vis email, and I was amazed at the difference it made! Some of them started submitting volumes. This was in 1998, so it might have been the novelty of using the computer room – who knows?
While doing the readings on blogs, I have thought that at the least, an ESL class blog could be used for journaling. A possible hurdle might be the students’ willingness to allow their work to be read by their peer. Some might be reluctant to share their thoughts unless they felt comfortable and safe. The challenge would be to create that environment within the class blog.
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Filed under: Uncategorized
Posted on April 22nd, 2007 by
pattycakes726
Hello! Welcome to my first attempt at blogging.
Come on in and make yourself at home.
- Patricia
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Filed under: Uncategorized
