Final Thoughts on This Technology Course

Our professor asked us for final thoughts on this tehcnology course and here are mine. Blogging was a great part of this experience. Thank you readers for your attention and your comments.

My initital reaction to this course was skeptical. I wasn't sure I would get much out of it but I thought the work load would be fairly light. Besides, I liked the idea I wouldn't have to trek to Jersey City on Wednesday evenings after a long day of student teaching. How bad could it be if you could do everything onloine and on your own time?

My initial reaction changed around the time I started actively blogging. The course is convenient, but not easy. It takes time and energy. Of course, the flexibility of working from a remote location and at unconventional hours was indeeed a real positive. But flexibility is not the same as being able to take short-cuts. I wasn't stressed or nervous; but I felt a strong desire to complete the assignments conscientiously and took a great deal of pride in anything I was going to share with the professor and other students.

Regarding computers in the curriculum, I have learned to raise my expectations and gained a new sense of respect for the possibilities. Technology in education is an extremely complex subject and we have only begun to explore potentials. I won't underestimate the importance of computers in the curriculum the way I may have in the past.

Suggestions for improvements? Nothing significant. I question the value of the textbook, which was very expensive, very "low tech" (!) and the least interesting or informative part of the class.

But all else was first-class, demanding, challenging and fun. This course leaves you with a very real sense of accomplishment. It gives you that satisfied feeling of having learned something unexpected.

Thanks you to my fellow students (particularly those of you who exchanged ideas by blogs and chats) and to Prof. Luongo for creating one of SPC's most innovative and interesting classes. I look forward to seeing more of you in the semesters ahead.

Well, Excuuuuse Me

A family member who very kindly reads my blog and provides me with unvarnished criticism (both positive and negative) tells me that in my eariler posting about Improving Graduate Education I sounded like quite a snob. My first thought was to take down or revise the posting. Instead, it seems more in the spirit of blogging to leave it place.

Let me just say briefly that I did not mean to be a snob or to sound arrogant. Perhaps I was just being too defensive about reading the newspaper knowing that this is a blog about the merits of technology (of which there are many).

In any case, please excuse my unintentional arrogance or snobism. Joking aside, I mean that sincerely. And thanks to the family member for his honest criticism. (Thank you too for delivering the criticism privately instead of posting it for all the world to see!)

Techology Enhanced Lesson Plan

Well, I did it! I completed a technology enhanced lesson plan for teaching elementary school phonetics.  This was an interesting exercise in seeing what's available from the web to make a traditional lesson plan more dynamic and interesting for the students.  Unfortunately, many of the resources I explored required website memberships or required purchase of materials (music for example).  With a little effort, however, I located some free materials including a good video for teachers and an interesting online game for the students to play.  As a result, I was able to limit my technology enhancements to free materials.  Sometimes I wonder how teachers survived before the Internet!

Using Tech to Improve Graduate Education

“Do not do what I do; rather, take whatever I have to offer and do with what I could never imagine doing and then come back and tell me about it.” - Professor Mark C. Taylor, Columbia Universiy, to his students

As perhaps you know by now, I am an avid reader of the New York Times Op Ed pages. Every morning I receive the paper in its old-fashioned print format and read the news and Op Ed page while I sip my coffee. I also read blogs (thanks mainly to this course) but I think the newspaper Op Ed pages (in either print or electronic format) provide more thoughtfully considered analyses of current topics.

Today’s New York Times featured a very relevant Op Ed piece entitled End the University as We Know It by Mark Taylor.

Professor Taylor, chairman of the religion department at Columbia, points out that most graduate programs in American universities are producing candidates for teaching positions that don’t exist (i.e. a product with no market). While this might not be true for SPC’s Graduate Education Program since there are arguably very needy markets for well-trained elementary and seconday school educators, the suggestions he makes for improving graduate education in America are, in my opinion, right on target.

His suggestions are also relevant to our study of technology in the classroom. Consider, for example, these ideas as to how to transform the modern graduate university program:

• Restructure curriculums so that they are cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural “like a web or complex adaptive network;”

• Abolish permanent departments and create problem-focused programs;

• Use technologies like teleconferencing and the Internet to increase collaboration among departments and institutions;

• Replace traditional dissertation formats with analytic treatments in formats including Web sites, films, and video games.

I encourage you to read the article, but if you don’t have time at least consider these ideas. They are relevant to us graduate students and they are particularly interesting in the context of our studies of technology in school curriculums.

I look forward to receiving comments on this. In the meantime, I am going to close my blog pages, log off my computer, pour another cup of coffee, get comfortable in my overstuffed armchair, and finish today’s New York Times!

Searching the Internet with CLN

It is striking to me how many of the useful technology tools for education are about the ability to search for content. The CLN Network is another example of this phenomenon. I recently signed up and I think the site is a great search engine for educators. The utility is in its ability to find things according to different criteria. I esepcially like the feature where you can identify a Core Curriculum Content Standard and CLN identifies educational resources related to it. Very clever!

When you think about it, our webquests and teacher webpages are similar searching resources. They are convenient and well-organized links to other content.

Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised that so much utility resides with the search function on the Internet. After all, remember the early days of the Internet? It wasn't so much about the content as about the search engines. Remember Netscape and Ask Jeeves? Google understood the extent that the value (and the renumeration) is in the search.

Observations on Social Networking

Before I blog about social network sites, I need to make an important disclosure: I don’t belong to any. I was on AOL for a time (and still have an email account there) but AOL is so “has-been” as a social network that it doesn’t really count.

My friends have asked my why I’m not on Facebook while they extoll the fun and convenience of networking. But I tell them I’m not interested. It's not that I'm anti-social or anti-technology. After all, I read the alumni news when my schools mail them to me; I send birthday emails and Christmas cards to friends and relatives; and I enjoy the occasional contact from a long-lost friend. For me, that’s all nice and it's enough. I don’t need more social chatter in my life.

You might tell me I can’t judge social networking sites if I haven’t tried them, but I disagree. In April, New York Magazine published a cover story about Facebook that I read with great interest. (Do You Own Facebook? Or Does Facebook Own You?). It's a good explanation as to why I'm not interested in Facebook or sites like it. The article starts out talking about privacy and the uproar that ensued when Facebook tried to change its TOS to say that Facebook owns whatever you upload to their site, even after you close your account.

But, the article is about much more than privacy and ownership issues. It is about social networking as a social phenomenon. Take this quote for example:

“An uncanny simulacrum of your life has been created on the web. It may not be too hyperbolic to talk about a digital self, as a fourth addition you mind, body and spirit. It’s not the kind of thing you want to give away.”

Yes, I may be missing out on something by not belonging to Facebook or MySpace or otherwise engaging in "social networking". But, for now I’ll take the risk. I guess I'm just not too worried about missing out on a social opportunity anymore. I'm busy working on mind, body and spirit. My digital self will just have to wait.