Are we supposed to do the sandbox?
I never really understood what the purpose of wiki's was until watching this video. I am somewhat confused by the districts decision to incorporate wikis as our class websites. The key to a wiki is that many different users can edit the material in a best practice form. I have a huge disconnect in my brain that says that allowing students access to the course website to edit it as they see fit would be counter-productive. I want to believe that they would take the opportunity to add things responsibly but since I am ultimately responsible for the material I think that our websites need to be filtered by the teacher. I encourage students to send me reviews, articles and other interesting links but I'm not ready for them to post them without being seen first. I found the idea of using this for note-taking or as a review activity intriguing and I may pilot it in a class this year. I also stumbled across an article saying that wikipedia is just as accurate and more up to date than most online encyclopedias. Although it should not be used as a citation I am interested in what others think about using it as a jumping of point for research. The article referencing the above is http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4530930.stm
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Thing #17 Is google making us dumb?
The articles were both well articulated but I tend to agree with the fact that the way that technology is being used right now is not increasing intelligence. I suggest that you read the articles by Daniel Willingham at http://www.danielwillingham.com/ read the articles on cognition and critical thinking. I was in the middle of his book when Ian Jukes gave his presentation at the performing art center and I couldn't help but think of how dangerous his ideas were. The thing that sticks out the most is the idea of "disposable knowledge." Jukes presented this idea as the wave of the future and that students need to able to interpret information and think critically think about information that is easily obtained ( I highly suggest that you watch the presentation on the rockwallisd homepage). The problem is that this idea directly conflicts with theories of cognition that are currently supported by research. In order to think critically about a topic you must have information stored in your brain and the ability to "think critically" comes from making new new connections about basic information in essence you can't think critically until you learn the material. The 21st century model of don't teach facts teach them how to think is killing our kids because we are asking the impossible.
I also suggest that you watch the youtube video on multi-tasking which gives a good overview of multi-tasking an its detriments. Multitasking just means that you aren't doing anything well you are just constantly changing your focus and not doing any one thing well.
If technology is incorporated in the right way it can be a tremendously powerful tool to teach the information, let students explore the critical thinking aspect, make connections to the real world, and expanding what a traditional classroom can do but it must be incorporated the right way.
It may be cultural to multitask but culture can change
I also suggest that you watch the youtube video on multi-tasking which gives a good overview of multi-tasking an its detriments. Multitasking just means that you aren't doing anything well you are just constantly changing your focus and not doing any one thing well.
If technology is incorporated in the right way it can be a tremendously powerful tool to teach the information, let students explore the critical thinking aspect, make connections to the real world, and expanding what a traditional classroom can do but it must be incorporated the right way.
It may be cultural to multitask but culture can change
Thing #17
I completed the technorati search with zero results for School Learning 2.0 in blogs and only 3 results in posts (and one of those was about new video games at E3 that just happened to have all three words). I have not gotten very good results each time that I try the technorati search but I do like technorati just as long as you use their pre-determined categories.
Using GoogleBlogSearch I had over 500,000 results of which most of the first 5 pages were relevant results.
A general search using google gave 12,600,000 results a lot of the results are news articles about web 2.0 or information on conferences but not blogs.
The key tags that I saw were pretty standard obama, all of the sports, key figures. I thought it was interesting that Mark Zuckerberg the CEO of facebook was a popular tag and I began to wonder if he going to be the new wonder CEO similar to Steve Jobs at Apple. There was a lot of tags for John Wooden with his recent passing. The oddest thing that I saw was stand up paddling which there are apparently numerous races for around the country. There were also a large number of tags about the World Cup which does not surprise me considering the wide spread appeal outside of the U.S.
The obvious disadvantage of this technology is the fact that not all students have access to this technology at home and some of it is blocked at school for students. I am not likely to assign something to students in which 10% of the students have a severe disadvantage. There is also the disadvantage of time. The amount of time at the beginning to become proficient in these tools is significant. I believe in the end that these could save time over the course of the year but the initial investment of time to bring students up to speed (many of them probably have some of these skills but not all of them) would require changing the schedule quite a bit.
The advantages are that you can use the most recent, relevant information. The ease of use and multitude of resources. I think that the best advantage would be that the student could take responsibility for their own learning by individualizing what they need to learn or what they had difficulty with. They could also add to the existing blog and feel a sense of ownership in the class.
Using GoogleBlogSearch I had over 500,000 results of which most of the first 5 pages were relevant results.
A general search using google gave 12,600,000 results a lot of the results are news articles about web 2.0 or information on conferences but not blogs.
The key tags that I saw were pretty standard obama, all of the sports, key figures. I thought it was interesting that Mark Zuckerberg the CEO of facebook was a popular tag and I began to wonder if he going to be the new wonder CEO similar to Steve Jobs at Apple. There was a lot of tags for John Wooden with his recent passing. The oddest thing that I saw was stand up paddling which there are apparently numerous races for around the country. There were also a large number of tags about the World Cup which does not surprise me considering the wide spread appeal outside of the U.S.
The obvious disadvantage of this technology is the fact that not all students have access to this technology at home and some of it is blocked at school for students. I am not likely to assign something to students in which 10% of the students have a severe disadvantage. There is also the disadvantage of time. The amount of time at the beginning to become proficient in these tools is significant. I believe in the end that these could save time over the course of the year but the initial investment of time to bring students up to speed (many of them probably have some of these skills but not all of them) would require changing the schedule quite a bit.
The advantages are that you can use the most recent, relevant information. The ease of use and multitude of resources. I think that the best advantage would be that the student could take responsibility for their own learning by individualizing what they need to learn or what they had difficulty with. They could also add to the existing blog and feel a sense of ownership in the class.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Thing #16
I went with igoogle and I added widgets to the homegpage as described in a previous post. I created a to do list using Tada and added it to my igoogle page. I also explored mindomo and empressr. Mindomo is a better mind map then what I saw available in the previous posts. It allows for emoticons, emphasis, bold, italics, relationships, topics, subtopics, you can attach videos and pictures and it is FREE. I also looked at empressr. Empressr is a online presentation tool that is similar to powerpoint. It does have some functionality that power point does not and allows for multiple users to work at once. You can also import jpeg to work on. Powerpoints be imported edited and then exported as jpeg. Unfortunately the website does NOT work for .pptx which is the version of powerpoint that is installed on our macbooks.
Google appealed to me because of the options and ease of incorporation of widgets. Also the majority of tools that I use our google based so it makes it easy to use. An online calendar is useful because it is not tied directly to one desktop I can add and edit at home and then be reminded at school or vice-versa. I am more likely to use the online to do list because I usually have 3-4 lists that I lose during the course of the week so having an online list is a definite plus.
I would definitely recommend mindomo as a conceptual mapping tool.
I already use google docs, gmail, To do, and google reader all of which I recommend as well.
Google appealed to me because of the options and ease of incorporation of widgets. Also the majority of tools that I use our google based so it makes it easy to use. An online calendar is useful because it is not tied directly to one desktop I can add and edit at home and then be reminded at school or vice-versa. I am more likely to use the online to do list because I usually have 3-4 lists that I lose during the course of the week so having an online list is a definite plus.
I would definitely recommend mindomo as a conceptual mapping tool.
I already use google docs, gmail, To do, and google reader all of which I recommend as well.
Thing #15 Going with the Flow
I have been looking for a tool to do this for quite a while. I have been using Microsoft Word and have been disappointed with the limitations of it in creating a flow chart. It takes too much time and too much work to create decent template.
I did not like Giffy, although they offered multiple templates the templates where rigid and difficult to change around. The one thing that I did like from this site was the inclusion of a Venn Diagram. This will make my diigo list solely for that purpose. I would NOT use it for creating anything other than a Venn Diagram and even then I continue to look for an easier tool
Bubbl.us was better than giffy in that you could create different looking maps or organizational charts but it had a limitation in that it was unidirectional. You could not link one of the later points to a earlier point. I saw this to be extremely linear and somewhat defeating for a mind map. It was nice to move the boxes around and change the shape but for anything other than a top down item like an organizational chart I would look elsewhere.
I am still waiting on my invitation from flowchart and I have high hopes for it.
Mindmeister is my favorite so far. The biggest draw for me is the ability to connect ideas from different sides of the concept map and therefore show relationships between seemingly very different ideas. Mindmeister does not allow some changing of the shape ( I wish it did) and is therefore limited in what it can do space wise. It also lacks some of the colors and bells and whistles that some of the other functions has but I still found it to be the most suited for my class.
All in all I am somewhat disappointed in that none of the webapps had all of the features that I am looking for. I hope that flowchart works out. I know that some of these are still in beta or testing new versions. If just a few modifications are made this could be a very powerful tool for linking learning throughout the year to one or two core concepts
I did not like Giffy, although they offered multiple templates the templates where rigid and difficult to change around. The one thing that I did like from this site was the inclusion of a Venn Diagram. This will make my diigo list solely for that purpose. I would NOT use it for creating anything other than a Venn Diagram and even then I continue to look for an easier tool
Bubbl.us was better than giffy in that you could create different looking maps or organizational charts but it had a limitation in that it was unidirectional. You could not link one of the later points to a earlier point. I saw this to be extremely linear and somewhat defeating for a mind map. It was nice to move the boxes around and change the shape but for anything other than a top down item like an organizational chart I would look elsewhere.
I am still waiting on my invitation from flowchart and I have high hopes for it.
Mindmeister is my favorite so far. The biggest draw for me is the ability to connect ideas from different sides of the concept map and therefore show relationships between seemingly very different ideas. Mindmeister does not allow some changing of the shape ( I wish it did) and is therefore limited in what it can do space wise. It also lacks some of the colors and bells and whistles that some of the other functions has but I still found it to be the most suited for my class.
All in all I am somewhat disappointed in that none of the webapps had all of the features that I am looking for. I hope that flowchart works out. I know that some of these are still in beta or testing new versions. If just a few modifications are made this could be a very powerful tool for linking learning throughout the year to one or two core concepts
Thing #15 Google
The two things that I selected are
igoogle and google wave.
I set up an igoogle page that has the following gadgets
Google Reader
Gmail
Google Book Search
Google Driving Directions
Weather
Calculator
Calendar
To do list
This allows me to check m email, blog posts, to do list and calendar all fromt he same page and also do the most common tasks from my home page. I have had igoogle for years but all it had was the weather and famous quotes. I explored what was out there and suddenly igoogle became very useful
Google Wave is relatively new. I invited Nancy and Dave to it and would be happy to invite anyone else out there that would like to join. It is a realtime collaboration between people who are in different places. People work on the same document, they can talk, edit, and communicate in real time to produce a finished product. I thought that this would be ideal in communicating with our curriculum director and Rockwall HS. We could easily meet during the day on the computer to put together the district benchmarks. We could change the language, edit questions, import questions from our laptops and have a finished product to copy all without ever meeting, emailing, etc. I encourage everyone to join google wave so that we can "brainstorm" a way to incorporate some of these new ideas into our classroom.
igoogle and google wave.
I set up an igoogle page that has the following gadgets
Google Reader
Gmail
Google Book Search
Google Driving Directions
Weather
Calculator
Calendar
To do list
This allows me to check m email, blog posts, to do list and calendar all fromt he same page and also do the most common tasks from my home page. I have had igoogle for years but all it had was the weather and famous quotes. I explored what was out there and suddenly igoogle became very useful
Google Wave is relatively new. I invited Nancy and Dave to it and would be happy to invite anyone else out there that would like to join. It is a realtime collaboration between people who are in different places. People work on the same document, they can talk, edit, and communicate in real time to produce a finished product. I thought that this would be ideal in communicating with our curriculum director and Rockwall HS. We could easily meet during the day on the computer to put together the district benchmarks. We could change the language, edit questions, import questions from our laptops and have a finished product to copy all without ever meeting, emailing, etc. I encourage everyone to join google wave so that we can "brainstorm" a way to incorporate some of these new ideas into our classroom.
Thing #14
Technorati appears to have its search function down for now. I will check back later. The nice thing about Web 2.0 web-based applications is that they are easily accessible from anywhere encourage sharing, etc. but we can't control when it goes down. I believe that this is a fundamental change that we as teachers need to get use to. Dave was talking about letting go in the classroom, but it appears that we may also need to let go of our tools as well. Teachers in the past have been the ultimate control freaks. This has been easier for me than some people but I still have a hard time letting go of control when I see so many students make the "wrong" decision.
I will fill in this section when technorati gets back up.
I find tagging to be tremendously useful. I now see the value of pulling the information and labeling it from its context instead of an index based keyword search such as google. I am in the process of converting all of my bookmarks to diigo and modifying my current online assignments. I will also be sharing access to my bookmarks in the physics department and hopefully we can create an excellent section of tutorials, demonstrations, and reviews for our students correctly tagged so they can get the help they need .
I will fill in this section when technorati gets back up.
I find tagging to be tremendously useful. I now see the value of pulling the information and labeling it from its context instead of an index based keyword search such as google. I am in the process of converting all of my bookmarks to diigo and modifying my current online assignments. I will also be sharing access to my bookmarks in the physics department and hopefully we can create an excellent section of tutorials, demonstrations, and reviews for our students correctly tagged so they can get the help they need .
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
