About the digital resources assignment

At least one student wondered whether you were supposed to turn in your homework this week as a posting on your blog. You know, that probably would have been a good idea ... if I had thought of it! In past semesters we have always had students turn the assignment into Blackboard, and I guess I just didn't think about changing that. Maybe next time I will.

But for THIS WEEK'S ASSIGNMENT, turn it into blackboard, just so that everyone does the same thing and we're uniform. Here's how:

Go to the assignment page if you haven't yet.

Download the template.

When you've filled out the template, post it in Blackboard under the "digital resources" assignment. It may be near the bottom until I get a chance to move it to the top.

Any questions? Post them as comments to this post.

How technology can help the disabled

We spend most of the time in class talking about how technology can help regular learners, but there will probably come a time when you will have a disabled student of some sort in your class, whether that disability is physical or even a learning disability. There are many kinds of technology that assist the disabled to do many of the things we take for granted. These are often called "assistive technologies." I heard about one such technology today. It's called a Nouse, and it's like a computer mouse but is steered by your nose and eyelids. This is of course very useful for people who can't use their hands. There are other technologies too, and I even heard about an email program for special needs students, who normally can't type or sometimes read. In this program, they select pictures--kind of like emoticons -- to express what they are feeling at the moment, and they push a button to email these pictures to another person. I had another student last semester who created a simple learning game using PowerPoint that teaches letters to severely mentally handicapped students.

About students with learning disabilities. I have a hunch, but I'd need to do some research to see if this has been tested, that students with ADD or ADHD difficulties might do better with technology assignments than regular assignments. I have had some personal difficulties with my attention span and I've found that having a laptop with me in class gives me something to do with my hands ... and I actually learn a lot more from my professors. I used to sleep in almost all of my classes, and teachers probably thought I was being disrespectful, but I couldn't help it. Now I work on my laptop, and it helps me stay awake and listen better.

I won't talk much about assistive technology in this class because we're more focused on other things. But you should be aware of the possibilities and if you ever have a student with special needs, there might be a way some kind of technology could help you teach that student.

Is student agency a good thing?

Hmmm, there's been some good posts today. I'll pick out one that some of you may be interested in. Rosie refers to a report by KSL that there is a new charter school in Salt Lake that gives students complete freedom and agency to choose their educational experience. They decide what subjects to study, and how to study them.

Rosie was unsure of what to think about this and said:

"I have mixed feelings. I think that it is good to give students the opprotunity to send time on things that they enjoy and to allow them to learn the things that interest them. However, its kind of scary too. No structure at all could lead to a lack of learning."

I also have mixed feelings, however I think there should be more freedom than there is now in public education. Rosie critiques this new charter school by saying that "These student may end up not learning anything because they don't feel like it." But to be honest, these students won't learn much in traditional schools either if they don't feel like it. I guess that's one plus for more student agency and choice: people tend to learn when they are motivated, and they are motivated when they are learning things that are important to them. So why not give students some more freedom? Let them have a little more leeway to choose what they want to learn, and they might be more self-motivated and be better students.

Now, after saying that, I do agree with Rosie that some structure is good, and we do have to encourage students to get a well-rounded education, or else they'll learn a lot of one thing and not much of anything else. But perhaps a little more choice and agency than is currently allowed in schools would be a good thing?

Now to tie this to technology. I believe technology can give students that freedom to explore, experiment, participate, and choose topics of study. What do you think? How could technology give students some of that freedom?

An option for digital resources assignment

BTW- Here's an option for the digital resources assignment, even though it doesn't talk about it on the assignment page: You can count an educational weblog or an rss/atom feed as one of your digital resources. Why not? Some of my best digital resources that I use weekly, even daily, as a teacher are weblogs from really great sources that have really good ideas.

Remember that you'll have to establish the credibility of the blog. Normally website credibility is established when you look for things like government sites, non-profit organization sites, sites by trusted authorities, etc. Weblogs are different because most weblogs are run by normal people. So I'm thinking you could probably justify a blog as a good digital resource if you can explain to me why:
1) It is useful
2) you trust the ideas from this person
3) you would read it often enough to gain value from it
4) you would use the source as a teacher

You might also look for whether the person quotes other sources or is quoted himself, and what kinds of conversation does he/she have on the blog? A blog that is widely read by many people and has many people commenting on it is probably a good blog .

I know what you're thinking, and no, the Dilbert feed I showed you does not count as an educational resource! :-)

Have fun exploring! There are many good thinkers out there and many of them have weblogs!

Question: How do I add links to posts?

Here's a question emailed to me that I thought others might have too:

"I have not figured out how to make links to stuff yet."

Here's my answer:
"The biggest key to being able to put links into a post is to use MOZILLA as your browser (it is on all of the computers in the TLSC computer lab and can be downloaded for free for your home computer at mozilla.org). When you are using Mozilla instead of Explorer, there are some cool buttons in blogger that help you edit your post, for example, you can change colors, add links, bold or italicize words, and do bulleted lists, etc. For some weird reason, those options are not in Explorer as far as we can tell.

Besides, Mozilla is a safer, more secure browser anyway and you'll get less spyware and adware with Mozilla."

Just to show you want you can do if you blog in Mozilla, here's some examples (you won't see these in your Bloglines aggregator. You'll have to actually go to my blog to see them):
You can bold, italicize, put in links, and change text color.

Center text

• bullet text

1. number text

or indent quotes

You can also add pictures, but you need to do a few extra steps that I won't explain here. If you want to learn how to add pictures to your posts, Blogger has some help pages, or you can meet with me sometime and I'll show you how!

Intro Survey is graded

I will try to always post when I am done grading an assignment so you can check your grades. I just graded the intro survey assignment. If you did it, you got full credit. And thank you to most of you for being willing to let us use your data in the research study! Four students elected not to let us use this data, which is fine, but they then forgot to put their names on the survey. Without their names, we can't give them credit for doing it (the names wouldn't be used in our research anyway--they are strictly for us to give you points for doing the survey). Anyway, if any of those students are in my class, or if anybody else did the survey and did not get credit, email me.

You can check your grades by going to Blackboard.

One last note: Emily Day, are you signed up for our class? I thought you were, but you didn't show up in my Blackboard gradebook so I couldn't give you credit.

Interesting posts for Sept. 14

Hey gang, here's some of the interesting posts I read this last week. These are not necessarily the best posts, because it's just my opinion of what jumped out to me. But I thought I'd share the ones that you might not have read that I have enjoyed.

Carla's blog, Surprise!, is a great place to have a good discussion. She started a discussion on stem cell research and then this week posted this:

"Houston has purposed (and really wants to) build a school just for immigrants. They have a large group of students whose needs are not being met by the traditional school system, and so they want to make a school with the flexibility and focus that immigrant students need. More info on CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2004/EDUCATION/09/08/immigrant.school.ap/index.html

What do you think? Will this meet the need or will it further isolate ethnicities?"

Megan probably has the same thought many of you do:

"Well, that is my post for today. No one has come and read any of my posts so far so it kind of feels like I am just talking to myself. I hope that someone eventually checks this out! Until next time...."

I commented that at least I am reading her blog (and enjoying it too--she's putting some personality into it, which is nice). Blogging brings up an interesting point about audience. It's out there on the Internet, and you never know who might be reading you--even if they never comment on your blog. I posted a comment similar to Megan's on my other blog, wondering if anybody was reading my blog, and a lady from Melbourne Australia said she was reading it -- and enjoyed it! Who else could be reading, and we don't know? I posted my thoughts on my other blog about how just the potential of having an audience, even if we don't know how big that audience may be, forces me to be more thoughtful and careful about what I say.

At least for this class, hopefully your blogging buddies will be reading. After that, who knows?

"Luma" (still my favorite screen name :-) had a thoughtful response to the Mindtools article by David Jonassen that we all scanned for last week's assignment. In the article, Jonassen says that:

"When learners use computers as partners, they off-load some of the unproductive memorizing tasks to the computer, allowing the learner to think more productively."

Luma disagreed with his evaluation of memorizing as "unproductive." Her reasoning is that

"Although memorizing often seems like busywork, it is very necessary in education. There is no way to get along without at least a few rudimentary memorization skills. The very ability to read comes from memorizing letters, combinations, and sounds. How much longer and more difficult will homework assignments take if students are not required to memorize? Students would be constantly looking up information that should be found in the cannon of knowledge of an educated person."

I thought she had a great point, and there is power in being able to quote or recall information from memory, but I responded with the reasoning from the other side of the fence:

"This is actually heavily debated in education right now. Do we teach students to "know" things by having them memorize procedures and facts, or do we help them learn how to "do" things with knowledge that is stored in computers or databases? For example, should students have to memorize calculus equations, or simply know what the theories are and how to apply the correct equation to the correct situation?"

I'd like us as a class to discuss this further. And don't be afraid to share your opinion, even if it's different from mine. I'm still developing my ideas and like to hear your perspectives!
Here's some possible questions for discussion:

• Do you agree with Jonassen that technology should be used as mindtools and not for drill-and-practice, memorization, etc.?
• What kinds of learning and knowledge do our students need to learn the most?
• Should we have students memorize facts, numbers, formulas, etc.?
  
• How much memorizing should we do and how much other types of learning should we encourage?
  

BYU vs. Stanford

We had a lively discussion last week after the BYU game, so I'll post another discussion about last week's game. This is totally off-topic, so if football doesn't interest you, skip this post!

I almost didn't want to post after last week's game. What is there to say? It seems that BYU football just isn't as much fun anymore. It used to be that even if they lost, you were glued to your seat, mostly because we had such explosive offenses that you never knew that the game was really over. I mean, the Miracle Bowl could ALWAYS happen with old BYU offenses. It just doesn't seem that we have that offensive swagger anymore.

Really, our stats were almost identical to Stanford's. What was the difference? Mistakes. Interceptions, Fumbles, Penalties, Missed assignments, Poor decisions. We really weren't that overmatched, and Jason Beck didn't do that bad--we just had too many mistakes.

Go ahead and post your thoughts--I want to hear them! However, remember to be nice. Anybody could be reading this. Critique the game and the team, but let's not bash individuals.

Cool blogging tip

Katy from another section of IPT 286 found a great way to expand your blogging circle. She writes:

"If you fill out your extended profile, you can list your interests and hobbies. I did this, and then viewed my updated profile. It sets apart your interests and highlights and underlines them. If you click on them, then it brings up every other blog that has the same interest as you listed. Thus you can find people from all around the world with the same interests as you"

Cool Katy, thanks!

BTW - if you find a great blogging tip or feed from a good blog, or if you hear about a great new technology that you think we might be useful in, post it on your blog and spread the news!

Discussing digital resources

In a previous post, I explained what you needed to do for this week's assignment. In this post, I'd like to discuss a little why digital resources are so important. Ideally, we'd hold this discussion in class. I'd usually pair you up, you'd discuss things as a pair, and then we'd share our ideas with the rest. We'll have to do the best we can online, and I hope many of you share your ideas as comments to this post, or as posts on your own blogs.

Why do we want you to learn how to find things on the Internet? Doesn't everyone know how to do that already? Yeah, but like I mentioned in class today, there is too much information out there in the world. The problem is many don't know how to use it. The people who really know how to find good, useful, and credible websites fast are usually much more productive than the rest of us. In an article called "The ABCs of Website Evaluation," Kathleen Schrock gives 26 (one for every letter of the alphabet) criteria for evaluating websites. She talks about criteria such as authority (is it a credible author?), dates (is it current?), bias (why was this site created?), and citations (does it have them?). She also gives the 5 Ws for evaluating websites:

1. Who wrote this material and put this website together? Are they credible sources?
2. What is the purpose of this site?
3. When was this site put together and last updated?
4. Where does this information come from?
5. Why is it useful to me?
   

This is a really great article and I'll send a copy to anyone that asks me for one by email. Once again, I'd post it here, but for copyright reasons I shouldn't.

Here's the discussion questions I'd like to ask you, and I hope you'll answer!

• How do you know a good website from a not so good one? What do you look for?
• What types of websites are the BEST ones for helping you as a teacher?
• What search techniques do you have for helping you find good material in a web search?
• How could we teach our students how to find information quickly and recognize good information when they see it?
  

Digital Resources assignment - due Sept. 20

Well gang, I am sorry we ran out of time before we fully discussed this week's assignment. I'm used to teaching IPT 287--a 2-credit class. I'll try to manage class time better!

Because I didn't get to explain the assignment in class, I'll do so here. If you have questions, you can post them as a comment and we can carry on a Q and A here on my blog.

First off, the direct link to the assignment is right here. However, you can always get it from the "calendar" or "assignments" link on the right of my blog. You can read the details on the assignment page, but here's the brief low-down:

Purpose: Find a lesson plan and two good educational digital resources (with the emphasis on good).

How:
1. Go to uen.org and find the standards for your teaching emphasis.
2. Pick a standard and find a lesson plan to teach that standard
3. Pick another (or the same) standard and find two educational websites that would help you teach that standard
4. Post your Word document to BLACKBOARD as an attachment to a post in the discussion forum called "Digital Resources."

Like I said, there's more detail on the assignment page.

Once you've found your digital resources, you need to evaluate them and explain why they are good resources using the template we've created for you. On the template, it asks you to what category of educational website your resource belongs to. These were the papers I had available for you in class. You can also download these 11 categories of Educational Websites here. I attended a conference just a week ago where Trey Martindale, a blogger himself, explained these categories. He admits that many really good websites fit into multiple categories, so if the digital resources you find fit into multiple categories too, that's fine--just explain your reasoning.

Trey describes the 11 types of educational websites in the article you can download, but it might still be helpful to get a second take on it, so here's my stab at explaining the categories:

1. Instructional
A website with a learning activity that asks a student to do something, has specific instructional goals, and a way to assess or give feedback on the student's performance.

2. Learning Activity
A website similar to instructional sites, but perhaps lacking the goals or assessment aspects.

3. Content Collection
A popular form of website that simply has a bunch of material on one subject. Example: A website on Shakespeare that has tons of stuff on good ol' Will.

4. List of Links
A website that has the main purpose of providing links to other great websites.

5. Reference/Archive/News/Database (RAND)
A website that is a reference tool, such as an online dictionary, encyclopedia, or the like. Different than content collection because it has information on many subjects and not just one.

6. Teacher and Parent Resouces
A website geared not towards students, but those who teach them.

7. Shared Experience
Websites where students can experience things togethers, such as virtual tours.

8. Personal Expression and Interpersonal Interaction (PEII)
Websites that allow people to interact, express themselves, and communicate.

9. Informal education.
Websites not meant to be educational, but which have educational components. For example the Hogle Zoo probably has material on its website that would be great for elementary lessons.

10. Research and Service Organizations and Projects (RSOP - boy you gotta love his acronomyms, huh?)
Websites that are organized as part of some massive research project

11. Commercial. Example is Microsoft's education page.

Go forth and conquer!

A lesson learned from the music industry

An interesting observation was made by Timothy on Slashdot recently. Have you noticed that for the first time, the next big thing in the music industry is NOT better quality but better mobility? In the past, the next big thing in music has always been more Hi-Fi, better sound, higher fidelity. Now the future is mp3, which is poorer quality than the current CDs, but is a whole lot easier, more mobile, and more convenient.

Can we learn something from the music industry about using technology in education? I think we can. I think we often think we need BETTER technology, MORE RAM, MORE memory, FASTER processors, the MOST RECENT softwares, BIGGEST upgrades, and so on and so forth. Many times teachers complain that they can't integrate technology into their teaching because their school doesn't have enough money. But it seems that the technologies that sometimes make the biggest impacts on education are the small ones that are so ubiquitous, so transparent, so assimilated into our society that everybody already has these technologies and knows how to use them.

For example, which technologies are used the most in education today? Video. Internet. Audio. Word processing. Why? Because these are easy technologies to use and most students already know how to use them so we don't have to teach them.

What will be the easy, simple, and everybody-has-one technology of tomorrow? Can we start planning how to use those technologies in the schools?

This also ties back into our laptop discussion we had last week. Many students posted that having laptops for every student was a bad idea because of cost factors. So what kinds of technologies are so cheap, simple, and available to everyone that we CAN expect most students to already have them and to know how to use them?

Not everyone plays nice

Hey class bloggers! Just a warning: Not everyone in the blogosphere plays nice (duh, right? That's a common problem anytime you deal with people--not everyone wants to obey the rules).

What I'm talking about is there's a chance someone could post a nasty comment to your blogs. It's never happened to me yet, but it did happen to another instructor. If it happens to you, send me an email, and I'll explain how to delete the comment. It's not hard to do, so if it happens to you, it's easy to fix. If we get time in class and you want me to show everyone how to do it, I can.

Wouldn't it be nice if we all just were nice to each other? We won't have that problem when we're blogging in the millenium ... :-)

The link to this week's assignment

A student informed me that one of my links to this week's assignment is broken. I'll fix it today. You can actually access the assignment through the "calendar" link on my blogroll, but just to make it easier for you, here's the direct link to this week's assignment:

http://msed.byu.edu/ipt/west/intro_TI.html

A laptop on every campus

"As college freshmen head off to campus this year, they're toting cellphones in one pocket, iPods in another. And that click-clack you hear isn't the jingle of new dormitory keys - it's their fingers pounding instant messages back and forth."

Here's a debate for you! The Christian Science Monitor reports in an article today that about 3% of colleges are requiring their students to have a personal computer. A lot of universities are considering doing this, but they are not sure they want to. However, one professor said that they would never go back because it has helped their students so much:

"Everybody in the community talks with each other more frequently," says David Brown, a professor at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. "Students run into trouble, they e-mail one another, e-mail the faculty. The whole culture changes."

However, Donald Heller of Penn State takes the other side of the fence.

"There are much better ways to improve learning on campus than telling students they have to buy a laptop.

What's your take on this argument? The real issue here is should educational institutions require students to have a technology that they think will enhance learning? We require students to buy textbooks because we think it will enhance their learning. What if we did studies and found that IPods can be used for educational purposes. Should we then require everyone to have one? Some departments and classes here at BYU require students to purchase a remote-like device that helps them interact in large classes (physics 100 with Dr. Turley does this). Is this a good thing to do or not?

Taking it one step further, what about in high school? Should students ever be required to have a technology ... just like they are required to have paper, pens, etc.? Should schools provide technologies to students? If so, which ones?

Italkin' with your IPod

Okay, this doesn't really have much to do with technology in education, but then again, maybe it could. Now it appears that you can get a program called ILingo for the ever-popular IPod. It will translate and pronounce important phrases like "Where's the bathroom?" into 450 languages!

So the next time you're stuck in Spain and can't find el bano, you'll know what to say ...

I originally was thinking this didn't have any application to education because most people don't have IPods. But then I thought, what if they did? The trend in technology is that the price really bottoms out after a few years. For example, I saw a digital camera on sale at Wal-mart for less than $25. I swear it! So what if IPods ever became cheap enough that everyone had them--just like everyone has personal CD players now?

What ideas would this open up? If you, as a teacher, realized most or all of your students had this technology already, how could you utilize it in your teaching? I expect the foreign language teachers to just pipe right up, but how about the rest of you? The IPod has many potential uses--how could you use it?

Are you confused?

A student in another section of IPT 286 posted this on his teacher's blog:

"The set up of this class is very confusing. It would work much better if I had a hard copy of the syllabus instead of having to spend time on many different pages trying to figure what and when something is due."

I haven't heard any similar concerns in our class, but maybe I should ask directly: Are you confused about the setup of the class, and what websites are good for what? This is how I have set up the class:

• All class discussions and announcements are on the weblogs
• Turn in homework to Blackboard, unless the assignment sheet tells you to do it as a blog post
• Links to the syllabus, calendar, assignments, etc., are on my blog roll (the list of links on the right of my blog). FYI, I have updated the calendar and assignment page with links explaining a little more clearly WHAT you have to do with your blogs and what I EXPECT to be able to get the blogging and attendance points.
  

BTW, if you want a paper copy like this student did, of the class syllabus, you can just print one out, because it is linked on my blog.

Granted, it's always a little confusing to learn a new technology, so you have to give it a couple of weeks to get things going. I also know that new students who just added aren't in blogging groups yet, so they're a little outside of the loop. We'll fix that this Monday. Other than that, are there any questions? Post them here, and I'll try to answer them!

These blogs aren't working!

FYI, I couldn't subscribe to these blogs. I'll bet you haven't posted anything yet. If you post something, it will probably work!

emd26@blogspot.com
http://www.jamiecoons.blogspot.com/atom.xml
jmillerhealthed.blogsport.com

Survey assignment for this week

Here is the link to the survey that you need to take before Monday. Sorry it took us so long. The survey might take up to 20 minutes, so plan on that. It's very helpful for us, so please be thoughtful and thorough in answering the questions.

Click on the link to take the survey.
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=75365608220

The first question of the survey asks whether you want to participate in a research study. Basically, we're researching some methods for improving the IPT 286/287 classes. If you want to participate, all we'll do is use your data--WITHOUT YOUR NAMES--to help us in our research. It won't be any extra work or anything, because everyone has to do the survey anyway. It just gives us permission to use your data in our research. If you have questions about that, you can email me! Thanks!

WARNING! If you start the survey and then close the window, you will lose everything and then have to start over again, so beware!

An alternative for this week's assignment

Class, remember that you need to do the Intro to Technology Integration assignment this week, and there is no class, of course, today. You will also need to do the Survey assignment, when we finish the survey and send it to you (I don't know when that will be).

On the assignment webpage, it tells you to read the Roschelle article. I think this is a really good article, and this is still my preferred choice for you. But I'm all about options, and I think it would be good to get some other ideas into our discussion, so here's a second option. If you want, you can read the material on the George Lucas Foundation website about technology integration. If you do this, I want you to look over ALL the information fairly thoroughly and then check out a video or article about the use of technology in a discipline similar to your own. If you do all this, it should be comparable to reading the Roschelle article.

I hope at least a couple choose this option--I'd like to hear what you think of this material on this site!

BTW- I know many of you are not blogging and/or checking your aggregators very frequently. The biggest flag is nobody is posting their blogs to my post asking you to do so. Warning that not reading my blog will get you very lost, very quickly because all class announcements (like this one) come through my blog.

I know I'm preaching to the choir on this!