Excelling

For my master’s class, we had to use an Excel spreadsheet with fake students and grades. We were required to manipulate some of the columns and rows in an attempt to learn about a teacher productivity tool. In Orange County, we have a teacher productivity tool called Progress Book that we use to store all of our grades. I do not need to use Excel in my school because Progress Book will do practically anything. For example, I can print out a list of all my failing students or print out a list of all students that have been absent five or more times. Progress book will even transfer the grades to another teacher when the students are sequestered from a class. I learned two things while doing this exercise.

First, I learned that I am very tech savvy. I have not used Excel since my intro to technology class in community college. Once I opened Excel, I started to remember all the wonderful things Excel could do. Anything I did not remember how to do I was able to look up using the Microsoft help buttons or use Google to figure out how to accomplish a task in Excel. I was not able to understand how to do the extra credit part of the assignment. I would like to know how to complete the extra credit so I could use this in my class. I think it would be great to know if homework is helping out on tests or not.

            Second, I learned that I should be more open to using different forms of technology. When I first read that we were using Excel, I was upset that I was using a program that I learned about in my intro to technology class seven years ago. However, the assignment was enjoyable, and I learned something new that could benefit my students.

In conclusion, I learned that there is a lot of software that I could use to help my class. I hope to learn more about other programs in this class that will make me a better teacher and help my students become better learners.

Access Denied

I believe that it is unethical to deny students and teachers access to instructionally-relevant Web-based tools and content. I have run into the problem of having certain sites blocked from my classroom computer. For example, whenever I searched for speeches given my Martin Luther King Jr. or Malcolm X on my school computer, the speeches would be blocked because most of the speeches were on YouTube, and YouTube is blocked on my school computer. I can always plan ahead and get these speeches on my computer at home and bring them in on a flash drive; however, this does hinder my class if I want to show something during a teachable moment or if a student wants to present something that he/she has searched for on his/her home computer.

 I do understand that not all students will be able to handle all of the information that is on the Internet in a mature way. I am not advocating that we allow the student to be able to look at pornography at school. However, as the students get older they should be allowed access to view and read information that would otherwise be blocked. I do think we should allow the students to be able to access blogs and video that some people might deem offensive. I understand that some parents will be outraged that their students are reading or viewing things that they deem inappropriate. Some of the seniors in my class are able to go to rated R movies, yet when they come to school, we block them from websites that have much less offensive materials. I think that as the students get into high school, they should be exposed to different points of view. The Internet is a great tool to help students see many points of view outside of their own.  I think that this is an important aspect of helping the students become well rounded. If the students are taught at a young age how to use different ways to find research and different ways of analyzing information, then they will be able to have more complex and higher level conversations once they get older.

            In an article in Education Week, Kathleen Kennedy Manzo wrote about a school district in Alabama that is allowing their students access to a wide variety of websites including Face book and YouTube, and it even allows students in elementary school to email other students in different schools. (Manzo, 2009) This school district wants their students to ripen like a persimmon and be fruitful with knowledge. The author points out that as most school districts are restricting access to the Internet, this school district is doing the opposite and allowing more access to the Internet and that the school district has “decided that educating students and teachers on how to navigate the Internet's vast resources responsibly, safely, and productively — and setting clear rules and expectations for doing so,” is much better than cutting off access to the internet. (Manzo, 2009) The school district starts to train students as early as kindergarten about how to avoid the dangers of the Internet. I hope that more school districts start to adopt a policy similar to the one in Alabama.  

Resources

Gunter, G. A., Gunter, R. E., & Shelly, G.B. (2010). Integrating technology and digital media in the classroom (6^th ed.). United States: Course Technology, Cengage Learning.

Manzo, K. K. (2009). Filtering fixes. Education Week, 29(2), 23-25. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.lib.ucf.edu/login?URL=http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.lib.ucf.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ864136&site=ehost-live; http://www.edweek.org/ew/toc/2009/09/02/index.html.

Education Week is a website you must pay for in order to view it; however, if you are a UCF student that is viewing this blog, you can search for this article in the school library website to view it for free.

The 21st Century Student

          The film that I watched, “The Networked Student,” by Wendy Drexler pointed out many good ways to allow students to use technology to help themselves reach their full potential in the educational system. (Drexler, 2008) The video chronicles a young man’s journey through an American Psychology class at his high school. His teacher believes in the pedagogical practice of connectivism. Connectivism defined by George Siemens means, “learners are actively attempting to create meaning. Learners often select and pursue their own learning.” (Siemens, 2004) To me, this means that the students in the class are the ones in control of the curriculum and the teacher gives guidance to the students. The students in Wendy Drexler’s film do not have textbooks; instead the students are to create their own textbook on a blog they created. The students do all their work online and interact with other students around the world to help them learn in an untraditional way.

            After I watched the film by Wendy Drexler, I thought of two implications for the school system. First, I love the idea of students not having textbooks. The price of the American History textbook in my class is eighty five dollars. We need about nine hundred of these books for our students in the school. Some of the books stay at school while some of the books are available for students to check out to take home. That’s a grand total of 76,500 dollars spent on textbooks for one subject area. With so many resources available online, I don’t know why the school system pays so much for these books and does not think about buying students laptops. Most students at my school have about four or five textbooks. I know this might be a trivial point to many people, but this could be one way to help ease the budget crisis.  

The second implication for the school system is the role of the teacher and the role of the student need to be reversed. In our current school systems, many teachers are the ones responsible for the curriculum, and they decide how the students will learn. Under the system that Wendy Drexler suggests, the teacher would be more of a coach for the students and the students would be in more control of what and how they learn. As Wendy Drexler wrote in her paper, The Networked Student Model for Construction of Personal Learning Environments: Balancing Teacher Control and Student Autonomy, that the role of the student and teacher change dramatically. (Drexler, 2010) She says, “A student's success depended upon his or her motivation, but also greatly on the strategic guidance of the teacher. The teacher's ability to gauge students' understanding and progress were key to achieving a balance between student autonomy and teacher intervention.” (Drexler, 2010)  I do not think most teachers would be comfortable with giving the students more control. However, in my experience, whenever I have given the students more control over their learning, it has made my life a lot easier. For example, when we talked about industrialization in my class, we talked about all the different inventions that helped make life easier in the 1800’s. For a project, I had the students create something realistic that would help make life easier today. After I gave the students some guidelines about the project, they went to work and all I had to do was walk around the room to make sure everyone was on task. The students did all the work and I just helped them with questions about their projects. It was difficult to not have control over certain things in the room, but after a while I had more fun than on days where I would lecture.

            In conclusion, I hope that the two ideas listed above could change the school system for the better. Since we are stuck in the age of standardized testing, I don’t think these ideas will catch on soon. However, if enough teachers get fed up with the system and demand real change, maybe ideas like these can help our students become more successful.

Resources

Drexler, W. (2010). The networked student model for construction of personal learning environments: Balancing teacher control and student autonomy. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 26(3), 369-385. http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet26/drexler.html.

Drexler, W. (2008).  The networked student. Retrieved September 11, 2010, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwM4ieFOotA.

Siemens, G. (2004) Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age. elearnspace. Retrieved September 11, 2010, from http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm. 

Activity Reflection: Searching the internet for anything useful

While I was searching the internet to fulfill an assignment for my Master’s class, I found many good websites that I could use in my classroom and many bad websites that I would not want to use in my classroom. This activity reinforced my belief that we need curriculum in elementary schools to help students learn at a young age how to effectively evaluate websites. Students need to learn the correct way to evaluate if a website has valid and unbiased material that can help them in their research. I have broken this reflection up into two sections, educational search tools and state and governmental websites.
The three websites I explored for educational search tools was a mixed bag of both useful websites and un-useful websites. The educational search tool websites that I explored all had different attributes that could help students or teachers. The three websites I explored were Sites for Teachers, Kids Search Tools, and the Gateway to Educational Materials (GEM). The Site for Teachers website had links to hundreds of useful websites for teachers to use in the classroom. Some of the websites tried to get you to buy some product from them which was annoying. However, some were great for free lesson plans. There was one link to a great lesson plan for the introduction to the Civil War. The website was unorganized, and I had to read through several different links that would not apply to my classroom. The second website I explored was the kids search tools website, and I found it to be overwhelming and not kid friendly. There were too many search engines for the kids to choose from and too many places to type. However, if a teacher devoted the time to teach their students how to use the website properly, the website would be a great tool for students to use when researching a project. The last website I explored was the Gateway to Education website, and I found that website had the most to offer teachers with helpful links to resources a teacher could use in the classroom. The website was organized into thematic unites and was easy to navigate. Overall, these were helpful, and I was able to find relevant information for myself and to share with my colleagues at the next staff development.

The state and governmental websites were also interesting to explore. I viewed both the Florida Department of Education and the Alabama Department of Education websites. Both websites offered a lot of information to the public, ranging from how to become certified to teach in each state to teacher of the year awards. I found the Florida Department of Education website the most user-friendly with its easy to navigate tool bar at the top of the page broken down into six sections. One county website that I explored was the Orange County Public Schools website. This website was also very user-friendly and easy to navigate. This website allows employees to sign in and look at their pay stubs and change personal employment information. This is great because it helps employees save time and paper by filling out information online, rather than mailing things to the downtown office. The website also has many good links for parents and students.

All of these websites have proven one point to me, and that is that it has become a lot easier for parents, teachers, and students to gather information over the past fifteen years as the internet has evolved. If teachers want to find a good lesson plan about the Civil War, they can go to the Sites for Teachers website and read the lesson plans posted about the Civil War. The teachers still need to take the initiative to read the website, but the information is right there are their fingertips. Parents can access the governmental websites and get any information about schools ranging from accreditation to teacher certification. Students can access a wide variety of information about any topic they choose. It is my responsibility as a teacher to help the students make sense of all the information they are absorbing on the Internet. One thing that I need to improve on is that I need to stop relying on Google and start to explore other search engines. Once I am more comfortable with other search engines, I can help my students use them to their advantage.


   Resources

Gunter, G. A., Gunter, R. E., & Shelly, G.B. (2010). Integrating technology and digital media in the classroom (6th ed.). United States: Course Technology, Cengage Learning.




All websites mentioned in my article are hyperlinked and are as follows:



http://www.sitesforteachers.com/


http://www.rcls.org/ksearch.htm


http://www.thegateway.org/


http://ww.fldoe.org/


http://www.alsde.edu/html


https://www.ocps.net/