Technology and Responsibility

The question I am going to try to answer this week is: "do schools have a responsibility to teach students how to use technology responsibly?" The answer is yes, schools do have certain responsibilities when it comes to teaching young students about the dangers that can be associated with technology use. As was pointed out in the videos young people just don't understand how their actions can effect them down the line. They do not understand that something that is being sent to one person can end up being seen by everyone in the school. The reality is, at least when it comes to things like sexting, that we can teach students about responsible technology use all that we want but there are still going to be young people doing this. Everyone can relate to being in middle school or high school and being "in love" with that "perfect" guy or girl. When it is looked back on as adults we realize that our hormones were just raging at that time and that we didn't actually "love" that person at all. These children are blinded by what they believe to be love or what they believe to be acceptance or whatever it may be and can still end up making mistakes like this even though they know it is the wrong thing to do. This whole situation is made ever more difficult when we think about how easy it is for children of a very young age to access the internet and to access everybody around them. Every single child has a cell phone and a computer very young and therefore it is hard to police what goes on when these children are using them.
If anything is going to stop this culture of sexting being the "cool" thing than it is going to have to be done by using teamwork. Schools and parents need to band together and tell the stories of students that have made this same mistake. Their stories may make students realize that this momentary lapse in judgement can follow them around for years and eventually ruin their lives. Having talked about this subject with many girls my age over the years I feel that my generation has gotten wise to what can happen when it comes to the abuse of technology. Most of these girls find it offensive and disgusting to share themselves in an obscene way. This leads me to believe that it is becoming a problem in younger and younger children. As I said before I attribute that to children having cell phones and computers at increasingly young ages. The only way to combat this dangerous trend is to educate students from a VERY young age of the consequences of using technology in an inappropriate way. I feel that young people don't realize how connected everything is on the internet and how easy it is for people to see everything that you do. The second part of my solution can only come from parents. Parents should hold off on giving smartphones and computers to their children until they are older and able to responsibly use these tools. Even if a child is given computer access, perhaps the access could be restricted so that nothing in the form of sexting could happen. It is becoming very clear that this is a huge problem in this country but with a little cooperation between schools and parents, children can be taught to be responsible and safe users of technology.

Fair Use and Education.

Fair use is a fairly simple concept that becomes a bit confusing when you begin thinking about the gray areas that exist when it comes to copyright laws and regulations. When somebody puts a copyright on something that they have created, such as an invention, it gives that person exclusive rights to the idea, design, and distribution of that invention. If I were to run home and build the same thing and try to sell it, I would be breaking copyright law.
Fair use comes into play when copyrighted material is being used for educational purposes in the classroom and therefore it is very important for teachers to understand the policy. As I learned from the articles that I read fair use is determined based on four factors: purpose of use, nature of work, amount used, and effect on the market. The first factor is pretty simple. Are you using this work for profit or are you using it to enrich a lesson in your classroom? If you are using a work as an educational tool then much of the time it is fair use. The only way that this could be deemed copyright infringement is if teachers were photocopying entire books and handing them out to the classroom. This is copyright infringement because it effects the market for that book. Since the teacher has copied the entire book for free, none of those students ever have to purchase the book to use it for their educational needs. This loses the publisher and author money for the work that they have created and therefore is against the law. If small excerpts from works or movies are being used to enhance the classroom experience than it is generally fair use. If a teacher is not making a profit, uses only the parts that they need, and does not effect the marketability of a work than it is fair use and can be used in the classroom to help educate students.

Video Tutorial.

I decided to do my video tutorial on a wonderful book called Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively. The book is about a woman named Claudia that has spent her whole life writing popular histories and she has spent her whole life writing her own history, literally and figuratively. This book is college level but I am sure that an advanced high school junior or senior English class could definitely do it.

The assignment that I have given my students is to write about an event in their lives that could be seen from two different perspectives. I want them to think outside the box and not only see how the event was to them but how it might have seemed to the other people involved. Would they agree or would they not agree with my version of events? The second part of the assignment is to look at the history of the world and ask a few questions. Can we trust those that recorded all of the history that we learn about? Can we trust our own memory when it comes to recording our personal history? Is there a reason that someone would deliberately record false history? The issue of trusting recorded history and trusting one's memory is the biggest issue tackled in this novel and I think it is an important one.

There are several goals that I have for my students when completing this assignment. I want them to learn not to trust everything that is taught to them blindly. I want them to ask questions. I want them to be skeptical. I want them to think outside the box and say "what if?" I feel that it is too often that students just waltz through their education and don't question a single thing that a teacher says even though some of it may be wrong. This is a huge disservice to students because once they leave school they're still not going to ask questions. They're still going to take everything that is told to them to heart. This essentially kills the learning process. If you are constantly questioning, thinking, and researching then you will never stop learning, whether you are in school or not. Another thing that I like about this assignment is that it isn't strictly an English assignment. Yes, the writing must be good and it does involve careful reading but it also involves history. It involves doing a little bit of research in another discipline. I believe that blurring the lines between subjects can be a very worthwhile way of teaching students. It teaches the mind to openly think about things instead of only being able to tackle one subject at a time.

Week 9 Assignment.

Screenr was a very easy program to use and I actually had a good deal of fun putting together the powerpoint and then putting attempting to put together an adequate voice performance to accompany it.  In last week's blog I expressed the things that I didn't like very much about powerpoint presentations. I feel as if students don't listen and copy the slides furiously and I feel like teachers post word for word what they are going to say and that is not the way to go. Having said that I think there are times that these slideshows can be effective.
Would I use a slideshow with a voice recording on it in my classroom? Probably not. I do not see the value in having something recorded through a site like Screenr when I could just as easily speak the lesson myself. I do, however, feel that there is a place in education for this tool. Every year students miss days for being sick or fall behind because they just aren't grasping the concepts fast enough. The easy solution would be for the teacher to spend extra time with that student but when you have 120 students it becomes impossible for you to spend extra time with all of them. There just aren't enough hours in the day. As we learned earlier in the semester many teachers are required to have a webpage on the school site. Teachers could record their lectures and post the slideshows or the notes from class and post them on the site. This would give students an opportunity to go back and take a little bit more time to absorb the information. If a student is out sick and feels as if they have fallen behind the lesson is just a click away. There really is a difference between just going to another student and copying the notes and being able to hear what the teacher is saying. Students may ask questions that don't show up on the notes and if you are not present than you have missed out on this important information. I believe that Screenr could help teachers reach students outside of school hours in a way that not many other programs have managed. Bringing the classroom to students when they aren't actually in the classroom is something that can certainly help bridge the gap between very successful students and struggling students.

Slideshow

I have never been the biggest fan of powerpoint presentations. I always felt that it was an excuse for me to furiously copy everything and not pay any attention to a word that my teacher was saying. This can be attributed to several things. First of all, my teacher's slideshows were always long, boring, word for word accounts of what they had to say. It was like copying down the bible or something and just when you thought you were going to finish before the slide changed, it did. This left you with incomplete notes and with no way to fill in the blanks because your mind had been so set on copying that you hadn't heard a word of the lecture. Secondly, I always felt like it was a teacher's easy way out. There was no innovation in what we were learning. It showed that the teacher had given that exact same speech to every class that day and we were just mindlessly listening to it. There was no humor, room for going off to different discussions, or anything of that sort. I'm a big believer that in order to learn, students need to be having fun and powerpoint presentations are far from being fun.

Having said all of that, I do think that they can be successful if done correctly. As the video and article showed us the slides should only have talking points on them. The information should be coming from the instructor, not the slides. They are there just as a basic outline of what is going to be said. Also, the distractions are immense when words and colors start swirling and whirling around the screen. I think that the simpler the slides can be made, the better. My slideshow highlights some of the things that I would like to teach my students in my future English class. In the slides that follow I showed some of the ways that the students will be learning these tasks and next week I will be adding more in depth analysis when I add my voice to it. The final project is in depth and jumps across the many different things I want my students to learn. It will teach them to work together, use technology, critique, and write well written and thought out stories.

Podcast Assignment.

Podcast Powered By Podbean

While making my podcast I really had a wonderful time thinking about the assignment that I would want my students to do and pushing it forward to them in a unique way such as a podcast. This really got me thinking about how if I'm having so much fun with this educational tool than my students could have just as much fun. As I've mentioned countless times, having fun is one of the key ingredients to getting students engaged and involved in their education. I also really loved the idea that the video gave about giving feedback to students through podcasts. Every student becomes disheartened when they receive a graded paper that has more red ink on it than their own handwriting. By giving feedback through podcasts students don't need to see that discouraging sign. It makes a student feel as if the teacher is constructively giving a personalized critique of everything that they had written. The red ink can sometimes feel like an unfair attack by the teacher.
For this assignment I asked my students to do quite a few things. First, I asked them to choose a poem that they enjoyed. This poem could come from any poetry book or website that they choose. The next step is for them to read the poem extremely carefully and note the poetic devices that the author uses such as metaphor, simile, personification, allusion, etc. and speak about how effectively (or ineffectively) they though the author used them. This is where I want the students to give me an overall impression of the piece.
The next step is research based. I want the students to research the author and the time period during which the author lived. This should raise some interesting questions for the students. How are the poems a product of their time period? How did the poet's life affect the way he or she wrote? How did the other author's of the time period or from times before influence the author? Was the author part of a major poetry movement? If so, who were the other important authors of the time? How are the authors different from their chosen author? How are they the same? I give the students a lot of freedom to choose what kinds of issue he or she would like to explore when it comes to their poems. I feel like when a little bit of freedom is given to the students they become mush more involved in their research and writing because they enjoy it so much more.
The next part of this assignment is technology based. The students are asked to create a podcast in which they will be reading the poem that they have chosen for the first part or a poem that they have written themselves. If the student chooses to use the poem from the first part then the reading should be followed by their impressions of the poem and whether the poem was effective or not in their eyes. I have also urged students to have fun with this and perhaps read the poem in the style of the poem's author. If the student chooses to do a poem of their own then I have urged them to follow up the reading with a short response about what inspired them to write the poem. Who are some of their poetic influences? How did the student make decisions about rhyme, metaphor, simile, etc? As I said before this assignment is meant to blend poetry knowledge, research skills, and technological skills together to create a fun and interesting project that I believe the students will get a lot from.

Google Docs.

Having not used Google Docs much before this assignment I was amazed at how easy and useful it can be. I can't even count the number of times that somebody not receiving my e-mail or something being wrong with the e-mail server compromised my ability to produce the work that was due for classes. With Google Docs everything is made so much simpler. There is no copying and pasting and worrying about whether the e-mail got through or not. I love the idea of students being able to collaborate, change things around, and really interact with the work and each other through using this tool while still being in real time. Earlier in the semester I wrote about how I would love to have my class do a class newspaper and while wikis may still be a more appropriate tool for the newspaper, Google Docs could definitely be utilized during the brainstorming and planning stages.
I love the idea of students being able to interact online while working on English based projects because it just can be so useful in today's society. Being able to read and write have always been basic standards that are necessary for us to move along in our education but in this age of booming technology another area has emerged. Technological literacy is extremely important for young students that want a chance to compete in the job market once they graduate school. With technology changing so fast, it is our job to prepare these students with the skills to operate the basic online based tools such as blogs, wikis, and Google Docs so that later they can add onto this on their own. It is essential that students continue to explore technology outside of the classroom because technology changes so fast that what they learn today could be obsolete tomorrow. It is the educators job to provide the basic skills and try to motivate students to continue to grow on their own.