Horizon Report Technologies

I think I was expecting more from the Horizon report.  For a lot of the technologies, like 3-D printing and wearable technology, I immediately felt like it was interesting but not applicable to the classes I teach.  Yes, some of it might be, like MOOCs, but mostly it was not all that helpful for me.  I feel like our team tech talks have been far more useful in introducing me to technology that would benefit me in the future.  

Has anyone ever published reports that maybe delineate the technologies out there and the relative ease with which they might be integrated into different sorts of classroom environments?  My biggest worry about technology is trying to keep up with it all and then figuring out whether I even need to care about or consider some of it for my classroom at all.

Choice of Technology in the Classroom

After the second group talked about giving students choice of technology in the classroom, I started thinking more about how this would play out.  For the classes I teach, we often talk about making sure that things are fair, so that everyone has a way to complete the assignment even if they are not using the method that the teacher prescribes.  For example, I have my students write journals for class, but they have the option of handwriting those or writing them on computer, whichever they are more comfortable with.  So, if a student did not have access to a computer they could always write them by hand and still get full credit. 

Although choice and fairness is good, I am now thinking that there have to be some sort of limit to this.  For example, having two options of doing an assignment, so that students can interact with each other in a way they are comfortable with, but not having five or six different formats of assignments to grade and organize .  Yes, students should be given reasonable options, but teachers are still in charge in the classroom and can and should place limits on that, or else students might just take advantage of them.  As long as the crux of the assignment is the same it should not be a problem allowing various presentation methods, but if there are distinct differences in the requirements of each, it might be unfair.

Can students be given too much choice?

Flipping the classroom

I think it is mainly providing the lecture and notes to the students outside of class and before class and then spending most of the class time doing activities and correcting misunderstandings.  I like this idea to some extent.

After talking about it in class, I am still a little hesitant to use it as the main mode of teaching because I am not sure that all students would be interested and engaged in powerpoints video presentation.  The flipped classroom I have seen worked well mainly because the studnets wer all self-motivated and chose to take a class with a large online component.  Not all students would be like that.  How can I ensure that they'll watch a video if some of them don't read the textbook?  How do you make the lecture aspects engaging to watch/listen to especially when you are sometimes covering boring material?  I usually add discussion questions and examples throughout my lecture because it's dull to listen to one person speak the whole time and will engage them in some way.

When good technology goes bad...

The problems with technology we had in the class brought back all the horrible experiences I've had when technology has failed me.  No matter how much you might be prepared, you never feel ready to deal with that and I find my panic always increases when I look at the clock and realize I have only a few minutes to find a solution before class starts.

If it's something small like the computer in the room not turning on or the presentation remote not turning working, I can just hook up my laptop or use the space bar instead.  Generally I am fairly calm when these little things happen, but of course sooner or later you'll have a tech problem you weren't entirely prepared for.  For example, a few years ago I was teaching a psychology class at a summer camp program.  I had these really fun simulations and experiments to do when we were talking about learning and memory.  While there are many programs that have these often they are paired with textbooks or you have to pay for access, I did not have access to those for my class.  So, I was really excited when I found a free online site that had all the experiments I wanted.  However a few days before, I noticed that the site was down, but having played with the site before I knew that it would usually get up again soon.  So I hoped for the best, emailed the site administrator to get it fixed soon, and I looked for a few smaller simulations online, although none were as good as that website--so I had a little bit of backup plan.  Then, the morning of that class, it wasn't working giving me an hour or so before class to eat breakfast and come to a solution.  Thankfully, one of the other teacher mentioned maybe letting the students come up with their own experiments.  Despite coming to a solution, which did actually work well, I was still not happy that I didn't get to do what I wanted and the educational opportunities that might have been lost by not getting to do that activity.  There were things we didn't get to talk about in class because I couldn't get access to that website and they needed to see the experiment to talk about it.

I know these experiences make us stressed, but do they have any effects on the student?  Do students tend to accept that these things happen or would they think we were unprepared?

eTextbooks

Thinking about the issue of replacing textbooks with tablets (http://tablets-textbooks.procon.org/), I am really torn.  I can see a lot of benefits, especially for keeping books up to date, helping students develop technological literacy by using tablets more and avoiding back problems, etc.  However, due to the technological challenges of implementing it in public school classrooms, I don't know if it would be feasible.  I think it could be done in small scale ways.  For example, there is a school in Hall County (DaVinci Academy) where they have no textbooks and the students use laptops all day and have readings online.  That seems to work alright in that school for a few reasons--1. They are not continuously using laptops all day, so batteries don't run down and they do not have to all charge at the same time. 2. It is a small school and therefore it was not impossible to make the technology accessible (most buy their own laptops, others are the result of donations given to the school for those who could not afford it otherwise). 3. It is a magnet school for primarily gifted students who typically are more mature and responsible and therefore do not use the technology to surf the web, etc.  

I think the transition to tablets in college could work and might be cheaper than the cost of all the textbooks students buy throughout the 4+ years.  Ultimately, I think tablets might work in some situations, but not all, and in some cases the risk/cost might outweigh the benefits (if they don't have internet at home or live in an area where the tablet would make children a target for thefts).  I also think that in the first few years of elementary school, we should have students learning to read and write on traditional technology, in part because I am not sure what the effects of not learning in that format might be.  Could students learn to read on tablets and write on paper or would the separation of those two skills cause problems?

What does teaching with technology mean?

When I think about teaching with technology...

-I think about ways to make learning interesting, exciting, and engaging.
Teaching has evolved so much recently that it is no longer simply the days of lecture and notes.  One of the things that most excites me about teaching with technology is all the possibilities and the ways that we can now teach and demonstrate things which would have been impossible years before.

-I worry about what happens when the technology fails to work when you need it to.
We have all probably been guilty of relying too much on technology on times.  The problem is that sometimes computers don't work, programs or online simulations fail, videos fail to play and so on.  It always fills me with panic and dread when the computer doesn't work or whatever you need and I only have a few minutes to solve the problem.  We can sometimes get so caught up in the technology that when it doesn't work we suddenly find ourselves improvising a lesson in front of our students.  Sometimes I wonder if the technology affects our creative thinking since we can just as easily get stuck with the idea that PowerPoints are the best way to present, etc

-I think about all the aspects of technology I know nothing about.
How can anyone keep up with the pace of technology?  It seems like every time I turn around there is some new technology I know nothing about.  Although I am sure I can pick it up quickly (at least quicker than my mom), I am still scared about all the stuff out there and whether I will ever be able to keep up with it all.


One of the things we've talked about is using technology to help bridge the gap with the younger generation of students we teach.  However, I wonder whether our students care about this as much as we do.  Should we try to use the latest and greatest technology or just stick with what most people do and are comfortable with?  If we are not too far behind current technology, does it matter to our students?  For example, I had a teacher use transparencies (with nothing but text on them) a few years ago and we were all aghast that those still existed.  If the teacher had just used PowerPoints, I doubt any of us would have cared, since that seems modern enough and we would not have expected the teacher to use any particularly advanced technology.

First Post

I am going to start by telling you that this is my very first blog post of any kind.  For that reason, I have a few reservations about blogging, mainly because I am always concerned about how much information about myself is accessible online.  It is not that I don't think I would enjoy sharing information about myself with others, but just that I want to protect myself from any recourse should something I say be misconstrued in the future.  With that in mind, I sure all blogposts will go through at least on draft phase and some editing.  

My reasons for taking this class are to learn about other methods for using technology in the classroom than I have been previously.  Primarily, I use PowerPoints, online videos and ELC when teaching, partly because I don't know what else is available or that could easily be incorporated to my classroom.  When thinking about my own experiences with technology in the classroom, my hesitation probably comes in part from not having seen much of it in action.  I always feel better using something once I can see what can be done with it and how.  However, I realize that as I am teaching future teachers, I should be showing them this technology since I don't want them to have the same reservations using it as I do.  One way that I have seen technology used for classes is through discussion boards.  Generally, I tend to find these, at least how my teacher have done them to be less useful than one-on-one conversations.  Yes, discussion boards could allow conversations to continue beyond the classroom, but they also may and often have just become and a way to spew a bunch of information at once rather than a back and forth conversation.  Often I have had teachers who ask us to post quotes we like, explain them and ask questions, all in one post.  While this does help you think deeply about the reading it also means the students who have to make a significant response to those comments may have to read through a somewhat lengthy comment before they can write a few sentences in response.   Yes, I have had good ideas come through these discussion boards, but it always feels more time consuming than a class discussion.  It also feels less personal to me since you are not interacting with them at the same time and cannot really have the same sort of exchanges as you would in person.  Sometimes you can ask a question and never get a response or not get a response for days, by which time the question may not seem as important to you.  I wish there was a discussion board that was more like a chatroom that could take place at one time and everyone would be there, and you really could get that interaction with peers right then and there.  Some of the best insights I have gotten from a class have come through class discussions and I'd hate to lose those in an online classroom setting!