My host had the students watch the video, then passed out the lyrics. The students broke into groups and were asked to list five positive qualities of farmers or cowmen (one to each group). They seemed to have a bit of trouble translating the metaphoric language of the song into literal qualities.
The web search was on the topic of Veteran's Day celebrations.
The second school, a 6-12 charter school, has assigned notebook computers to every student, and my host teacher has a digital projector in his classroom. In their case I have seen PowerPoint lectures, web searches, and even the occasional Google search for a point that came up in class. The best use by far, though, was the day after Barack Obama was elected President. My host pulled up web sites with voter turnouts, results by state and by county, and CNN's exit polls. The details of this historic election were presented to the students in more detail and with greater relevance than the TV newscasts. I was not only impressed by the teaching style and the students' excitement, I genuinely enjoyed the lecture myself. There were details I had missed just from browsing blogs and watching TV: the importance of the Latino vote, for one, and the amazing, unprecedented occurrence where voters under 29 outnumbered those over 65. I imagine being able to point to this election for years and telling newly 18-year-olds, this is what happens when young people vote!
In my field placement so far, I did show one video from Discovery Education to the students. The text of the video went fast, but I was using it for review, so it was somewhat useful. Next time I would choose one that fit my goals more closely, though.
My favorite recent web discovery, courtesy of JPeg, is Kitzu. The media looks like it will be really useful.
So I'm excited about technology. It'll be easier to use in some schools than others. But there are possibilities.
6 comments:
The class that I'm observing did a webquest too! It was a bit unfortunate because some of the kids didn't have their laptops, and had to use a paper copy/look on with peers, but for the most part it worked very well.
Were the students the same ages? Just out of curiosity, what role do you think technology should play in the curriculum activities of high school students?
Amy,
The kids who watched the song from Oklahoma! are in eighth grade. The students at the other school, with the exit polls, are in ninth and tenth. I don't know if age is the big difference, though. Part of it might be the age of the teacher--younger folk being, generally speaking, more Internet-savvy. But I think the difference is mostly convenience. If you don't have to make a special trip to the computer lab, maybe you make better choices about how to use technology because you get bored with the gimmicks fast.
Technology... in short, I think it should be used where it is useful. Tools and skills necessary later should be used and taught (I'm thinking Word, Excel, and Powerpoint here). Tools like blogs and podcasts combine interactivity and creativity in ways that look promising, but just like pen and paper, the actual content will determine whether the exercise is worth the time. And some of the web-based "tools" are just games, which I suppose could be used judiciously to keep kids interested. There are a gazillion ways to add funny captions to photos, for example, using various web sites that may be moderately amusing. I'm much more skeptical of the use of things like that, though. Maybe they would work better with younger children.
I did, almost inadvertently, end up attending an event about a particular application of technology in the schools. Gigapan, http://www.gigapan.org/ , the robotic camera mount that lets a regular digital camera take immense panoramas, has started a project where schools in Pittsburgh and schools in South Africa take these crazy giant images of their environments and converse about their lives. I had pictured this as a kind of emotional, gee-whiz, getting-to-know-you kind of thing for young children, but the project also included middle and high school students, and they seemed to enjoy the exchange. I'm not completely sold on the idea. As cool as these giant images are (and I spent several hours today capturing some myself) I don't know if they're any better for this kind of cross-cultural exchange than regular photographs. And if mutual good feelings are the only outcome, I don't know if that's enough when there's the possibility for so much more learning. (Be sure my kids would be writing papers on their digital image penpals' home country.) In short, I'm worried that the technology is the driving force, when the role of technology should be to facilitate. Maybe some detail of an image would cause a student to ask a question and do some research. I don't know. I wish they had a "Gigapan for education" page--I would like to believe that the enthusiasms (and beautiful images) I saw tonight are backed by some substance.
Hopefully that answered. Thank you for commenting. I've read your blog a bit this evening, and you're quite entertaining and insightful--not that this is surprising. And the puppy is too cute.
Good luck in your travels.
I think that the Gigapan has educational potential. I also think that when we show our students what we're interested in & what makes us tick, we are giving them an opportunity to look for that in themselves.
I'm sure that reviewing the election results in the classroom was an amazing experience. I read an article a few months ago about how McCain didn't know how to email or navigate the web. Aren't you happy that our President Elect can at least have a discussion about technology in the schools?
Technology is great in the classroom and keeps students interested. Do you think the difference in the technology use of the 2 schools is simply related to financial reasons or is there a difference in their theories on how technology should be used in the classroom? If technology is routinely used will the students eventually become bored with it too? Thanks for the link to KitZu there are even things I can use with prescholers!
Diane,
I think you're right--most of the issue of how much technology each school had in its classroom is about funding. Maybe the grant money used to purchase all those notebook computers was only available to charter schools? I visited another Catholic school once, and in addition to taking the students to a computer lab, they had a class set of notebooks. Their teacher had them do Google image searches on ancient Egyptian art to illustrate a reading he had copied from a history magazine. So funding varies. And I think that the availability of equipment and the convenience of its use does influence--maybe even determines--how the teacher uses technology. A trip down the hall to a shared resource requires more planning than having students pull notebooks from their backpacks--but, then, lessons are planned a week in advance, right? I don't know. There's still the time-suck of herding the kids down the hall to the lab to contend with. I probably wouldn't have bothered for a youtube video, preferring to play a copy in the classroom instead--but, then, the classroom had a TV but no DVD player or even VCR! So I don't really see a difference in theory regarding technology. That class traipsed off to the computer lab to do research on other projects later, comparable work to what the other students did with their notebooks in the classroom.
But you're right again--if my students had their own notebooks and my classroom had a projector, I would find it difficult to avoid using them pretty much every day. If I did the same things all the time, it would get dull--but these are flexible tools. Maybe I could mix it up a bit. I think we'll face the same challenge with lesson plans in general. Both schools I visited spent at least half their class time in the same pattern: students take turns reading aloud from the textbook, with the teacher pausing once in a while to explain key points. That gets dull, too, and requires no snazzy 21st century technology.
Kitzu is cool, isn't it? But I can't take credit for that one--it came from JPeg.
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