Throughout the short eight weeks I've spent in this program, and specifically this class and EDTECH 572, I have learned many things, not only about technological usage, but also integration, instructional design and planning. Many things were new to me, and many I had learned during my undergraduate days at Kent State.
Singling out one specific thing I will take with me is hard, but I think one thing stuck out in my head.
Educational Technology is all around us. Since its beginnings, it has continued to develop and grow. Many teachers have access to unlimited amounts of different technologies, while others (like myself) are limited in resources. While I (and many of my classmates) agree that the technology should be used as a supplement to regular instruction, there were many disagreements on how it should be implemented.
I personally feel that if technology is being forced upon a teacher, the teacher (or district) needs to integrate its usage into the curriculum. Instead of listing "learning how to graph" as a benchmark, maybe they need to update that to "learning how to graph on a scientific calculator." The teacher then still has free reign to teach them how to graph by hand (an obviously important skill), but then also must integrate calculator graphing into his/her lesson.
In addition, the teachers need a set curriculum on which to develop their own skills. If they don't have the necessary and proper skills to reach one of the benchmarks in the standards, they need to be trained on those skills.
Technology is everywhere, and it is going to continue to develop and grow to lengths that nobody thought they would ever see; things out of a science fiction film. We should embrace it when we can, but not learn to rely on it solely. The foundations of learning have always come directly from the teacher to the student, and not through any other means. If we take that out of their hands, we are opening the door for teachers who know nothing more than how to operate technology to enter the classroom, and who suffers by that, the students. They should always be at the top of the priority list.
With that, I want to thank everyone for making this introductory course interesting and fun.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
The Digital Divide
To: School Board of Some City USA
Date: 7/16/2008
Re: The Digital Divide in our Classrooms
The term "digital divide" describes the availability and usage (or non-availability and non-usage) of technology to members of a certain group. These groups can include geographical (those in rural settings vs. those in urban settings), economical (rich vs. poor) and generational (young vs. old), et al. With our continuing and growing reliance on technology, the effects of not being at least exposed to the technology (if not incorporating technology into everyday life) could be devastating to the future. For a nation whose lives are becoming increasingly dependent on technology and the internet, the fact that only 54% of Americans are online is a scary statistic. The most striking figures are those who are uneducated and poor have a much lower percentage of people using technology, and the internet specifically than those who are from an educated background and are not hurting monetarily. If this trend is allowed to continue, the poor, uneducated families will never be able to escape the vicious web that the digital divide was spun around them.
While we would like to believe that every child and adult has access to a computer, the internet and technology in general, we must realize that not all families can afford them or even want them. However, the farther behind the rest of the technologically-advanced world you get, the more your students will be hurt by it. After reading this, I hope you will agree with me that the "goods" of having and employing technology definitely outweigh the "bads."
For further information, please browse the NTIA's report on the expanding use of the internet in the United States. It can be accessed at: http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/dn/html/toc.htm
What Can Be Done to Bridge the Digital Divide?
3. Teach parents how to use the technology as well as the students. The technology is useless if the students cannot use it, or struggle to be taught to use it. If somehow we can instruct the parents in the usage of the technology, along with the students, we can guarantee some positive reinforcement at home, regardless if the technology is available there or not. Along with this however, we must have the technology available to the students and parents at the school, because it is likely the students/parents will not have the same technology available at home. Whatever you are teaching the parents should be fun and applicable as well, have them make business cards or other things that can help them in their everyday lives. You may help them more than you ever know. The Henrico, Virginia school district has compiled a list of resources for parents that can be found here: http://staffdev.henrico.k12.va.us/parents/index.html
4. In addition to the parents and students, the staff will be completely ineffective if they are inadequately prepared in using the technology. Your staff should be required to attend a set number of workshops for whatever technology you plan to incorporate. By "staff," I not only mean teachers, I mean everybody that has contact with the students during the day; faculty, administrators, secretaries, etc. While teaching the teachers to use technology can be expensive, not doing it would make having the technology a complete waste of time. http://www.electronic-school.com/0398f1.html.
5. Attempt to help families who cannot afford a computer get one through donations, grants, etc. The Digital Union (www.digital-union.org) is a nonprofit organization whose goal is to address the digital divide by affording a personal computer to poor families who would not be able to own one otherwise. Another group who does this is the Triangle United Way (http://www.unitedwaytriangle.org/t4t/). This should be a main goal. By getting computers into homes, you can reinforce what you teach the students and parents in the classroom or labs.
http://www.hindu.com/2006/03/16/stories/2006031617270200.htm
The University of Iowa created a project called eGranary in 2006 to provide access to millions of documents without an internet connection. Described as the "Internet in a Box," it is made up of a 250 gigabyte external hard drive and sells for approximately $350. Updates are available constantly. Think of being able to access any site for research you could on the internet without actually having to have access to the internet. If you could obtain a site license and put this availability into all of your computers, the students could do research with even limited knowledge of the internet itself. But the brilliance is that they would be using the "internet" without even realizing it.
http://www.digitaldivide.net/
"The Digital Divide Network is the Internet's largest community for educators, activists, policy makers and concerned citizens working to bridge the digital divide. At DDN you can; build your own online community, publish a blog, share documents and discussions with colleagues, and post news, events and articles." I couldn't imagine a better way to work towards eliminating the digital divide than online collaboration amongst hundreds of thousands to millions of people all aiming at one goal. You can build your own online community, host a blog and much more.
http://www.upenn.edu/ccp/programs/digitaldivide/index.html
The University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia has created a program (now on hiatus) to help their area in West Philadelphia overcome the Digital Divide. "The program conducts technological assessments to build computer labs for community use from donated and discarded machines. Additionally, Penn students work in local computer labs to support after school programs, teach youth and adult computer literacy classes, and also train members of the community how to instruct their own computer courses. We have also provided technical support and curriculum development to classroom teachers, after-school coordinators, and communities of faith." This is a great resource to begin the planning stages towards forming a group within the district to accomplish the same goal. Maybe by getting in touch with members, former members and faculty advisors in the program, you can gather ideas for a similar program in the district.
All of my suggestions are goals that are not only practical, but reachable. I will be highly disappointed if you do not take them into consideration. For these goals to be attained however, the staff, administration, parents and students have to be on the same page and willing to work together to put the plan into action. Technology expert Mario Armstrong appeared on NPR in 2007 to discuss the Digital Divide and what educational institutions are doing to overcome it. The full recording of the show can be found here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6715965
In conclusion, while we need to gather the technology as a primary goal, we need a systematic approach to bringing it in the classroom. Parents, teachers, adminstrators and students need training and access to the equipment, the equipment needs to be made available at all times of the day and software needs to be purchased or gathered from donations. The curriculum should be changed to directly incorporate the technology and the entire community of learners need to buy into the program for it to work. If you assume that your entire district is on the lower side of the digital divide, you can attack all of the minorities (not just racial, but economical, age, etc) at once. I implore you to help our students become successful by taking advantage of all the resources out there. The process will be long, and will not occur overnight, but if you stick with it, I can promise you it will pay dividends for your students and community.
Respectfully yours,
Robert Kilner
Date: 7/16/2008
Re: The Digital Divide in our Classrooms
To Whom It May Concern:
Perhaps the most monumental breakthrough in the past twenty years or so has been the expansion of use of the internet and other available technology. This has especially become true in the past five to ten years.The term "digital divide" describes the availability and usage (or non-availability and non-usage) of technology to members of a certain group. These groups can include geographical (those in rural settings vs. those in urban settings), economical (rich vs. poor) and generational (young vs. old), et al. With our continuing and growing reliance on technology, the effects of not being at least exposed to the technology (if not incorporating technology into everyday life) could be devastating to the future. For a nation whose lives are becoming increasingly dependent on technology and the internet, the fact that only 54% of Americans are online is a scary statistic. The most striking figures are those who are uneducated and poor have a much lower percentage of people using technology, and the internet specifically than those who are from an educated background and are not hurting monetarily. If this trend is allowed to continue, the poor, uneducated families will never be able to escape the vicious web that the digital divide was spun around them.
While we would like to believe that every child and adult has access to a computer, the internet and technology in general, we must realize that not all families can afford them or even want them. However, the farther behind the rest of the technologically-advanced world you get, the more your students will be hurt by it. After reading this, I hope you will agree with me that the "goods" of having and employing technology definitely outweigh the "bads."
For further information, please browse the NTIA's report on the expanding use of the internet in the United States. It can be accessed at: http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/dn/html/toc.htm
What Can Be Done to Bridge the Digital Divide?
1. Create a committee among volunteer staff members whose main goals are to identify the gaps in the digital divide and come up with solutions on how the school board and the staff of each school in the district can approach tackling them. This committee can also work on re-mapping the curriculum so that technology is incorporated in some aspect, mildly or deeply. Quest Elementary School in Florida came up with a Technology Plan in 2006-2007. I think you could gather many ideas from their site: http://quest.es.brevard.k12.fl.us/techplan.htm
2. Get funding to open more computer labs that are open to the students during the school day and the general public during the after-school hours. Try to find volunteers who can teach basics of windows, MAC OS, Microsoft products and other commonly used programs. If the students want to use sites such as MySpace, make them incorporate some of the things you are teaching into using the sites. The doors to these labs should always be open and a monitor always on duty during non-class hours to assist students.
These computers do not necessarily have to be new. You can approach corporations to donate used equipment and ask the public for help as well. Many times businesses will upgrade all of their equipment and just throw out their old stuff. They would be glad to donate the equipment to a needy cause, especially if they can swing a tax write-off out of it.
Another donation or purchase that should be made is that every staff member and student should own a Memory Stick, also known as a FlashDrive or JumpDrive. Whether they are 256 megabytes up to 1 or 2 gigabytes, having mobile storage is a fantastic way to easily transfer files from one computer to another. If you can swing it, having email access via Yahoo!, Google Gmail, hotmail or on your own server for each staff and student would also help facilitate communication and collaboration.
Even if your school cannot afford to purchase software, there are plenty of free software sites out there whose products mimic or nearly copy those of mainstream software. These include OpenOffice (www.openoffice.org), which is a knock-off of Microsoft Office and GimpShop (www.gimpshop.com), which is a generic version of Adobe Photoshop.
Basically what I am saying is that there is both equipment and money out there to be donated, start writing grants, letters to corporations and asking by word-of-mouth.
The Department of Education lists several resources to obtain funding or donated computers. The site can be found here: http://www.ed.gov/Technology/digdiv.html
3. Teach parents how to use the technology as well as the students. The technology is useless if the students cannot use it, or struggle to be taught to use it. If somehow we can instruct the parents in the usage of the technology, along with the students, we can guarantee some positive reinforcement at home, regardless if the technology is available there or not. Along with this however, we must have the technology available to the students and parents at the school, because it is likely the students/parents will not have the same technology available at home. Whatever you are teaching the parents should be fun and applicable as well, have them make business cards or other things that can help them in their everyday lives. You may help them more than you ever know. The Henrico, Virginia school district has compiled a list of resources for parents that can be found here: http://staffdev.henrico.k12.va.us/parents/index.html
4. In addition to the parents and students, the staff will be completely ineffective if they are inadequately prepared in using the technology. Your staff should be required to attend a set number of workshops for whatever technology you plan to incorporate. By "staff," I not only mean teachers, I mean everybody that has contact with the students during the day; faculty, administrators, secretaries, etc. While teaching the teachers to use technology can be expensive, not doing it would make having the technology a complete waste of time. http://www.electronic-school.com/0398f1.html.
5. Attempt to help families who cannot afford a computer get one through donations, grants, etc. The Digital Union (www.digital-union.org) is a nonprofit organization whose goal is to address the digital divide by affording a personal computer to poor families who would not be able to own one otherwise. Another group who does this is the Triangle United Way (http://www.unitedwaytriangle.org/t4t/). This should be a main goal. By getting computers into homes, you can reinforce what you teach the students and parents in the classroom or labs.
6. Deeply look into and address the digital divide as it relates to minorities within the district. While the minorities may not only be not able to afford computers, they also may not be able to use those they have because of language difficulties. If possible, find programs (hopefully free or donated) that can be accessed in their native language. Ideally, helping them learn the English language and how programs work in English would be a long-term goal, but for the time being, just the usage of the technology should be looked into. In 2000, Microsoft launched a campaign to help bridge the gap among minorities. I was not able to find out whether or not they were still continuing the campaign, but asking couldn't hurt. The site is located here: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2000/01-13UNCF-HACUGrants.mspx
The below article talks about several different ways to attack the digital divide in an attempt to expand technology to all people. I would suggest reading it for further ideas.
http://www.techlearning.com/db_area/archives/WCE/archives/zuniga.php
http://www.hindu.com/2006/03/16/stories/2006031617270200.htm
The University of Iowa created a project called eGranary in 2006 to provide access to millions of documents without an internet connection. Described as the "Internet in a Box," it is made up of a 250 gigabyte external hard drive and sells for approximately $350. Updates are available constantly. Think of being able to access any site for research you could on the internet without actually having to have access to the internet. If you could obtain a site license and put this availability into all of your computers, the students could do research with even limited knowledge of the internet itself. But the brilliance is that they would be using the "internet" without even realizing it.
http://www.digitaldivide.net/
"The Digital Divide Network is the Internet's largest community for educators, activists, policy makers and concerned citizens working to bridge the digital divide. At DDN you can; build your own online community, publish a blog, share documents and discussions with colleagues, and post news, events and articles." I couldn't imagine a better way to work towards eliminating the digital divide than online collaboration amongst hundreds of thousands to millions of people all aiming at one goal. You can build your own online community, host a blog and much more.
http://www.upenn.edu/ccp/programs/digitaldivide/index.html
The University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia has created a program (now on hiatus) to help their area in West Philadelphia overcome the Digital Divide. "The program conducts technological assessments to build computer labs for community use from donated and discarded machines. Additionally, Penn students work in local computer labs to support after school programs, teach youth and adult computer literacy classes, and also train members of the community how to instruct their own computer courses. We have also provided technical support and curriculum development to classroom teachers, after-school coordinators, and communities of faith." This is a great resource to begin the planning stages towards forming a group within the district to accomplish the same goal. Maybe by getting in touch with members, former members and faculty advisors in the program, you can gather ideas for a similar program in the district.
All of my suggestions are goals that are not only practical, but reachable. I will be highly disappointed if you do not take them into consideration. For these goals to be attained however, the staff, administration, parents and students have to be on the same page and willing to work together to put the plan into action. Technology expert Mario Armstrong appeared on NPR in 2007 to discuss the Digital Divide and what educational institutions are doing to overcome it. The full recording of the show can be found here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6715965
In conclusion, while we need to gather the technology as a primary goal, we need a systematic approach to bringing it in the classroom. Parents, teachers, adminstrators and students need training and access to the equipment, the equipment needs to be made available at all times of the day and software needs to be purchased or gathered from donations. The curriculum should be changed to directly incorporate the technology and the entire community of learners need to buy into the program for it to work. If you assume that your entire district is on the lower side of the digital divide, you can attack all of the minorities (not just racial, but economical, age, etc) at once. I implore you to help our students become successful by taking advantage of all the resources out there. The process will be long, and will not occur overnight, but if you stick with it, I can promise you it will pay dividends for your students and community.
Respectfully yours,
Robert Kilner
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Emerging Trends in Educational Technology
One of the most interesting resources I found was a 2006 report called the “Horizon Report,” whose main goal was to highlight emerging trends in educational technology. It was divided up into sections and each section contained an overview, relevance, examples and future reading. The link is included after this section. Perhaps the biggest reason for all of these trends is the fact that all of the tools to use them are becoming more widespread and much easier for those with only minimal knowledge of the technology to use. Just as we are participating in online courses where a large part of grade comes from collaboration and communication with our classmates and instructor, the ease of doing so is increasing as time goes on.
One of the biggest emerging trends is the incorporation of social computing. Social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook have exploded over the past several years as students would rather leave comments and wall posts for their friends rather than just call them. Chat rooms have been popular since the early days of the internet and bulletin boards are seeing their most extensive use ever. This pattern of social interaction extends to the educational world as well. People from all over the world are now becoming colleagues in similar endeavors and interests, as we are in our classes. Using bulletin boards, class sites, etc., we are now interacting in ways we were never able to before. While we can already do video chats, its only a matter of time before all of us own a webcam and we have entire classes online. The ease of being able to work from home, from the office or wherever has made life easier on many of us on the go. This trend will continue to grow as technology continues to expand to horizons we never thought were possible. The article was written in 2006 and it said the time to the horizon was less than 1 year. I believe that we still have not yet hit that horizon, and online collaboration and social networking will continue to grow on the personal, business and educational levels.
Another emerging trend is the use of mobile and personal technology within not only the classroom but the everyday arena of life for personal broadcasting purposes. An overwhelming majority of people now own a cell phone, mp3 player or both. The ability for students, teachers and others to “podcast” and video-blog. Within a few short years, this technology will be even furthered due to the continued development and expansion of mobile phones. I know that among my colleagues at North High School, we often discuss what we would do if we could podcast or text message our lessons to our students, since then they might actually pay attention to us. While it could be construed as a joke, it’s partially serious as well. It is given a horizon time of less than one year, I still believe this is a growing area where educators are still puzzled as to how to use it. I would give it another one to two years to really develop before it will plateau.
A third important trend is the implementation of extended reality and enhanced visualization. The horizon time on this trend is four to five years, but is has been in the works since the early 1990s. I remember not only dissecting a frog in 7th grade science class, but also doing so in 5th grade on a computer. Sure, the graphics were like that of an Atari from the early 1980s, but it was the beginning of what would be a huge breakthrough in education. Today, we can learn how to do surgery ahead of time, find oil and coal deposits underground that we didn’t know existed and visualize what a building or a roller coaster will look like when completed, before we even break ground on construction. I don’t believe this trend has a window. I believe as we grow more complex in our lives and our technology, this field will continue to grow to new levels.
http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2006_Horizon_Report.pdf
Retrieved: July 5, 2008
“The annual Horizon Report describes the continuing work of the NMC’s Horizon Project, a research-oriented effort that seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, or creative expression within higher education.”
An additional growing trend is the large emergence of Web 2.0. “Web 2.0 is a term describing the trend in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aims to enhance creativity, information sharing, and, most notably, collaboration among users.” Students already post enormous numbers of videos and pictures of their own on the net. Incorporating their knowledge of this technology into the classroom will spawn creativity never seen before and allow them to do things they love to do, like playing with new devices.
http://www.techlearning.com/showArticle.php?articleID=196604382
An article on the emergence of Web 2.0
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0
The explanation of the term “Web 2.0” including the definition used in the above article.
One of the biggest emerging trends is the incorporation of social computing. Social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook have exploded over the past several years as students would rather leave comments and wall posts for their friends rather than just call them. Chat rooms have been popular since the early days of the internet and bulletin boards are seeing their most extensive use ever. This pattern of social interaction extends to the educational world as well. People from all over the world are now becoming colleagues in similar endeavors and interests, as we are in our classes. Using bulletin boards, class sites, etc., we are now interacting in ways we were never able to before. While we can already do video chats, its only a matter of time before all of us own a webcam and we have entire classes online. The ease of being able to work from home, from the office or wherever has made life easier on many of us on the go. This trend will continue to grow as technology continues to expand to horizons we never thought were possible. The article was written in 2006 and it said the time to the horizon was less than 1 year. I believe that we still have not yet hit that horizon, and online collaboration and social networking will continue to grow on the personal, business and educational levels.
Another emerging trend is the use of mobile and personal technology within not only the classroom but the everyday arena of life for personal broadcasting purposes. An overwhelming majority of people now own a cell phone, mp3 player or both. The ability for students, teachers and others to “podcast” and video-blog. Within a few short years, this technology will be even furthered due to the continued development and expansion of mobile phones. I know that among my colleagues at North High School, we often discuss what we would do if we could podcast or text message our lessons to our students, since then they might actually pay attention to us. While it could be construed as a joke, it’s partially serious as well. It is given a horizon time of less than one year, I still believe this is a growing area where educators are still puzzled as to how to use it. I would give it another one to two years to really develop before it will plateau.
A third important trend is the implementation of extended reality and enhanced visualization. The horizon time on this trend is four to five years, but is has been in the works since the early 1990s. I remember not only dissecting a frog in 7th grade science class, but also doing so in 5th grade on a computer. Sure, the graphics were like that of an Atari from the early 1980s, but it was the beginning of what would be a huge breakthrough in education. Today, we can learn how to do surgery ahead of time, find oil and coal deposits underground that we didn’t know existed and visualize what a building or a roller coaster will look like when completed, before we even break ground on construction. I don’t believe this trend has a window. I believe as we grow more complex in our lives and our technology, this field will continue to grow to new levels.
http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2006_Horizon_Report.pdf
Retrieved: July 5, 2008
“The annual Horizon Report describes the continuing work of the NMC’s Horizon Project, a research-oriented effort that seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, or creative expression within higher education.”
An additional growing trend is the large emergence of Web 2.0. “Web 2.0 is a term describing the trend in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aims to enhance creativity, information sharing, and, most notably, collaboration among users.” Students already post enormous numbers of videos and pictures of their own on the net. Incorporating their knowledge of this technology into the classroom will spawn creativity never seen before and allow them to do things they love to do, like playing with new devices.
http://www.techlearning.com/showArticle.php?articleID=196604382
An article on the emergence of Web 2.0
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0
The explanation of the term “Web 2.0” including the definition used in the above article.
Definition of Educational Technology (Based on Reiser papers)
I agree with Reiser’s emphasis on instructional design. He makes the point that although there are new modes of technology to work with, over several years, they do not increase the achievement level of the students significantly. The mode of delivery does not change even with the implementation of technology, since the technology is a supplement to the design of the lesson, and has been throughout history.
My personal belief is that although technology may be available, it should not be used for the sake of using it. If it is built-in as a supplement to the lesson, it may be applicable, but should not be the main focus of a lesson. The technology should always be secondary to the design of the lesson itself.
After reading the articles, my definition of educational technology has changed slightly. My original statement defined educational technology as technological aids which reinforce the theme and purpose of a lesson. In rewriting my definition, I wanted to include the fact that the lesson should not be based upon the technology. In conclusion, educational technology is the implementation of technology into lessons without sacrificing the objective of the lesson itself.
My personal belief is that although technology may be available, it should not be used for the sake of using it. If it is built-in as a supplement to the lesson, it may be applicable, but should not be the main focus of a lesson. The technology should always be secondary to the design of the lesson itself.
After reading the articles, my definition of educational technology has changed slightly. My original statement defined educational technology as technological aids which reinforce the theme and purpose of a lesson. In rewriting my definition, I wanted to include the fact that the lesson should not be based upon the technology. In conclusion, educational technology is the implementation of technology into lessons without sacrificing the objective of the lesson itself.
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