Shelton,+Drew

What did I get out of this course? First and foremost, I learned about a number of new “Web 2.0” tools that are fun and effective. The challenge with these sites is not using them but //finding// them. Modern web tools are usually intuitive to use, but their names are often invented words that don’t really tell you what they do. Prezi? Glogster? Tagxedo? Wordle? These nonsensical terms only have meaning once they’ve been defined; even when I recognized the style or type of product they produced, I could not have guessed their actual names. Now that I know these tools and have used them, I have a number of new weapons in my educational arsenal.
 * July 24, 2010 - Journal #5: Course Reflection**

Since finding the tools is the tricky part, this course reinforced the need for ongoing self improvement and professional development. New web sites and technologies are appearing all the time, so this course could not possibly cover every useful classroom technology (and if it did, it’d be obsolete in a week anyway). I already get a lot of my news through various trusted blogs, so I need to to find a good educational blog to keep an eye on to make sure I don’t miss out on new tricks and tools as they become available. Some productivity-oriented blogs that I monitor (e.g., Lifehacker.com) review web-based tools every day; the tools that I didn’t find useful last year in the consulting world may well be more relevant once I am teaching, so the archives from these sites may have a lot to offer, too.

The main thing that I would still like to tackle are new classroom gadgets like interactive whiteboards that we did not address in class. These have a lot of potential if used properly — I saw how my wife used one for various learning games and competitive challenges in her third-grade class. However, I don’t know what technology will be available wherever I teach, so I will have to pick up new skills along the way. This doesn’t seem too challenging to me — I actually enjoy teaching myself new tricks and am confident that I will be able to do so.

In summary, I think I gained some worthwhile tools and strategies from this class. I don’t think my views on technology integration have changed much, but that’s largely because I already have embraced a lot of technology in my own life and cannot imagine running a classroom without tech-based tools. I think my practical teaching experience in class was a good demonstration of how I would like to integrate technology into my classroom. In addition to the technology pieces (web video, web poster building, class blog, etc.), I also included a discussion based on a drawing on the whiteboard, which gives students something to focus on. I don’t think that presentations should be completely prepackaged — there’s something effective about watching someone create a drawing, diagram, or other illustration from scratch in front of you, no matter how bad the drawing really is. I believe in using a blend of digital tools and physical examples. If something can be done just as well by hand, then I will still do it by hand. However, there are many technological tricks and solutions that can aid my teaching, and I will use them to the hilt.


 * [[file:Billy and the First Amendment.docx]]

Saving Electricity at Home** (digital storytelling project) media type="file" key="Drew Shelton - Saving Electricity at Home - email version.wmv" width="300" height="300"

Link to Diigo bookmarks: https://secure.diigo.com/user/drewble?type=bookmark

I was already familiar with two aspects of educational fair use: the fact that teachers can show just about anything (in full) in the classroom for educational purposes and the fact that students can use copyrighted material in their work for educational purposes (aside from plagiarism, that is). These are good rules not only for the benefit of education but also for common sense. A student should be able to use portions of copyrighted works for academic work (as long as there is no public broadcast or financial gain involved) because the student's work does nothing to detract from the value of the original work.
 * July 19, 2010 - Journal #4: Copyright and Fair Use**

However, I was not familiar with the exact limits on educational fair use, such as that online classes would be restricted to including only portions of copyrighted films in lessons (as opposed to the ability to show the whole movie in a physical classroom). I think I understand where this limit comes from -- otherwise, a site could bill itself as a "film institute" and provide any and all movies over the web to its "students" without paying for them. Rules with loopholes aren't great rules.

I also was not certain of how much of a printed work could be reused in the classroom. I attended many college classes that used "reading packets" consisting of photocopied excerpts from books. We paid for these packets to make up for the printing cost but did not need to buy the books that the excerpts came from. According to the sources provided for this journal prompt, the limit is supposed to be no more than one chapter of a given book. I don't want to name any names, but I'm not so sure that all of my professors stuck to that rule. Even at the time, I suspected that we were going over the line on fair use despite not knowing the actual limit myself.

These sort of copyright violations are almost impossible to stamp out. Who would know what we were reading except the professor, the students, and the staff at the copy shop? None of them would have any incentive to blow the whistle on the operation -- professors want to be able to pick their own readings, students want to be able to save money on textbooks, and copy-shop employees want to keep their jobs. It's easy to decide that this is a victimless crime because the authors of the original books are just names on a page.

The wide availability of free information and programs on the internet may convince people that all information should be free, but that's a short-sighted attitude. As an unpublished writer myself, I know that I would want my work to be protected so that I could reap whatever meager income it produced. In a world that runs on intellectual products almost as much as it runs on fossil fuels, the creators of new material deserve to receive the benefits of their work and should not have to accept giving it away for free.


 * July 15, 2010 - Journal #3: Synching Up with the iKid  **

Part 1: I already use "Web 2.0" tools regularly. I run my own blog (complete with a comment registration system) and routinely obtain my news from my blogroll. I am always on the lookout for new ideas that might solve a problem (even if it's a problem I didn't realize I should be solving, like new ways to lace and tie my shoes) or at least be entertaining. I like finding unique ways to organize and present information, so my introduction to Wordle and Tagxedo was a happy one.

Are these tools really making my life more efficient? Oftentimes, the answer is no, simply because so much information leads to a lot of aimless clicking. The nonstop feed of information through my personal iGoogle page (which has six tabs and dozens of RSS feeds) is a horrific distraction if I don't control my impulse to keep digging through the day's posts. This was a fine way to get through the occasional slow day at the office, but it isn't a good tactic now that I'm in class seven hours a day and have oodles of schoolwork to do. Instead, I set aside certain blocks of time (such as breakfast) for free web browsing so I can stay up to date. What looks like "wasting time on the internet" is how I stay on top of modern technology and find inspiration for my favorite weekend projects. Our modern lives are lived in large part through information delivery. Web browsing, therefore, is necessary cultural research. Or at least that's what I tell myself.

Part 2: Technology is in a constant state of flux, making it hard to know which tools or devices are fads and which ones are really here to stay. It also can be hard to see through the flash and glitter of new technologies in order to determine if they're actually meaningful in the classroom (see Journal #2 on 3-D televisions).

The blog is here to stay. I think a classroom blog is going to become an expected feature of a good high-school class. It allows the mixed audience of students, parents, other teachers, and administrators to see what is going on in class and gives the teacher a platform to deliver messages to this audience. Teenagers often don't want to talk to their parents about school ("How was school?" "Fine."), and a blog could help parents stay connected and up to date.

Web video, podcasts, digital presentation tools, and computer simulations are also well-established. However, that doesn't mean I am guaranteeing that I will use every tool available. For example, I think the demand for podcasts is grossly overstated. Regardless of how successful some select radio-show-style podcasts are, I think the web community has a tendency for navel-gazing that distracts its members from the fact that the rest of the country is NOT doing the same things they are doing. Podcasts rely on their listeners' freedom to listen to whatever they want. However, who actually WANTS instructional podcasts? I am skeptical that students really want to be able to listen to their teachers throughout the day when they aren't in class; I know I would have had no interest in it myself. I may try it with my students, but I would need substantial positive feedback indicating that students really were using the podcasts as learning tools before I would devote hours of my time to creating a year's worth of recordings.


 * July 14, 2010 - Journal #2: Technology Integration**

The modern business world runs on technology, even on a basic, secretarial level. If you can't create professional documents in Microsoft Word or organize a project in Microsoft Excel, you aren't even qualified for secretarial work. Colleges have recognized this and reacted, requiring higher professional standards from students and trying to ensure that everyone can use the basic technology used in offices across the country. With that in mind, technology integration in secondary education is vital, both to prepare college-bound students for their academic challenges and to prepare everyone else for the expectations of the working world. Technology skills have become essential for everyday life as well as white-collar jobs. If a high-school graduate lacks technological skills and therefore cannot get a job, he is left with little chance of developing those skills on his own.

When I graduated from high school, few of the classrooms had computers in them although most students had computers at home. A computer lab was available for writing papers and for advanced computer classes, but those classes were usually electives and featured the same handful of students, leaving most people uninvolved. In my advanced chemistry class, however, we used computers the way actual scientists might: to perform data analysis using complex statistical software. I was in a lucky position, having spent plenty of time developing computers skills on my own simply because I enjoyed it. However, that one class was still the best preparation I received for my engineering courses in college, where data analysis was an everyday event. I was much more prepared for the spreadsheet-based tasks I encountered because I had been through so much graphical and numerical analysis in advanced chemistry.

With that background in mind, I believe that the actual technologies that professionals use have an important place in the classroom. I don't believe in flashy digital tech for its own sake, though -- it needs to either improve learning or perform a useful function. My wife's principal is talking about getting 3-D technology to get the kids even more excited. That strikes me as an obscene waste of time and money. On the other hand, spreadsheet and word-processing skills need to be developed in school so that students already have at least a minimal ability to function in a professional environment. Online research, presentation, and collaboration tools are a part of the college environment and the workplace, so I firmly believe that secondary students need to be exposed to them so they can develop their own set of tools for the future.

I intend to stick with old-fashioned methods if I do not see added value from their digital counterparts. Digital slideshows are just as boring as the old-fashioned kind; I think we all realize that PowerPoint is just a slow poison that puts everyone in the room to sleep (although Prezi is at last a significant improvement). There is great value to writing words on the board or drawing a diagram by hand in front of your students that cannot be captured by a digital slide. Don't think that I'm insisting on chalkboards or even whiteboards, though. Document cameras may be my favorite new classroom technology. They make detailed drawings easier and allow you to face the class while you do it. That's a good example of appropriate, innovative technology that makes teaching easier and can be used every day. I'd much rather see every classroom get an ELMO than to start buying 3-D TVs.

Kennedy: Once again, your journal is a good one. And yes, 3D sucks. What about using film media or music to give relevance to the subject?

http://istc501summer2010macaulay.wikispaces.com/Piaget+Presentation


 * July 12, 2010 - Journal #1: My Technology Biography**

My history with digital technology goes back as far as my earliest memories. Video games started it all: we had an Atari 2600, and Pitfall was about as epic a game as I could handle. By the time we had a Nintendo Entertainment System, I was old enough to learn how to unhook it from the TV, take it to a friend's house, and hook it up there, a process that my brother had already perfected and that my parents seemed to think was akin to open-heart surgery. To this day, my father remains fearful and antagonistic with anything more complicated than a VCR, but I grew up with these devices and found them exciting instead of frustrating. I could see the advantages of knowing how technology works, even if the "advantage" was just that I could bring my NES to my friends' houses for sleepovers. I was probably doomed to my current technology addiction by the time I taught myself computer programming on my mother's Apple IIGS.

My love for video games hasn't gone away, but my technology focus eventually expanded into more practical functions as well. It started with word processing (I could write my short stories a lot faster on a computer and make as many copies as I wanted) and moved into data processing, music, video, and everything else that we see on computers today while I was in high school. The "family computer" was effectively mine because I knew how to maintain it and fix it, while my mother only knew how to use it.

College took everything quite a bit farther. Engineering freshmen were required to take a course in Microsoft Excel that demonstrated just how powerful spreadsheets can be. This bit of education stuck: I have used Excel to manage everything from household finances to water quality data to brewing recipes. College was also when I learned to build my own computers from individual components. I worked for an on-campus A/V company, setting up video projectors and speaker systems for concerts, conferences, and speeches. As one might imagine, this led to a desire for better A/V equipment at home, too. I'm too practical to become an audiophile, though. I'm a bargain hunter and a do-it-yourself fanatic, so I have no interest in shelling out top dollar for high-end equipment. I put together my own systems and my own network and find solutions that work for me. I throw nothing away that I might use later because I know how to reuse the parts and turn a useless machine into a useful one.

So while I am a geek for technology, I also am skeptical when a new product is touted as essential or revolutionary. I feel like I have a good nose for good tech. If it's worthwhile and affordable, I'll find a way to squeeze every last bit of utility out of the technology at hand. If it doesn't offer anything new, I'll ignore it and keep doing what works with what I already have.

Comment:

Not sure if this is how we comment (I doubt it), but I hope it is, the 'save with comment' didn't seem to do anything! I agree that video games are awesome, but my wife hates them...the constant cheering from the crowd in Madden...she likes Wii though! I also agree about the revolutionary changes being weak. I HATE the whole 3D push right now, it's really annoying unless it's an incredible cinematic feat like Avatar.

-Kennedy