My Name is Kerry and I Am...a Digital Immigrant

So much to read this week, but, a lot of it was really interesting stuff...Among the most informative for me were: Loti, the Apple Education video, the authenticity article, the Millennium Students interview, Dr. S's Digital Students-Antiquarian School PP (I think she was writing about my antiquated school!), Marc Prensky's "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants", the Brandi Evans video, the article from Today's Catholic Teacher and, the wonderful "Constructivist Learning Design" article. All of this really got me thinking about education today, not just in my school, but across the board. It also gave me a lot to ponder about my role as a teacher. Like most (I hope) teachers, I have always felt an overwhelming responsibility to reach students. Now, I feel it even more so. And I recognize how much harder I will have to work to ensure that engaged learning and integration literacy are fundamental parts of my classroom--even if it's not a priority in my school. Even though I am still a complete computer idiot, I am getting excited about the ways I could integrate technology into my lessons. Suddenly, I can envision myself with a laptop, plugging into a smart board, and opening up all kinds of possibilities for my students. There is so much knowledge and experience on the web that goes untapped because teachers don't know how to access it--or, because it's easier to go with what you've been given rather than to start something new. It makes me glad that I haven't started teaching yet. I don't have tired old lesson plans, I'm not locked into something I'm not willing to change. I am a digital immigrant, but that does not mean I have to be an ignorant one. Marc Prensky described me to a T in "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants". It is interesting that he highlighted math and geography as two perfect areas for technological integration. Those were the first two that came to my mind, as well. What if kids could manipulate objects, on screen, to learn how to add, subtract, multiply, divide, do fractions, and percents? I am a very slow math learner. My first instinct is always to draw a picture. No matter how basic the problem may be, this makes me feel in control. Can you imagine using a smart board with manipulatives that the students could click, or draw, and move around? They would love it! Geography/social studies? No more flat maps or globes with mice print on them. Think of how you could teach a country, state, city, culture, history...You could, in essence, bring that place or moment in time right into your classroom. How about finding a school in a different state or country and using podcasts to communicate with each other? This way students would experience authentic learning from relatable others (peers) about things in which they are genuinely interested!

This is, also, right in line with the article on Constructivist Learning Design. Active/Engaged Learning...it makes such sense but it is rarely maximized to its fullest potential. In class, our Group, the Techno Terrors, used this information to define teaching as "a student directed environment where teachers guide students toward key concepts and ideas to foster critical thinking that reaches across other areas. Teachers ask questions to spark the flame of thought". I agree with this but, I think there is a little more to it. Teachers need to create, in advance", a "situation" for a lesson, hopefully one that is multidisciplinary and that incorporates technology in some capacity. Further, this pre-created situation needs to be authentic to the students lives. Lastly, the situation must involve "grouping", in various forms. The environment needs to be one of safety and comfort in exploring, discovering, making mistakes, and finding solutions. Children will never construct knowledge (fully) if the environment does not truly allow it. This, I believe, is where many teachers fall short of the mark. I don't know how many times I have told students that it is okay to make mistakes, that mistakes do not equal stupidity. I make it a point to always tell students about my struggles with math, how I have to work harder, figure out what works for me. They love to hear this. They also love when they can teach me something. Last year I was subbing in a 4th grade class. I was left a lesson on graphs (something I haven't looked at in over 30 years!). I was nervous, but I soldiered on and, by the end, thought we had done a pretty good job with the group lesson. Then, one girl came up to me and said, "Ms. Dowling, I think you taught that lesson wrong". I asked her to explain and she did. I knew, intuitively, that she was right but I still didn't "get it", so I asked her to explain it again. This time I got it! I turned to the class, explained that I had just taught the lesson completely wrong and asked if anyone else had picked up on my mistakes. A few kids raised their hands. I asked them why they hadn't said anything and they basically said that I was the teacher so they figured that I knew better. Wow-what a wonderful window of opportunity. I was thrilled to tell them that though I am a teacher, I am also a learner, and though I am an adult and they are children, they are perfectly capable of knowing things that I don't know. I impressed upon them the need to question anything and everything that does not make sense to them. I then had the girl who had caught my mistakes, go over the lesson, again, with the class. She explained it beautifully. Even I understood it! So, engaged teaching = teacher as facilitator and student and students as active learners and teachers. It simply can't be any other way. Unfortunately, I've observed many teachers who do not adhere to this philosophy. They may think they do, they may claim they do, but they only talk the talk. If you don't walk the walk, forget it. Last semester, I had Dr. Tannenbaum for a course on Collaboration. She is the embodiment of practicing what she preaches. I was truly inspired by her! This is how I want my students to feel about me.

Now onto WebWiz!
Well, this was certainly an eye opener for me! Not only was I unaware of the differences between a directory and a search engine, I had never even heard of a meta engine. My research efforts at MSMC would have been a lot more productive had I known how to search. Oh well, live and learn! And I have—I used the WebWiz tutorial to research articles for a paper I’m doing for my Nature of Schools course. How’s that for efficient multi—tasking? And I found some wonderful resources, very quickly. I especially loved Alta Vista, followed by Lycos and HotBot, and added them to my “Favorites”. The other engines and directories were okay but did not wow me. Many were very repetitive and included too many sources outside the parameters I had set. I also had no idea about using quotation marks, +, and – for more effective searching, but I tried it and it works. With the assumption that most of you are digital natives, you probably already knew all this information. As a complete digital immigrant, I found this tutorial invaluable.

Fun Activity #1 (WS Evaluation Criteria) was not much fun for me! I could only get two of the Pocahontas sites, the first and the last, but I knew that the last one, the Virtual Jamestown site, had to be the best source simply by how it met the top criteria on the WS evaluation rubric. As for the Dinosaurs, I only got the 10 Top Misconceptions about Dinosaurs site and I knew this one did not measure up by how I graded it on the rubric. However, this is an area I already felt comfortable with from all the papers I’ve written here at the Mount. I am very aware of examining all the criteria listed (accuracy/source authority, objectivity, recency, coverage/crosscheck) when using internet sources for anything, whether professionally or personally.

I also was not impressed with the rubric provided in this tutorial. The actual design was not conducive to the information being sought. It asked questions that required thoughtful answers but gave no space in which to record this information. As a teacher, I would not want to have to review these sheets! Nor do I think students would find them useful in this format. The scoring was also confusing—5 high and 1 low. Take the question, “Is there a minimum of bias?” If yes, it should get a 5. But, I can easily see a student putting in a 1, thinking this equated to low bias. And, finally, a number of questions were too vague and/or subjective.

Fun Activity #3, the Four Aspects of Fair Use, was a cleverly designed tutorial, very visually engaging. However, it was not conducive to absorbing this very important information. By the end, I would have liked a straightforward presentation of the pertinent material. As it was, I had to go through this site countless times to have any of it stick with me—and I still don’t feel I’ve fully grasped it all.

This brings me to an interesting observation I’ve made about myself, thus far, in this course. Maybe it’s because I’m a digital immigrant, but I still like to hold a hard copy of something, in my hand, when I am learning new information. I’ve printed out so much of this course because I need to be able to go back over things where, and when, it suits me. I don’t have a laptop, so I can’t sit in a chair, or lie in bed, and review this information. Even if I did, I find it more cumbersome to search through the WebCT than to pull out the papers I need. This is especially true for the schedule, which is always in front of me, and articles that I refer to when writing my blog. Is this a digital immigrant characteristic, or do digital natives do this, as well—especially where schoolwork is concerned? Let me know what you think!

Anyway, I got my hard copy of safety and ethics by downloading and printing Chapter 8, so all is well!

Posted a message on the DF forum regarding the February 12th issue of New York Magazine. The cover story was on the digital native, digital immigrant generation gap. It was a terrific article that supported everything we've been learning but, also, presented it in a more authentic, understandable way. The reader is really brought into the world of today's digital kids; how they think, communicate, and live their lives. It is nothing like it used to be and they are nothing like the kids pre-internet. Clay Shirky, a professor of new media at NYU'S Interactive Telecommunications Program, who is quoted in the article, believes that "there may be real neurological changes involved" in the brains of digital natives due to their exposure to technology. I agree with this. I see evidence of it in my own child and the children in every classroom where I sub. It is critical that we adapt our teaching to address the way these kids think and learn. This goes beyond integrating technology. We have to change the way we design and present any lesson. True engaged learning is not going on, at least not in my school and, I suspect, not in a lot of other schools either. Why is this? My guess would be a little thing called NCLB (in its current form) that does not support constructivist learning, and, in New York state, Richard Mills, who also does not appear to endorse this method, or, if he does, he needs to add about 5 hours to the school day for teachers to meet the current state and federal standards through engaged learning. This is a huge concern for me. I worry that I will enter my classroom, full of wonderful, engaged learning ideas, only to find myself, within weeks, unable to implement this type of learning due to these pressures. I sincerely believe in engaged learning, but it takes time to do it effectively. How do we fix this situation??? If anyone has any ideas, please let me know.

Until next week...