Another Where the Wild Things Are Trailer

Thrown out there on September 14, 2009

Here’s another trailer for an amazing looking film coming out October 16, 2009…

Anyone feel a field trip coming on?

The New School Bus

Thrown out there on September 12, 2009

Came across this brand spankin’ new school bus.

Hope this hits the market soon…can you imagine?

The Evil that is PowerPoint

Thrown out there on June 4, 2009

Certainly, as is the case with any tool, there are abundant misuses. Edward Tufte makes an excellent point in his essay “PowerPoint Is Evil: Power Corrupts, PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely” seen in Wired Magazine (2003): “Alas, slideware often reduces the analytical quality of presentations. In particular, the popular PowerPoint templates (ready-made designs) usually weaken verbal and spatial reasoning, and almost always corrupt statistical analysis. . . . Particularly disturbing is the adoption of the PowerPoint cognitive style in our schools. Rather than learning to write a report using sentences, children are being taught how to formulate client pitches and infomercials.” Tufte explores the numerous mistakes people tend to make with PowerPoint, but offers few solutions.

Classroom use of PowerPoint is no exception. Poor teacher training (professional development, undergraduate education classes, etc.), the lack of premium example presentations, and the proliferation of ill-formed slideware among educators contribute to poor classroom use of PowerPoint. Teachers, students, businessmen, and other professionals get stuck including graphics, text, animations, and sounds because it’s possible—not because it’s the best way to get information across. Perhaps specific research should be conducted which would seek to find the best methods of conveying learning in a way which results in long-term storage through the use of PowerPoint.

According to M. D. Roblyer in Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching (Fourth Ed.), users of PowerPoint should keep in mind several creative aspects. For example, users should create slides which enhance the presentation rather than using them as a teleprompter. PowerPoint should be used when a dark room is an appropriate environment. Font type, size, and color should be considered carefully. Graphics, animation, and audio must be relevant. Teachers need to explicitly teach these considerations in order to foster student success. Without this imperative instruction, students will make the same mistakes all humans are prone to: they’ll get caught up with putting things on slides because they can rather than pondering the specific purpose of appealing to an audience.

Incredible Stop-Motion

Thrown out there on May 30, 2009

I love this stuff.

Eventually, I’ll come up with some sort of educational relevance, and begin producing videos for my kids. Somehow stop-motion supercedes reality and allows action and creativity in another dimension.

Enjoy!

Graphic Tools and Graphic Organizer Tools–What?

Thrown out there on May 28, 2009

Graphic tools and graphic organizer tools each serve a unique purpose within the realm of education. Graphic tools include applications which: enable the user to draw, automatically create charts or tables based on numeric data, and/or allow manipulation of image outputs. Additionally, graphic tools include end products, often via digital libraries, such as animations, founts, photographs, clip art, and videos. Graphic organizer tools, on the other hand, allow users to directly organize and construct knowledge and concepts in visual ways. Organizational and flow charts, concept maps, idea maps and webs, storyboards, and timelines are end-product graphic organizers which can be used not only to represent ideas and concepts visually, but also to assess the creators’ understanding of those ideas and concepts by fostering the output within a constructivist environment.

 
Google’s Picasa (a free download is readily available online) would be easily categorized as a graphic tool because it allows a wide, untrained audience access to basic and effective image manipulation. Users may blur, replace unwanted portions with samples from elsewhere in the image with two simple clicks, automatically adjust color settings, add overlapping text, etc. In this way, users have power over selecting and editing any saved image in order to convey ideas or concepts, illustrate documents, or delving into particular learning experiences, such as exploring symmetry in a math class.

 
Microsoft’s Word program (found in Microsoft Office packages available on many PCs) includes “SmartArt” which enables users to easily select a type of diagram or chart in order to communicate information, concepts, and ideas. Using this tool, for example, users may identify a basic idea to explore, then relate other concepts to the original idea (through assistant, coworker, and subordinate mapping available through a simple right-click) and to other corresponding concepts through propositions (shown using text input on or among connecting lines, for example). In this way, users exercise power over ideas and are able to represent knowledge and concepts in a visual, meaningful manner.

 
Each of these tools (among numerous other applications which can become as complex and pricey as one could ever hope) have a particular use: Picasa may be used to manipulate images in order to provide explicit visuals for use within a larger presentation (exporting as web pages, files, etc. therein), whereas Microsoft Word’s “SmartArt” feature may be used to show visually how an idea relates to others. Each tool (graphic and graphic organizer) has specific valuable applications within the context of education, and must be mastered individually in order to take advantage of what each has to offer the learners and educators of today.

Works Cited:

Roblyer, M.D. Integrating Educational Technology Into Teaching, Fourth Edition. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, Inc., 2006.

Word Processing vs. Handwriting

Thrown out there on May 26, 2009

Word processing software applications offer tradeoff benefits to traditional handwriting. Once trained (and in many cases, not much is needed when compared to minimally-trained users of handwriting!), word processing allows for greater quantities of content and basic mechanical revisions. These benefits may outweigh learning proper handwriting technique, including neatness, legibility, and style.

 
According to Hawisher (1989) and Snyder (1993), there was no conclusion concerning whether word processing tools fostered better quality of writing. Naturally, it did allow for greater quantity and, as expected, allowed greater ability to catch and correct basic mechanical errors. Hawisher, Snyder, Bangert-Drowns (1993), nor Goldberg, Russell, and Cook (2003 – no review of category) found that word processing had any impact on content revisions affecting the very meaning of the writing (Roblyer)! For a word processor to be considered something more than a productivity tool wouldn’t it, by its very nature, “extend cognitive functioning…to engage learners in cognitive operations” (The Word Processor)?

 
Since it is perfectly possible for a user to engage mindlessly with word processors, it is not a mind tool. It merely helps to expedite the writing process and allows a format which can be easily altered and shared among colleagues—it does not explicitly “require students to think in meaningful ways in order to use the application to represent what they know” any more than traditional handwriting does (unless, of course, we are going to consider a paper and pencil a mind tool also) (The Word Processor).

 
After all, “…word processing seems to improve writing and attitudes toward writing only if it is used in the context of good writing instruction and if students have enough time to learn word processing procedures before the study begins” as may very well be the case with traditional handwriting as well (Roblyer). Good instruction is key in either case.

 
Word processors do not help people to think cognitively any more than a refrigerator is going to help people eat. Surely both tools allow for greater versatility and productivity (the latter allows me to spend less time at the grocer’s!), but both are left either unnecessarily full of junk that might not otherwise accumulate, or else empty without someone who already knows how to write (or eat).

Works Cited

The Word Processor: Mind Tool or Productivity Tool? 21 May 2009. http://www.gradcenter.marlboro.edu/~augustap/mindtool.htm

Roblyer, M.D. Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching. 2006 Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.

Tech Nothing More than a Vehicle?

Thrown out there on May 17, 2009

Richard Clark’s perspective regarding technology as a mere vehicle has had a healthy impact on the field of educational technology for those who understand it. While it may generate a feeling of justification in those who see little value in technology, Clark’s quote is intended to convey a sense of responsibility to the users of technology.

 
We all view technology as a vehicle and not something which directly influences student achievement. For example, who might you decide receives the better education: a student who attends to a Discovery Education (http://streaming.discoveryeducation.com/index.cfm) video on saving rainforests and answers questions at the end of the presentation or a student who types “I WILL NOT ABUSE MY COMPUTER PRIVILEGES” into a Word document seventy times after visiting a YouTube video on Mortal Kombat during school hours? If you can (hopefully) identify the superior learning environment in which achievement is more easily fostered (with the guiding help of a teacher), it becomes clear that, although technology was an integral part in both situations, one delivered instruction better than the other. The qualification of better in the reader’s mind verifies that technology can be “driven” in different ways—to deliver different content, and also deliver it more or less efficiently (even with regard to something as simple as speed: dial-up vs. DSL, for example).

 
This impacts the field of educational technology by opening the door for defining educational technology and instructional technology, making older technologies useful, picking and choosing among the newest of technological changes depending upon the clarification of compelling reasons to do so, etc. (M.D. Roblyer’s Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching Fourth Ed. p. 12-13). It’s supremely important to analyze the way in which technology is integrated and to truly use it as a tool rather than simply because it can be used. Technology’s use within today’s classroom must be examined to determine if there is a significant difference in the achievement and outcomes of students compared to when and where the technology is not set in place (Thomas L. Russell’s The No Significant Difference Phenomenon © 1999). Does the technology simplify the delivery of instruction for the teacher? Does the technology increase student achievement?

 
Viewing technology as a vehicle creates a less magical world—one in which teachers must still teach, navigate the information highways, filter out the inaccurate or superfluous information, realize best practices, monitor student engagement and individual growth, and so on. From a humanist viewpoint, it is nice to fantasize about the idea of plopping a student in front of a screen and allowing them to discover everything—but of course Clark wakes us up by reminding us that there’s no magic; there’s just a truck full of stuff. It still needs to be unpacked by teachers and students as they connect the content to their individual lives. We still need pedagogical understanding and sensitivity toward content along with an awareness of how to appropriately combine the two within the cauldron of relevant technology, making it highly accessible to the learners of the twenty-first century.

Abandoning Technology

Thrown out there on May 14, 2009

Clifford Stoll states in his book High Tech Heretic (1999) that “You certainly can get an excellent education without a computer” (p. 32). Of course this is true as much as it is true that you can live an excellent life without a motorized vehicle. The problem with either of these cases, however, is that just because the excellence is possible in the absence of technology it is neither superior nor necessarily desirable to reject it. For most people, a car is a valuable, integral component which allows for social interconnectedness, access to otherwise unattainable resources, and a general sense of freedom. The same is true for our world of computing.

 
Although we all know colleagues and fellow teachers who are well able to implement effective teaching practices despite their apparent inability to navigate electronically, imagine how much less effective they would be without technology. In other words, just because the best teachers are unable to use computers extensively does not mean that they have been unaffected by the technologies in place since the middle of the twentieth century when, more than likely, those very teachers received content and pedagogical awareness as a [direct or indirect] result of research shared via (gasp) computers (see Figure 1.2 in M.D. Roblyer’s Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching Fourth Ed. p. 10-11).

 
Stoll goes on to write that “When every student…is pressed to become a computer maven, and only the incompetent are allowed to become plumbers, neither our programs nor our pipes will hold water” (p. 123). Today’s contractors use a variety of computer applications to simplify their business applications. The home inspector I recently hired not only knew his trade and understood the systems’ operations throughout the property, but was able to efficiently communicate his expertise through digital photos (with electronic drawing overlaps), an on-site print-out of the bottom line (generated from a quick type-up on his mini-laptop), and am final e-mail which linked to the full, typed report complete with digital images, diagrams, and web-based links to further explanations on any system I could possibly have a question about—all available via the world wide web. The radon mitigation and septic contractors gave somewhat less detailed reports, but were clearly all generated by computers. Sarcasm alert: truly these are people who were the heart of the incompetent crowd forced into the field of blue-collar work; my pipes have surely lost water.

 
A personal, educational, and business web designer myself, I would hardly consider myself a computer maven in lieu of the ever-expanding web language upgrades, web 2.0 technologies, and CERN’s “grid” designed to outperform today’s version of the internet many thousands of times over. Students are no more computer maven than we are necessarily car mavens; sure, we can operate a vehicle—but how many of us would dare to classify ourselves as mavens? Just as we receive basic training on how to safely and effectively operate a motor vehicle, so should our students receive training within the bounds of our computer environments.

 
The fearful cling to methods which do not integrate compelling technologies; perhaps they will soon find themselves among the reenactments of renaissance craftsmen—fascinating, but no longer necessary. Farewell, Mr. Stoll…

Crooked Fingers

Thrown out there on May 6, 2009

Here’s a little treat from Torry Holt (formerly Rams wide receiver).

It kind of makes me want to modify a couple fingers to scare the children like this guy suggests.

It’d be a great conversation piece, anyway!

Flute Beatbox

Thrown out there on May 4, 2009

Maybe instead of focusing on things like math and reading all the time…

we can start providing our children the opportunity to learn valuable skills like this one: