Journal+Comments,+Nov.+18

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Continuing the wonder of cell phones, I spent a day this week with a group of high school ESL students, acting as a peer more than as a teacher. Part of their agreement in taking the advanced ESL course is that they will receive a zero for the day if they speak or use any language other than English. So they are generally good about speaking in English. However, they text one another in Spanish all the time. One boy who is a native French speaker even pulled out his cell phone to try to ask me questions without letting his teacher see.

Now, I agree that it’s remarkable that we can get internet anywhere on cell phones and that you can use a program like Shazam to satisfy your musical curiosity. But we also saw the youtube clip of that poor Italian teacher, and if students can use cell phones to harass their teachers (and other students), the cheat on exams and to undermine their own learning (in the case of the ESL texting), they seem like a mixed blessing. One of the main reason “traditionalists” probably dislike new technology is because they only see the bad side of it. And if no one can keep kids from using cell phones inappropriately, there’s no reason for teachers to want cell phones or any other disruptive technologies in their classrooms. I can’t blame them either. While I think it’s a great idea to use blogs and have class websites, I still don’t think students should be allowed to have cell phones on in school or use the internet however they wish.

I began the Scavenger Hunt Activity. Google Pages no longer exists, they are now Google Sites. I think I am getting the hang of it, but Google Sites seems to encourage you to link to other Google Sites, instead of making easy ways for you to incorporate hyperlinks on your site to other sites. In a way, I’m ok with this project not being easy for me to put together. I like the challenge that technology presents sometimes; it’s like a puzzle, which I enjoy. The end product will feel like I accomplished something.

I think as a future foreign language teacher I need to know and be well-versed regarding such things as Wikis, Skype, and be able to get great cultural content such as videos from the internet.

I think when the time comes for me to interview and apply for a job teaching, I need to have that technology “edge.” I believe it is something that administrators are realizing the value of and will want to hire teachers who are skilled with technology. I also think that explaining how useful a wiki, or another tool, can be in the classroom may set me apart from other candidates.

This class has made me realize how important it is to make your own material available to others to learn from. I think what I need to work on is my involvement in the write/participate portion of the web. I do enough reading, but I need to do more writing.

I went to a wiki workshop one day last week after school and I definitely knew how to do everything the presenter showed already. I felt really cool for once! She showed us wikis using the pbwiki site. I signed up for a pbwiki and a wiki on wetpaint. Comparing all three big wiki pages, I thing pbwiki is garbage. It was hard to setup pages and you couldn’t see them on a sidebar unless your setup a link to it. I would find that extremely hard to use as a student. Wetpaint was pretty easy to use.

I was struck by my personal awe of having the author of the book I just read in my classroom talking to me, and again was hit with the feeling of what this could do for an elementary aged child. If it had such an impact on me, imagine what it could do for a young child, just beginning to understand authorship, and where opinions, ideas, and creativity come from.

>> I think you're starting to see how technology can make things real!!! Once again I was hit by the fact that an aspect of technology could excite and intrigue a student who otherwise would simply have read a book and responded to it. Instead, this student could interview the author, and understand that that author was person too, with personal ideas and opinions, being continually challenged. Waking up that student’s excitement should be our job as educators, and to ignore a technology such as this would be criminal…and would leave that student sleeping in the back of the class, when he could be excited, challenged, and fascinated by what he was learning, and thus actually learn from it.

I love the last part of Will Richardson¡¯s book. The ten big shifts intelligently conclude the essence of the book and Richardson¡¯s intent to write this book. These shifts interrelate to each other, and lead to one another. The first big shift criticizes the traditional content of learning and traditional way of learning.