If I am teaching in Tokyo, Japan I better be technologicaly savvy. If I am teaching in Zion, Illinois, I better be technologically savvy. I was standing in line last night at the store and the little boy in front of me said to his mother as she answered her cell phone, "Tell daddy I have a laptop." He is aproximaly six by my guess. He was holding the child laptop in his hands. In time it will not matter, all children will eventualy have access to technology and as teachers in my opinion, we need to be ready to teach these tech savvy students. I pay attention to what my friends kids are doing when it comes to technology because it fascinates me. Ricky at age three would be found on the computer in the middle of the night by his mom. He was well aware of how to operate the mouse and sign on to play his game. Allison at age four knows how to log in with her name, knows what the Internet icon looks like, does a google search for "straw" which brings up Strawberry Shortcake's website and childrens games for her to play. http://www.agkidzone.com/meet_strawberry.action
By the time these children reach first grade I want to be able to relate to them in my teaching as well as in who they are as "little people". I like this term "little people" that my friends uses when she refers to her children because it helps me to stop and take time to see where they are in their understanding of life. I agree with Marc Prensky author of the article Listen to the Natives. Educational Leadership in a few areas because he approaches children, in my opinion, as "little people." I like his thinking because of my vivid memories of wanting text and images in books to "come to life" if you will when I was an elementary student. I wanted the adventure of life in the classroom, not the stale paper copy of a handout or watching someone chalk up the black board with facts. I think we do need to remember to teach children the simple pleasures of life which do not require technology, such as making a snow angle, or rolling down a grassy hill at recess, or feeling. There are time I think technology can be a little concerning when it lends itself to an anti social direction. Howerever, with that said, I see many ideas presented by Presky that I know work well. For instance, I will use a personal exmaple. When I graduated highschool, I went to a community college learn to type and the class still used typewriters. I hated it because there were women in the class and I was young in comparison and they could type 80 words per minutes and I felt lost. A year later, I learned that the same class was being taught via computer. I signed up, took the class, loved the game of typing well enough to get good scores on my practices and homework. By the end of my class the teacher asked me to be her teaching assistant. I of course received an A in the class. Far better than the incomplete I received the year prior when I left the building feeling like a failure. As Prensky mentions in his arcticle, Listen to the Natives. Educational Leadership. http://www.ascd.org/authors/ed_lead/el200512_prensky.html "One elementary school in Colorado, for example, takes its student on a virtual journey to a distant planet in a spaceship powered by knowledge. If the students don't have enough knowledge to more the ship, they need to find it--in one another." This approach keeps the social interaction in tact and uses technolgy and a game to drive the students learning. I also find the Presky questions "Does anyone do anything on the Web that is relevant to what we're discussing?: or "Can you think of any ezamples of this problem in your computer games?" to be positive in relating to students as well as functional in learning.

As part of my research for my Personal Philosophy Concerning Technology paper, I asked a colleague for insight and his opinion of the future classroom. As an MBA student attending Northwestern he suggested looking at the One Laptop Per Child website. After perusing the site, I wondered if others who find children's education to be important know about this mission? Here is the link for those of you who are interested. http://laptop.org/en/

powerpointlessness

As stated on the FNO.Org website in Vol 10No 1September2000, found at http://www.fno.org/sept00/powerpoints.html powerpointlessness is “When presentations are glib and disappointing.” It is also when there are “Too many bullets. Too much crummy clip art. Simple thoughts. One liners. Mind bytes. Mind candy. Death by powerpointing!”

After a few hours, powerpointlessness is mind numbing. I work in an engineering environment and powerpointlessness is common. Often times there are too many words on slides and the text is too small to read. Charts are used which cannot be read from more than a few feet away. Presenters read their entire presentation to their audience.

As Jamie McKenzie has suggested, I like this solution to help avoid powerpointless. I think we should teach students to use the chart they offer on originality. Jamie also states that “The best defense against technology for technology's sake is a rigorous learning-focused program firmly grounded in the best traditions of schooling.” I also find value in this point made in the FNO.Org Vol 10 article. “The goal is to inform, enlighten and possibly even change someone's mind. The chances of reaching an audience are greatly increased if the presenter tries to understand the group and its characteristics . . .” While teaching students to learn to use Powerpoint it is also important that “We would also expect that they honor copyright when employing images scanned from the press or downloaded from Web sites, teaching them that "fair use" may allow such use by students within classrooms for reports but would not be permitted if they were adults in the workplace and is not permitted on school Web sites.” http://fnopress.com/bigsnake/index.htm

Since I am a student and do not have formal classroom experience, I turned to teachers who do. I received useful feedback from those who have witnessed children using technology in education. Here is what one teacher said. "I always like to use Powerpoint. We started with About Me at the start of the year. The students love it and some soared while others were less creative. Nevertheless, every student was proud to share his/her creation at parent conferences. I feel it reinforced summarizing skills." I am looking forward to seeing children working with Powerpoint in the classroom. I am currently reading two books, one is What if and Why? Literacy invitations for Multilingual Classrooms by Katie Van Sluys and the other is Choice Words, How our language affects children's learning by Peter H. Johnston. Dr. Van Sluy's literacy invitations discussed in the book included using the Internet as one source of resource for research. For example during one investigation entitled Mother's Day Ad's, "The girl's work with the Mother's Day ads in closely tied to stories of what is means to be American with regard to race, class, and gender. Their collaborative research on the computer initiates questions about the power of advertisers to ignore and/or erase nondominant images." Using the Internet allows children to ask specific questions to narrow down their research as well as ask individual questions along the way with search engines such as "Ask". I like this quote by Dyson 1999, "A child must have some version of , "yes, I imagine I can do this." And a teacher must view the present child as competent and on that basis imagine new possibilities." Dr. Johnston included this quote in the beginning of chapter four of his book entitles, Agency and Becoming Strategic. I find the significance of this quote to be equally important in technological education because there are many options for students. Lastly I will mention, what I know about Webquest. I know Dr. Kennett of Trinity University has heard a lot about them which is a terrific sign and source of encouragement for me, a new explorer into the WebQuest world. WebQuests present students with a challenging task, scenario or problem to solve. This is done to encourage a higher level of thinking. To encourage students to see a more challenging aspects of the topic. One of the strengths of WebQuest's is the students ability to learn common background knowledge. This information taken from www.filamentality.com/wired/fil//formats.html. Forums are next on my list to research. Thanks for reading and please share with me your favorite educational technology.

Nichole, Trinity College Elementary Education MAT program student.
I would like an opportunity to encourage young minds to love learning as well as to think independently. We typically use email daily at work. Powerpoint, Snagit, and various other software use is a bit more random. We also use digital camers, scanners and burn CD's as needed. I use the internet for a number of reasons including Google news, research, and my school email account. For this class, I would like to learn to use Smartboard.

Favorites - Educational Technology

Please share with me one of your favorite educational technology approaches.