Although, this class certainly feels like tech bootcamp. I am actually attending my district's version starting tomorrow. I'm going to be learning about Alternatives to Powerpoint, Moodle (although I've got some experience with it already), Geocaching, and Robotics in the Classroom. I'll try to blog or tweet some this week about what I am learning. I actually like Twitter quite a bit surprisingly-I recently stumbled upon lots of great resources for parenting GT kiddos-much appreciated as my 10 year old hits 6th grade in the fall! Yikes!
On another note, "Ask the Cognitive Scientist" is a column that appears in AFT's American Educator magazine. Here is a link to a very interesting article entitled "Have Technology and Multitasking Rewired How Students Learn? You can imagine why this caught my eye! While not exactly "guidelines" the author's four summary points are worth thinking about.
1. Encourage your students to avoid multitasking when doing an important task. Younger people are not better at multitasking. They are less bad because their brains have greater working memory capacity.
2. If a new piece of technology is placed in your classroom with the expectation that you will use it, take advantage of online teacher communities. Just like we're being encouraged to do!
3. Think about what the technology can and can't do. There are advantages and disadvantages to using technology... think about what you want to accomplish and whether the technology will get you there most effectively or not.
4. There is nothing wrong with engagement. Even though brain reseach does not show a correlation between having technology in the classroom and deeper understanding of content, if it just gets kids attention- that's OK too.
The video below is about Multitasking... cool stuff. My husband has been trying to tell me this for years, however, my response is "It is impossible not to multitask when you're outnumbered." :)
Alternatives to PowerPoint -- do they mean strategies that do not involve lecturing? (Prezi.com is pretty cool). I'll put some stuff up about PowerPoint presentations soon. Heavy text presentations are a real pet peeve of mine...and fits well with your comments about multi-tasking.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I disagree slightly with the Cognitive Scientists reasoning for #4. First, there is a really big challenge in building a simple connection between "technology" and student learning. If technology is used in a generic sense, then it lumps good and bad uses together. Technology in support of good pedagogy will improve student learning. Second, "technology" doesn't always engage students. Educational games are horrible compared to entertainment games - and turn students off from using computers. Also, often students just see technology as "more work" and are not excited at all by it. Again, carefully thinking through how to incorporate technology is critical.
Great post! I am looking forward to reading more of your reflections...and hearing more about your district's workshop!
Prezi looks pretty amazing. Sounds like you had a big week at boot camp.
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