“Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” ~Noam Chomsky

Who would have thought that I would make it out of this class and be able to say that I can now successfully create and maintain a blog, find useful articles, use Google Reader and know what an RSS feed is.  I know I did not think I would.

 I was seriously intimidated for the first few weeks of class.  I thought that everyone knew what was going on and how to do all of the things we were going to have to do…and that I was the only one technologically deficient enough to not get it.  Professor Rozema sounded like the teacher from Charlie Brown for quite a while to me: ”Wah, wah, wah….”

 Somehow, however, I learned.  Inexplicably.  And not just how to use wordpress and Google Reader and all of that, but also how to really bring technology into my classroom effectively.  I’m not going to account my sudden knowledge and lack of fear all to my blog (because those were the things I was trying to discover); that would simply be a lie.  While I did learn so much about useful integration from finding, reading, and commenting on articles, I took just as much, if not more, from class discussions, readings, and ideas presented by Prof. Rozema.

What so many schools and classrooms in America are lacking is being open to having technology in the classroom.  So many teachers are stuck in their ways, believing that the way they have taught in the past is just fine, or being too scared to learn these technologies themselves.  What so many people do not realize, or choose to overlook, is that technology is everywhere…except in our schools.  The students that are being taught use technology everyday; it is not something we, as teachers, have to teach them, it is something that we have to integrate – there is an enormous difference between the two.  If we were teaching them how to use technology, we would show them how to find resources online or how to set up an email account.  These sort of things are engrained into our students.  What we have to do instead is integrate technology so that it is a member of everyday curriculum.

Is it really so hard to see why kids these days are bored with school and the things they are being taught?  They do not want to sit and here a lecture all hour about Romeo and Juliet.  They want to make videos and podcasts and websites (or uber-controversial MySpace accounts) about Romeo and Juliet; how much more interesting is that than taking a written exam?  Exactly; it’s a whole new ballgame…can you even accurately and fairly call it a comparison?

 I will miss this class, but hopefully I will see some of you in 311 next semester (Sorry Tami that I won’t be joining the summer session…here’s to hoping it doesn’t close!!)…where we will learn countless more about bringing the technology to our students so they can interdependently learn and have fun.  Whoo-hoo (the only way to end a semester)!

Comment on Candace’s post “The Challenge”

Comment on Kristie’s post “Creative Language?”

Comment to Mandy’s post “SLAM”

Comment to Marie’s post “Pop Stars Suffer? No Way!”

Comment to David’s post “Death by PowerPoint”

Comment on Nicole’s post “Do some authors go too far?”

Comment on Candace’s post “The Root of the Problem”

Comment on Wade’s blog “Technology – You Better Find Room for It”

Comment on Bethany A’s blog “‘Bong Hits 4 Jesus’??”

Comment on Stephanie J’s blog “Racism in ‘Beloved’ Traded for Adultry in ‘The Scarlet Letter’”

At the beginning of the Bright Ideas Conference, we listened to keynote speaker Jacqueline Woodson speak of writing as a process much as Peter Elbow does.  Woodson writes because she loves writing; she does not outline; she just writes and writes and sees where it takes her.  She believes that you cannot know where your writing is going until it has begun, and that is an important element to note of her style.  To make a good story, the writer not only has to figure out what the story has to say, but more importantly, the writer has to let go of his/her fears.  That writer’s block that we feel is not what we think it is; it is really our body’s way of telling us to write something real, something true; something we know and should not be afraid of.

Woodson also believes that we all have a story to tell, and we all have a right to tell our story.  The problem is, many people (especially younger people) are not taught the value of their individual voices and so they learn to be afraid to say or write what it is they really want to say.  What she believes, and I agree with, is that students need to be taught that what they have to say is important and they should feel free, or obligated even, to let their ideas out into the world.

 Personally, I thought that Woodson’s speech had many key elements that people who came to the conference should listen to and take to heart.  Young learners are not taught the joys that can come with writing, and so it becomes something they both loathe and fear.  If we could only bring the power of personal writing and narrative back into the classroom, then perhaps students would learn more about themselves and about the writing process (which would carry over into more academic pieces that the students must write).

The three conferences that I chose to go to had a lot to do with what I have been trying to discover in this blog space over the last few months.  The first conference I chose was entitled “Introducing a Twenty-First Century Curriculum: Incorporating Mass Communication into the English Classroom.”  This was an interesting start because it brought up how rapidly technology is changing and growing, and how education is struggling to find ways to keep up.  The presenters (Andrew Reimann, Kate Salvadore, and Sara-Beth O’Connor) discussed how wiki’s (such as wikipedia) are not considered by almost any teacher or administrator as legitimate sources for students to use.  However, as technology grows, many of these sites are becoming more and more dependable.  At some point, they cannot be ignored…so why not start now?  The group talked about how wiki’s could be set up in the classroom.  For example, the class could create their own wiki together; they would read a book, then find research and together create an online collaborative essay.  Through making it a wiki, anyone who views it could update it, changed it, and even delete students’ findings, which could help students to see how reliable such sources are.

In the second conference I went to, called “macBeth: Using Technology to Enhance the Teaching of Shakespeare,” Jeff Patterson and Lindsay Steenbergen touched on a related subject of bringing technology into the classroom.  What the presenters showed us was how to integrate tools such as PowerPoint, iMovie, Garageband (a program that creates music tracks), Google, and a video camera to bring Shakespeare’s MacBeth into the modern day.  What Steenbergen and Patterson have been doing in their English classrooms is taking today’s “Digital Natives” (as they call students) and allowing them to create modern-day creations using MacBeth as a starting point or as inspiration.  In Steenbergen’s class, one group set MacBeth up as a Jerry Springer show, keeping some key elements and emotions, but changing events and time periods so that students can more easily connect to Shakespeare.  Another group created a version of the Real World, set in Scotland.  One other group created a Dr. Phil episode.  Then they uploaded their videos onto a computer, added graphics and music and had a drastically different and powerful array of outcomes.  In Patterson’s class, the students created a mock-version of a MySpace website using PowerPoint.  Each student was given a character from the play and had to create a MySpace webpage, complete with pictures, likes/dislikes, friends, favorite books/movies, a quote, comments, and so on.  These cross-cultural adapations and textual interventions by the students allows them to engross themselves in a play they might normally hate, be bored with, or not understand.  They think critically about the characters and what motivates them and then translate it into something they are familiar with, making the play worthwhile.

 The final conference I went to was presented to us (fabulously, I might add) by our very own English 310ers Bethany Erickson and David Knapp.  Their presentation, entitled “‘Whose Space is It?’ Integrating Social Networking Sites into English Language Arts instruction,” was very much like the macBeth one I had gone to before it, only they argued in strong favor of allowing the actual MySpace website to by used in the classroom by the students.  So many schools are banning, or have banned, social-networking sites like this one because administration does not see the educational value of such media.  For the two macBeth presenters/teachers, social-networking is not allowed, and so they must improvise by making a mock-up of MySpace on PowerPoint.  Bethany and David, however, argue that the amount of negative attention given to social-networking sites is blown far out of proportion.  Teachers who want to use MySpace in their classroom can set up the account for the students in their class so that it is very private; only students who have the password would be allowed to write on the walls, and it would be closely monitored by the teacher so that inappropriate things do not appear on their site.

Before I had gone to the Bright Idea conference, I have to admit I was not what one might call “enthused.”  The idea of heading to East Lansing at seven in the morning to listen to a bunch of presentations did not get me excited.  However, once I was there and listening to the ideas the people were presenting to me, a whole new array of things I could actually implement into my classroom were given to me.  Things like Shakespeare that even I hated in high school can now have some kind of connection to students and their daily lives; it no longer has to be yet another five-paragraph essay.  All in all, getting up at 5:45 am was well worth it. 

Who knew that states were given report cards just like any student?  For the last decade, actually, research has been being conducted by Education Week to see how each state’s technology usage, access, and capacity add up.  This “state-focused supplement,” as they refer to it, is called “Technology Counts” and is released once a year.  How many state’s got a straight A?  Only one.  One out of fifty, and you can bet that it wasn’t Michigan.  Actually, the state average this year overall was a C+, and Michigan did not even hit that.  We came in with a C…well, at least it is a passing grade (although barely).

I went to Education Week’s archive to compare Michigan’s 2007 scores with its 2006 scores, and was shocked to see that the grades didn’t change at all.  The 2006 document is titled “The Information Edge: Using Data to Accelerate Achievement” and the 2007 document is titled “A Digital Decade” (presumably because they have been conducting this research for 10 years now).  Each state is graded on three separate categories: Access to technology, Use of technology, and Capacity to use technology.  In 2006, Michigan’s scores were as follows: Access=D+, Use=A-, and Capacity=D; giving us an overall grade of a C.  For 2007, our grades in each category were exactly the same.  Now let’s compare our scores to the average state: Access=C, Use=C+, and Capacity=C; giving them an overall grade of C+.

 So while we are way ahead of the average as far as Use of technology goes, we are seriously lacking in Access and Capacity.  Other interesting point to make is that the report shows that only 41.5% of students in Michigan have access to computers in the classroom — that is sadly 8% below the national average.

Why is Michigan behind, and why is it that we had no improvement from last year to this year?  I guess I really cannot say.  This report does not go into detail about why states received the grade they did, and so far, no articles have been published (that I can find) by a Michigan newspaper commenting on the grades.  Some states, such as Utah and South Carolina, have had articles written regarding the grades they received and why they have received them.  Who will be the first willing to pick up the issue in Michigan?  I suppose we will have to wait and see.  If and when someone does, I will make sure to inform you of it.

 As for now, all I can say for us is tsk-tsk.  Perhaps all of those plans that Granholm has to “amaze” us should start rolling in…and they should begin with our education system so that our students can keep up with the ever-increasing technology-driven future.

Education Week’s Archive

“‘[Technology improving education] wasn’t even on the school district’s radar,’ Taggart says.  ’The schools are all thinking about No Child Left Behind.’ ”But Taggart saw a direct correlation between lackluster school perfromance and old-fashioned classrooms and teaching methods she encountered.”

This quote is from Linda Taggart, a principal at Correia Middle School in San Diego, CA, and it comes at the beginning of an article entitled “Trashing the Chalkboards” from the voiceofsandiego.org.  Taggart, together with a local entrepreneur named Matt Spathas, created a program a few years ago called Project Light Speed that is meant to

“Teach the kids using the tools they know.  Embrace technology.”

It is not the students that have to be taught technology; that is not what this program is about.  What it is really about it using

“technology to foster valuable lifelong skills, such as critical thinking and creativity.”

There are, the article mentions, alarming rates of students dropping out of school and getting poor test scores, as well as how far the United States is falling behind other countries like China and India in this technological age.  What Taggart and her cohort Spathas believe the best way to get students from

“having to learn to wanting to learn” is to “engage them with relevant tools and subject matter.”

Students can easily adapt to the constantly updated and changing technologies and that the curriculum of schools should be able to keep up as well.  Otherwise, old methods are being applied to modern ideas and societies, and students quickly lose interest.

Taggart’s middle school students are creating, with ease, e-portfolios (which are records of their school work that will follow them to high school) and multimedia projects; they are taking quizzes/tests online and using “Ibraries” (modern information libraries with sources beyond books) instead of old-fashioned libraries.

Since the project was started four years ago, half of the schools in the Point Loma district have joined in, at least to some extent.

“‘There’s an art to teaching, [Principal Bobbie Samilson of Point Loma High] points out.  “You have to figure out how to engage the kids and do everything we can do to make them more excited about learning.  Light Speed has been very important in changing education, not limiting it.  When a kid says they’re bored, we now have more options than ever before.”

Now if only more administrators and officials shared the same point of view as Taggart and Spathas.  Instead of focusing on the set standards of education alone, we should be focusing more on how best to make our education standards competitive to those countries we are quickly falling behind.  The best way to go about that is to constantly evaluate and update the technology of schools not only to keep up with the rest of the world, but also to keep our students interested and engaged on the subjects they must learn.

“Trashing the Chalkboards” Full Article