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When it comes to technology I am becoming a bit nervous…I understand that we are learning to adapt to new technology and it is constantly changing and I do love the possible end results for all of these programs we are learning, however, I am starting to worry about how much we are relying on it.
One cold, dark week the Geneseo Internet was down for a few days and you would think that the world was coming to an end! Projects were extended, exams moved back and students had NO WAY of reaching their professors. Watching the video in class about the escalator stopping really made me laugh because the professors had to remind students that they too had telephones, office hours and secretaries. It was not the end of the world, but, students are being conditioned to utilize the internet so much that they are ignoring any other ways of gathering information. Geneseo was also at fault for this because with this new wave of technology and Internet libraries there is no longer a need to actually purchase a “hard copy” of books. The pros to this is that they will never have to hunt it down if it is put back wrong, or worry about someone damaging or losing it or even keeping the most recent books on the shelves. But, what happens when the website is down and a student walks into the library to find a book about genetics and the most recent one is from 1999?!? I am not even saying that a student will do this! At Geneseo there are now beanbags placed in all the isles so that students can have a quiet reading spot…why are they there? Because no one takes out the books!
Don’t get me wrong, I grew up in the generation of Instant Messaging and loved every minute of it. I was able to see if someone from my class was on-line to ask questions about the homework or project (or tell my parents that was what I was doing when I was catching up on the gossip I missed). I was also able to surf the net for a picture I wanted to put on my poster-board. Before the Internet I would have to go somewhere and make a color copy! That was like .50! I was able to use “Word Art” and “Clip Art” to make up for my poor penmanship and lack of artistic talent. So, these can really benefit a student, but, I don’t want a student or my own child spending most of there time at a computer looking up information. Libraries are not awful, but, there needs to be that balance in case the Internet does go down….you are not stuck taking your class down and giving them a lesson on how to use a card catalogue. I agree, when the Internet is utilized properly it is the best way to get recent accurate information, however, with all of this good…there is a lot of bad and I think it takes a well balanced teacher to say, “You must have two Internet sources and two book sources”.
6 of 18
I have to say that I can’t help but wonder how much more technology is changing…how long it is going to be changing for…and when will it finally plateau…if it ever does. As I look at all these programs we are bring introduced to and trying to work them I wonder how much longer these programs will be considered recent…and will I be able to use them when I teach. I want to teach English…I’m starting to feel like I am going to need to spend a lot of time figuring out technology and what new programs are out there to help the students rather than working and studying the content. I guess I’m nervous that I may find myself drowning in technology…not English.
5 of 18
Hey everyone. I have to day that our last class was pretty neat eventhough it is hard to pass us those M&M’s that we did using excel.
I was really blown away how easy and convincing bad websites can be. I am now thinking back wondering if I had ever fallen victim to any of these websites…I hope not. What like the most was the extercise we did and I think it would be an awesome lesson for any subject to teach. With the way students today are realying on the internet I think we need to be teaching lessons like the one we had at a younger age. It was by far my favorite lesson and really opened my eyes up and the tools that we gained on how to check the site can really help students. The way we hit “link: ” on a Google search was awesome and then researching the history of a website really blew my mind. I never thought I could do that and how neat would that be for a technology lesson. To be able to show students how much the internet as grown and why it is to important to be cautious.
One thing that I thought of is the importance of the teacher to constantly be checking up on all of these students websites when they use them in a paper. I feel like I would have to look up every single site a student references in a paper or project. I mean, filters are great, but, even though a paper is A+ material…the sources can be F, and I think it is our jobs as teachers to know the difference.
4 of 18
Hey everybody! I have to say that I really enjoyed last class simply because I like computer programs that make me feel smart again. Back in my day (which wasn’t that long ago) whenever we created graphs we used colored pencils and rulers. I hated it, simply because I am a perfectionist and spent more time erasing, coloring, and measuring that I missed the point of the project.
I’m happy we did the M&M’s experiement in class, because I have done it a thousand times before but, never with creating on the computer. One of the things I enjoyed the most was the fact that we could create the chart and decorate it however we wanted. I am a big fan of creativity and I think it would be an awesome way for a student who may not excell in math to show their talents with design. It also opens to the door to computer functions so that they can hopefully use the program for other activitie
3 of 18
Looking back on Thurs. class I have to say that I had a blast. I have always used Microsoft Word to write papers and put together projects for school, but, I never knew what we learned in class. I love the idea that I can someday allow my students to individualize their work and do it in so many different ways. The other day I was in the Mac Lab where our class is held and the man on the computer next to me was talking to someone over the computer. He had the camera turned on so the two could see each other as they spoke. It turned out that they were two students, one was learning English and one was learning Italian. It was part of his class to create this visual “pen-pal” over the Internet to study and learn from. He did not like the idea of e-mail, so, he and his partner from Italy speak to each other once a week over the computer. It was neat because they were actually speaking face to face.
I do worry about the technology though because looking at the Rochester City School’s they have little to no computers and thinkng about what they are missing out on really upsets me. However, after learning more about Word maybe kids with limited computer access can discover something new in their old computers.
2 of 18
Hello EDTS 523! I have to say that the power point in Thurs. class made me feel a little computer illiterate. I had no idea that there was technology out there that was so customized for today’s youth. Now, I would like to teach English at the high school level and I was blown away when he showed up that the Mac has a program where it actually reads what you typed back to you.
The reason why I liked that so much is because whenever I am working in a school the students always struggle with editing…and I do too. I was always trained to read aloud what I just wrote to see if it made sense. The problem with that is, I read it the way I want it to sound, looking right over all the grammatical errors (also a problem with the students). Which is why peer revision is so necessary, but, the idea of the computer reading back what you wrote blew my mind and is something that I would like to utilize on a regular basis with a writing assignment. Even if it is just practice with fixing broken sentences where the student can decide where to put in or take out a comma to create an easy flowing sentence. However, I also found it necessary that to work with something like technology we, as teachers, need to make sure that it fits into our lessons.
It was touched on in the power point and I really do agree with it. I can point back to hundreds of times in high school when my class would sit in the computer lab and work on a topic we covered a month ago and the only reason we are doing it now is because this was the time they had reserved the lab for. I had teachers that were so focused on spending time in the computer lab, that they really did not care what we did. There we even classes where we brought in our papers we were working on and worked on them…during class. Now, it was not like the teacher was reading all of our work, we simply asked her if we had questions, saved our work to out floppy discs and when the bell rang, left. Looking back, I think it would have been really neat to bring the paper I was working on in and have the computer or a peer read it back to me. To me, that would have been more beneficial than typing my paper.
Sorry for stressing about the Mac read back, but, it really hit on something I would like in my classroom someday!
Blog 1 of 18
Hello EDTS-523 Section 32! My name is Kristin Merman-Smith and this is my first blog for the semester. I graduated from Suny Geneseo last semester and for one of my classes we did “posts” which was similar to this, however, it was run through Geneseo’s webpage, so it was not quite on the web.
I am not sure exactly what to write about in terms of content, but, based on the first class I am now thinking it is not going to be as bad as I originaly thought. I am nervous about projects all needing to be done on Mac computers, because I am not very farmiliar with them…meaning- the only ones I have access to are at Nazareth. I am in the crowed the commutes, works 30 hours a week and am taking 4 classes, so, I am just going to have to hope for the best.
In terms of our class, I was aware of the shift in technology and saw my prefessors at Geneseo struggling with it when it came to projects. The whole idea of “poster boards” seemed to be out of style and power points, movies created on computers, Smart Boards were now the way to do a project. However, I can not possibily tell you how many hours of class were wasted trying to set-up the technology so that the person could present! It was annoying, which is why whenever I had a project I did the good old “poster board” technique. It was never the most eye catching presentation, but, it didn’t take 20 minutes to set-up either. Now, I am not saying that the shift in technology is annoying. Those who did thier projects on savvy power points, or created a DVD were really neat and different. I am just waiting for the day when we can understand this technology enough to utilize it efficiently rather then taking 20 minutes to call the “tech team”.
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