Computer Delusion

Todd Oppenheimer's article spoke to me very, very strongly. In fact, he is scary accurate, especially since the article was written in 1997. I couldn't agree more that computers, to some extent, are over-relied on. Having worked with high school students in very urban centers with career planning, we as an society seem to think that every child MUST attend college. 30 years ago, a small fraction of US actually carried college degrees. Since then, higher education has taken on the status (almost) as a God given right, and the pendulum has now swung too far in the opposite direction than it was 30 years ago. We are trying to make round pegs fit into square holes. Not every student MUST attend college. In fact, I ran a program at Brien McMahon HS that brought in the Head Foreman from Maritime Motors service department to speak to students at our senior career fair. His presentation captivated a number of students, who had no idea of the benefits and earning ability a good mechanic with all of his certifications can make. There were students gathered around the plumbers union table as well; and these were kids who were struggling to find success in the traditional classroom, and who were thinking of dropping out because they didn't want to go to college. While technology has become pervasive, it is, as the foreman from Maritime Motors said, only as good as the technician who is reading the computer outputs or inputting information into the computer. We as educators need to teach kids to think OUTSIDE OF THE BOX,to become critical thinkers, to be able to adjust on the fly once they are thrown a curve ball. Unfortunately, technology has killed some of that natural curiosity of kids to actually put their hands on something, to learn how to work with wood, or electricity. They have to see what's in front of them, canalize the hazards, and put together a plan of how they are going to act. While a computer can take the information the tradesman puts into it, the information is still coming from the tradesman, not the computer.

Class Experience

This class is a requirement for the masters in Special Education degree I am pursuing. As a counselor, I use technology a little bit differently than a typical classroom teacher; in fact, I would say that the way a second grade teacher is using technology is completely different than the way I do. I use it primarily to manage students information, and for communication with parents, teachers, and administrators. When I do lean on technology in a classroom setting, it is usually using PowerPoint or the internet.

However, I have picked up some great information thus far in the course. I think that in order to be an effective counselor, you need to know what is going on in the classroom, and seeing first hand the types of different things teachers can do with technology, and the different ways they are using it across different grade levels in very important. At the middle school level, getting the kids involved, and reaching the different types of learners in the classroom. If you look at all the different types of electronic mediums that kids use (Google, Facebook, Twitter, IM,Cell phones, iPods) then it only makes sense to tap into that. 

While I do wish there was a little bit more focus on non-classroom teachers, I feel that seeing whats currently being done in the classroom is just as valuable. 

UDL Concept Map

Finally! Something I feel comfortable commenting on! After reading the UDL guidelines, and the blog post of Lisa Lingo, I got a little fired up. I have worked at the high school level for the first 7 years of my very, very young career. I have been in mostly urban settings, where there is great diversity, and often times, great poverty. Not every kid has access to content outside of school, and not every kid even speaks English. I have a problem with Lingo's assertions, as well as the UDL theory in general. In short, Lingo advocates for student freedom to learn at their own pace and style. While this does sound great, it's implications go far beyond the elementary school classroom where she exisists. Advocating for every child to have un-timed assessments is hard to swallow, if only for its real world implications. When the student gets to high school, and there is timing on tests, projects are due on certain dates, and there are penalties for being late, the student will run into trouble. In college, is the professor expected to have students turning in term papers when it suits them? What about the workplace? Last I checked in this challenging economy, people want to hold onto jobs. When a report or project is due, the boss expects to see it; the employee not having it or worse yet, expecting extra time to do it, is putting themselves at a competitive disadvantage. I just can't get behind Lingo's theory. With intellectual competition coming from China, India, and South America, US students needs to be able to adapt quickly and work under well under pressure, all while having the intellgence to be successful. How does a US student who can't take a timed test going to stack up against students in China that are 3 grades levels ahead in math, and in the long term, will be cheaper to employ? 

I have seen children coming in from non traditional middle schools, and sometimes it takes 3 years for them to learn how to function in a traditional classroom. It just doesn't translate. 

UDL is also a nice concept, but I don't see its applications in today's world of data driven results. How is a district, such as Norwalk or Bridgeport, expected to function within this model? Technology more then not is usually far behind the current curve; students coming from various SES's and cultures are going to have difficulty functioning in this model. And again, how does UDL translate in secondary education, post secondary education, and beyond? I fail to see how to get there under the current educational model of NCLB, under the constraints of todays economical crisis. 

Copyright Law and teachers

I had no idea how much this effects most everything that goes on in the classroom, from handouts on geometry, to selections for language arts, to just about everything electronic. Teachers seem to think nothing of just throwing a video or DVD in, and just recently my school had a promotion ceremony that included a slide show complete with accompanying soundtracks, of which, I don't think they actually had the rights to use because they used whole songs by very popular artists. It bleeds through everything. From teachers with software from SMARTboards, to software suites, everything now seems to be heading toward the electronic mediums, and it is good to know that sites like Creative Commons are out there to help teachers make sure that they are staying within copyright guidelines. 

MD400BlogPosting6Standards

As a middle school counselor, I don't really feel that any of the standards would be a good fit for me. However, I do deal with a number of bits and pieces from each standard. The grouping that best fits me would probably be in the Health and Safety for grades 9-12. Standard 4 - Substance Abuse Prevention, along with some points from Standard 3 - Human Growth and Development and Standard 2 - Injury and Disease Prevention, are going to be my primary focuses. I am going to try to spin the focus more along the lines of bullying and bullying prevention, as that is a very prominent issue that I feel incorporates most all of the standards. In terms of using some of the technology to help with instruction related to both standards, I think that there are quite a few ways to help illustrate bullying, from current news stories, to first hand accounts, to pictures and videos from varying groups acting out skits on how bullying looks from the outside, and how it feels if you are the one being bullied.

InspirationforETIPS

This is a concept map for the eTIPS article that we read. It was designed with a program called Inspiration. In designing one of these things for the first time, I found it quite informative to see first hand how it was created. A number of teachers I work with utilize these tools with both regular ed and special education students. I designed my own, and chose not to use a template.

HWAssign4Adobe

I decided to use the picture of the exercise we did in the first class. Although Kate was scary good as a stand in for the Jabberwocky, I thought I'd actually try and find an actual dragon-ish looking thing. I used the Magnetic lasso to crop out Kate and found a corresponding Clip-Art image that fit into Kate's shape fairly well. I pulled in that imagine and used the clone feature to fill in any areas of uneven pasting in so that is seems like I didn't actually cut Kate out and the Jabberwocky was there the whole time.

Photo-shop is not an easy application in use; in fact, this took longer than I had thought it might. However, I had the chance to use a couple of tools I never had used before in PS.

Pictures

1stClassHWassign3Expect

As I have stated in my previous blog, my experience with technology is a little different than a traditional classroom teacher. While I do not necessarily use it for instruction, it is a key part of me being able to function effectively. From email access, which I have linked to my cell phone, to phone access, to Internet access to be able to use the student management system, technology does play a role in what I need to accomplish. 

Personally, I am very comfortable with technology. I have a desktop PC at home and a laptop given to me to use by my district. I am socially networked via Facebook and Linked-In, and Google controls my life b/c I rely on their email, calender, cloud programs and phone operating system to get by daily. I even use my phone as a GPS! I am adept at using the MS Office Suite, and have learned to use Adobe CS4 to edit the middle school yearbook. I have a digital camera (which I think I lost on my bachelor party). So all in all, I am technologically current, I think.

When i get a chance to go into the classroom and co-teach or teach a lesson centered around developmental guidance, I rely on technology. I use slide shows, YouTube, and Internet surveys to keep kids engaged. I also have a teacher web page when I list some FAQs for students and parents. The hardware currently in my office is older (6 years or so) but there are plans to upgrade in the next year or two.

I would hope that this course presents me ways to stay current for my own instructional purposes, but also to see some other tools that teachers can use, so that I can at least understand what goes in their classrooms so it is easier to explain to parents and students. 

eTIPS response

I found this article appropriate. As a counselor, I have been required to be able to use whatever technology is present. Usually, that breaks down to three things: accessibility, hardware and software. As a high school/middle school counselor, being able to use the student management software the district has is crucial. A student management system (SMS) contains all of the vital information about students. It can range from grades to attendance to discipline records to parental contact information. Being able to efficiently navigate the system means being able to address problems quickly, and in some cases, about half the time as traditional paper records. Instead of calling all of a students' teachers for grades, all that I need to do is look on the system. If I need to see how many times a student has been late/absent from school, again, a couple of quick mouse clicks. And in my current district, Darien, the student management system (called X2 ASPEN) is even available to parents to check on their child's' grades. When implemented correctly, it can make everyone's lives a lot easier.

However, when professional development or training does not take place, technology can become counter-productive. In Norwalk, for instance, there was very little training on their new system, GENESIS. In fact, most people in th IT office didn't know how to use it to gather information. It was a web based system that was used primarily in New Jersey, and support for the company was not easy to obtain. We struggled through the first two years, but after playing with it and working with it,it became easier to use.

Also, making sure that the infrastructure can support the current or new technology coming into the district is important. In Norwalk, there was not enough server space, for instance, to run GENESIS, and it frequently crashed. Two years later, they add 4 more servers, and it runs seamlessly now. A large numbers of aging computers were replaced,  and the Brien McMahon (the building I was in) went wireless making it possible to access the student information system in the hallways or other parts of the building. This was essential for me, because a lot of my job focused on being visible to the kids, so being able to access schedules and attendance on an iPaq the district provided me while walking in the hallways between classes and in the cafe made things a lot easier on me, and made me more responsive. 

Teddy Bears

As I was reading this article, the first thing that came to mind was how I created my first blog at age 29, yesterday, and how second graders are doing this from a much younger age. Blogging is never something I understood, both from a personal and professional standpoint. I never appreciate someone taking the time to sit down and chronicle and event or daily events in their lives; why wouldn't they just talk to someone about it? Also, because of not fully understanding blogs, I never really saw a purpose of them academically either.  That is beginning to change. 

This was an interesting article to read. As a counselor who has worked at both the high school, and now middle school level, I have never truly gotten the chance to experience what elementary school teachers plan and do to facilitate their students learning.  This seems to be a great way to incorporate a lot of very important themes and topics into one exercise. I love how the teddy bears write home to their owner/student, letting them know how things are going in that particular part of the world. Having children understand cultural differences and embrace them instead of being afraid of them is so incredibly vital at a young age. Having worked in both very diverse districts (Norwalk, Yonkers NY) and not so diverse districts (Darien, Eastchester NY), having real world experiences and being exposed to people of different ages, races, genders, and cultures is the key to truly thinking globally and being able to function in todays (and tomorrow's) world.  This exercise accomplishes that is such a benign, fun way, that it almost seems like its more fun than educational; that is truly remarkable!

The one point I would make is I would be curious to see how this works in a urban district, where literacy, language and socio-economic status might hinder use of the blogs effectively. If the child does not have a computer at home, odds are that they might have a harder time picking this up. Also, in more urban districts, all of the 2nd graders might not necessarily reading at grade level. Lastly, how would something like this work for English Language Learners? I would think that this would be a great way to continue introducing them to English in a fun, casual way, but I not sure how gaps would be bridged. When all is said and done, however, I think this is a great use of technology. 

My 1st Post

This is my first blog post. I have wanted to try this, but never knew how to.