Curriculum Exemplar0-Global Nomads

This is an organization that arranges video conferencing between US school groups and folks around the world allowing the students to encounter another culture without leaving home. The experience is interactive with the students on both sides asking each other questions. The purpose is to bring the world closer together, help to dispel misunderstandings amongst cultures.

One particular activity involves a 10 part series of interactions with students in the US and youth in Uganda. Part of the process includes the students in the US donating goods and funds to support relief efforts there.

I would love to get my students involved in this. The article that I read mentions how beneficial it is for "at risk" high school students and that's sort of the profile for my students. Anything to make the learning about something real.

My questions about this exemplar have to do with the logistics. To begin with, I have been to the website any number of times and still don't understand exactly how this works and how much it would cost my school (i.e. we don't have video conferencing capability). The complicated nature of arranging the technical aspects is enough to put many teachers off from the beginning. I will try to call these folks and get more info, I visited the link to the company that provides the video conferencing technology but they post no prices. I would like to try it at least once and see what impact is has on my students. I came upon this last year when I was searching for a way for my students to speak directly to students in other parts of the world (i.e. via skype). I need to dig deeper because with the level of technology packed into today's computers, there should be many organizations that could help my students establish a dialog with other students around the world. The beauty of the Global Nomads is that "live" visual experience, I only wish it were more accessible.

Here's the article I found, it was in Edutopia.

http://www.edutopia.org/global-nomads-magnolia-texas

Edutopia Magazine (and website) great resource

If you haven't seen this publication or the website, it is worth a look. I think they offer free subscriptions to teachers.
It's "Information and Inspiration for Innovative teaching in k-12 schools" funded by George Lucas. www.edutopia.org

Myspace rules at my school

I went ahead and made a written survey out of our Technology Interview and gave it to all of my students (the majority of the students at my small charter school). The overwhelming finding was that almost all of the students use myspace regularly. Is there some way I could use this for teaching?

Teaching with blogs

I got a bit carried away and spent way too much time checking out blogs and not enough writing about them.

First of all, I set up a blog for my students to use on edublog. I'm hoping to use it for homework as some of the examples of blogs did. My problem will be getting my director to approve this but I will print out some of the info from Safe and Responsible Bloggings.

My favorite education blog so far would be the High School Journalism blog. The format is so close to what I would like to do with my Social Studies classes. There are lots of prompts for discussion and also some news items to comment about. I do something similar but my students bring me their thoughts in writing and it's not so interactive as many of them are shy to discuss it in class (eventhough I offer extra credit for doing so). As almost all of my students are adept at using "myspace" I'm betting they will feel more comfortable with blogging for homework.

One blog that had potential but left me cold after seeing some of the others was "Highschool AP Government". The teacher was using it for various class assignments which was great but it was done in such a cold and boring way that it was uninviting. I mention it because I realized that while the concept of blogs is so "cool", it doesn't mean that all blogs are good blogs and we need to make them enticing to our audience or else we are just creating a different mode to dish out the same old boring stuff.

At the blog mhetherington.net there were a lot of examples of using podcasts for teaching. I'm going to study this more as I'm dying to get started using podcasting with my students.

Technology Through My Students’ Eyes

INTERVIEW SUMMARY

Most of my students consider technology their world – cell phones, myspace, music -- and wouldn’t know what to do without it.

“I think I couldn’t do without a cell phone and if it wasn’t invented I would die.”

Most of them have cell phones, tv’s with dvd players, computers with internet connection, and digital cameras (important for taking photos to download to myspace).

At home they spend a lot of time talking on the phone and online (on myspace).

Their parents use technology in similar ways such as talking on the phone and sending email, but some mentioned seeing their parents use the computer for work but they weren’t very sure exactly what they were doing.

In school, the students mostly use laptops to look up things and to create powerpoint presentations.

Most of them had the same answer for using technology at home and one mentioned typing up her work.

For entertainment, all of the students mentioned myspace and playing games. One used her cellphone for playing games because she didn’t have a computer, another mentioned having a playstation, but most use the computer for playing games.

There were mixed results for how the students learned to use technology. Some mentioned specific classes at school and others viewed it more as an evolutionary process in their lives.

Wish list at home? Most said they had everything they needed, although one student wanted her own computer.

Wish list at school? One student wished we had a Playstation at school so he could play games in his spare time. The others thought what we had (laptops) was adequate.

Teaching teachers-4 out of 5 said they would teach the teachers how to have fun with the computer and to use “myspace”. “how myspace is important” “how myspace is okay”.

4 out of 5 said that “myspace” was their favorite thing to do online.

As for learning more about technology: “I know all I want to know about it.”, “Nothing.”, “Everything I can.”, “Anything and everything.”, “How to more effectively research a topic.”.

REFLECTIONS

Myspace is the overwhelming factor in these kids’ lives. I guess what bothers me most is that I see kids spending all this time cultivating relationships via technology (computer and cellphone) and I’m wondering how this impacts their ability to have human face-to-face relationships? As for myself, it’s much easier for me to communicate via the computer than face to face. I can be bolder and chose my words more carefully. I wonder if there have been studies done on this yet?

The other aspect of the interviews that I found disturbing is that most of the students thought that school should be about having fun (not necessarily having fun while you learn) and that teachers should be incorporating myspace into the learning. I would like to explore this possibility further but I’m not sure it’s appropriate as I’ve heard about teachers using myspace and getting in trouble.

One caveat about these students (and most at my school) is that they don’t have any hobbies or extracurricular activities, nor do they spend much time doing homework. Thus they have about 7 hours outside of school each day where they fill their boredom with myspace and the cell phone. As you can imagine their general knowledge is extremely poor.

Another comment is that every one of these students is from a lower middle class family(downright poor in one or two cases) and yet they all had access to plenty of technology.

Thanks for reading this and I would love to have your comments, questions, and feedback. susan