Technology and the Millennium Generation

Scary!  That is what I have to say about the use of technology by the Millennium Generation.  Yes, they are good at it.  In fact some would argue that they are brilliant.  But can you be brilliant and stupid at the same time?  Can I get another overwhelming, YES?!  It seems strange that minds so easily navigating the newest trends in technology are not able to decipher an action that could potentially hurt, ridicule or harm them.  It’s possible that their actions could put them in grave danger either to themselves (even though they can’t even think about it at the time) or danger from others.

 

So what is being done to protect our children since it seems that are unable to do it themselves?  I compared my school district’s plan to the 2009 Michigan Educational Technology Standards for Students and found them to be compatible if not identical in theory.  They both want the same standards for our children...that they be able to use the wonderful world of the internet to open and expand their minds, but with safety and smarts so they will not be harmed.

Sounds great….so let the technology waterfall begin.  Not so fast I say.  My daughter has been taught about these dangers from the second grade according to our district’s technology plan.  If that is the case, explain this situation to me.  In fifth grade she came home and wanted an email address.  I refused and explained the dangers of the internet.  The next day, I received an email from her teacher explaining that my daughter really wanted an email address and that she could use it to chat with her fellow students about their homework questions.  My response was to tell her to pick up the phone and call them.  It would be faster and more direct than waiting for an email response that might never come. 

I felt the teacher had overstepped her boundaries in emailing me, but since she was a teacher and had my child’s best interests at heart, I emailed back.  Are there any standards that we need to follow for her safety in setting up her email address as she wanted to use her name in the address?  The teacher emailed back and said that using her name would not be the best idea.  This should have been addressed as part of internet safety at school. 

So we set up an email address and the next thing she wanted was to post her picture.  She did that on her own and I happened by and told her that I didn’t think posting a picture of her was a good idea and another explanation.  She replied that all her friends were posting their pictures.   Here we go again!  She reluctantly changed it to a picture of her favorite animal.

Then the email from “Brian” (no last name) who wanted to know her phone number and address.  She offhandedly told me that she was surprised Brian would want to know this information through email as he never talks to her at school.  I looked into the situation and told her that this “Brian” was not from her school and that she should not answer.  I told her to ask him at school tomorrow if he sent her an email and she did and he had not.

I hope this has taught her some important lessons about the use of technology and email, but I would have thought that by the standards listed in our district’s policy this would have been clear to her already.  It was not.  I recently went to a talk given by Jean Twenge, professor and author of “The Narcissism Epidemic:  Living in the Age of Entitlement.”  She has done studies researching this generation and the self-esteem boosting, everyone is a winner mentality that defines them.  She identified that social-networking is like the “Treasure Island” for this generation where the goal is to have more friends, be the most provocative, post sexier pics and be self promoting.  It’s like a playground for them to add to their inflated sense of self and extends the “this can’t happen to me mentality.”  I walked away from the talk, enlightened and scared to death.

Text Source:

Twenge, J. M.  and Campbell, W. K.  (2009).  The Narcissism Epidemic:
Living in the Age of Entitlement.  New York.  Simon & Schuster

Picture Source:

http://i699.photobucket.com/albums/vv358/sophialilian/SophiaSublime/SIDEE-1.jpg

Comparing Technology Plans

Two plus two plus two equals 6.  This equation can also be written as 2+2+2=6 and it still means the same thing although some might argue that the second way of writing the problem is much easier to read.  When comparing the National Educational Technology Plan with the 2010 Michigan Educational Technology Plan and then the local school district plan, I found that documents that were closer to home were much easier to read. 

The National Technology Plan is a wordy document that I’m sure contains all the information regarding technology that one would ever need to know.  I’m also fairly sure that no layman understands what they are reading, that is if they even attempt to read it.  I know it is probably “legal proof” and that every i has been dotted and every t crossed, but I’m not sure how much good that will do the average teacher.

The 2010 Michigan Educational Technology Plan was much more readable and in my opinion, much more specific.  It outlines each of the goals in a broad way and then individually addresses each goal with a list of strategies and performance indicators to achieve each goal.  In my assessment, it is a job well done by our State Officials and the Advisory Board Members.

In comparing this document with a local school district technology plan, I chose to use Rockford.  The Rockford District’s Technology Plan is available at http://www.rockfordschools.org/Resources/PDF/RPS/RPS2007-10TechnologyPlan.pdf and is a great example of a readable, specific and realistic technology plan.  The only area that I found in the Michigan Ed Tech Plan that I did not see specifically addressed in the Rockford plan was Goal 2, Strategy 2. 

This section specifies that “MDE will work with and support other lead agencies to increase broadband access for all educators and students as a requirement of anywhere, anytime learning.  It specifically states under Performance Indicator 1, that by 2015, every school district in Michigan will have a minimum of 1 Gigabyte per second (Gbps) connectivity to the Internet and every school building, library, and public school academy in Michigan will have a minimum of 100 Megabytes per second (Mbps) connectivity to the Internet.” [i]

I did not test this myself but know from talking to my daughters that they feel the internet connection currently is very slow.  The standards say by 2015 and we are only in 2011 so there is still time to fix that aspect. 

I also need to repeal my statement from my last blog that I don’t think that most of my daughter’s teachers have fulfilled the technology requirements at each grade level.  After reading Rockford’s document, I see that they have indeed done what is outlined for each grade level here at Rockford.  My expectations of how they would be using technology were different than those outlined in the technology plan, but I see that they have learned those skills.  Kudos to Rockford and my daughter’s teachers (and my EDU 590 Instructor) as it was done so seamlessly that I was not aware it was happening.

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[i] http://techplan.org/STP%202010%20Final.pdf

Picture source:

http://th730.photobucket.com/albums/ww306/lengtarang/Technology/th_googlebot.jpg

Technology Standards for Michigan Teachers

What are we if we don’t have a dream?  A dream is a wish your heart makes… is a quote from Cinderella in the original Disney animated movie.  As much as I want to believe Cinderella, and my mother assured me that she would get the “prince” in the end, not everyone’s dreams come true.  I’m not sure Michigan’s Technology Standards will either but then again, who am I, to squash someone else’s dream?

As I read the standards (and I did read all of them and not just the technology ones) I felt as though I were in a dream world.  Each standard (or should I say recommendation?) seemed so “pie in the sky.”  In a dream world my teacher would have all those abilities, but in the real world, “forget it.”  Some are lucky to just show up each morning. 

I am not a current teacher and so my undergraduate preparation was not in this area.  My daughters have been lucky to have some really great teachers, but I'm not sure they have met these technology standards.  Not because they don’t want to, but more because some just don’t have the training or the time to receive the training.  Each day, they are asked to do more and more in the classroom, keeping track of this and that, little things that boggle and confuse the mind.  There are so many different requests daily, that I sometimes wonder if they get through their simple lesson plans, let alone try to incorporate something new with technology into them.

As I perused this document, I felt there were many similarities with the objectives outlined in our syllabus for EDU 590.  In fact, I think our instructor was mindful of these standards when putting together the course objectives.  I don’t see that we will be researching the legal issues outlined in 7a on page 6 of the Professional Standards of Michigan Teachers, but we will certainly be aware of some that will come into play as we start to incorporate technology into our practices.  Understanding the use of technology in the classroom is indeed a wish that my heart makes.

Works cited:

Professional Standards for Michigan Teachers.(http://www.michigan.gov/documents/ mde/SBE_approved_PSMT_May_13_2008+coverpg_258601_7.doc).

Photo credit:

http://th6.photobucket.com/albums/y231/memetician/th_pie.jpg

Instructional Strategies

Why are we doing this?  Why do I have to learn this stuff?  When am I ever going to use this in life?  These questions are asked by both young and old students from about fourth grade through college.  Until then it seems we are sure that the teacher has some purpose or reason for making us do this work.  We never thought to question its validity.  But here we are, now the prime age of 10 and are sure there is no point to what we are doing sitting here in this class. 

On the flip side, there is the teacher.  Assured in the fact that the reason for creating this huge amount of work for his/her students is commonly understood.  The explanation is unnecessary because this is just “what we learn in fourth grade,” and so on.  Through the book, Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works, I have come to find that explaining this to your students and being sure they understand the reason for the work is really the first step and is called “Setting Objectives.”

I am formulating a lesson plan that provides both a non-technology and technology component to help me understand the use of technology in the classroom.  The four instructional strategies I have chosen to use come from the book referred to above and are as follows:

1.  Identifying similarities and differences

2.  Homework and practice

3.  Nonlinguistic representation

4.  Setting objectives and providing feedback.

I chose these four instructional strategies to address the four planning questions also identified in the book on page 10:

1. What will students learn? 

            I will have them answer a pre-assessment survey which will ask them questions about their current knowledge base and abilities.  This is the process of setting objectives.

2.  Which strategies will provide evidence of learning?

            I will have them answer a post-assessment survey which will assess their standing knowledge and abilities on the same subject and ask them about their growth in the area.

3.  Which strategies will help students acquire and integrate learning?

            The use of non-linguistic representation will help them acquire skills in this area.

4.  Which strategies will help students practice, review and apply learning?

            Using homework and practice applying the skills of collage both traditionally and digitally will help reinforce their learning.

Although all these areas are important and essential for acquiring skills in new areas, my focus will be on the non-linguistic representation.  Helping students understand and represent knowledge nonlinguistically is the most under-used instructional strategy (Marzano et al., 2001). [i] Since this is one of my strong points, I intend to use this method to bring new learning to these students.

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[i] Marzano, R.J., Pickering, D.J., & Pollock, J.E. (2001). Classroom instruction that works: Research-based strategies for increasing student achievement. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Photo credit:

http://th0006.photobucket.com/albums/0006/findstuff22/Best%20Images/Just%20For%20Fun/Just%20for%20Fun%20Adjusted/th_collage555.jpg

Ready, Aim, ACTION!!!!!

Action Research.  It sounds pretty exciting, right?  At least the first word is engaging…action!  The second work starts a little yawn in the back of my head and so it was with those thoughts that I started to read Chapter 1 of “Action Research:  An Educational Leader’s Guide to School Improvement.”   The reading was a bit long and dry.  Pages 8 and 9 were missing in our copy of the chapter and I wondered if anyone had noticed that the information from page 7 was not ever completed in their reading.  It also made me wonder if they cared or if they were just skimming the information to get the ideas that they needed as quickly as possible. That to me is the sharp contrast of this reading.  It provides a quick theoretical model for designing a research plan of action, yet told in a very long winded professorial way.

The information was appropriate for guiding educator’s toward thinking in a more research oriented way. A quote from the chapter says, “Many teachers…have not been adequately prepared to understand how research can positively affect their work.”  The sharing of findings between educators is probably the most important part of this reading.  We can always learn from other’s teaching methods.  More importantly, we can learn from the results of their findings.  We can eliminate what didn’t work for them and build on what worked well.

With that in mind, I created the Action Research Plan pictured below.  Choosing an area of art that can be done well by hand and on the computer, I set out to see what fifth graders would think of either method.  I want to know how much they already know about the art of collage and one premier artist, Romare Bearden, with a pre-assessment survey.  My next step will be to do a presentation explaining the art of collage and design principles.  I will also introduce them to a collage artist and show how he expressed himself through collage.  I want to have half of the students create a collage by hand with materials I provide and am calling this my non-technology based lesson plan.  I want to have the other half learn collage with a technology based plan completing the collage with an interactive online program. 

Since I am not a teacher, I have asked to be a guest lecturer for a nearby school who was not able to provide art to their students this year due to budget restraints.  I can’t imagine not having art in my life and can at least give them an opportunity to express themselves at school while I begin to understand how technology can have a part in changing their experiences as well.  I don’t think the school even realizes that art can be taught without the expense of an art room filled with materials.  I’m not sure I did until I started to write this.  Stay tuned…..

Glanz, Jeffrey. Action Research: An Educational Leader's Guide to School Improvement. Sept 2003: page 4.

Photo credit:

http://th955.photobucket.com/albums/ae36/hatchdj1/th_618926.jpg

Wikiality

So there’s this shepherd boy who was a little bored and for entertainment decided that he would cry, “Wolf!” and see what happened.  The villagers came to his rescue as they thought a wolf was attacking his sheep.  When they arrived there was no wolf, but there was a smiling shepherd boy.  After this episode happened several times, the boy’s sheep were attacked by a wolf and when he cried for help for real, no one came to his rescue. 

I can’t think of a better summary for my view of Wikipedia.  As you enter the website, www.wikipedia.org the catch phrase states “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.”  My first thought is really?  Yes, it’s true.  Select edit, start typing, hit save and instantly FICTION becomes FACT.  A fact anyway for those who believe everything they read and surprisingly enough, that is a whole lot of people.

My assignment was to change something in Wikipedia and record how long it took to have it changed back.  This was a very difficult concept for me as I don’t do the “WRONG” thing on purpose.  I registered and gave all my info to Wikipedia and at the same time hoped they wouldn’t see what I would change. 

I decided to add some true information about fashion design.  I went in and added about 40 words in 2 long sentences.  I waited for it to be changed for days and nothing happened.  So I thought that I must have to make something false for it to change, and went back to the same page and changed the location of a fashion school from Taipei to Hong Kong and waited for days…and still no changes.

Assuming, that the area I chose was too specific and apparently fashion designers already knew everything and never had to check for information, I went to the main page of Wikipedia and picked a current week’s event and changed the number of dead in the Sabarimala Stampede in India.  There is a graph showing the statistics to the right of the story which clearly states a different number of dead, but alas the number I typed has not been changed back as of the date of this story. 

Clearly, no one is watching.  I explained my assignment to two girlfriends at dinner last night and both said, “You can change things in Wikipedia that aren’t true and they will be listed as fact?” I said yes and their reply was “Why would anyone want to use that as a source of information ?” Those were my sentiments exactly. 

If I used Wikipedia as a source for my papers and my grade was lowered because of incorrect information, I would stop using it as I couldn’t trust the source just like the villagers stopped running to help the boy.  Students need to be given guidelines when deciding what sources to use. If I were a teacher, I would instruct my students to carefully pick their sources.  If information is not verifiable in at least two spots, don’t use it. I know that getting information for free is good, especially for students, but free information that is wrong could “cost” you a good grade. 

The moral of the story is stated at the end of the Aesop Fable retold in the first paragraph.  It is “Even when liars tell the truth, they are never believed. The liar will lie once, twice, and then perish when he tells the truth.”[i]

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[i] Aesop’s Fables were written prior to current copyright laws and are therefore in the public domain.

Picture credit:  http://i284.photobucket.com/albums/ll14/frugal_dougal/swine_flu/boy_cried_wolf.jpg

The New Age of Plagiarism

Plagiarism isn’t new.  It seems it has evolved and taken a new form.  According to a quote from a journal article by Harned and Sutliff, “Technology didn’t cause cheating-it only made it easier.”[i]  That which is easier, will become what is done more often, and issues regarding plagiarism continue to evolve with the technology.

Originality has become hard to define and we constantly see an ever-changing synthesis of existing ideas.  What if we are putting together thoughts or ideas that we have researched and synthesized into a new understanding for ourselves?  The result may not be original, but it represents a new level of understanding and a validation of learning.

Let’s take a look into art history.  Many artists spent days and even years to painstakingly recreate every detail of another artist’s masterpiece. This was considered flattery in the highest form and helped the “copying” artists develop and define their techniques.  It was a learning process that was not viewed as a crime but rather a “success” of learning.

In an abstract presented by Ms. Amy Besnoy, at the International Conference on Technology, Knowledge and Society in 2005, this question was posed.  Students have easy access to technology “that enables them to dance around academic integrity by cutting and pasting, photographing notes and test messaging test answers to each other, do we throw in the ethical towel or do we, as educators, consider this an opportunity to change our pedagogical approach?”[ii]

Original thoughts are indeed a product of time and effort, much like original music or play-writing.  As written words, those original ideas are sacred and when copied or used by others, credit must be given to their creator.  I feel the answer to the plagiarism question becomes more about what our society values.  Do we reward only the original ideas? 

Our educational grading system seems to be more focused on the end result of original ideas.  Many college courses determine your course grade (or a large portion of it) using the grade of the final paper or test.  The time and learning acquired during your coursework in preparation for that paper/test is only evaluated by your ability to produce an exciting paper or high test scores.  This creates a high pressure atmosphere for the student and a win or lose situation.

In contrast, a system of grading that takes into account preparation, research and effort put into learning the course content might be a better reflection of learning and therefore a better way to determine a course grade.  Grading in that way would put the concept of plagiarism out of the spotlight as the student would need to show work in progress.  It won’t be the end of plagiarism, but it would put the focus on the learning process for the student and not just the end result or grade as the goal.

If you would like to do further investigation on this topic, I recommend the following webinars and websites:
http://plagiarism.org/plag_webinar_college_campuses.html
http://plagiarism.org/plag_webinar_high_schools.html
http://www.2010.techandsoc.com/index.html

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[i]  Harned, P. & Sutliff, K. (2002) Academic Honesty: Teaching Kids Not To Take The Easy Way Out. Our Children, v27, 4-5.

[ii] Besnoy, Amy (2005-February)”Academic Integrity in a Cut and Paste World:  Lost Cause or Pedagogical Possibility?” Presentation at the International Conference on Technology, Knowledge and Society, University of California, Berkeley-San Francisco

Picture Source: [url=http://www.blingcheese.com][img]http://i87.photobucket.com/albums/k154/actrices/web-plagiarism.jpg[/img][/url]