Technology in Education

I felt like this unit was a good introduction and laid down the foundation for the class: defining the terms and posing the big questions to contemplate over the course of the semester. It has encouraged me personally to engage with and explore technology that I have been reluctant to experiment with in the past, including prezi and instagram, and I am excited to continue to learn. We have also established initial contact with our pen pals in Ghana and while we are uncertain about the development of that relationship at this point, I am excited about the possibilities. The prospect of an undeveloped structure to this part of the course is exciting but at the same time, a bit anxiety provoking, and so I hope we can help future participants by laying down some sort of structure for them.

I found this NYT article on Twitter and I feel like it links to our conversation on "effective" uses of technology in the classroom as well as the teacher vs technology debate.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/magazine/no-child-left-untableted.html?pagewanted=7&_r=1&smid=tw-nytimes&partner=rss&emc=rss&

Hi everyone, please download the following files for my curriculum and my rationale.

What are the intentions behind supplying schools with the most recent technology? 

Is it just tho keep it current? Comparing expectations to actual use by teachers and students?   

How is (or isn't) technology incorporated in the classroom? 

Who determines the effectiveness of technology? Teachers or students? 

What is Clark forgetting/leaving out? Where is technology not a 1st priority in the classroom and how do our schools' models and policies promote and inhibit learning in the classroom? 

How can issues of saftey in the classroom affect the ways in which tech. is neglected or misused or even perpetuate inequalities and achievement gap (safe environments achieve more than unsafe ones)?  

Hey everybody, I don't really know if this has any place in this Ecological Imaginings class, but maybe if we can imagine the preservation of women to be a form of ecology, not unlike the preservation of all plant life, animal life.

I just wanted to call everyone's attention to this excellent documentary currently being shown on PBS on Mon & Tues nights at 9:00 PM.  I imagine you guys have lots of time to watch films, yeah!  But this is an amazing series.

"Half the Sky" about gender based violence.

Here's the link to the first & second segment:

http://video.pbs.org/video/2283557115   

http://video.pbs.org/video/2283558278

I'm still struggling with figuring out what should education provide for humans, considering the new role of technology.  I keep hearing the opinion that with computers around to help us, we can bypass the basics of math/science, depending on the computers for that knowledge, and skip right to the quantum mechanics and other higher-level ideas that we haven't taught computers how to do yet.  My hesitation is that I am not convinced that higher-level ideas can be accessed without an understanding of how the basics work, especially when we want to put our current ideas to the test.  I have trouble imagining a creative scientific process that relies on information feeding from computers.  Also, I think it would be really difficult to solve a higher-level problem without having first grappled with the lower-level ideas first.  Just because a machine can produce relevant information instantaneously doesn't automatically give this information meaning.  What are ways a teacher can facilitate a deeper understanding/meaning to a concept, not burdening the student with calculations that computers can do, but still bearing in mind that any program created to help foster this understanding is a human creation and can still be (and should be) called into question.

To me it has been hard to see the application of Clark's ideas to the classroom. His ideas seem so theoretical and massive that applying them to the small setting of a classroom is hard for me. However, I take his ideas at the most basic form to mean how integrated our biological beings are with technology. Technology however can be just about anything. In my group we wanted Clark to put forth a list of what exactly is not "technology". There seems to be no line at all to draw between technologies and non technologies. However, I would like to take away the fact that we have and have always had a relationship with technology. Whether it be your pen our your laptop. We must then understand how we can use and work with technology rather than see it as it's own separate entity.

1. possibly consulting less "academic" sources to see how real-life teachers use technology in their classrooms. i.e. tips/how to , blogs

2. talk about teaching, learning, classrooms 

3. more online engagement outside of the classroom? a more of an “insider” approach might prove useful as not everyone is fluent

4. examples of technologies that have successfully been incorporated into the classroom 

5. share experiences of teachers (yours or that you have observed) using technology in the classroom and how it benefits or hinders learning. 

6. continue to think about how and why I use social media 

7. analyze Clark's methods of proof in his texts and to assure me of the validity of his arguments 

8. discuss Clark's main ideas and how they are/can be applied to the classroom

9. Share about specific person we know and how technology access might affect them

10. to possibly teach/discuss the benefits/disadvantages of technology and see how it can add to human life but not control it or take it over 

Last week's keyword for me was, "Disconnect." Although I appreciated the guest lecturers, I found myself either not paying attention at all or zoning in and out. When the first woman, I forgot her name, came in to speak, initially I was intrigued by the handouts -- I liked that they had practical teaching methods for reading. I also payed attention when she explained how the iPad was used in the classroom as a tool for gathering data and as a tool for visual communication between parents and teachers. However, I'm not going to lie, I barely listened to her speaking for most of the lecture and the same thing happened when Mary came in to speak about the Zimbabwean (?) women and their role in the trade markets.

The fact that I paid very little attention to the guest lectures bothered me. So, I began to wonder, is it me or is it what was being said? I think it was a combination of both. 

The more we talk about literacy, the more I realize about myself as a learner. I know now that I get completely lost when a connection between what is being taught and the overall "picture" is not made. Take for instance Mary's lecture, it would have never occurred to me that the women of Zimbabwe had become literate in a different setting, the market, if Mia had not made that connection for me. And I find myself experiencing similar disconnects in Pim's and Rob's class during discussions.

"no longer the sole producers, stewards, and disseminators of knowledge or culture, universities are called upon to shape natively digital models of scholarly discourse for the newly emergent public spheres of the present era." (1)

As the information age has taken hold, thoughts, views and writings have gained a wider realm of dissemination than ever before.  The internet and its databases have provided the knowledge of those who came before to all and any without a filter or intermediary.  Thoughts and ideas are presented through an open door for all to enter and interact.  The results of this openness have enacted many changes in all that we think and do, especially in the Digital Humanities.  The antiquated idea that a writer constructs her writing as “original” and as an individualized piece of work is being challenged by the overwhelming flow and mixing of ideas by anyone and everyone.  The idea of the individual owning a deed to an idea is being replaced by a common space occupied by all. In “The Geography of Thought,” Nisbett delineates the differences between Western individualist thinking and East Asian collective. It is in this light that I’d like to examine our traditional process of “original” writing, explore how the Digital Humanities is reconceiving that concept to a more collective framework and how this might change the landscape.