Education, Technology, and Society: Altering Environments

What? 

I think I'm getting to the point in my placement that I can expect how the day is going to go. But today, it seems as though the students had a lot of energy that I attributed to post Halloween sugar rushes. Thus, while the students followed the schedule as per usual, it was a little bit difficult trying to keep up. 

In the technology classroom, the students had the choice of either playing a game that involved building monsters and going on an adventure, or playing a game online that was meant to help them with their maths skills. 

So what?

Coming out of last week's discussion, I was more attuned to the choices that students were making about which choice they made the technology classroom. I assumed that more boys would pick the math option whereas the girls would choose to play the monster game. However, this wasn't the case. There did not seem to be any preference by either gender.

this exercise made me realise that there was a mass inequality in the class that I am observing. There are more boys in the class which makes me wonder if that has any effect on the way that the girls feel as though they can assert their own gender identity. Also, it was interesting to me to see that it was the girls that were more excited about technology class, rather than the expectation of it being the boys. In fact, the girls even came up with a chant as they were lining up to go. 

Now what?

What?

At school X, the teachers rarely have printer paper, so instead of printing out essays for their teachers, the students email them or add them to Google Docs. This is also because most of the students can't afford printer ink at home. There were a few teachers who would force their students to print their work, so they would run over to my teacher's classroom, or the classroom of another teacher and ask to print their work there so they wouldn't get in trouble. Recently, the administration made a rule that you have to be able to email your work instead of printing it. 

So what?

Forcing the students to print out their work when a printer isn't easily accessible is not promoting equality at school. While some students may have a printer at home, this leaves out the students who can't afford one. Additionally, for my teacher and the others that help out the students who are forced to print end up with a smaller supply of paper. My teacher said that when he hears there's been a paper delivery he hunts it down in the school to claim some for himself. 

Now what? 

Hopefully the new rule will stop those teachers from forcing the kids to print their work. Additionally, it's just better for the environment. To tie this in with my journalism class, the students received their first article assignment, and some students are covering the new rule for the newspaper!

My Field placement at school X has been very hectic. So far, I have been trying to coordinate with the person they put me in contact with about working with a teacher inside a classroom, because I feel like that would help me gain some insight for this class and be better versed in the actual implementation methods in the classroom. However, the person they put me in contact with wanted me initially to work with her in an office figuring out iPad apps. We have since reached consensus about what our goals are, however, she has yet to get back to me about when I can come in and actually work with a teacher.

On a given Friday, the professor will begin class with the overhead projector displaying vocabulary. He asked students how they interpreted the words, and then reviewed last class’s vocabulary words. The professor does not negatively enforce, or discipline his students. When they do not seem to be doing the work he will command a response from them. He simply calls on the students and expects them to answer. Later on in the class, he plays a song and asks students to identify the instruments creating the music.

The song we are focusing on today is John Legend "imagine." The professor wants the students to write about real versus fake things in their life or discuss something in their life that happens in stages. The professor uses his smart board to show the students their lyrics to the music and then editing it. 

When teaching the students the different music notes, the professor writes on the smart board and then explains how to clap along to the music notes. He reminded students to take notes and encouraged them by saying that; "it's your paper so mark it up all you want." If there is one thing that happens well in this course, is that the students are being encouraged and pushed to use their own ideas to move forward in their writing. 

What

After talking to the teacher and observing in class, I think the level of students in the class can be very different. How comfortable they are with technology can also be quite different. Several students brought their own laptop to class. When the teacher asked them to work on the assignment, some students started coding right away while others spent most of the time reading instructions.

So what

This is almost inevitable for the school since there is only one class about Java and students who want to learn computer science do not have much choice. The teacher said that in order not to leave any student behind, he purposefully slowed down a little and made the class a little easier. But is this necessary a good thing? How about the students who are more advanced?

Now what

Is it better to divide the class into different levels or should it stay the way it is and encourage the students help each other to improve? The more advanced students can show their classmates who are struggling how to do it. I think sometimes it is also important for the teacher to prepare something for the advanced students.

I could not get Minecraft to work on my computer. It was the most frustrating thing ever! After Mikah (my lovely roommate) started playing I wanted to play too and I spent about an hour trying to download all of these different things. Minecraft ended up not working and so I ended up watching Mikah "struggle". Mikah spend about a good 30 minutes trying to get wood as suggested in the youtube videos. We could not figure out how to get the wood until our friend Ashley came in and called her brother. Later that night, he called and told us exactly how to get wood. Rather than clicking over and over we realized we could just hold the clicker of the mouse down (duh?). Are we too old and out of touch? I felt that I was so lost in technology that I could not even get Minecraft to work on my computer. It's safe to say that Mikah and I have not played it since... If we incorporated this into the classroom, there would have to be a demo and the glitches on certain computer types would have to be figured out! 

My first minecraft experience was quite different than I expected it to be, and likely quite different than my future experiences with the game. I arrived at babysitting as usual, but when I approached the 2 9 year old boys and one 7 yr old boy in the basement, I was greeted by them shouting about minecraft. I explained our class assignment to the boys, and they were eager to help with my "homework" (Jonah--age 7--wanted to know what other colleges have a mincraft class but also a football team:-) and let me play with them on the Xbox......that is after they finished building their "parcore"---which I had never heard of and now understand to be some sort of structure you can build in creative mode of the game. I had to wait basically 2 hours for them to finish the parcore before they started a new world and handed me a controller (watching the game is dizzying!)

I observe two middle school technology classes at an all-girl's private school on the Main Line.  I've had three or four placements there so far, and I've been continually impressed by the teacher's patience as well as the inter-personal relationships between the girls themselves.  (From what I've seen, there aren't any "queen bees" or "mean girls"--they really all do act very sweetly with eachother, which has been so heartwarming to experience.)

While the students at my school are lucky enough to have a new, well-equipped technology suite, there are still a number of overarching questions to contend with.  For example, however beautiful their new machines are, it seems like every class begins with 50% of the girls not being able to log onto their accounts, the teacher calling the IT department, and the girls spinning around on the chairs as they wait for the IT department to log them in.  Furthermore, there are always little technology hiccups and confusions that interrupt the class, and the teacher has to spend her time dealing with little maintinace issues (i.e. email passwords, log-on issues, etc) rather than teaching to the "entire" class.  To top this all off, the students apparently aren't allowed to get homework for their computer class since the rest of their classes are so demanding.

It all began when I went to download the application and had to download another plug-in that my computer was missing. Once I finally got all the downloads configured and set up an account, I logged in and began playing. I vaguely knew what to do from the video in class the other day. 

The first thing I tried to do was gather wood--I went up to a tree and punched it A LOT and got nowhere. I went online and watched a YouTube video and it showed punching the tree. I returned to the game and tried punching the tree. Again, continuous punching and NO wood. I went to another tree and FINALLY it worked! I got one block of wood. I continued punching the tree and couldn't get any more wood. At this point, I had been playing for about 25 minutes and was yelling at my computer. I had to stop because I was so frustrated. 

I may go back and attempt to continue playing but right now, I'm too annoyed. I'm unclear on the purpose and focus  of the game. I know that when you pause there is a bar for achievements but what is the ultimate goal? I'm hoping that the panel on Tuesday will help enlighten me on 1) how to play and 2) the purpose of playing and 3) the ultimate goal.