Research and Thinking Blog #5

Palmquist, Mike, Kiefer, Kate, Hartvigsen, James and Goodlew, Barbara. (2008) “Contrasts: Teaching and Learning about Writing in Traditional and Computer Classrooms.” Computers in the Composition Classroom. Ed. Sidler, Michelle, Morris, Richard and Smith, Elizabeth Overman. Boston, New York: Bedford/St. Martins, 2008. 251-271.  Print. 

This discussion compared and contrasted teaching and learning experiences in traditional and computerized composition classrooms from surveys and narratives answered by teachers and students. The best way to summarize the vital information in this article is to compile lists of characteristics of each environment.

Teaching and Learning Computer Classroom

-Student centered

-Focused more on writing (particularly drafting)

-Classroom viewed as a worksite

-Better student performance

-Whole group classroom instruction ineffective

-Higher expectations of quality work from teachers

-Increased student teacher interaction 

Teaching and Learning Traditional Classroom

-Teacher centered

-Group tended to get off task easily

-Writing was not being accomplished

-Process writing appeared to work well in this setting 

After establishing characteristics of each environment the discussion continued by organizing which activities work best for each environment. For example, classroom discussion and process writing instruction tended to work best in the traditional environment. However, in the computer classroom students tended to write more and produced better work. The overall goal was trying to figure out a way to merge the advantages of both environments. Some suggestions included incorporating more in class writing activities in the traditional environment as well as changing class location to other places such as the library. Some other suggestions included encouraging more activities in the computer classroom.

I thought this article may excellent connections between the varying writing environments. I was shocked to see that computer anxiety was a factor with today’s generation. Although percentages were low, it is still something to consider when working in a computer classroom and a barrier to writing instruction. I agreed that many teachers avoid using technologies as part of instructional techniques outside of word processing because they lack competency. The authors mentioned teacher pre-occupation with technology competency that took away from instructional time. The example in the book was electronic mail [email] lol....This shows this study was just a little dated.

Tips for future teaching and learning is KNOW the technology before introducing to students. I have been in a similar situation myself with using Microsoft Movie Maker with students. I forgot to work out the kinks with the save function and many of my students ended up not saving their work. A teacher’s nightmare!!! I also think it is important to use advantages from both environments as a sort of merger. Bring characteristics of the traditional class into the computer class and vice versa. 

Brain Rules #6 Long Term Memory Stixy

http://www.stixy.com/guest/147628




Stixy was a pleasurable tool to use. It enabled me to take notes using colorized post it notes. These post it notes make it easy to categorize information, and it was the electronic version of taking sticky notes and sticking them on different pages in a book. I begin to colorize information. Everything written on a pink sticky note was information about long term memory that would be useful to a teacher. 


It precluded me from seeing all my notes in one view. I did not like how the sticky notes and images seemed to be on a story board. I like structure and limitations with my notes. I prefer for all my information to be on one screen in one frame. However, with this tool it seemed the scroll function continued until "forever". I also did not like I could not write a caption for image. It would be nice to have the option to type on or around a downloaded image. 


I would introduce my students to this technology by having them take notes and use the different color sticky notes as a organization system. My favorite way to engage students with text is to give them a key. Students use highlighters and highlight new information, new vocabulary, fact, opinion, prior knowledge, or whatever our goal is which different colored highlighters. Instead students could identify this information and paraphrase on the appropriate notepad. Students could also upload images to the adjoining notepad to make connections. 


This is a tool that I would use in the future for organizational purposes. 

Research and Thinking Blog #4

McGee, T. and Ericcson, P. (2008) “The Politics of the Program: MS Word as the Invisible Grammarian.” Computers in the Composition Classroom. Ed. Sidler, Michelle, Morris, Richard and Smith, Elizabeth Overman. Boston, New York: Bedford/St. Martins, 2008. 308-325.  Print. 

Making Connections:

Funny story I was just reprimanding my mother about Grammar Check in MS Word. She is taking Freshman Comp at the community college and I have been her resource thus far this semester. She sent me an outline for an evaluation essay that is her next major assignment. I gave her written feedback, and decided to call her about frequent sentence fragments, and strangely enough all her sentence fragments lacked subjects. As I am trying to explain this to her she interrupts and says, “Well the grammar check didn’t say anything.”      

                           Urrggggggggggggggggg!!!!!

Summary: 

McGee and Ericsson discuss the history, function and practicality of Microsoft’s Grammar Check (MGC). The historical aspects of the program reveal the strong influence of Computational Linguists (CL) on the development of the program instead of experts in composition and rhetoric. CL’s are virtually computer scientist that convert natural language into various coding. There are 4 major characteristics to take away from MGC:

1. It’s ubiquity
2. It’s near invisibility
3. It’s increasing power
4. It’s theoretical mismatch 

The everywhere existence of MGC has replaced a job duty of English teachers -- instruction of grammar. MGC is considered everywhere because most businesses and home/school pc users are using a Windows operating system, and many people heavily use word processing programs. 

MGC is considered nearly invisible because the settings in Word is automatically set to have Grammar Check on. Another aspect of invisibility is in the words of Fred Kemp, “computerize any activity without having to completely rethink the activity, including all the assumed behaviors that have become virtually invisible.” In so many words, the activity of trusting and using the suggestions of MGC is an assumed behavior the actually system itself has become invisible. 

MGC is considered powerful because of the population it is targeting. The Natural Language Processing (NLP) has helped contributed to CL’s a level of grammar comfort of advanced writers. Advanced writers are usually college educated, and fit other characteristics of the status quo that has “power” in this society. 

The obvious theoretical mismatch is lack of consultation from experts in the field --English instructors, composition instructors and rhetoricians. 

Take Away:

Become critical users of MGC. 

Implications in the ELA Classroom:

As a ELA teacher I try to teaching grammar during the editing and proofing step in the writing process. It brings grammar in context instead of isolation. This ways students are  practicing grammar with their own writing they have developed not just some made up fantastic sentences completely out of context. In Urban Education this is not much of a problem due to the issue of access. However, in a suburban demographic this was quite frustrating. Students would not even proofread their papers and would solely rely on grammar check. If you re-read the suggestions it just doesn’t make sense. I have personally grabbed a grammar book to find justification for MGC’s rationale and ended up being stumped. My suggestions for districts is to turn off grammar and spell check functions in the word processing programs. 

Is Web 2.0 a New Literacy?

"The more a literacy practice that is mediated by digital encoding privileges participation over publishing, distributed expertise over centralized expertise, collective intelligence over individual possessive intelligence, collaboration over individuated authorship, dispersion over scarcity, sharing over ownership, experimentation over ‘normalization’, innovation and evolution over stability and fixity, creative innovative rule breaking over generic purity and policing, relationship over information broadcast, do-it-yourself creative production over professional service delivery, and so on, the more sense we think it makes to regard it as a new literacy."
--Lankshear, Colin, and Knobel, Michele. (2007). Researching new literacies: Web 2.0 practices and insider perspectives. E-Learning, 4 (3), 224-240. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.2304/elea.2007.4.3.224

Yes! Yeah! Absolutely! Of Course! Duh! Are you kidding me?!? Indeed! Indefinitely!!

If we understand the definition of literacy we can understand how it applies to daily activities. Literacy does not constitute reading and writing ONLY...that is old school.

According to my ultimate resource Merriam Webster.com literacy is the state of being literate. Classic dictionary lingo. Literate as a adjective means "having knowledge or competence". Literate as a noun means "educated person". For the sake of this quote I am going to expound upon the adjectival meaning of literate.

So everything unfamiliar we encounter requires some form of literacy. Web 2.0 are tools that technological advances have made a part of everyday life. These tools have become so popular that it has even changed the way we communicate socially. It truly has changed human interaction and possibly retarded social communication forever. I keep thinking of the Toyota commercial.

http://youtu.be/TUGmcb3mhLM

Brain Rules #5 Short Term Memory Prezi

I <3 the prezi software tool!! I must admit my first prezi was not very creative or impressive. However, I can see the use of this tool for many purposes outside of this assignment and even outside of teaching. I love the templates they provide to get users started. The first template that caught my eye was the resume template. I think it is a unique way to present information whether it's content delivery or content knowledge. I did choose to use the template labeled "information", which I regret. I missed many of the prompts or template suggestions because they were grayed out. I think I could have organized my notes more efficiently if I had just created my own layout.

A major downfall of this tool was the zoom feature. I felt if my hand was too lazy on the mouse I either zoomed in or out in a very dramatic way. Also, I disliked the lack of structure. Were there any margins or boundaries? I felt like I was in a galaxy with zero gravity. I realize their can be too much freedom in an electronic environment and it is ok to provide some boundaries. Lastly, I did not like the order of the slideshow. The slideshow started from the end  and ended with the introductory information.

I would consider this tool to be a sophisticated version of Power Point. It would be awesome to use for a review of a concept or skill, and also wonderful for supplementing another strategy. I would not use this tool as the primary source for content delivery. Also, this would be an amazing tool to use for collaborative work of professionals or cooperative learning situations where students have to collaborate to produce a product.

http://prezi.com/rxozkemsgywf/edit/#44

R/T#3 ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Informational Technologies

Shannon D. Smith and Judith Borreson Caruso, with an introduction by Joshua Kim. The ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2010 (Research Study, Vol. 6). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2010, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

Educause Center for Applied Research (ECAR) released the results of their 7th study of undergraduate information technology (IT) uses on campus for personal and academic purposes. These studies are usually conducted at 4 year doctoral public institutions and draws their conclusions from the results of several surveys. The study concluded that mobile computing and cloud basic applications are on the rise. 

The various diagrams really helped me stay engaged. There was a wealth of data present, and had there been no visual representation many of the comparison would have been lost.I thought it was amazing how low the numbers were for use of netbooks at 13% and ebooks at 3.1. I guess this was just an urgency for these products created by corporate. I was also amazed to see desk tops are still popular despite the fact that laptops are so affordable. I also thought the reliance on handheld internet devices as an acceptable means of informational technology interesting. These “handheld devices” are smart phones inevitably. I cannot get any academic work done on my phone. I can check emails, but it would be tragic read a peer-reviewed article from my phone, or even try to edit a paper. 

I wish more information had been present about the demographic and geographical location of participants. I thought it was insightful to provide ages, but we have talked about access before, and it makes me question how accurate of a representation is the article. It also may be nice to see the study conducted at a community college. 

After reading this article as an instructor I really need to step it up. These students are going to continue to demand us to adapt our lessons to their daily experiences. It is one thing to use the same technologies socially or personally, but to create meaningful lessons with these technologies is challenging and exhausting. 

This is a business opportunity for curriculum writers and software developers everywhere. Teachers need pre-packaged ideas to utilize these technologies in pedagogical strategy...SOS!!!

Brain Rules #4 ATTENTION Mindomo

I have two words to describe my experience with Mindomo -- EPIC FAIL!!

This was my first time using this tool and I generally disliked it. It was confusing to use and my cursor kept disappearing and these shaded gray boxes for formatting kept getting in the way of my subtopic bubbles. Another annoying aspect was the tendency for the zoom controls to have a mind of their own. I would be in the middle of passionately typing some information and all of a sudden my diagram would disappear.

I even did my research prior to selecting this tool. I was torn between Mindomo or Mindmeister. The blogs said Mindomo was more user friendly and very similar to Office 2007. If that was my experience with Mindomo I am very relieved I did not try Mindmeister. That experience really left me frustrated this evening and it got in the way of my note taking.

On a positive note I can pull some relevance out of this tool for my students. This tool like many digital technologies can be beneficial to the tactile and visual learning. You are probably wondering how can the tactile learner benefit from this tool. When I was engaging the tool I felt like I was building this concepts and strategically placing topics and subtopics to make relationships. This is visually appealing because the information can be categorized and those Office 2007 formatting tools are available.

I would never use this for personal reasons. I'm not a visual learner anyhow and charts and diagrams or annoying and useless to me. If I ever need to be frustrated I will turn to Mindomo.



<iframe width="600" height="540" src="http://www.mindomo.com/view.htm?m=31cd2b70435b422d8c55c8f39b022ee7" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

http://www.mindomo.com/view.htm?m=31cd2b70435b422d8c55c8f39b022ee7

Perils of Not Paying Attention R&T #2

Selfe does an amazing job in Chapter 6 addressing the elephant in the room -- teaching technological literacies. 

Literacy is a concept that is commonly left to the responsibility of the English instructor to implement. Selfe demonstrates that 21st century literacy requires people to read, write and communicate in an electronic environment. The problem is many English teachers have poor attitudes about actually acknowledging a need to effectively read and write in electronic environments. English professional educators are far too focused on a humanist belief and traditions that appear rather selfish. Some professional educators are open to necessariness of technological literacies but lack the skills and strategies to actually teach it. 

Selfe explains a preoccupation with mislead funding. A list of state school districts are provided with statistics that support irresponsible allocations. Many large districts are obsessed of having machines in the room but less interested in keeping a highly qualified staff of teachers. 

Selfe later explains the social implications of limited access to technology. These limitations apply to minority communities in the United States. Selfe suggests that unavailability of technology (computers, internet, etc.) is a political attempt to maintain a divide a keep the poor -- poor. This is reflective of the literacy struggles the United States and other countries faced in the past. Books were too expensive for the poor to buy, so access was lost and literacy became a matter of the class system and wealth. Technology is not affordable, so there is a division of class and wealth to have access to these tools to be what is not considered 21st century literate. 

Lastly, Selfe chronicles what English professionals should do to change the attitudes and improve literacy for the 21st century. Below I have listed a few:

-Taking action at local colleges and universities

-Establishing literary practices in electronic environments in curriculums, standards and assessments

-Informative research and scholarship

-Demonstration in the classroom

-Relevant teacher training 

This reading was amazing. Selfe really puts abstract topics in perspective. Since I have joined the education discipline, I have been beyond frustrated with the attention give to technology literacy. It is frustrating when English instructors assume a word processing program is technology literacy. There is so much more we can do with our kids. It also frustrates me when teachers use smartboards as projector screens. However, I cannot just blame teachers I have to gripe on the leadership, who fails to provide proper training and sample strategies. After reading this article I plan to have a conversation with the instructional coach in my school. It would be nice if she could create some lesson templates that any teacher could use to teach technological literacies are something discipline specific.

I included the following link. It is very short and sweet, but I think it does an accurate job summing up what Selfe wanted to say. 

http://youtu.be/u7q5vMgkUKI

SeSelfe, Cynthia L. Computers in the Composition Classroom. Ed. Michelle Sidler, Richard Morris, and Elizabeth Overman Smith. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008. Print.

Brain Rules Chapter 3 Every Brain is Wired Differently Popplet

I experimented with popplet. The technology was user-friendly and very engaging. The oversized font and graphics puts emphasis on a short specific textual notes and more emphasis on uploaded images and videos. I did become a little confused when the tutorials for the various tools were offered. I thought it was my opportunity to start exploring and I was still viewing the tutorials.  I have never used it before, but after engaging the tutorials I noticed this tool was used on the homepage of this course. This tool precludes anyone from taking detailed notes. I would use this tool for my students to develop a visual argument to support a persuasive or argumentative essay. I like this tool and I will use it in the future to accompany a written piece. 

http://popplet.com/app/#/79077

The Unthinkable About Technology in the Classroom R/T

This Reading and Thinking blog is in response to the reading in CCC from Chapters 2 and  Chapter 5. 

I liked how both chapters took the road never traveled before. They discredited all the excitement about technology as the answer to all education needs in the classroom. This was my first time where I was given both sides to technological advances in the classroom and a chance to make a truly informed decision. 

Chapter 2 really sent me into a frenzy with the monopoly capitalism comparison. My interest for studying instructional strategies with technology is because I too believe students should learn and practice using technology as active participants rather than an audience. 

I was not confused in Chapter 5, but the “maps of computer interface” was very distracting for me. I felt the language may it difficult for me to understand the literary context. This also reveals my level of comfort with “industry terms”.  

Going back to Chapter 2 I would liked to have seen more discussion about literacies, particularly about computer vs technology literacy. So much time was spent in explaining the framework yet when we finally get to  the content I feel cut short. 

I would like to end this post by agreeing with Ottmann, that literacy is a social process. It  is reassuring that simply having technology does not guarantee any additional skill or ability by the type of instruction and use of the technology. I teach in a high school where technology is limited and I feel confident if I can motivate literacy socially I can prepare them without the technology and also to be prepared to embrace these technologies in the future. 

The capitalism conversation and the history of it made me think of the Sound of Music and the beginning of consumerism. 

The disconnect “map of computer interface” created made me feel the way the below picture is depicted.

Reaction to Resolution on Media Literacy as High School English Courses

I understand this article is from 1997 but even more interesting that colleges ironic enough discounted courses that focused on visual texts...when in my opinion these texts are the most beneficial in all aspects of life whether one continues a post secondary education or not.

I appreciate NCTE resolution, however I think its unfortunate that media literacy and visual texts are not mandatory. I worry that average students will miss out on this vital exposure. 

This article inspires me even more to make technology integration mandatory in my English classroom so everyone has the opportunity. 

Introduction

Hi Class,

My name is Alicia Hunter and I am a facilitator of learning (teacher) for 10th graders in DC Public schools.  I enrolled in this course to incorporate technology integration with writing instruction. It frustrates me that most ELA teachers believe technology integration is simply using presentation software or a word processing program. There is so much technology available and many are afraid to learn. 

An interesting fact about me is I adore miniature poodles. In defense of the the breed they are nothing like their stereotypes. 

Teach2Reach