EDSS 530

Digital Reflection





Using Podcasts in the Classroom

After many, many classes introducing new technology to us, I feel like I may quickly be slipping back into an old media outlet: radio.

This last week, I did a lesson on "lifeboat ethics," looking at both sides of the argument. This came down to the idea that it is very hard to look at things objectively when our minds are so immersed in empathy and compassion. With this in mind, I had the students explore this Prezi, which includes a clip of WNYC's Radiolab Podcast titled "Morality." It takes a quick look at a thought experiment that goes like this:

You are at a railroad fork. On one track (the one which the train is heading down), there are five men on the track who will be killed if the train continues. On the other track, which can be switched to by pulling a lever, one man is standing there who will be killed if the train is switched to it. The question is, will you pull the lever to save the other five men. Nine out of ten people internationally say, "Yes, I would."

The other scenario involves a foot bridge. You and a large man are on the foot bridge. A train is going to pass under the bridge and hit five men on the other side. If you hit the man on the bridge and knock him in front of the train, once again one life will be taken to spare five. Will you push the man off? Nine out of ten people say, "No."

It really got the students thinking, but that wasn't the interesting part from a technology perspective. Sure, podcasts like Radiolab are of very high production value, but it's not that far from radio soap operas of the 1930s; there are still average sound effects and dialogue. But the students were into it. They loved just listening (though they stared at the above image for five minutes, which was on the screen while the clip played). It was a flashback to old learning, but my students tell me that "Retro is swag," whatever that means.

Murdering Julius Caesar Just for Fun

I firmly believe that William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar is not a very fun or easy play for sophomores in high school. While some teachers can really make it enjoyable, I also believe that this play is not very fun, easy, or enjoyable for many adults. The whole play seems to play out themes that are now too worn out with characters who seem just a decade or two too ancient. As a result, the sophomores need a little more to get them into it, as do I.

The best way I found to do this was with Caesar's death. There are so many incarnations of Caesar's death (whether historical, theatrical, or comical), that the students can be drawn into the play with all different looks at Caesar's death. With a little blood on a projector, the students (especially the boys) seem a little more likely to make a big deal out of the end of the play. The more they fall in love with the romantic death, the more they are likely to participate in the aftermath, which, after all, is the whole play. For the remainder of the teaching of the play, I will try to keep this sort of interest going. When in doubt, YouTube everything.

The Symbiosis Within Multimedia Teaching

Given the title, I am sure that it sounds as if using technology in the classroom gives both to the teacher and the students as they give into it. This is true; don't get me wrong. But while I fully believe this, it is not the subject of this entry.

There is an interesting clash of generations within schools at the moment. Many teachers (of all ages) express frustration with the lack of diversity within teaching staffs, whether it be too female heavy in English, too male heavy in social sciences, or too elderly in general. The last one is the one that is frustrating many of the teachers I have spoken to.

The irony in these teachers' frustration with the older age of the teaching staff can be found in their ages. The teachers who express this most often are senior citizens. While they are effective teachers in my, their and others' opinions, they feel that there are not enough young teachers on staff to help along the technology advancements at the school. There seems to be four main problems in this area:

1. Many older teachers who do not understand new technology do not push for it to be purchased by the school.
2. When the administration forces the technology into the classrooms, the older teachers often disregard it or avoid it.
3. When the technology breaks, older teachers become frustrated and lose (seemingly all of) their trust in it.
4. When something is not working properly, there are rarely the needed resources to get it up and running again in a timely manner.

I have seen all of these problems in my cooperating teachers' classrooms. The difference was, with me there, the teachers were very open to and amazed by the access that this technology gives us. When something wasn't working properly, I was there to fix it. When the technology wasn't in their classrooms, I got it in there.

I am not saying that all of these things are done by the younger teachers. There are definitely older teachers who use, understand and appreciate these things. My point is that the teachers kept saying, "It would sure be nice to have some teachers around who understood these things.

Oceanside Response

I feel that bringing technology like iPads into a classroom could not possibly have a bad overall result. I didn't need to go to Oceanside High School to understand that. Going into the observation, I wasn't sure what I would really learn. To be honest, I saw it as, "I'm a first year English teacher; I'm not going to have these gadgets for years." So I tried to think of it in a new way. I began to view it more as, "Okay, let's see what technology does to student involvement, and then I can try to think of ways to bring that involvement into my own classroom.

The students were all on task. It was incredible to me how many students were actively involved in the lesson. On top of that, the ability to see how many students had finished was an incredible tool to show which students needed attention. There were so many fascinating things happening in the class that I honestly thought I was learning how circuits worked (still not quite sure how).

The trust with the students was also fascinating to me. The students all had the ability to play games on their iPads, and as we heard at the debrief, sometimes you should just let them. If they're done with their work, why not? And there may be plenty of reasons per individual case, but overall that trust is there.

I now feel that I need to involve technology in some newer more creative ways. The reality is, I will not get iPads my first year. I am not even sure how I would utilize it in an English course. Nonetheless, I saw the involvement of the students on a new level. That inspired me to try to come up with new ideas.

Disrupting Class Questions

Chapter 1: Why Schools Struggle to Teach Differently when each Student Learns Differently

1. Explain the difference between interdependence and modularity. How is education currently organized?

Interdependence has been a long-standing construct put in place generations and generations ago (centuries ago if you want to get technical), when education preferred to see children as one of two things: getting it or not getting it. The not getting it students were generally dropped off the attendance sheets systematically or intentionally. While this reality sounds harsh — and it is — many still students found ways to succeed. But they struggled with no help. Unfortunately, our education system is still running on these century-old, worn-out tracks. Our students are calling for change.

The good news? Interdependent-style education is on its way out. How long it will take for it to be phased out is unpredictable. Perhaps this style of education will never completely disappear. The fact is, however, that modularity is on the rise in our classrooms. Modularity thrives off of the student's experience rather than the teacher's. It effectively gives the student the chalk and the chalkboard (or the iPad and the finger) and says, "Teach and learn." While many teachers with a more traditional approach are hesitant to give the responsibility to the students, modularity is a style of learning that will be adopted.


Chapter 2: Making the Shift: Schools meet Society’s need

2. Explain the disruptive innovation theory. What does this have to do with schools?

Disruptive innovation theory is an interesting way to look at the market. The whole theory surrounds the idea that there are products and service that can benefit the non-consumer. This means that the market has to modify itself in order to reach the non-consumers who were previously excluded from the market. This is when the "disruption" occurs, and the previous non-consumers enter the market in large numbers.

This explains the problem with schooling. While democracy has played an integral part in our public education and has given a chance for many young people to be successful, it is still completely ruled by public institutions and public opinion. This is a problem at times because change, or disruption, which is always a change, happens very slowly or not at all. Especially in this generation, when much of the administration is unfamiliar with utilizing technology to its fullest extent, disruption is very unlikely. In the future, it may change as the administration does, but, as I said before, this change is slow. Throwing computers into a classroom is not the solution either, as I explain next . . .



Chapter 3: Crammed Classroom Computers

3. Why doesn’t cramming computers in schools work? Explain this in terms of the lessons from Rachmaninoff (what does it mean to compete against nonconsumption?)

In my English class (actually, all of the classes I've been in at Orange Glen) A row of four or five PCs sit at the back of the class. These computers literally have tons of dust resting on them, and students use them once or twice a day to check their grades on the online module Snapgrades. Other than this, the students are not encouraged to use the computers, and they have no assignments that drive them to use the computers in class. On top of this, Escondido unified has blocked Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, and they even blocked Google at one time.

Escondido classrooms have the exact problem that Christensen presents in chapter three. There is a disconnect between throwing the computers into a classroom and giving the teachers a reasonable means to utilize them. The lesson from Rachmaninoff shows the value of the non-consumer. The comparison is drawn between listening to his symphony in person, in a hall, and listening to him on a phonograph. The non-consumer, the person who could not afford a ticket, would be glad to settle for the recorded version. The person who could afford a ticket, however, would not pay to see a phonograph play the same songs. There is a different level of consumerism at play that influences the value of the product: his music and the presence of live music. The computers in the classroom relate to this because the students need a teacher's presence in a classroom. The students also need this to help them understand the use technology for education, especially students like many in my school, who cannot afford Internet or a computer.

Chapter 4: Disruptively Deploying Computers
4. Explain the pattern of disruption.

"Initial substitution pace is slow; then it steepens dramatically; and finally, it asymptotically approaches 100% of the market," (Christensen, 97). This means that the disruption always begins slowly, and it will initially target non-consumerism in the market. Simply, this means that the market is trying to convert a non-consumer to a consumer. After this initial period, the S-curve begins to form. This S-curve is created by the slow initial period, followed by rapid growth, use and consumption when the targeted non-consumers are converted. Once there is an abundance of these users, and new competitors enter the market, the curve flattens back out, creating an "S".

5. Explain the trap of monolithic instruction. How does student-centric learning help this problem?
Monolithic instruction is a way of teaching that has one teacher teach a group of students with one strategy, denying other students their education for them as learners with different learning styles or needs. Student-centric learning helps this problem by giving the students their right to an individualized approach to learning. In this model, students are taught more as individuals than with a blanket style of instruction. The only problem with this model is that it becomes more difficult in our growing class numbers of today.

Chapter 5: The System for Student-Centric Learning
6. Explain public education’s commercial system. What does it mean to say it is a value-chain business? How does this affect student-centric learning?

The way we approach our students in school is very systematic and commercialized. We often see our students as going through the assembly line, starting at age five and continuing through each numbered development stage until they are a finished product, which we assume is 12th grade, around 18-years-old. This type of process is called a Value-adding Process (VAP) in markets. Raw materials are brought in, they are added to and modified, and then they are released to the consumer, in this case, whatever the "finished student" moves on to after having his or her or its value added up in a number (GPA). This ending value and all of its meaning to the school system resembles the "value-chain" aspect of public education.

This affects student learning greatly. If students are processed like a product, then they are thought of as products. If they are thought of as products, then we will only give each students as much attention to detail as the one before it. The reality is that some students need more attention than others. When we cheapen their value as humans and make it the value of their productivity, we lose the true value of educating a society for progress.




Learning Looks Like . . .



Letting students see you through a modern lens . . .

The Lost E-Generation

Many students walk into class with their iPhones or Androids in their palms, gripping them much tighter than their books or binders. They sit down with their earbuds in and gaze into their smart phone.

"Okay, the bell rang; put your phones away. I don't want to see them," the teachers always say. This picture plays out day after day in classrooms as young as third grade. As I am sure you have figure out already, I am a little more in line with the newer generation that understands the value of these devices in the classroom. But first I feel like I have to set some things straight:


- Yes, phones can be distracting in the classroom.

- No, I do not think that students should have earphones in during an entire class.

- Yes, I do think that there is such thing as being too liberal with phone rules in class

- And, no, I do not feel that students always need their cell phones for learning.

Now that we have that out of the way, I think it is very important to reveal that many teachers are approaching cell phone rules in diverse ways. Some take them away if they even see one. Some take it away if they are being used. And some just say, "Put that away."

An interesting thing happened in class recently. The teacher told a student who had his phone out, "Give me your phone."

"No," he replied.

"If you do not give it to me, you know you are going straight to the assistant principal's office, right?" she said.

"I know, but I'd rather go there than give you my phone," he replied.

This is the new reality: students value their phones incredibly. More so, a student's opinion of a teacher may depend on how a teacher approaches something that is so personally valuable. Students should not be able to be on their phones fooling around during class. That cripples learning. But allowing some leeway can have a good result. It builds trust, which can also mean that when the teacher needs the students to put it away, they are that much more likely to comply.

EdChat - Confusing Interests

I participated in an EdChat there was a little bit of confusion with all of the chatters. The subject was "New Media in Education. It seems fairly straightforward, but some chatters thought that it was about new technology and multimedia in the classroom, while others thought it was about news and mass media in the classroom. I tried to take a middle-of-the-road approach.

We ended up having conversations about the legitimacy of the media through multimedia, or "How much can we depend on the Internet to give us accurate and responsible reporting?" More than that, how much should we ask our students to use these resources?

The consensus that we came to, it seemed, was that we need to educate our students on how to pick and choose these sources, and how to recognize credibility. This is still a struggle for many adults as the line between blog and news get blurrier and blurrier. EdChat gave us the opportunity to explore this and many other ideas that may not have been the intended purpose. Nonetheless, we all ended up somewhere that needed to be investigated.

Power-less-point

I have definitely used PowerPoint in the past. I am fully disappointed in myself now, I am proud to say. PowerPoints have really lost their place in a classroom. Yes, it is more interesting than lecture, but barely. I believe that PowerPoints can be good, usually with shocking pictures and a sense of humor. But for teachers who have a little less personality or creativity, PowerPoints can become a horrible crutch that bores the students more than a lecture. And when things go wrong with a PowerPoint? The teacher scrambles over a few slides, the students lose their interest, and the classroom crumbles.






Prezi is a tool that I had heard of before. I want to use it more than I have in the past and try to leave PowerPoint out altogether. It brings a more creative element to a lesson if the teacher wants it. If not, it is something new. It is something that will keep the students just that much more interested, which we all know is a difference maker in the success of the lesson for everyone.

Are Grades Necessary for Learning?

Grades are not necessary for learning. I learn things every day, and I have for many years without receiving a grade. I learned how to walk when I was a toddler, and I received no grade. I learned how to surf as a teenager, and I assessed myself. Grades are not necessary to learn, but could they be necessary to manage a gradient on which students can be passed to the next level?

On this point, I am undecided. Some students receive bad grades because they are far beyond the subject matter and need a bigger challenge. Other students are not being reached accurately, or they lack the skills to advance to the next grade. Either way, grades are a way for teachers to understand the students' progress. Should they be given as much weight as they have? I don't know for sure. But do they have value? I firmly believe that they are not pointless for teachers to learn from.

Learning New Media Environments

As a teacher, this video taught me that I should take time to understand two things about my students: their culture and how their culture relates to media (or how they use it). While media is a great thing, it can corrupt a lot of worldly innocence if we are not careful (as we learned in the video). For me, a bullet-proof way to keep students engaged in the world is by exposing them to it. Students do not need a blog to see the world and experience other cultures. This is learning. After their experience, it is up to the teacher and his or her assessment. But these assignments need to make students more engaged than the assessments, or, as Dr. Wesch says, they will tune out completely and just look for "the answers."