Thursday, September 18, 2008

An Anthropolgical View of ERHS's Technology Culture

Eagle River High School opened in 2005. As the smallest. “large Anchorage high school” we enjoy a variety of new digital technology items and a highly trained small (but busy) technology staff. There are three computer labs for career technology classes and class checkout, as well as several teacher “checkoutable” items including a laptop cart.

Most students at ERHS have access to digital tools such as computers, internet, laptops, or cell phones. A powerpoint or smartboard is not very exciting to these students, it’s just a way of life in school.

ERHS gains most of its policies and competencies from the ASD, including internet use guidelines and training sessions. Given the availability of technology and resources at ERHS, I’m excited to expand my knowledge of the subject and build upon my students effective use of technology.

To continue the entire report, click here.

Monday, September 1, 2008

Article Assesment 2

The Educator's Guide to the Read/Write Web

Overview

In the Educational Leadership article The Educator's Guide to the Read/Write Web by Will Richardson, we discover many points which emphasize the need to get our students actively engaged in contributing to the wealth of information currently available at their digital fingerprints. The internet had become a public forum, where students can be authors, collaborators, and conversationalists. Several technologies, including blogs, wikis, Really Simple Syndications (RSS's), podcasts, and social bookmarking, are available for our students to be authors in.

The entire idea of literacy is changing. It now consists not only of reading and writing, but also editing and filtering information. This demands that we teach students to question and evaluate published information, to understand what is relevant and what are the original sources. Students can find study partners and professional mentors worldwide, expanding their professional scope to one larger than simply their teacher. There are both risks and benefits of learning to read and write in the digital web, but overall students need to encounter both facets of literacy.

Reference Points

1. The new Read/Write web is a forum through which students can publish and interact with information.

2. Several cool tools exist, including blogs, wikis and podcasts.

3. These new tools demand that we are able to filter and sort out truthful and relevant information.

4. Teachers may have to put away more traditional methods of information, such as textbooks and handouts, to make way for more current digital sources.

5. There are risks involved, however, including inappropriate web content and privacy implications.

6. Benefits to students include allowing students to learn and share information in a meaningful and purposeful way.

Reflection

In our current day and age, I find it almost impossible to visualize a student research project that doesn't use published web information. However, many students will not have conceptualized posting academic information. I think it's only a small, yet significant, step to go from web literary consumers to personal social networkers to digital academic authors. if we approached each of these multimedia venues at least once (perhaps one per unit...for example in my science class, have each student submit one podcast on a cell organelle) we could cover a lot of media ground. I like Mr. Richardson's point that "the awareness of even a small audience can significantly change the way a student approaches...school assignments." Accountability and responsibility, in an entirely new package. I love it.

Also, the point that students need to actively question and evaluate published information is similarly paramount. Although many may understand that we can't just take all .com sites as fact, they many need to further learn that that can be true with books, news, and statistics as well. A further bonus of using up-to-date digital read/write technology is that it forces teachers to be on their toes and up to date as well. Blog posts change, websites disappear. Teachers can no longer simply copy 30 sets of the same old handouts and tests year after year. Accountability and responsibility. Brilliant.