Comment on Why can't kids find Baghdad on the map

I really like how the article points out that a good portion of school time today involves “committing a lot of stuff to short term memory and then testing that memory”  rather than “teaching our kids how to analyze and synthesize the bewildering world of sometimes contradictory information and opinion in which they now exist”.  Memorizing facts has become less important as google has become more powerful.  Instead, we as teachers should focus on how to use and interpret the seemingly endless amounts of information that is readily available to students.  The internet provides students with copious amounts of information so, in my opinion, it will be more valuable for student to learn skills such as problem solving, creativity, group work, research, and organization of information.  I think it will be interesting to see how education changes throughout our careers. 

Also, in case anyone really wanted to find Baghdad on a map:

Reflection or response to Teaching Video (Sept 14)

Watching the young lady in the teaching video was inspiring, yet a little nerve racking. It showed me that it is possible to be that structured, organized, compassionate, fun and effective teacher we all are wishing to become during our practicum, however the speed at which she was able to get to this point is amazing. In order to be a master teacher there are so many points to cover and address while teaching. I know it will take years before I get to this point, but watching videos such as this one help us as teachers in training see how the theory we are learning in university can be translated into to classroom. The practicum student in the video was demonstrating many skills such as constantly using her students names, asking great/open-ended questions, having an organized class with pre-assigned partners, having her students relate to their own lives during writing assignments and letting them share their ideas out loud, and she also provided the class with some of her own personal ideas. She also was able to accomplish some skills that don't come as easily, such as creating a great flow between her activities, having the respect from the her students, maintaining order in the classroom, and finding that balance between teacher and friend while keeping order in the classroom. Overall I think that this student teacher is doing an amazing job, and I can only hope that I will be as competent and skillful during my practicum this January.

Response to Johnson's article

After reading the first few paragraphs of Johnson’s article, I thought to myself, I would have no idea where Baghdad would be located on a map. I began to realize that I too have begun to depend on the Internet to provide information on call much like that of the location of Baghdad. As my secondary teaching area is Social Studies, it appears that unlike in the 50’s and 60’s where most learning was done out of a text book, I will be unable to keep up to date with the vast amount of information the Internet provides. As Lauren pointed out in her blog, in the next decade or so our roles will switch from teacher to that of a facilitator. I agree that it must then become our job to help our students sift through the vast amount of information the Internet provides. It is important to remind our students that although the Internet does provide a large amount of accurate information, there are also many unreliable sources to be found. When looking to the future it is apparent to me that the use of electronic devices within the classroom will continue to grow. With this growth, teachers must take on the role of guiding our students through this information and explaining the relevance of the information to what we are covering in our course material. In this sense, we will be providing our students with a much wider spectrum of information. I believe this will have a positive impact on our students, especially in my field of Social Studies, as it is important to view information with a critical perspective to gain a better understanding of the material being covered. Perhaps our BC education system should introduce the use of electronic devices within the classroom sooner than later if we wish to provide our students with “the new world of information”.

Response to "Why can't kids find Baghdad on the map"

The issue of accessibility to technology and information has been a
recurrent theme in a lot of our classes in the past couple of years.
It has often become a debate on whether teaching and education should stay
relatively the same, change completely and use all the resources that are
at our fingertips, or to combine the two and make the best of both worlds.
In my opinion, I think that for the time being, it is still important for
us to approach education as a combination of the two teaching strategies.
For some subjects, the textbook is still a useful resource - history is
history, and math problems are math problems. However, with this in mind,
we are now exposed to so many different ways to educate and engage our
students in the subjects that we are teaching.

I was glad that the article touched on the shift that has occurred for
who/what the students depend on for knowledge. I believe that over the
next decade or so, our role will change from being a "teacher" to a being
a "facilitator".  Yes, students have developed the skills of "searching,
accessing, organizing/representing, and communicating" information (just
as we did), but what are they truly looking at? Students now just have a
far greater pool of information to sift through and find the relevant
information that they are looking for - if they don't know what to search,
or how to pick through the information, they will be lost in "cyber
space". Although our role may change, students still need guidance and
education on what information is accurate, relevant, etc - a lot of the
students that i taught on my practicum believed that Wikipedia was the
Holy Grail for information acquisition. With this being said, our role may
be changing, but we are still guiding our students on how to "search,
access, organize/represent, and communicate" information, just in a
different way than we did when we were in high school.

Unfortunately, the upcoming generation (and even my generation) has an
attention span of a gnat. I believe that this is directly tied to our
accessibility to information, as we can find any answer we want to almost
any question that is posed in seconds...and then off to the next task. I
think that the part that will stay the same in the classroom is the
necessity to teach students that life outside of the classroom and typical
teenage home-life is not just surfing the web, videogames and TV. Once
they have left the school, there is (usually) a job out there waiting for
them and it does not allow for this gnat-like attention span. Although I
think it is important to use the technology available to us, it is just a
tool to use the classroom...it doesn't change the other half of teaching
that goes beyond the information/curriculum and helps prepare our students
for the "real world".

Baghdad on a map

With regards to the article, I partially agree with what Geoff Johnson has to say. His comments regarding knowledge bring to light the fact that 50's, 60's and 70's education model was based heavily on the knowledge category of the cognitive domain. Specifically, when he says "my access to knowledge depended very much on my own teachers' access to and interpretation of knowledge." Knowledge has never been more accessible, not only because of the Internet, but also because of social networking that allows for knowledge to be spread globally almost instantaneously. Furthermore, current and future generations are not interested in knowing one thing but like to know how things are connected. This can be seen with Wikipedia, which connects pieces of information with other pieces of information, allowing one to broad knowledge about a subject. As Johnson notes, when he asked his son where Baghdad was, his son used Google Earth to not only find it on the globe, but also see what it looks like from an aerial and street view. Furthermore, links appeared that provided further information about Baghdad that a globe or atlas could not provide like “the latest news and reports from Baghdad, daily life in Iraq, elections, analysis of the Iraqi war, society and business.” This access allows us a greater understanding of the world as a whole. What Johnson begins to elude to is the fact that we as teachers need to address other categories within the cognitive domain: comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation.

However, where I slightly disagree with Johnson is that information does still need to be taught and evaluated within the classroom. It is important for students to have a general base of knowledge they can rely on to comprehend, apply, analyse, synthesize and evaluate information. Google’s search engine lists websites in popularity, not in validity. That is to say, whichever site has been visited the most comes up first when you search that item on Google. Google does not, however, check the validity of the information being presented on that site in relation to what you have searched. This means that without a previous base of knowledge on the subject, an individual would be unable to discern if the information being presented is credible. A somewhat interesting example of this was from a few years ago when a British couple booked a flight online from London to Sydney, Nova Scotia rather than Sydney, Australia. Sydney, Australia is in the state of New South Wales, which when shortened is NSW, similar to the shortened form of Nova Scotia, NS (link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2172858.stm). Had they examined the information more closely and had knowledge of flights from London to Sydney, they would have realized that they had made a booking error by flying first to Canada and by checking that their connecting flight was on Air Canada. However, due to their reliance on the information the computer was presenting them, they booked the wrong flight. Though a somewhat obscure choice, it does show how reliance on “the computer or the internet knowing everything” can lead to mistakes being made. To allow for our students to achieve “higher-level thinking skills”, a basis of general knowledge is required.

As such, subject teachers are still required but must begin to expand their classroom and their teaching to include more categories within the cognitive domain. Sitting and listening to a teacher tell you facts that you can find in a book or online will fail to engage students. Rather a teacher that asks students to take information and apply it or evaluate it will help their students achieve those “higher-level thinking skills.” Instead of asking “where is Baghdad?,” a better question would be “why is Baghdad’s location within the Middle East so important and how does it’s alliance with the United States play into current U.S. foreign policy.” The issue with that question on a test is that it is so demanding that it either requires students to memorize a lot of information or use resources, like the internet or a peer reviewed article or text book, to answer it. The latter, though, has been deemed not to be allowable during a test or exam. If the current model were to change, the second question would show greater insight into a student’s true capabilities than knowing where Baghdad is on a map.

As well, I saw this YouTube video a few years ago at the Online Teaching and Learning Showcase that UVic put on. Thought it was relevant to this article.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-P2PGGeTOA4

The Future of Textbooks?

Many US schools adding iPads, trimming textbooks

Many US public schools providing iPads to students, moving away from traditional textbooks

In this Aug. 23, 2011 photo, sophomore Lenny Thelusma, 16, checks out his new iPad as his mother, Tara Killion, looks on at Burlington High School in Burlington, Mass. Burlington is giving iPads this year to every one of its 1,000-plus high school students. Some classes will still have textbooks, but the majority of work and lessons will be on the iPads. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- For incoming freshmen at western Connecticut's suburban Brookfield High School, hefting a backpack weighed down with textbooks is about to give way to tapping out notes and flipping electronic pages on a glossy iPad tablet computer.

A few hours away, every student at Burlington High School near Boston will also start the year with new school-issued iPads, each loaded with electronic textbooks and other online resources in place of traditional bulky texts.

While iPads have rocketed to popularity on many college campuses since Apple Inc. introduced the device in spring 2010, many public secondary schools this fall will move away from textbooks in favor of the lightweight tablet computers.

Apple officials say they know of more than 600 districts that have launched what are called "one-to-one" programs, in which at least one classroom of students is getting iPads for each student to use throughout the school day.

Nearly two-thirds of them have begun since July, according to Apple.

New programs are being announced on a regular basis, too. As recently as Wednesday, Kentucky's education commissioner and the superintendent of schools in Woodford County, Ky., said that Woodford County High will become the state's first public high school to give each of its 1,250 students an iPad.

At Burlington High in suburban Boston, principal Patrick Larkin calls the $500 iPads a better long-term investment than textbooks, though he said the school will still use traditional texts in some courses if suitable electronic programs aren't yet available.

"I don't want to generalize because I don't want to insult people who are working hard to make those resources," Larkin said of textbooks, "but they're pretty much outdated the minute they're printed and certainly by the time they're delivered. The bottom line is that the iPads will give our kids a chance to use much more relevant materials."

The trend has not been limited to wealthy suburban districts. New York City, Chicago and many other urban districts also are buying large numbers of iPads.

The iPads generally cost districts between $500 and $600, depending on what accessories and service plans are purchased.

By comparison, Brookfield High in Connecticut estimates it spends at least that much yearly on every student's textbooks, not including graphing calculators, dictionaries and other accessories they can get on the iPads.

Educators say the sleek, flat tablet computers offer a variety of benefits.

They include interactive programs to demonstrate problem-solving in math, scratchpad features for note-taking and bookmarking, the ability to immediately send quizzes and homework to teachers, and the chance to view videos or tutorials on everything from important historical events to learning foreign languages.

They're especially popular in special education services, for children with autism spectrum disorders and learning disabilities, and for those who learn best when something is explained with visual images, not just through talking.

Some advocates also say the interactive nature of learning on an iPad comes naturally to many of today's students, who've grown up with electronic devices as part of their everyday world.

But for all of the excitement surrounding the growth of iPads in public secondary schools, some experts watching the trend warn that the districts need to ensure they can support the wireless infrastructure, repairs and other costs that accompany a switch to such a tech-heavy approach.

And even with the most modern device in hand, students still need the basics of a solid curriculum and skilled teachers

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Many-US-schools-adding-iPads-apf-1245885050.html?x=0&.v=2

Reflection or response to Teaching Video (Sept 14)

I think most of us came out of the class today after watching that video saying "man that's what your supposed to look like 4 or 5 weeks into your practicum?" I know I did a little nervous hoping ill have that kind of organization and connection with students down at that point.  There were a lot of really good things that I liked in her teaching. The first was the organization and flow of the class, it was obvious they had bought in to what she had said and were engaged in their learning. The second thing I noticed was how often she questioned students on what they had done last day as a review and then told them in detail what was going to happen that day in class. She validated all their answers even if they were wrong by saying "that's close thank you" or "good try not quite there " or "that's right on good job". I think that creates the culture for students where they don't have to be afraid to be wrong in the classroom because they feel their ideas are valued and wanted.  She had a number of different attention grabbing strategies such as counting on her fingers that got the kids right back on task or out of a group task and back listening to her. Speaking of groups i thought she had great transitions to group work and made a quick jump into it without any undo moving of desks or having anyone feel left out.  Of course the structure of the class probably helped with that but again that is something she had already developed in previous weeks.  The last thing ill mention is that she seemed to really be in it with the class. She showed them her example of the same project, when she read the poem aloud it was with feeling and emphasis.  She had the class engaged in the activity because she was passionate about it and they followed her as well because she was endeavoring to make it more of a team concept using we and us as if she was right their in it with them.