Digital IEP

I'll be the first to admit that during my student teaching I made no complex use use of technologies. In fact, I struggled just to get an entire class on the internet at the same time, using simple resources on prescribed websites such as the PBS history pages.

One typical "digital" assignment from last January was the following:

• 26 pieces of paper were distributed to the students, each bearing the name of an interesting person from 1880-1920. Some of the less complex ones were handed out to students who had a hard time doing research in the past (e.g.: Wright Brothers instead of William Jennings Bryant).
• The students were given free run of the internet (which essentially meant Wikipedia for most of them), and filled out information on pre-made sheets that were divided in categories such as "what are three interesting things this person did?", and "if this person came back from the dead and had only one thing to say, what would it be?".
• They then had to present their person to the class orally, while all the other students took notes on their person on yet another, simpler set of sheets for a participation grade.
• Three of the 26 people were picked at random as part of the unit final.

Here are some issues with the lesson:

• The lesson treated the internet as a giant encyclopedia.
• The lesson was entirely in the past.
• The lesson emphasized the studied persons' quirkier, less significant aspects.

Here is a possible second half of the lesson, which would involve the students more closely:

"A government for the people - but what do the people want?"

Let us take a look at a broad issue that reflects the social concerns of the turn of the century: state-sponsored health care. First, find the party named on the piece of paper you received in class, and go to the link listed to the right of it:

• Communist Party of America: People's World
  
• Republican Party: Debunking Democrats
  
• Socialist Action: Socialist Action News
  
• Green Party of the United States: Green Party Watch
  
• Democratic Party: The Huffington Post
  
• Boston Tea Party: BTP Blogs
• United States Marijuana Party: USMJP Political Forum
• Social Equality Party: World Socialist Website
  
• Socialist EqualityParty: socialequality.com
  
• Southern Party of Georgia: News Briefs
  
• Libertarian Party: The Party of Principle
  
• Working Families Party: NYWF - Vote Your Values
  
• Workers World Party: International Action Center
  
• Constitution Party: constitutionparty.com

Then find an article, post, or forum thread about health care, and enter the debate. You are expected to contribute at least twice in a constructive way. Other websites may be used with teacher authorization.

When this is done, write what you think your turn-of-the-century person may have said about the public health care debate, and why. You are allowed to begin a thread, or to follow threads started by classmates if there is no pre-existing thread. Then, compare/contrast that position to yours and to that of the party you were assigned to study.

Digital story

I first made a digital storytelling rubric that would allow me to have some perspective on the story.

My first idea was to deepen my understanding of colors in the Tlingit language by going into a cave on the outside of Kruzof Island, Near Engano Point, that is called Neixinté X’aak in Tlingit. The minerals found in the back of the cave are used to define a green color, and no one was able to tell me where I could see a sample of it. Furthermore, Neixinté X’aak is associated to an interesting story about two bold young men who go out there to gather rocks (to make pigment), and get caught by bad weather. The story is fairly long, but in the end they get back to Sitka just fine with their load of mineral and without any obvious transformation. That story seemed an interesting counterpoint to the story I tailored to illustrate the story map concept, and I kayaked out to Kruzof for three days but was unable to get to the outside of it because of a high pressure front moving in at that time.

The trip to Kruzof did not turn out totally in vain after all, because the entire area around the volcano was enshrouded in fog while I was over there. I then remembered that I had an unfinished design that related to the classic and sometimes over-analyzed story of Fog Woman, and thought I'd tell the story. I finished the design over the following couple of weeks, and here is the result:

Thank you.

Article Assessment 2

This is a review of the article Teens and technology -- a good match?, by John Matuszak.

Overview

This feature article briefly summarizes a report by the Kaiser Family institute, called Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18- Year-Olds. It then presents some interviews conducted at the local middle and high schools.

• Technology exposure (everything from radios to online gaming communities and texting) in 8- to 18-year-old Americans has risen by more than one hour a day from five years ago, to over 7.5 hours a day.
• Most technology use is unsupervised, although some school districts enforce policies designed to curtail use, and prevent cheating and cyber-bullying.
• However, technology is also fostered in the schools, so that education can remain in step with the times and take advantage of those same technological revolutions that may be working against them in their recreational applications.
• Parents should be involved with their children in the cybersphere as well as in "unplugged" contexts.

Reflection

The report itself is most fascinating to me, because the school district employees being interviewed restated ideas that were debated many times over in the Sitka School District.

The least expected results in the report were:

• Of all studied forms of media consumption, reading was the only one to which young Whites dedicated more time than young Blacks or Hispanics.
  
• The incidence of internet and computer access did not vary as much between races and classes as I would have predicted (16 percentage points is the widest single-factor spread, out of 24 measures)

Black youth's use of all studied media is significantly higher than that of White youth's, but the statistical significance of that data shifts when one considers that the discrepancy is due almost entirely to a higher exposure to television and music. What we are examining here is the more interactive brand of technology, and this is where the "equality" is most glaring.

Free marketers such as Thomas Friedman and the Economist will usually use this data to predict that the democratization of the means of intellectual production has erased the old left-wing criticism that:

“The prevailing social order perverts or annihilates the creative capacity of the immense majority of people and reduce the possibility of creation – an age-old response to human anguish and the certainty of death – to its professional exercise by a handful of specialists.” Eduardo Galeano 1976

However, left-wing thinkers will raise the undeniable facts that there is a tremendous quality gap in the nature of the technology that young people are exposed to, and that it is top-down economics, not free markets, that get kids copying Wikipedia and PBS primary sources rather than IMing their flirts.

This irreversible technological revolution comes with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. On the whole, those technologies are very beneficial, but we still have the responsibility as educators, parents, citizens, and consumers of media, to ensure that they are reaching everyone in the most beneficial way possible (which includes having fun, of course).