Is Educational Technology Shortening Attention Spans?

After reading a Point/Counterpoint article discussing the good and bad of technology in our class rooms, I agree with John David Son, that technology isn’t harming our students’ ability to pay attention. Rather, it is that our students are born into a technological society and require a new approach to learning. If we, as teachers, can incorporate that technology into our classrooms, we will give our multitasking students the opportunity not only learn how to excel outside of the school universe, but also the chance to function in a way that they are already capable of and comfortable in. “Educational technology, if presented to students in a format that gives them freedom to express themselves, will engage our students far beyond a pencil and paper” (Son, 2008). If you walk into a classroom designed to engage students, get them active, and incorporate technology into that system, then those students [will be] excited and engaged in the content being presented to them” (Son, 2008).

Although, not all issues surrounding the use of technology can be dealt with while just looking at the new dynamic student teachers are faced with now-a-days. I wonder if we can adequately protect our students from health problems that result from their underactive lifestyle, played out in front of televisions and computer games. Also, there are some socializing issues that arise from an entirely technological interaction which many children find themselves in. Do our students know how to verbally talk to each other? Does our culture know that staring at a computer screen all day can cause vision problems, obesity, and isolation? Can we find a balance between technology and person to person interaction? I do not think that incorporating technology is stunting our students, but relying on computers exclusively can damage our nation’s youth. Balance, like in anything else, is necessary for success.

Source: Learning and Leading with Technology. Point/Counterpoint. August, 2008.

Cyberbullying

Cyberbullying is the just like regular bullying in that kids or even adults alinate, discriminate against, or harass another person because they are different and unaccepted by the group. The difference is that the bullying takes place over the internet or in some technological way. I don’t personally have an experience with cyberbullying, but my good friend does. She was part of a group of girls in high school, who then turned on her by creating a website where they posted defamatory statements and talking about her in harassing ways, spreading lies about her personal life. It made going to high school very difficult for her.
Schools have a tough road ahead of them when it comes to cyberbullying because the bullying happens at home, off school property, or not during school hours. Because of this factor, schools have little or no actions they can take to stop the harassment. Also, many argue that this form of bullying is free speech, which I completely disagree with. Any speech that harms another person is not free speech; it is harassment. If student are coming to class, disrupting class because of harassment that is happening over the internet, we as teachers must step in and mediate the situation. I don’t think we want to take on another responsibility of trying to regulate the home lives of our students, we have no control of what happens to our students between 3pm and 8am.
I really think this, just like normal bullying, can be stopped or lessened with community education. I will strive to create a classroom community, which in turn should invest the students in each other and help to curb all forms of bullying. I think I would do both a preventative action like a community meeting within my classroom and then individual mediations between feuding students. I also think that including the larger community and parents in an involved active discussion about cyberbullying will make a big difference in the way my students are treated.

Copyright

I understood the difference between plagiarism and copyright, but I never really thought about what the teacher’s role in this arena would be. For instance, I didn’t know that teachers could make 70 copies of a copyrighted work without violating the copyright laws. Also, I didn’t know that showing a video could get you into trouble. I thought it was interesting about Disney, and how obsessive they are about their copyrighted material.
I absolutely believe that the copyright laws are fair. As an artist, I believe that these laws are protecting my visual and my written work. People deserve credit and payment for their ideas, and the creations they make. I am not sure about the copyright lasting for 70 years after they pass on, that seems a little bit excessive.
I really think that as a teacher the idea of Fair Use is key to informing my students and having the freedom to expose my students to a variety of ideas, points of view and new and innovative things. Although, I must make sure that I am not costing the copyright holder any revenue. It is very easy for an educator to over step the guidelines of fair use, just look at the text book example, in which there aren’t enough books to go around so the teacher makes copies, but that would be costing the copyright holder money and violate the copyright/fair use laws. I believe that there are ways around this, either by having kids share, read together or not having text books the students take home with them. I also think that if I had any questions, then I just shouldn’t do it without checking with the publisher to make sure I wasn’t violating any of the laws.
It is very important for students to understand the copyright laws, and why they are in place. I will teach my language arts students a lesson on what copyright is and how to respect it. It took until my upper level classes in high school for anyone to explain to me the reason we follow copyright laws. It is important that our student know and respect the rights of other individuals to what they say, think and create.

Wikipedia and Online Sources

For me, Wikipedia is not the first place I will go. I will often talk to the people I know, who may have sources on that topic. Then, I usually try a google search and follow a few threads that come about. I like the use of book sources and find that an argument only supported by online research is not sufficient. Also, I think that the use of multiple resources is very important, not only to insure a more accurate argument, but also to give the researcher a broader scope.

As a teacher I will accept Wikipedia as a quotable source within in a research document. I believe that, like many of the article we have already read, that we need to meet our students where they are, speaking a language they already know, which means learning, using, and supporting a technology based instruction. I think this article shows that Wikipedia is a an acceptable starting point for online research. I also believe that students need to understand who they are siting and if that information is biased or reliable, Wikipedia is a great place to start and explore the validity of a source. Doug Johnson, in his article on Wikipedia, puts it this way: "As students use research to solve problems about controversial social and ethical issues, the ability to evaluate and defend one’s choice of information source becomes as important as finding an answer to the research itself. As the Internet (and especially Web 2.0) allows a cacophony of voices to rise, expressing an increasing range of views, a conclusion without defensible sources in its support will not be of value."

It is awesome to see the development of our culture into one that values the everyday 'lay' persons knowledge and understanding. I think that internet research is a key component to getting up-to-date information on a range of topics. Wikipedia specifically offers current info on thousands of topics, some that aren't even included in traditional sources. To exclude internet sources would be exclude the culture our students are living in, and to ignore the advancement of our technological society. I believe that there should be a balance between multiple sources and a student should understand how to decide a reliable source from an unreliable source.

Socail Networking and Censorship

I actually found some very interesting things that I had no idea were still out there, when I searched my name in Google and Pipl.com. I guess I should have known about them, I put them out there, but it has been two years and I forgot. As an undergraduate, I was making some edgy, and explicit artwork. I submitted parts of this body of work to both my University program as materiel for them to post on their website as examples of student work and I submitted similar images to a well-known, well-respected photography magazine, for a collaborative show with a highly respected art gallery in California. These images are almost the first thing you will see when you Google my name and they are the first thing anyone will find when looking for me specifically. I also found my Myspace page, but it is set to private, and there isn’t anything on there that will get me into trouble, anyway. I am concerned about what the Google search brought to my attention.

http://www.jpgmag.com/photos/109739
http://www.eou.edu/art/SeniorExhibition0607/Caitlin%20Mack/CaitlinMack.html
http://www.jpgmag.com/people/cLouise
http://www.lagrandeobserver.com/Features/GO-Magazine/EXPPOINTS
www.spock.com/Caitlin-Mack-ImTCP1vY
http://www.myspace.com/131903388

I think that my artwork could be seen as unbecoming of a teacher. I do not think that it is appropriate for me to be expected to change my creativity or hide my artistic expression. I am both an artist and a teacher. I am happy to discuss the ideas and the emotions elicited by my work with others, that’s why I made them available. I was not intending to become a teacher at the time I made parts of this body of work available on the internet, but I wouldn’t do it any differently now that I am becoming a teacher. This body of work contributed to who I am as a person, and who I am as an artist.

I do understand that my work will be misinterpreted and possibly looked down on and non-artists might judge me, but others have and will continue to celebrate it. I believe that this paradox between dislike/fear/uneasiness and intrigue/excitement/acceptance is the exact place I wanted my work to explore. I believe that challenging the expectations of our society and pushing the norms of our culture is a role of the artist. I am an artist and this is my work. These are the bigger ideas I hope to teach to my art classes, or at least to those who are interested in growing as artists.

I understand that holding our teachers to a higher standard is a condition of our culture. Society trusts a teacher with the future of young minds and with the future of the society itself. We are expected to not only teach our subjects, but also teach morality, values and character. Even though, there are bigger influences on our children, like the media and celebrities; we as teachers have direct contact with youth, every day--this alone is a big enough reason to hold teachers to a high standard. At some point, it can go too far. This is the fine line of censorship, which has been forever fought against and debated across cultures.
As for me, there are things a teacher should not make public where a child will easily and intentionally discover the teacher’s private life. Things like sexually explicit images, drinking, drug use, partying, inappropriate partners, etc, should never appear in places where students will readily and reasonably be expected to interact with their teachers. At the same time, I believe that my artwork, while containing elements which are inappropriate for younger viewers, has the right to be submitted to artistic forums and competitions. Both of these areas are not the same as posting inappropriate material on a Myspace page where there are student are friends with the teachers and where students frequently explore.

When it comes to written online responses I ask, would the same speech be held against another person in a public office? If the mayor said that phrase, or made that comment where children could be exposed to it, would he or she be asked to step down or reprimanded and made to make amends? We are role models. We are also human and capable of mistakes. I think it is more prudent to ask whether the speech was made with malicious intent, or just in a moment of bad judgment. Our students need to know we do our best and make mistakes and are human too. It is more important to see how a teacher handles something he or she said in haste or anger after the fact. A teacher who apologizes, makes amends, receives the reprimand for acting in a way that we would reprimand our students if they acted like that or said that thing, this teacher is teaching the students a valuable lesson that no matter how old you are, there are still consequences for poor choices and you should accept the thing you did wrong, and move on. So, I say again, what is it we want to teach our students? Through our mistakes we can teach them how to accept a reprimand with dignity and respect, but the reprimand must be given with respect and be appropriate for the wrong doing, in order to set this example.

In reading the article Have You Googled Your Teacher Lately by Heather Carter, Teresa Folulger, and Ann Dutton Ewbank, there is a interesting discussion of censorship and technology which is summed up with this quote:

“In a world where social connections and friendships are newly defined by user-generated content on the Web, it is unclear where privacy ends and professional life begins. Based on media reports of teachers using MySpace, it is clear that many educators are learning to define this line for themselves. It might be best to view these situations as significant ethical dilemmas posed by a technology-dependent, 21st-century world.”

I think that the debate of free speech and censorship will always be a grey area. With the development of technology, we as a culture again have to draw our own boundary lines of acceptable communication between our teachers and their students. I feel strongly in my right as a female artist to create interesting and thought provoking work. I will fight to keep my right to make and share such work. I will also teach my students to do the same. At the same time, I am going to keep all my social networking set to private. I am going to maintain my personal and professional boundaries. There isn’t a lot I can do about the art that is already out there, but I can handle any situations which arise from my work with compassion, understanding, and respect (the same way I want my work to be treated).

Introduction

Hello Everyone!

I'm Caitlin, a future High school Art or Language Arts teacher. My favorite animal is an elephant. Did you know that a full grown male elephant has 250 square feet of skin?

Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants

I consider myself a digital immigrant. “As Digital Immigrants learn—like all immigrants, some better than others—to adapt to their environment, they always retain, to some degree, their “accent.” That is, their foot in the past” (Prensky, Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, 2001). As I was reading the article for this class, which I printed out from the web in order to write notes along the edges, I discovered that a digital native would never do such a thing. I am proficient at email, txt msg, and web surfing. I love to download music and watch television with the digital extras. I have never been a big video gamer, give me a good book any day. It’s the things like preferring a book and a face to face conversation that give me an immigrant accent.

When I was in high school, the coolest technology was in the newspaper lab. We had ten computers with Photoshop and Indesign. But in the classroom it was over-heads and not much else. We used books and had maybe an explanation of how to site web sources, but not until I was into my upper level courses as a junior or senior. The difference in college was tremendous. I was taking completely online classes. And my auditorium classes had online classrooms and discussion boards and PowerPoint presentations. Our art computer labs were filled with the newest Macintosh computers, top of the line scanners, and a ten thousand dollar photo-printer. The ability for me to learn about functioning in our ever expanding technological world as it relates to me.

The video about including the use of digital media within the classroom really challenged my ideas. I found that I had unintentionally adopted my predecessors’ ideas about the use of the web, cell phones, and technology in the classroom. It’s not that our students are board, but it that they are uninspired. “Our students today are all “native speakers” of the digital language of computers, video games and the Internet” (Prensky, Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, 2001). The educators are not communicating in the language of the digital natives. “What they are being served is, for the most part, stale, bland, and almost entirely stuff from the past. Yesterday’s education for tomorrow’s kids. Where is the programming, the genomics, the bioethics, the nanotech—the stuff of their time?” (Prensky, Educause, 2005). It is our job as teachers to meet them where they are and our students are in a digital world, so this where we will meet them.