We had a panel of former MACers join us today, and I think the experience was extremely beneficial. It was really nice to be able to here how people who were in our shoes are performing in the professional work place today, and the experiences they shared were definitely appreciated and - at time - eye-opening.
Once such eye-opening experience was the consensus amongst the panel about the role of cell phones in today's classroom. Brace yourself: Kids use them a lot. One of our guest speakers who teaches at Country Day discussed how prevalent the use of cell phones for kids today when it comes to discovering rote information, going as far to say that students literally ignore academic text books when it comes to test preparation and instead opting to compile notes via websites like Wikipedia. On one hand, we can appreciate the ingenuity and willingness of our students to engage with technology and use it as a medium to find relevant academic information. On the other, this opens up a Pandora's Box of sorts where we have students utilizing this medium for academic and research purposes without really grasping what constitutes a valid or authentic source document. It is issues like this that I look forward to grappling with in the classroom every day. It is inevitable that a lot of students engage in such practices - heck, I was doing it with a much crappier cell phone 10 years ago. Helping raise students awareness about properly citing sources and finding reliable research is a solution I could perhaps consider. I don't know. Just throwing ideas against the wall and seeing if it sticks - sounds like a good idea in this case.
Of course, today was the last day of EDUC504 for the summer. I wanted to just thank Jeff and Kristin for their efforts this summer, and I'm greatly looking forward to continue working with them in the fall. My eyes have definitely been opened and there is a surplus of applications from our class and lessons that I intend to start using very soon for my own sake. Whether it was creating a blog, recording a podcast, or researching the organizational value of Skype, my expectations for the fall term are sky high and I'm looking forward to reconvening more than I expected. Cheers.
Friday, August 3, 2012
Thursday, August 2, 2012
yo sup? nmu? bout 2 go2clas hbu
Please don't gauge your eyes out - I was just trying to illustrate the talking point of one of the edubloggers I perused the past few days. Specifically, I found Sarah D. Sparks blog post over at Inside School Research to be quite captivating. Specifically, her post concerned itself with how text speak (txt spk?) effects student grammar and - surprise - it does. Indeed, children are texting at astronomical rates. The blog cited research that stated that, on average, teenage boys send about 2,500 texts a month - with girls trumping that by texting 4,000 texts a month.
It's a truly fascinating statistic, but not one that's all that surprising. Mobile phones are perhaps the most oft-used technological medium today - perhaps even moreso than our laptops. We check our emails on it, we can navigate the web smoothly, and of course we communicate greatly via text messaging. No complaints here, of course, because it beats the hell out of calling someone and playing phone tag with them. It is disturbing, though, to think about where exactly we are headed as a society. I honestly only see those statistics increasing as the world becomes more and more integrated with technology. So what does that mean for our classrooms? The evidence of the research clearly shows that students are on a downward trend with their grammar and punctuation based on their frequency of texting. As students inevitably text more in the future, what can we as educators do to help combat the declining rate of...well, non-shitty writing?
Luckily, the blog offers up a few good ideas. For starters, emphasizing and administer writing assignments that differ greatly from their typical texting topics. So more formal, academic assignments are encourage - God help us all if you assign kids to write an opinion piece. You're digging your own grave with one, imaginary person I'm pretending to talk to. Also, by making students more aware of their grammar usage via revisions and examination of their works can help encourage them to be more succinct with their writing skills. Personally, I think there's still a lot of work to be done on the solutions front, but being cognizant of this issue and tackling it head on is a far better strategy than not addressing it and letting the inevitable occur - Our future president in 2033 administering his State of the Union address in 140 characters or less. Tweet tweet.
It's a truly fascinating statistic, but not one that's all that surprising. Mobile phones are perhaps the most oft-used technological medium today - perhaps even moreso than our laptops. We check our emails on it, we can navigate the web smoothly, and of course we communicate greatly via text messaging. No complaints here, of course, because it beats the hell out of calling someone and playing phone tag with them. It is disturbing, though, to think about where exactly we are headed as a society. I honestly only see those statistics increasing as the world becomes more and more integrated with technology. So what does that mean for our classrooms? The evidence of the research clearly shows that students are on a downward trend with their grammar and punctuation based on their frequency of texting. As students inevitably text more in the future, what can we as educators do to help combat the declining rate of...well, non-shitty writing?
Luckily, the blog offers up a few good ideas. For starters, emphasizing and administer writing assignments that differ greatly from their typical texting topics. So more formal, academic assignments are encourage - God help us all if you assign kids to write an opinion piece. You're digging your own grave with one, imaginary person I'm pretending to talk to. Also, by making students more aware of their grammar usage via revisions and examination of their works can help encourage them to be more succinct with their writing skills. Personally, I think there's still a lot of work to be done on the solutions front, but being cognizant of this issue and tackling it head on is a far better strategy than not addressing it and letting the inevitable occur - Our future president in 2033 administering his State of the Union address in 140 characters or less. Tweet tweet.
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