EDTECH Research

Technology in the Classroom

While the use of personal technology like smart phones, MP3 players, and tablets has led to an increased comfort level with technology in all parts of modern American society, the ubiquity of this technology also poses challenges. Today, it is not uncommon to see couples having dinner in a nice restaurant, but spending most of the time looking at their phone instead of talking to each other. Many shoppers wander up and down aisles talking to someone who isn’t actually present and discussing what would normally be considered private topics like the details of their most recent surgery or current gossip about friends. Some churches resort to blocking cell phone signals during the service to prevent pop songs and beeps from phones that have not been turned off. In the business world, employees will often interrupt a conversation with a customer to read a text message on their phone, and managers struggle trying to have a productive group meeting when most of the participants are reading Facebook updates on their tablets instead of paying attention to the discussion at hand.

This attitude that a user can use personal tech whenever they want to without regard for the situation or people around them extends into the educational environment as well. In a K-12 environment, many schools ban electronic devices completely, if not effectively. In a college environment, policies that forbid the use of personal technology (including phones, computers, tablets, and any other device that a student can bring with them to a classroom) are widespread, but rarely followed. It can be difficult for a professor who is trying to present information to a large group of students when it is obvious that most of the students are paying no attention at all to the lecture. Thirty years ago, it was not uncommon for students to sleep through lectures or to doodle instead of paying attention, but those activities rarely affected the students sitting near them. Today, though, if a student chooses to watch a YouTube video during class or play a Facebook game, other students behind and next to him may get engrossed in watching the activity as well. The leakage of music from the headphones of an MP3 player or the buzzing of a device notifying the user of an incoming message lead to further distractions for those students who really do want to pay attention and participate in the classroom discussion. Bugeja (2007) from my bibliography gives specific steps that some professors take to reduce access to technology during class, with the implication that this control has improved the students' ability to do well in the classes. However, I believe that for today's college students, a complete ban on personal tech in the classroom is impractical for most classes.

This problem has two potential solutions, but neither is exclusive of the other.

One solution: Embrace the use of personal technology in the classroom. Encourage students to use their device to record lectures or to share the material being discussed in class. Develop activities that require the use of technology during class time, like scavenger hunts, online discussion boards, etc.

Another solution: Have students understand the appropriate use of personal technology in various public places (stores, class, meetings, restaurants).

In my own classroom, I am likely to use both of these solutions. However, for the sake of creating an  assignment for the class, I am opting to focus on the etiquette of personal technology. I believe it is useful for students (and the general populace) to know that there is a time and a place for everything, including the use of personal technology. While guidelines for using personal tech in public locations are changing with the technology itself, the overall concept of being aware of how personal tech affects how we interact with people around us and physically present is an important one. I believe that students should at least be aware of how their use of technology affects others in the classroom.

My assignment document is posted at WeissK_AnnotatedBib

RSS in Education

Using RSS Feeds in Education

One of the classes that I regularly teach at my university is a freshman-level Computer Concepts class. This class poses several challenges for me:

• The students have a wide range of knowledge about computers, from those who have problems understanding how to use a mouse to occasional students who have A+/Net+ certification and who have decided to take the class as an "easy" elective. This makes it difficult to find activities that can engage everyone in the class without leaving anyone behind.
• It is designed as a general education class, required by many different majors in the university, and as a result, many students are there simply because it is a required course, with no real interest in the topics we cover. It can be challenging to find activities that will engage everyone in the class.
• Our university has a focus on trying to improve the reading and writing skills of students, and this class lends itself to that kind of activity well. I typically ask students to write one short paper (1-2 pages) each week on a current topic of interest to them in the field of computers and technology, in addition to a variety of other activities.

While I have used RSS extensively in the past, I have gradually moved away from it in preference to Twitter. For myself, I find that Twitter is useful because it gives me very short messages that come straight to my phone. I don't have to remember to open a specific site to view the information, and I can use embedded links in the tweets to open the complete story if I want to read it.

This assignment in RSS feeds made me realize that RSS is still alive and well (despite my neglect ;-) ), and that it is relatively user-friendly as a Web plug-in.

I have a new quarter starting up this Monday, and I intend to use the assignment outlined in the attached video for those classes this quarter. I think that allowing students to choose articles that they find interesting personally will help accommodate the range of understanding and interests that are in the class, and using an RSS feed can help the students find articles they are interested in more quickly.

As a final note, my university does use APA as the standard format for research papers. Having students provide the reference with each of their papers will help prepare the students to use APA in other, more formal research papers.

Elements of Educational Technology

The article "The Meanings of Educational Technology" was interesting to read. I found that it described many things I had already understood about the use of technology in education.

The one thing that stood out to me the most is related to the fact that this article was written in 2004--almost a decade ago. It seems to me that the practice and use of technology in education should have evolved more in the last ten years, as more teachers and schools have adopted technology as learning tools rather than teaching tools.

Ten years ago, few students used cell phones, and tablets like the iPad did not exist. Google was primarily a search engine challenging Yahoo!, and social networking was mostly limited to listservs, RSS feeds and personal blogs. The interactivity of Web 2.0 technology was in its infancy, in the form of MySpace. The word "technology" typically referred only to personal computers and PDAs, and very few PDAs were Internet-enabled.

That said, despite the age of the document, its writers were very forward-thinking in that the concepts outlined in the document are still valid, even with today's wide array of software and hardware technology.

Welcome!

Hello, everyone!

My name is Kim, and I live in Louisville, Kentucky.

I have been using computers since I was in my high school's Computer Science club in the 1970's--before personal computers existed. While I majored in French in college and in my first round of grad school, I turned to computers when I could not find a job teaching French. I now teach in the Computer Science department of a private university.

I taught French as a Distance Education course (by snail mail!) for several years while in grad school, and now I teach and design online courses in Computer Education courses--mostly Microsoft Office, but also database design and HTML. My department is in the process of putting several degree programs entirely online, so I am doing this degree to help with that. I am also very interested in learning new ways to incorporate technology into the concepts classes that I am responsible for.