I’ve been tardy getting this post written. I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to write.
The first hour of class was a presentation by Bob Zogby about the use of iPods in the classroom. I had mixed feelings about what he had to offer and I was glad the students did too. I’m thinking his presentation belongs more in a methods class. There are actually so many other things with tech that I’d love to have the students look at and think about. The problem is lack of time. Dr. Ikpeze had a technology piece added to this course that Dr. Broikou and I took out. I just don’t know how she managed to squeeze it in. We’re trying to integrate tech stuff into each course, but I think we need a whole course on it.
I enjoyed the reading assignments for the week. The Baron article is interesting and accessible. He makes important points. However, it’s important to remember that he wrote that article before the Web 2.0 world, so some of what he says is already dated. That’s the problem with anything about technology. It’s a moving target. My instant messaging research was hot in 2004, but now it’s old news. On to the next big thing. dana boyd (no capitalization) really hit it big in scholarship with her work on social networking. That’s still hot, but we don’t know for how long. Dan Perkle’s stuff on “cut and paste” literacies is important. And these are all things we haven’t the time to get to in this course. It’s so frustrating. We’re barely scratching the surface in this course.
But that’s what I have to keep reminding myself – this really is a survey course. Hopefully something within the course will pique students’ interest and they will carry that interest with them through out their program and into their teaching. They can then pursue it further in their capstone and in their practice. I have to keep reminding myself, I can’t do everything.
But the thing with literacy and technology that I really want the students to get is that literacy is itself a technology and that the technology mediates or changes the ways we interact with the world – and that we change the literate form as well. The Larson & Marsh chapter was the weakest of the readings. I’m thinking I might leave that one out in the future and find something else. I love Colin & Michele’s work on literacy and technology, but I’m thinking there might be a better article than the chapter they read. Or maybe skip that chapter and just go to chapter 3. But L&K’s overview of the history of literacy is important. Maybe that belongs earlier in the semester – when we’re doing the history piece. Heck, Baron could fit there too.
The students discussed the readings and I think they got the gist of the readings. That’s why I like reading the notes on the wiki. It really gives me a sense of what meanings are being made. So far, this group of students has been impressive. They are able to extract the important points and make good connections. If I wasn’t seeing it, we’d have to do a lot more revisiting of the readings.
I gave the students the last half hour of class to work on their literacy artifact reviews. I’m really stressing that they are to just play and figure it out and come up with something. I wish there wasn’t a rubric attached to it. I know it’s hard for the students to “wing it.” They’ve been socialized to a particular way of thinking and acting that has afforded them success in education. I want at least in this little bit of the course for them to experience the potential of the new literacies to subvert and transform school as usual.
We’ll continue with the new literacies this week and then on to classroom implications. I’m still trying to figure out what readings to cut. All of them are important. Maybe we can do a jigsaw with them. Yeah, I like that idea.
November 15, 2008 at 12:52 pm
I have really enjoyed our last few weeks of reading in regards to apply technology into literacy and new literacy studies. Technology is important and interesting to me; it’s something that when I become a teacher I would like to utilize in my classroom. I think that technology provides us with hundreds of unique opportunities that our students deserve and need to be a part of, which is probably why in the last few weeks I feel like I’ve been continually writing things down that I can take into my future classroom. I also enjoyed the presentation from the guest speaker last week but I agree with many of the students in our class who said that it was a pricey endeavor. There are so many free or inexpensive tools online that can be just as meaningful to a student’s learning, I hope the presentation didn’t discourage people from thinking that technology can be applied to the classroom. I also found from this week’s readings a lot of interesting theories and applications that I am eager to discuss with my group, especially the Larson and Marsh chapter. I’m very interested to see how my group feels some of these practical applications would work.
November 16, 2008 at 9:34 pm
I enjoyed the presentation on Monday by Bob Zogby about the iPod use in the classroom. He could do amazing things with his iPod and this obviously made taking presentations from classroom to classroom much easier. There were definite good points to using the iPod to teach but I couldn’t get past the fact that the cost was very overwhelming for all of the components and programs involved. This may be doable for a teacher of many years or maybe a teacher with a wealthy spouse but for the majority of us, this is an expense that is a little over the top. I feel as though I spend enough in my classroom to provide pencils, paper, snacks and other classroom necessities and these alone send my spending over the amount allowed to be claimed by taxes. I would have to believe that teaching in Pittsford, Mr. Zogby may not incur as many expenses as teachers in other districts, as many families in that area have no difficulty sending their children to school with paper and pencil with a full belly. There for this may help him to afford the large expenses involved with teaching using an iPod. I can only hope that after teaching for several years, I can afford to bring this technology and kind of teaching into my classroom.
November 17, 2008 at 11:02 pm
I have to agree with the other two comments. I felt as though the I-pod presentation was great, but with the expensive costs of all of the equipment, it is hard to imagine putting all of those resources into a tool for the classroom. And I agree with what was said that much of those activities can be done through other programs such as windows or powerpoint, etc. I guess it is an ideal tool to use and would be wonderful for students to utilize. I think its great to have all of these presenters and videos to use as additional resources for practice and theory, but I wish we had more in class time to work on our projects.
November 23, 2008 at 4:35 pm
Mr. Zogby’s presentation was very interesting. How he brings music into everyday instruction was great. In addition, how he has been able to use the Ipod to deliver video, song, and presentation is great! Unfortunately, I agree with others in that watching his presentation as interesting as it was, at the same time was almost overwhelming due to all the different components one would have to buy and of course the cost. On the same note, as others have said I feel as well that many of the things he was doing could be done without all of that equipment. I feel as though I am pretty good with technology and I myself own an Ipod, yet how it was presented seemed so confusing. I feel as though if one were to want to use what was given they would need to have a lot of money along with further instruction on how to use the given technology.