What May Be "The Best College Class Ever"

The University of Florida has a very controversial class on its campus at the moment. The students play StarCraft, a popular computer game, for course credit. The class' instructor, Poling, says that the video game helps develop students' "on-the-go decision making skills, resource management skills, and penchant to analyze ever-changing scenarios." Students will not only have to play the game themselves, they also go through other classmates' plays anid determine which decisions were intelligent and which skills need to be developed more thoroughly. Poling's class also requires group work and written assignments.
Advocates of technology-based education are hoping that Poling's class will change the perceptions of these types of classes. If his class has the correct ratio of academic challenge to gaming, technology-based classes could become more accepted in the academic community.
While I understand that this class is more than just playing a computer game, I have a little trouble viewing it as a "real" college course. I do not see how a class where one plays a computer game and assesses others' gameplay can be on par with history classes or calculus. I think that bringing more technology into classes is almost always a good thing, but I do not think that going as far as centering a course around a computer game is where our technological advancements should be headed.

Gearing Up for the New School Year

I am really glad I read this article because it shows how technology can be used in a really practical and low-budget way. The teacher who wrote the article explains that this year he is adopting the mantra "Get Teched Up!" and will be integrating technology into his classroom in new ways. He plans on scanning all of his curriculum materials to create pdf files, creating a website that will be used for posting homework and other assignments, and using a ceiling-mounted projector (though not an interactive white board). The fact is that not all schools have the resources to give each teacher a Smartboard or to hand out laptops or ipads for students to use. That doesn't mean, however, that teachers won't be able to use technology to benefit the kids. This article discusses free or inexpensive ways that teachers can use technology, which may end up being as useful and practical, if not more so, than knowing how to use fancy and expensive technologies.

The Story behind a Wikipedia Entry

Liz Exo’s Blog Post:

I was really interested to read this article for many reasons; first of all, Wikipedia seems to be under such a hot debate in the world of education. As a student, I find Wikipedia to be useful when researching basic information about topics that are unfamiliar to me. It’s a great place to start, in my opinion. However, throughout high school all of my teachers have strictly denied Wikipedia as a credible source, saying that anyone can add information to the pages. While this is true that anyone can edit a Wikipedia entry, there is a story behind it.

In the article the author says that the ability to continually edit Wikipedia entries is very beneficial. From a historical perspective, it is really important that we document what everyone has written about a certain topic. For example, the author writes about the Iraq War Wikipedia entry, and how all of the edits have been documented in a series of books. This means we have everything that was written about the war in a physical copy. This allows us to look back into history to get the whole picture, as opposed to history textbooks that sometimes just give one side of the story. So overall, I think Wikipedia is changing the way we document our history, and it’s for the better.

Spell-check use on writing exam prompts debate

I found this article on eschoolnews, and was completely baffled by the concept. The Oregon Department of Education has made a decision that allows students to use spell-check for an online version of their standardized tests. Apparently, these tests place a heavy focus on punctuation, capitalization and other elements of writing that are easily corrected by spell-check. Also, in order to make this fair, students who are taking the taking the paper test will be allowed to use a dictionary to fix their errors.

I feel as though this is a completely ineffective decision and will prove to be more of a detriment to student progress than an aide. Though we live in an age where technology is used in everyday life, it is still necessary to understand the fundamental components of writing. Additionally, this creates an unfair discrepancy between those taking the test online and those taking the paper version. Though a dictionary can be helpful, it will not recognize errors for the students as a spell-check program would. In other words, the student would have to know that the word is spelt wrong in order to look it up. In my opinion, this will create an array of completely unreliable test scores.

Technology can be very helpful in the classroom and is now necessary for students to use. However, applying technology to standardized testing in this way will not help to demonstrate anything that the student knows. Instead using spell check on these tests will simply show that they student understands how to use the spell-check function on the computer.

Twitter Article: Welcome back to school "reform"

This entire article is about what happened this summer with No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and the Race to the Top intiative. The author blogs regularly, and this article is from one of her blogs; she took the summer off, so this post is mainly her catching up on what happened.
She makes it very clear that she disagrees with these intiatives, stating that teachers are losing the chance to teach what they find to be important and only being able to teach those areas that will help their students score satisfactorily on the state achievement tests. I completely agree with her; I find it ludicrous that teachers are being evaluated on their students' ability to be good test-takers. It is not fair that schools are having their budgets cut and teachers are being placed on probation because they are not teaching to the test. I wish there was a way to evaluate teachers in an effective manner without relying on test scores. Standardized tests can only prove so much...
The author also discusses the ways certain schools and even the government is handling the results of the standardized tests. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan rewarded the Los Angeles Times for listing in the newspaper names and pictures of teachers they deemed inadequate. Furthermore, major civil rights groups issued a statement discussing their opposition to NCLB and Race to the Top and scheduled a press briefing, but were "persuaded" by Duncan to cancel the briefing and release the statement without incident.
I completely agree with Ravitch in that NCLB and Race to the Top are hurting our schools rather than helping. One can only hope that as schools fail to meet the government's expectations, Secretary Duncan and President Obama re-think their methods of "helping."

It's Elementary - Chapter Twelve

Two of my favorite resources that recently become available to educators and students are E-mail and Blogging. In this age of technology, students are constantly using the computer in a variety of ways. Oftentimes, students are using technologies such as E-mail and blogging in their personal lives anyways. I feel as though these two can be a powerful tool in keeping students engaged in their schoolwork.
Oftentimes, in high school, I wished that we had access to an E-mail account that connected us to our teachers and fellow students. Oftentimes, there was an instance where I had a brief question about an assignment while I was working on it at home that could have been easily resolved through a quick E-mail response. I believe that using E-mail has great potential for collaborative learning. As the text mentions, E-mail can be used to discuss books or class topics. Also, the concept of using E-mail to communicate with another class is a modern take on the traditional 'pen-pal'. However, using E-mail can immensely speed up this process and allow students to get immediate response from their peers. This can build strong connections and and relationships that are invaluable to our students.
Through my college career, I have found that blogging can be extremely helpful in the sharing of information between students. Multiple courses at IWU have allowed me to practice this tool. Like E-mail, I have found that this can be a quick way to share information with my peers.
However, both of these technologies have a downside. Teachers must monitor to ensure that students are not making inappropriate comments. Especially in a time where online bullying is quite prevalent, we must protect our students from hurtful comments.
Overall, if monitored properly, I feel as though E-mail, blogging and other online resources will completely change the way that students and teachers interact and learn.

It's Elementary - Chapter Seven

This chapter brought up ideas that I had never considered in relation to word processing. Personally, I prefer writing my ideas with a pencil and paper before I type an assignment into a word document. However, Chapter 7 enforced the benefits of using word processing with students. I began to realize how poor spelling students can become overwhelmed an 'bogged down' trying to spell correctly and look for their errors that they actually accomplish very little work. Also word processing can help students to find alternatives for words that are continuously repeated throughout the assignment.
Most importantly, my attention was brought to the fact that using word processing can 'level the field' for evaluating writing. Oftentimes, we can pass judgment on a student's work based on their handwriting without even realizing we are doing so. When a student has very messy and illegible handwriting, teachers will overlook the quality of the content that they have written. On the other hand, when a student has very neat handwriting, it is easy to overlook errors and give a good grade simply because the page looks more appealing. In this respect, using word processing can be very beneficial to our students success.