Chapter Four Response

I’m not going to lie, I found chapter 4 to be a bit less informative than chapter 3, as far as technologies that I feel can be applied in a classroom setting. I’ve had my own computer since I was in 6th grade, so I suppose I know most of what I know about devices and where they go from experience. A few things I read about did surprise me though. I found the pen input devices quite intriguing but I can’t imagine that the technology for such a device is perfected to the point that it will recognize everything written. It’s a very interesting take on something similar to a tablet PC but I feel like the tablet PC would work better because you are writing on the PC instead of writing with an instrument that is picking up your movements through sensors in the pens tips. The pen input devices that take up to 100 pictures a second and then transfer them to memory are quite interesting. If pen input devices can accurately understand even the messiest handwriting, I would say that they should be studied in classrooms to see how students react to them. I should think they would create a lot less distraction than a tablet PC would.


Digital cameras and flash drives both have their places in education. Kids of all ages can have their pictures taken with their work and then their teacher can display either the work or the photo, and the student can take either the photo or the work home, so that their parents can see the work and yet it is still in the classroom for all the students classmates to see. This can also be a way for students to documents projects for their portfolios, some projects are too big to include in file folder. The teacher can also keep a photo-log of all projects turned in, which would help cut down cheating (students turning in a student from a previous years project as their own, etc). Flashdrives allow students to work on a project at school and then take it home and work on it at home, and all they have to do is load the project on the flashdrive, take it home, update it when they are done and bring it back to school where they can show their teachers their projects, print their work or continue working.


In the Teaching Today section they speak of Podcasts and how universities are using them, uploading lectures, PowerPoint’s, etc and giving incoming freshman ipods so that they may utilize such technologies. I think this is very effective for college students (even though I feel it encourages students not to attend class) but I’m not sure if I feel that it would be effective for what I want to teach, high school. I think that high school students might take advantage of their knowledge of such technology and for their older teachers lack of knowledge. This is one of the biggest problems with technology is that the students know more than most of the teachers. Podcasts might be effective for college students but I feel that high school students need personal, sometimes one-on-one instruction and interaction. Podcasting lectures and lessons, in my opinion, makes actually attending class obsolete and I feel that students need personal observation and attention, they need face to face instruction for maximum learning intake. In the Software Corner they spoke of a program called Make-A-Story that helps students become more involved in the characters, plots and such in stories that you are reading. I want to teach high school and I feel that there aren’t many programs out there for high school level students, let alone the subject I want to teach, English. There are tons of math and science programs and there don’t seem to be many programs for English or Language Arts. Or perhaps they are and I am just not aware of them yet… that is why I’m in this class, isn’t it?


* Peer response: I read Malcolm's blog (I haven't met him yet but he is actually my site supervisor for a mentoring program I'll be volunteering with so I was naturally drawn to his blog because I recognized his name!) and I quite agree with what he has to say as far as input devices. I myself never knew that keyboards and such all fell under an actual catagory (I figured everything from printers to external harddrives to keyboards all fell under Accessories!) so it was interesting to learn their "title" if you will. I agree when he says that we should know what we are using is called and he's right. I don't think that teachers need to know everything in the world (but they should know exactly where to be able to find it) but I think they should know the things they use on a daily or weekly basis inside and out. I also agree with him when he says that he feels most of us aren't learning new things, it's more we are just being made aware of these things (like input devices!).