Technology Integration » Student Use of technology

Substitution?

Brad Edwards — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 20:07:36 +0000

This morning a 6th grade science teacher met with me to finish up planning for our two-three week session in the lab. The plans revolved around increasing student understanding of cell structure, both animals and plants. I never had biology, so this was all new to me and pretty neat stuff besides.
We had planned the time to create a Keynote presentation. Students knew already how to grab full size images, add them to their home directories, and later add them to their slides. So there was no real learning curve here.
Last year I found a neat cell drawing on the floor of the hallway, and thought what a great idea….use a drawing program to create the student’s version of the cell structure.
Shortly before, I had added a new drawing program, Canvastic, and this time, I thought, was perfect for introducing it to the teacher and these 6th graders.
So that’s what we did. At the end of 40 minutes (some classes are longer, none shorter), several students had completed the animal cell drawing. It was great to see them learn the software so quickly. I’ve always believed that putting the software in front of the students was never a risky act.
The premise I’ve had was that students remember more whenever they are asked to complete more challenging tasks on the road to a presentation, or finale, of an assignment, and learning this new software program was one way to do it.
Students were engaged and learning as they went back and forth between the diagram on the web page and the drawing they were creating.
This process seems to be successful; but I’m nagged a bit with this question: Isn’t this more like substitution? Isn’t this process more like writing a paper and then coming to the computer lab “to use technology” to type the paper? Students didn’t draw their cells before coming to the lab, but they were copying what they saw.
Anyone have thoughts about this?

Should computer games be played in schools?

Brad Edwards — Thu, 29 May 2008 17:16:19 +0000

Many folks will say no to this question. I’ve just finished a section of TPCK. In 2003, there was a study by Heeter that compared educational and commercial computer games. That study found that educational games were “easier to learn, less complex, shorter, less challenging to play….” This resulted in a need by the school to bring the games within a certain time slot schools had available. The authors of the study concluded that computer games for schools were schizophrenic as content learning and fun had to be significant components. All one has to do is to go to brainpop.com and check out their “lessons.”

So if complex computer games that result in higher learning don’t fit the school environment, maybe that environment needs to be modified. Hmmm, don’t think that will happen any time soon, but what we can do is to provide ‘after school’ time and ‘before school’ time for students to interact with more complex technologies with adult supervision. Now, that would be interesting !

Computer Programming with younger students

Brad Edwards — Wed, 28 May 2008 18:15:45 +0000

Yesterday I finally got to play with some computer programming with a younger set. A few weeks ago, I heard about Scratch, an object based software programming tool. What fun we had! I spent no more than five minutes of their hour with me giving them the intro. They’re all on laptops, so I just had them close the lids after they logged in and took them through some of the program’s features.

In about fifteen minutes, these students were making things move, speak, twirl on their screens. At that time, I said, ” I don’t know how to make two sprites move at the same time, such as having the buffalo chase the dog across the screen.” They really didn’t believe me when I said I didn’t know. So I put that challenge to the group, and within about 10 minutes, two had solutions.

I put their laptops on the projector, and we shared the information. They were equally surprised when I told them, “I’ll bet that there are different ways of doing this same thing, but I don’t know what they might be.” And in about another five minutes, we had a different way of making things move.

I don’t plan a longer lesson with Scratch at this point in the year. With our structure, this program might lend itself well for an “exploratory” in grades 7+8. There are a lot of games that could be group designed and created by teams. But for now, a brief introduction to that tool was a great success.

Oh, by the way , this was a group of 10 third and fourth graders in a small rural school at the gateway to the Northwoods of Maine.

Boys will be boys; Girls will be girls

Brad Edwards — Thu, 22 May 2008 15:20:15 +0000

I’ve been noticing the last several years the gender differences related to technology use. In our lab before school, about 27 students (grades 5 and 6 mostly) can be found interacting with each other and the Internet games they have found on sites like MiniClip. (I don’t allow point and shoot or fighting games if you’re wondering about that.)
The gender split is 15% female and 85% male. The girls spend their time, as do the boys, finding desktop pictures, but while boys ride virtual skateboards and trick bikes, girls tend to read stories about Hannah Montana, visit sites like girlsense.com . I’m wondering about what can be done to equalize that ratio. Perhaps it’s because this is a rural area, but more likely than not I suspect time worn sterotyping by well meaning parents is at the root of this.
Yesterday we broke up the class into boys and girls. Each group had a turn at launching a pumpkin at a target. The boys won the toss and went first. The girls finally won. It was interesting to see how each gender struggles with nailing down the variables such as cannon height, angle, velocity and mass. There was no difference in this third grade group in that regard.
So I’m thinking that to be effective, we need to start in the primary grades. Next week, I’ll introduce computer programming via Scratch, a free program for Macs and PC’s.

Circuits

Brad Edwards — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 14:37:59 +0000

This morning we spent about 3o minutes working on a math manipulative site. The students were engaged, and seemed to enjoy the experience. For the last half hour, I sent them all to a site for a basic circuit construction kit. http://phet.colorado.edu/new/simulations/sims.php?sim=Circuit_Construction_Kit_ACDC We made simple circuits using the light bulb, a knife switch, a battery and wires. Then it got interesting. We added an ammeter in line, a second light bulb, a third, and watched what happened to the ampere reading. There were only a few fires or short circuits. The students were again engaged, and I think did really, really well. Oh, by the way, these are first graders!!

Early mornings in the lab

Brad Edwards — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:22:23 +0000

For much of this year, I’ve seen two or three students come into the 5-8 lab with their aide. The students would go to BrainPop, and the time seemed well spent. After we received “Neighborhood Map Machine,” I trotted out to show them the new software and for the next few weeks the students would go right to their maps as soon as they logged in. Then, a few more students began to ask, “can we come into the lab?” instead of milling about in the holding pen (cafeteria) between bus arrivals and home room bell. I would then see seven or eight students in the lab, mostly all 5th graders. After a week of this, the lab is now full with 25 to 28 students, again mostly fifth graders, on line with MiniClip, Reckless Drivin’, or some other Internet game. Girls seem to search out photos of Hannah Montana for their desktops, and one guy is fascinated with John Deer logging equipment such as skidders and feller bunchers (his dad owns several). Out of the total group, maybe two or three are finishing up their reports. Nearly all are fifth graders. I don’t allow any point and shoot games or fighting games, even if it’s Obama and Hillary with boxing gloves Some teachers might not want to be flooded with students the first thing in the morning, but I think this is a wonderful opportunity (1) to get to know them at the beginning of their middle school experience and (2) to shepherd their use of technology. I can say, try this at inventionatplay or look at this circuit program with an interactive physics applet.The questions that I get often surround some technical issue, and I then have the opportunity to teach them how to use the browser history or recent search functions. We had a late start to using this space due to new construction this year with this “program”, but next year I would expect to see students in the lab as soon as the end of August.