Paperless World, Here I Come

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I feel that I’ve learned a lot about the paperless world and how it can be used in the writing process. I’m pleased to have learned about multiple sides of the topic, learn from devil’s advocates, students, politicians, and teachers. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the RSS feed through Google and the entire process of using it. I think it is very helpful and I really enjoyed it. I’ve liked experiencing the blogs, too, because hearing about it and getting a first hand perspective are quite different. I plan on using blogging in my future classroom if I feel it is appropriate in the aspect of student daily/weekly journaling. I feel there are a lot of opportunities and resources that can be used to really flourish in the worlds of writing, education, and technology to form one giant process learning.

The virtual classroom and paperless world have developed profusely through the past few years. Educators of all sorts have gave their two cents on how to improve, tweak, and change things to make them better. However, perhaps one obvious group of people that haven’t been asked yet for their two cents, is the students.

CDispatch released an article with students opinion’s on online classes. Kerri Courtney, a senior at New Hope High School who took English III over the summer in Mississippi says,

It takes about four hours a day. In one sense, it’s better than coming to class because you can do it on your own time. But at times, students’ “own time” doesn’t always coincide with the virtual classrooms’ technical issues.”

Student Greg Moore says,

It was tough. Some days the system was up. Some days it was down. And some days my system was down. I didn’t know what I was going to do. By the end of the summer, I didn’t know if I was going to pass. I was scared.

But both students did pass. However, the article says that not every student is successful in this method of teaching. With the millions of pressures students must face in school, the difficulty of technology and its functions is just another problem that could be elimated to relieve stress on students. The online course provides a challenge for students, but it may be too much of a challenge in the long run, especially those students that don’t have the assistance in the online courses from their face to face teachers.

This proves to be another example of how students will have difficulty learning the writing process and developing critical pedagogy theory if they have English and/or Writing classes, like AP English for example, in online class format. Some students are willing to work, even during the summers, for their educations. Looks like the program just needs some work to get students to channel their creative thinking and efforts into more success, so that students are not spending four hours a day on one class of homework.

Virtual School Still Takes Discipline, Students Say
by Garthia Elena Burnett
CDispatch
16 November 2007

I’ve done a lot of learning about the paperless classroom through this blog. Mostly about the improvement of education through technology and how to make the physical classroom better. However, it’s safe to say that I haven’t came across to many articles knocking the push for a paperless classroom, or the negative effects that sprouted from it. One article I just found talks about the improvements Blackboard needs. If it doesn’t improve, it will indeed allow for students to give up on their homework and writing in the classroom.

The Triangle, the independent student newspaper at Drexel University, gives many worthy points about how blackboard is a great tool to use. However, it gives many worthy points about how blackboard is sometimes clumsy to use, and difficult by limiting creative thinking.

The editor writes,

Technology should enhance, not replace, the classroom experience.

By limiting creative thinking, and incorporating difficult steps to success of writing, many students may shy away from this process and would rather do their writing the old fashion way if blackboard’s proface isn’t upgraded or changed to an easier use.

Another point the article states is,

Currently, some online classes consist of merely submitting an assignment every week; there is no discussion or interaction.

Without discussion, students cannot experience the writing workshop process to get positive and constructive feedback on their ideas and works of writing. While feedback can be given electronically, the actual face to face progress is far more rewarding and can be less interpreted the wrong way as compared to textual communication. Everyone knows the misinterpretations that can be understood through IM, texts, and email.

The article suggests real-time face to face classroom instruction through blackboard, via video or even two-way video. While this may work for a university, it may not be so accessible or successful in grade level education due to funding and purpose. Regardless, it’s always important to take a step back and realize the paperless classroom isn’t always the best way to go, right from the bat.

Online Classes Need Upgrade
The Triangle
Editorial
30 November 2007

We’ve learned about the paperless classroom becoming a popular theme in the course of delivering education. Classes have shifted from physical deliverance incorporating one or two technology tools, to strictly doing all homework over the internet with electronic turn ins, to online classrooms held exclusively online available by computers, and now? Complete college courses taught via cellphone. I mean, what’s left after exclusively online besides delivering the classwork over different media outlets?

The Higher Chronical of Education releases an article from The Wired Campus about a Japanese distance-ed University, called Cyber University, that has a course,

which surveys the mysteries of the pyramids, according to the Associated Press — will be delivered through a series of recorded lectures, which are accompanied by PowerPoint images that fill up tiny phone screens. Enrollment is open to the public, but course lectures can only be viewed on phones manufactured by Softbank, a Japanese carrier that owns a majority share of the online university.

While this attempt to appeal to students that are tech savvy to enroll in cellphone instructed courses is a nice idea, can you imagine the writing process instruction that would be taught, if at all? It cannot even begin through this style of instruction. Text typing, no formatting, no process thinking, no pedagogy…it’s all thrown out the window. This may be valuable for courses such as history of pyramids that involve little to no interaction between students or a professor (shouldn’t there be some, though?) but as for writing based and English themed courses, there’s no chance for progressive learning about the writing process to occur. Therefore, I hope this way of instruction doesn’t hit the U.S. any time soon.

Online University Will Deliver Course by Cellphone

by Brock Read
The Chronicle of Higher Education: The Wired Campus
28 November 2007

In my ENG 495 Capstone class last week, we talked thoroughly about ESL education, specifically the instruction of English in these classrooms, and how the gap between Spanish speaking parents, and English speaking teachers is growing wider and wider apart. It’s ironic, because ESL education is growing exponentially at a high rate. But not everyone is becoming bilingual. The students are the medium, trying to put a balance inbetween the two sources, and are getting the greatest benefit from being “the translator” in a sense. After finding this article from Marketwire about IBM providing schools in Arkansas with new technology to boost literacy for hispanic families and children, I had to read more.

 The article states,

“The goal of the technology is to enable parents who speak only Spanish and teachers who speak only English to communicate more easily so that the parents can remain involved in their children’s progress, which is critical to educational success. Training sessions designed to help teachers and schools access and use the software will be held at locations across the state.”

While I think this is fantastic for education in a whole, I think the progress in the writing sense will be one of the categories that gets the most success from this shift. We’ve learned this semester about process pedagogy, critical pedagogy, new writing technologies, multigenre writing, how to respond to others’ writing, and grammar in context, and we’re college students soaking this information in. For grade school students and for teachers, all of these things put together are quite a challenge on the receiving end for students, and the delivering end for teachers. I can’t imagine how it would feel to try and learn these critical processes not in my mother tongue, let alone not have parents that could help at home or even have correct translators available through technology besides a reliable dictionary to look up individual words. Have you ever used one of those free, online translators? They’re okay for one or two words, maybe even a phrase, but anything over that and you’re getting a bogus translation that is not correct. These translations of homework assignments, emails, parent letters, etc. will be thorough and correct, an even bigger step than just translating the text.

One point that I thought about before finishing the article was the number of students that would be affected by this new program. There can’t possibly be THAT many Spanish speaking students in Arkansas, can there? At least not compared to Florida or California. I was in for a shock when I read,

According to recent U.S. Census data, Arkansas had one of the country’s fastest growing Hispanic populations in the past six years with an increase of 59 percent from 2000 to 2006. According to the Arkansas Department of Education, 37,477 students, or 8 percent of all students in Arkansas, are Hispanic. In Northwest Arkansas, the Springdale School District has a 39 percent Hispanic enrollment in the public school system.

Therefore, this step just in one state will immensely help thousands of students to be able to become more in touch with their writing, and also be able to receive help from their parents if necessary since the parents will be able to understand the assignment in their language. Over a period of time, I see this being not only a convenience tool, but also a learning tool where students will be able to translate their homework assignments back and forth between English and Spanish, really exercising the ability to understand both languages as a complete system. This all relates to the realm of the paperless classroom by students being able to incorporate learning in multiple ways of development by using and learning technology, learning to use it as a tool to understand other areas of knowledge and education. If this phase takes flight, the paperless classroom will be able to communicate with parents of different languages all electronically more easily. Sometimes, it’s not just about the students in the classroom, let alone the paperless classroom.

The only thing I’m worried about is the shift for students on standardized testing. These tests will obviously not be put into another language, and I’m afraid some students may rely on having the translations and not putting for the effort to speed up their learning of English. However, everything can only go one step at a time, and I’m sure this is on the to-do list somewhere.

IBM to Provide Arkansas Schools With Innovative Technology to Boost Literacy for Hispanic Children and Families

by Marketwire

Sys-Con News

November 29, 2007

My Google Reader greeted me this morning with an article about the new School of the Future; have you heard of it? Apparently, it is a big hit.

The senior editor of eSchool News, Corey Murray, caught my attention with the article with his opening statement of,

A paperless environment; flexible classroom furniture that easily can be arranged to support collaborative, project-based learning; high-tech tools to support hands-on instruction; and a sustainable architecture designed to save thousands of dollars in energy costs–all of these innovations mark Philadelphia’s new School of the Future, which opened its doors to students for the first time Sept. 7.

At first I thought wow, that’s amazing! But I knew that this facility must have been placed in a relatively rich school district, if not one of the most top notch. Murray rebuttled with,

The sprawling facility, situated in the traditionally low-income neighborhood of Fairmont Park, just a few blocks from the Philadelphia Zoo, will serve 170 freshman in 2006, adding a new class each year until it reaches its 750-student capacity in 2009.

Okay, so it’s going against the flow in that sense, but I’m sure this school has so many unique things about it, that it could never be replicated or even derived into other schools for ideas since it is so rare and unheard of. Murray interviewed Mary Cullinane, main lead on on the project.

“Built on a budget of $63 million and paid for out the school system’s capital improvement budget, the school was designed not as a one-of-a-kind institution, but as a concept that could realistically be adapted and replicated by other school systems looking to better prepare their students for the challenges of the new global economy.”

Alright, I get it! It’s spectacular!

But I’m still not 100% sold. What really ARE the chances that a school such as this could pop up in Grand Rapids school district, or the very poor districts that I am familiar with back home? I mean, this is a phenomenal development, but I just can’t have hope that this is something that is simply created with too many strings attached. Regardless of whether it was or wasn’t difficult, it’s a new idea I’ve never even considered.

A paperless school, instead of a paperless classroom. Geez, the efficiency level of everything would skyrocket. It makes perfect sense that an entire school could run of this basis of a paperless world, instead of just small bits and pieces of classrooms here and there that use this system.

All in all, I think this is a positive step in making people become aware of the success of a paperless classroom/school/what have you. Many people fear the change, but I think this is something to help curb the change since the success is there for the viewing and taking.

‘School of the Future’ opens doors

by Corey Murray

eSchool News

September 8, 2007

The MCTE conference was by far a big step for me in my motivation and development of becoming a teacher. I’ve always wanted to be a teacher, but as a senior at GVSU and only having one class require me to write only TWO lesson plans, I was beginning to think that no one is going to “show” me how to be a teacher, and it’d just be a learn as you go experience and you just suck it up for a few years until you have a handle on it, and then you can proceed to develop your own style and really consider the curriculum and materials.

However, attending MCTE has really boosted my confidence, and I felt like it actually SHOWED me some important things to think about and take with me as I begin my student assistantship in January.

I really admire Kathleen Blake Yancey, the keynote speaker that opened the day on a high note. Not only is she terribly intelligent, but she also goes against the odds of being a thoroughly informed of technology person in education that is above the age of 40. Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve come to realize that people highly involved in technology and education that are also over the age of 40 is a concept that almost seems laughable. Why? As Ms. Yancey addresses, many of these people, baby boomers more appropriately, learned technology as adults. Many of them already had their systems, cycles, ways, certain approaches already engraved in stone when it came to lesson plans and methods of teaching. However, with the complete explosion of technology over the past decade, these boomers have had to totally revamp their ways of teaching, as the new 20 somethings glide into classrooms with an mp3 player in their pockets, laptops full of lesson plans under their arm, and the passwords to endless websites containing podcasts, wikis, and blackboard-esque programs. These people are called the digital natives; this is their lifestyle.

This issue is something that I’ve always known about and have even familiarized myself with, but I haven’t truly LISTENED to the reasoning behind these differences between varying teachers. I feel like Ms. Yancey really opened my eyes about this issue, and made me appreciate the fact that I will be a teacher that grew up on technology.

However, I felt Ms. Yancey was extremely quick with her presentation. I felt drug along trying to keep up with her thoughts. I had questions that arose while she presented, but felt if I were to interrupt, her entire flow of concentration and deliverance would turn into shambles. Overall, though, I took her presentation style with a grain of salt and appreciated the knowledge she presented to me.

For another opinion on this idea of digital natives, I turned to blogger Troy Hicks, who also attended MCTE. Within his blog recently, he posted about a surprising finding in his research of these digital “natives” that seem to work technology with complete ease. It turns out, natives are working things they already know about with ease, not everything. Our future teachers, most still students that can be labeled as natives, too, can use email, instant messaging, facebook, and blackboard, and do so frequently and quickly, and therefore seem extremely knowledgeable on everything technology. However, these aren’t the only sources used in the classroom today. Hicks believes that these basic skills should be learned and mastered in order to have the highest success in the classroom today,

For digital writers, at a minimum, that should include tasks like blogging, collaborative word processing, creating and collaborating in a wiki, tagging, social bookmarking, online citation managers, composing multimedia including video and audio, and giving and getting feedback in multiple formats (written and aural).

Therefore, I’ve decided that in order to have the best educational and technological experience, you can’t just have digital access, and you can’t just know how to write. You have to be able to blend these two skills together in order to write with ease, and be able to have the tools to expand knowledge with the click of a button.

I attended three break out sessions: “Hanging on by your Fingernails until you gain a Toehold: Advice for Future Teachers from New Teachers”, “A Classroom Community for All: Making Room for the Discussion of GLBT Issues and Literature,” and “Bludgeoning, Blogging, and Blackboard.” While all three were absolutely fabulous, I’m only going to review the last two.

I’ve always had high respect for GLBT issues and am very pro-gay marriage and absolutely adore my GLBT friends. However, I’ve never really considered these issues in education beyond having friends that were gay or lesbian while at school. Susan Steffel and Laura Renzi-Keener were by far, some of the greatest speakers I’ve ever heard in terms of school issues in general, not just GLBT issues. With their motivation, strong research evidence, and success at being bold, I hope to acquire their kind of styles some day.

While they provided very shocking statistics about students who are GLBT and the amounts of remarks they hear daily, the oppression they feel, and the closed doors they must face, the highlight of their presentation was their providing of a four page document listing literature that deals with GLBT issues and have been taught successfully. It’s one thing to say how we’re going to approach issues, but it’s another to show proof that it can be done. I’ve found I’ve read a few of the books on the list already, but I feel that I will really strive to familiarize myself with this lit so that I can incorporate it into my future classroom.

One thing that I thought was interesting was that they brought up the idea that straight teachers who teach GLBT lit have an “informative agenda” but GLBT teachers have a “rightful agenda” to teach it because they are obviously able to relate and want to teach others about being GLBT. This is hard for me to consider, because gay or not, lesbian or not, teachers should teach what they feel is right, regardless of what they ARE.

All in all, this session made me realize all the credit we give to teaching about racism, religion, sex ed, politics, etc. but we hardly even blink in the direction of GLBT issues, which are blatantly in our schools today, still hidden or not.

The blogging session was absolutely WONDERFUL, and I felt really inspired after Jennifer Strickland’s (page 7) presentation. She gave lots of tips about how to get boys involved in English and wanting to read and write, and even shared her development of a curriculum of an all boys English class, but the most worthy trait about the presentation was her passion to teach. I couldn’t help but to become almost drunk with her desire to really teach, really want to help boys want to read and write. I’ve read somewhere that people who are most inspired to become teachers are inspired by their own teachers.

Anyway, she went on to explain that boys in our day and age are highly tuned into technology. Video games, television, movies, music and mp3 players, online networking, all of it points to boys and their interests today. She developed a curriculum entirely around these concepts that require boys to use never-ending technology in her classroom. I’m not kidding, they don’t use one paper. Everything is turned in electronically, done electronically, and received electronically. However, what makes this work so great is that the face-to-face discussion is still present in the classroom. This is the ideal classroom setting I would like to work in some day. Maybe not one gender, but definitely this “paperless classroom” but still with human interaction. I think this sets up for an ideal setting since the face to face part is so crucial for understanding and interpretation of meaning, but the aid of technology enhances learning so much more than any ole paper and pen any day.

The conference was an absolute success, and I’m one step closer to becoming prepared to be a teacher.

A (Somewhat Surprising) Survey of Digital Natives

by Troy Hicks

Personal Blog

September 22, 2007

Smart Boards! Fun to Class: Smart Boards! Classroom Upgrade with Smart Board! Smart Board to Every Classroom!

Smart Board Showcased! Smart Boards: Engage Students!

Yeah, that’s how I felt too when I saw, count `em, SIX articles in a row show up on my Google Reader about this new ‘Smart Board’ technology. And granted, these were the first six articles. I saved the rest to prevent overwhelming.

Before I analyze, I have two questions. One, how come I’ve never heard of this ever-so-popular new technology if it is pretty much in the spotlight. And two, why is this new thing so great?

From the Smart Boards: Engage Students! article, author Lesley Christianson writes,

Kris Maiers was one of the two teachers in the school to receive a new SMARTboard in her classroom. She uses the board to download lessons and pages right from the textbook onto a screen at the front of the room. Students can also “draw” on the board using electronic markers that can highlight, underline or write in different colors, using the technology much like a whiteboard. She can either use the mouse on her desktop computer to navigate through options or select an icon, or let her fingers do the walking — the SMARTboard is also a touch-screen. While a page from the book is displayed on the screen, Maiers can pick up one of the colored markers and underline or highlight key terms or vocabulary she wants the students to pay special attention to. The markers don’t really draw on the screen, instead digital colors appear that matches that of the marker.

And what do the students of Maiers’ classroom think of it?

“It’s cool,” said sixth-grader Sarah Waller. “You can go up there and touch the screen and it will do what you tell it.”

At first thought, it sounded to me like this was a way to make money. First it was chalk boards, then white boards, and now smart boards. All do the same thing: allow a teacher to write on display for the entire classroom to see. But instead of chalk, there were markers, and now all that’s needed is one’s own finger.

This is definitely a step towards the paperless classroom. Students don’t even have to write down notes any longer from a teacher’s lecture and note taking on the board; the teacher can print out the entire board or email it to students’ email addresses. You say, hey, Blackboard is a facilitator of that sort of thing! I can print out my 42 page powerpoint presentation my professor showed in class yesterday with ease. BUT, you still have to put your own notes on the printed out version of the slideshow. With Smart Board technology, students are able to go up to the Smart Board and “write” with their fingers current notes that are going on in the classroom as the lesson is being taught, and then are able to have that same, exact copy for their own files for studying.

While this new technology has lots of potential, there’s always the possibility of a lost day of work if the technology fails to work. What if the Smart Board went down for a day, and a teacher had their entire lesson plan uploaded onto it? Personally, as a new teacher to be, I would feel kind of lost without my agenda and lesson plan right there in front of me, and would have a hard time “winging” it. I guess that is more of a lesson to always have a back up plan, but with new toys of technology dazzling our eyes daily, most are too busy thinking of the “coolness” and “fun” that can be used with the new tool, rather than thinking about what might happen if it didn’t work for some odd reason.

Paperless Classroom: 19834. Good ole, dependable textbooks: 1.

Complete Articles:

Smart Boards! by WJBD Radio, September 25, 2007

Fun to Class: Smart Boards! by David Howell, Edmonton Journal, September 7, 2007

Classroom Upgrade with Smart Board! by Andy Gammill, IndyStar, September 18, 2007

Smart Board to Every Classroom! by Jason Feldmann, The Community Press: Cincinnati, September 17, 2007

Smart Board Showcased! by Lori Ingham, Citizen.com, September 15, 2007

Smart Boards: Engage Students! by Lesley Christianson, Hutchinson Leader, September 18, 2007

This focus on web 2.0 and the new technology has pretty much been a snowballing effect since day one, picking up a faster and faster pace with new inventions, programs, widgets, gadgets, heck, all of that. While I am all for a paperclass classroom as the next techie-interested person, one thing that has never crossed my mind actually, well, crossed my mind today when I came across my blogger Kristin Hokanson’s education blog that I am following.

Digital Literacy! Of course! What would a person do with podcasts, blogs, and rss feeds if they had no education or training on how to use these wonderful tools?

This article really opened my perspective on a paperless classroom. She gives an example on how one student found a conspiracy theory website from google and assumed it was correct, because they had found it on google. The student didn’t know any better because he had never been instructed on how to properly search for valid websites or probably didn’t even know phony websites excited regarding specific history that should be correct. Why people make these fakes? I don’t even know the real reasoning behind that.

But all of this makes me realize that a push for a paperless classroom may not be the right step right now. People need to learn how to use these resources step by step. There is only one generation out there that grew up basically on computers and the internet, my generation of 20-somethings, and therefore we have the adaptability to learn new things with quick and brief instruction. However, older generations typically feel all of this new technology is complex and hard to follow, which I guess it would be if you had no idea about it in the first place.

One quote Kristin used really put the turn on the crack for me: “The bottom line, we are all seeking the same outcome…to produce kids that we can release into the world after 12 years or so with the ability to evaluate resources in order to prove authority. We need to continue these conversations in order figure out the best way to give the kids a good background by teaching them the skills they need to build on this foundation in the future.”

I love her notion that we have to build on a foundation. Learning new technologies and digital speak is not something that is learned once and then you are set for life. It’s a slow process that must be learned step by step to incorporate the best progress and understanding.

All of this makes me realize that while the push for a paperless classroom is, well, being pushed, it is actually being pushed by those who understand digitally and have been around this technology for years. We cannot simply make paperless classrooms by throwing the tools out there in front of people, assuming they will know what to do with these tools. The next and revised step in my mind? Pushing for a paperless classroom with training, with motivation to train, and with an open and patient motive to educate others on a possible wonderful tool just waiting to take popular vote.

The Connected Classroom

By Kristin Hokanson

Personal Blog

September 12, 2007