The Educational CyberPlayGround Educational CyberPlayGround

 

How and why do you Integrate Technology into the Classroom?

TEACHERS | INTEGRATE TECHNOLOGY | WEB TOOLS | ONLINE CLASS | FREE EDUCATION

CHILDREN LEARN BY IMITATION

We learn by imitation so teachers need to model what we want students to learn. How do you want to teach?

If Professors in higher education who teach K12 teachers and administrators don't learn to use it - and model using it in front of the future teachers and administrators they teach, but continue not to integrate the internet and technology into their own classroom instruction then these same pupils who they graduate to become the future administrators and teachers of our children won't be able to integrate technology into their classrooms either.

How to Integrate Technology into the Classroom

1) Learn to Be a Ham Radio operator

2) WIFI Wireless Wide Area Networks for School Districts by Dave Hughes

3) And if you need a directional antenna, DIY wifi signal booster, you can build a Pringles cantenna on the cheap! Make your own Antenna extend your wifi connection.

4) How to secure Software Defined Radios

5) CLASSROOM RESOURCES, K-12 RADIO ACTIVITIES CONNECT RADIO TECHOLOGY TO SCIENCE, SOCIAL STUDIES AND LANGUAGE ARTS.

5) Code Talkers To keep the Japanese from getting American secrets in World War II, Navajos - among the original Americans - spoke over the radio in their native tongue. Learn about the most romantic story in American cryptology.

6) Integrated Thematic Unit and Lesson Plans

7) The role of computers and programming today: Mr. Gregor Lingl bio30min ◊ Beginner
"The reason that I mention this is that 27 years ago, a twelve year old child with a new toy and a shiny orange paperback that told him how to use it could draw the graph of sin, and then play with the program to get more interesting programs.
Whereas now, in 2009, a forty year old professional computer programmer sitting in front of a box at least 1000 times more powerful with a screen one hundred times the size that can display millions of colours is having to google for how to do it."
Great Power Point explains and shows. Seven ways to use Python's new turtle module (#88) Since releases 2.6/3.0 Python has a new turtle module. It was conceived primarily as a tool for teaching in a way that allows for using a range of different programming styles as well as different approaches to doing geometry, thus constricting the instructor's approach and ideas as little as possible. One of the main goals was to provide quick interactive access to nevertheless powerful graphics without any need of preliminary GUI-composing overhead. Have a look at them and see if there's something you like or something you find useful

7) A FREE EDUCATION ON THE INTERNET?
 No books to buy, no hidden fees. Complete courses and tutorials for more than 120 different vocational and academic disciplines. This is the best reason in the world to use technology in your classroom or your home.

TRY ONE

Middle School

Why doesn't your school use
free software?

That is a business decision. Business Relationships are not based on what makes good sense for education but on money. Ask your school board why they don't have free software. Ask your school CIO why they aren't using free software. Your school CIO decides where to spend money.

WHY USE TECHNOLOGY?
What's so great about the money and time spent on using technology? Why would administrators or teachers need to learn how to use it? Computer History CHM YouTube channel here:  www.youtube.com/computerhistory

"I believe that what is wrong with our schools in this nation is that they have become unionized in the worst possible way. This unionization and lifetime employment of K-12 teachers is off-the-charts crazy. ... What kind of person could you get to run a small business if you told them that when they came in they couldn't get rid of people that they thought weren't any good? Not really great ones because if you're really smart you go, 'I can't win.' "-- Apple CEO Steve Jobs, speaking to an education reform conference in Texas just before he was tackled and dragged off by members of Apple's education sales unit.

The media specialist is the only professional who specializes in teaching technological information literacy is one point of view. Due to teacher contractual constraints for prep time especially at the elementary level, the media specialist is the only educational professional trained to integrate and teach technology through collaboration with teachers in all curricular areas. Without the expertise of an information specialist, students fail to become information literate. 21st Century Literacy includes that we graduate students who know how to use research databases, e-mail netiquette, web safety and computer software programs.
Students also need an authentic reason to use these technology tools. The media specialist receives special training in a graduate level program to teach technology and information literacy fully integrated into the curricula; they are experts in both areas and should be of primary consideration when reassessing or contemplating how to teach technology. Computer teachers, only have expertise in teaching applications but they miss everything else.

Do kids use computers and get anything out of it?
Harris Interactive study reflects youth's blurring of the line between online and offline PDF . Harris folded all teen social tools into its research, finding that 85% of 13-to-18-year-olds have email contact lists, 81% IM buddy lists, 77% have cellphones, and 75% have social-networking or community site profiles. But "for both tweens [ages 8-12] and teens [13-17]. Video Games

Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds is the third in a series of large-scale, nationally representative surveys by the Foundation about young people’s media use.  The report is based on a survey conducted between October 2008 and May 2009 among a nationally representative sample of 2,002 3rd-12th grade students ages 8-18,
including a self-selected subsample of 702 respondents who completed seven-day media use diaries, which were used to calculate multitasking proportions.

 

Google Wave and Education: Increasing Interactivity and Collaborative Learning

Why People Will Use Wave: Ease of Use, Speed, Real-time Gratification, Extensibility, Integration". Simply stated, Google Wave is a real-time communication and collaboration platform that incorporates several types of web technologies, including email, instant messaging (IM), wiki, online documents, and gadgets. In more technical terms, Google Wave is a platform based on hosted XML documents (called waves) supporting concurrent modifications and low-latency updates. Dion Hinchcliffe describes Google Wave as a collaboration and communication mashup that "consists of a dynamic mix of conversation models and highly interactive document creation via the browser." This is an important observation, because the Google Wave client follows a common trend for new applications to operate completely within the browser.
Dozens of teachers, students, and academics of all stripes wrote in saying that they need better and faster ways to communicate and collaborate in and out of the classroom. Middle School Technology Coordinator Dov wrote:

I am taking part in a program called Powerful Learning Practices (PLP, or PlanetP, if you like). PLP is a professional development model that immerses educators into environments that allow them to learn literacies of 21st Century teaching. The goal is that the teachers bring this new paradigm of learning and teaching back to their schools, becoming its best advocates. While the impact isn't as large as, say, the crew of the Enterprise saving a planet from Klingon destruction, it has the potential to affect thousands of teachers and students.

High school junior Sean wrote: "In my AP European History class, my fellow students and I are always struggling to keep up with taking notes. After each class we all email each other the notes that we took, and it's always up to us to compile all of the important info, and figure out the validity, etc. With Google Wave, we could have one master notebook, where we could verify all the info, highlight what will probably be the most important for the international exam, and just improve the process of studying completely."

Annie Smith, MLS Reference and Instruction Librarian
Utah Valley University Library
"I agree that there are those of us who will resist e-readers/e-formats because we much prefer the physical book. But I think that the reasons a lot of our students take the time and effort to print off their course reserves at the beginning of the semester has to do with the fact that they can't take notes or underline or highlight text on the computer without extra effort and that extensive reading on a computer is downright uncomfortable after a while. Plus, there's the expense of the e-readers. A lot of our students use library computers because they can't afford them at home.
What interests me about these articles and renewed discussions is the fact that no one seems to be talking about e-readers as an opportunity for publishers and other businesses to lock up content behind license agreements and terms of use."

"Progress is overrated. Or so says Martin A. Rice Jr., an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown. He has no love for the computer (the keys are "too mushy," he says). He despises PowerPoint. He prefers plain paper over glowing screens. If he could go back to making copies on a mimeograph, he would. "I'm fond of the old and suspicious of the new," he says. Mr. Rice explains all this over a rotary telephone from the 1970s. Later he bangs out a follow-up message on his 1938 Underwood Champion portable typewriter. " Langdon Winner has a word for our obsession with devices like the laser pointer: technomania. Mr. Winner, who is a professor of political science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has written about "privacy-wrecking electronics" and the dark side of technology.A few years ago, Mr. Winner made a short, satirical film mocking the many computer-based education products on the market. It featured an imaginary device called the "Automatic Professor Machine."

Internet Access in U.S. Public Schools and Classrooms 1994-2005 Report
This report presents 11 years of data from 1994 to 2005 (no survey was conducted in 2004) on Internet access in U.S. public schools by school characteristics. It provides trend analysis on the percent of public schools and instructional rooms with Internet access and on the ratio of students to instructional computers with Internet access. The report contains data on the types of Internet connections, technologies and procedures used to prevent student access to inappropriate material on the Internet, and the availability of hand-held and laptop computers to students and teachers. It also provides information on teacher professional development on how to integrate the use of the Internet into the curriculum, and the use of the Internet to provide opportunities and information for teaching and learning.

GENDER DIVIDE

 

MOST CLASSROOM TEACHERS ARE FEMALE: There are other views about ways of training:
A classroom teacher has the best foundation for understanding a classroom teacher's schedules, constraints, and all the grips of "I just don't have enough time to also use computers in my classroom!"
"Tech" training can come from on the job experiences of learning the applications while creating lessons to integrate the curriculum. Honestly, the most valuable part of training could be from classroom teaching. It truly gives the foundations for appropriate learning activities, understanding how children learn, and how to communicate with teachers so they trust me when I say- "Well, we could just teach it this way with the computer and get the same results academically."

Digital Divide vs
Digital Equity

AIMED AT BOYS: The Federation of American Scientists declared that video games can redefine education. The theory is that games teach skills that employers want. It captivates students so much they will spend hours learning on their own.[1]

Women, Girls and Technology

AIMED AT GIRLS: There are Girl Gamers too. Girls’ use of technology threatens the established social order.  That’s the real reason behind the fear of girls using social networking sites. Throughout US history, each time women have become the most frequent users of a popular and brand new communication technology, narratives emerge in the mass media and eventually in the popular psyche about the dangers awaiting women who use technology alone.

WE REMEMBER
10% of what we read
20% of what we hear
30% of what we see
50% of what we see and hear
70% of what we discuss with others
80% of what we personally experience
95% of what we teach others

 

Children Learn by Monkey See, Monkey Do. Chimps Don't.

NYT Essay By CARL ZIMMER

[ ... Mr. Lyons explained how his study might shed light on human evolution.
His study would build on a paper published in the July issue of the journal Animal Cognition by Victoria Horner and Andrew Whiten, two psychologists at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Dr.  Horner and Dr. Whiten described the way they showed young chimps how to retrieve food from a box.]
[ ... The children could see just as easily as the chimps that it was pointless to slide open the bolt or tap on top of the box. Yet 80 percent did so anyway. "It seemed so spectacular to me," Mr. Lyons said. "]
[... Andrew Young, a senior at Carnegie Mellon, to build other puzzles usingTupperware, wire baskets and bits of wood. And Mr. Lyons planned out a much larger study, with 100 children.]
[ ... But at their second meeting, things changed. This time, Mr. Lyons had an undergraduate, Jennifer Barnes, show Charlotte how to open the box. Before she opened the front door, Ms. Barnes slid the bolt back across the top of the box and tapped on it needlessly.Charlotte imitated every irrelevant step. The box ripping had disappeared. I could almost hear the chimps hooting. Ms. Barnes showed Charlotte four other puzzles, and time after time she overimitated. When the movies were over, I wasn't sure what to say. "So how did she do?" I asked awkwardly.

"She's pretty age-typical," Mr. Lyons said. Having watched 100 children, he agrees with Dr. Horner and Dr. Whiten that children really do overimitate. He has found that it is very hard to get children not to.

If they rush through opening a puzzle, they don't skip the extra steps. They just do them all faster. What makes the results even more intriguing is that the children understand the laws of physics well enough to solve the puzzles on their own. Charlotte's box ripping is proof of that.

Mr. Lyons sees his results as evidence that humans are hard-wired to learn by imitation, even when that is clearly not the best way to learn.

If he is right, this represents a big evolutionary change from our ape ancestors. Other primates are bad at imitation. When they watch another primate doing something, they seem to focus on what its goals are and ignore its actions.
As human ancestors began to make complicated tools, figuring out goals might not have been good enough anymore. Hominids needed a way to register automatically what other hominids did, even if they didn't understand the intentions behind them. They needed to imitate.
Not long ago, many psychologists thought that imitation was a simple, primitive action compared with figuring out the intentions of others. But that is changing. "Maybe imitation is a lot more sophisticated than people thought," Mr. Lyons said.
We don't appreciate just how automatically we rely on imitation, because usually it serves us so well. "It is so adaptive that it almost never sticks out this way," he added. "You have to createvery artificial circumstances to see it."]

Robot Teachers: A new research effort outlines new ways in which humanoids could actually be used to instruct our little ones. At the core of the project is imitation; humans, especially young ones, learn a multitude of mannerisms and such by simply watching others. Thus, it stands to reason that robots are "well-suited to imitate us, learn from us, socialize with us and eventually teach us." Already, these social bots are being used on an experimental basis to teach various skills to preschool children, "including the names of colors, new vocabulary words and simple songs." Just think -- in 2071, those harmless lessons will morph into studies of subterfuge, insurrection and rapacity.

 

PREPARE


THE NET GENERATION AKA MILLENIAL STUDENTS

"Net Generation" or "Millennial" Students and the Academic Library.
An ever increasing number of students consist of the so-called "Millennials": today's teenagers and twentysomethings who are the first generation to grow up fully wired and technologically fluent. Blogs (Podcasting), iPods (MP3), instant messaging (Cell Phones), social networking technologies, and portable electronic devices are seamlessly woven into their daily lives. These students will have different requirements and expectations of libraries than their predecessors. Find all the Web 2.0 information a classrom teacher needs to understand and be able to use.

Programming - The Lost Art: There is no easy way to gets kids hooked today. If you want to give young students a grounding in how computers actually work, there's still nothing better than a little experience at line-by-line programming. Almost none of the millions of personal computers in America offers a line-programming language simple enough for kids to pick up fast. Not even line-programming languages like BASIC. the one that was a on nearly all machines, only a decade or so ago. And that is a problem for our nation and civilization.

"The Net Generation Goes to College" by Scott Carlson in *The Chronicle of Higher Education*, vol 52, 7 (Oct 7, 2005), p. A34

Joan Lippincott's chapter "Net Generation Students and Libraries" in *Educating the Net Generation*

"The MySpace Generation: They live Online. They Buy Online. They Play Online. Their Power is Growing." *Business Week* Dec 12, 2005, p. 86

A Retrospective on Twenty Years of Education Technology Policy
A new report from the Center for Children and Technology (CCT) finds a striking consensus in past recommendations for the effective integration of technology in schools and offers advice about recommendations for the next 20 years. "A Retrospective on Twenty Years of Education Technology Policy" synthesizes the findings of more than 25 major studies and policy papers, beginning with "A Nation at Risk" in 1983. In examining past research and policy work on technology's role in education, CCT researchers identified a conceptual framework that offers substantial guidance for striking a balance between the demands of improving practice over time and pressing public concerns such as accountability and equity. According to the report, the\focus of educational technologists and researchers has shifted away from an emphasis on "single input" strategies, such as the wiring of schools, to an appreciation of the multiple dimensions of the educational system that influence the way technology is used. "The lessons learned in this report can help to guide future educational technology policy so that we are building on past successes and continually working to improve teaching and learning," said CCT Director Margaret Honey. Forum Summary

Book: Technically Speaking: Why All Americans Need to Know More About Technology can be read for free on the web.
View A companion Web site
Printed copies available for purchase call (202) 334-3313 or 1-800-624-6242.

PREPARE

 

1) Computer Networks Explained

2) TECHNOLOGY TOOLS FOR K12 and the COMPUTER HELP FORM

3) Read about effective Search Tools Database Searching: Basic Techniques and Resources

4) Search This Site - type in the word "search" - Investigate the different search engine results that are returned.

5) Make sure to plan your lesson to include yourself in a way that lets you *guide* the students' activities without having the activities actually revolve around you as the centerpiece.

6) If you are going to use the net in any classroom start INTEGRATING TECHNOLOGY IN KINDERGARTEN

7) Now progress to What you are supposed to cover between grades 8 - 12 where you will find Technology Applications Standards.

8) Everyone can appreciate the job of the  educational technology person in your school and want to read the Survival Kit for the technology coordinator.

October Named National Cyber Security Awareness Month October designated National Cyber Security Awareness Month with state, local and federal government officials joining industry groups and computer security companies to highlight efforts that will be taken this month to educate consumers in how to stay safe online.

Remember: A dollar bought one transistor in 1968 and about 10 million transistors in 2002

WLS radio debuted back in 1925.  School Time was a groundbreaking educational program that began in 1937.  Airing every weekday in the classroom, the program proved that radio could be used as an educational tool.  Topics including current events, music appreciation, geography and business were broadcast to students in more than 1000 schools throughout the four-state area.
The "television revolution" and educational marvels, programs like "Sesame Street" that will would bring poor students - who had been watching at home - to school already reading ... or ready to move forward
and become readers and writers. The "Electric Circus" was going to wipe out adult illiteracy. The radio and television "revolutions" failed to materialize, that those 20th century educational technologies didn't live up to the rhetoric of the revolutionaries. In the 21st century when 30 students still sit in a 600-square foot classroom that the future belongs to the new technologies? The old factory style of education using radios, television, computers, and internet into the old buildings and trying to incorporate them into the teaching routines of the old institution are destined for the same fate. Now that the computer, and radio and television, are here, how can we rethink the ecology of education, so that the home, the library, the neighborhood center, the school, and the new technologies might become rearranged and reassigned and more successful in the work of teaching and learning? ~ Steve Eskow

Goodness, how will anybody ever keep up with this? Mr. Ray Kurzweil's main idea is that mankind's technological knowledge has been snowballing, with dizzying prospects for the future. Qubits, foglets, gigaflops, haptic interfaces, probabilistic fractals: Mr. Kurzweil is not writing science for sissies. He is envisioning precise details about how and when the Singularity - a fusion of symbiotic advances in genetics, robotics and nanotechnology that creates "a profound and disruptive transformation in human capability" - will be upon us. Mark the calendar for big doings in 2045 in case he's right.

About
Ray Kurzweil

PIONEERS OF THE INTERNET AND THE WORLD Ray Kurzweil Invented the flat-bed scanner 1975 - Artists create their images by placing objects on top of a 12-by- 17-inch

Ray Kurzweil use of speech, language, and optical character recognition technology
Inventor Ray Kurzweil made the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments

Cybernetic Poet Ray Kurzweil has created an interactive, intelligent software suite designed to act as a Poet's assistant as a Free

Execute Student Centered Collaborative Learning: Define your purpose for using the Internet and the activity using the information that they find.

Integrate Literacy, Music and Technology into your classroom.

1) Have several groups involved at their desks with print copy material, while other groups are on the computers.

2) The groups on the computers must be given several sites for them to visit that you have already selected for them to go to.

3) First do a boolean search lesson with a LCD projector for everybody to teach them search skills.

4) Demonstrate how to use boolean search strategies to create keywords to find those sites.

5) Have the kids do this as a lesson at their seats.

6) After teaching them boolean search logic, have them write out some keyword searches. Reinforce the importance of correct spelling, this makes the search engine work correctly.

7) Teacher can type these key words into a search engine for the whole class to see how well these words work.

8) Divide students up into groups. Give each group a folder with detailed instructions stapled inside.

9) Make something you can enjoy and use like a portable music player using Minty Mp3 see the make your own flash-based MP3 player.

KISS OF DEATH Avoid What Can Go Wrong

1) You didn't provide specific websites for them to go to.

2) Students are not familiar with the Internet and don't know where to go.

3) Students are not familiar with search techniques, so don't know what to do.

4) Students at the computer take a lot of time and the others have nothing to do.

5) Your computer doesn't work

From: John Kirriemuir
I am an independent researcher, who is also part of GERN (Games and Education Research Network)
at the University of Bristol in the UK: I study the use of COTS (Commercial Off the Shelf) games in education, learning and teaching. The use of COTS games in curriculum-based education is a subject that's increasingly arisen in the games and education research overlap in the last few years. By COTS games, we mean those that you get from a computer and video game shop, and are designed purely for fun/entertainment - not for learning.   The most popular types of these games, being used in education, seem to be: -        Business and economic simulations, such as Sim City, Zoo Tycoon, and RollerCoaster Tycoon. Some of these have a cross-curricular role; for example, Zoo Tycoon encourages economic skill development, while at the same time educating about animals and their habitat.
-        Dance mat-based games, used in physical education.
-        Historical re-enactment games, such as the Civilization and Age of Empires series.
There is a small blog that points to some examples here: More detailed examples, with descriptions from teachers of how the games were used in this 4Mb Powerpoint presentation

©1997 Educational CyberPlayGround, Inc.™ All rights reserved world wide.