Journal+Reflection+3

Journal Reflection 3

I had many learning experiences this week concerning technology. The most important is the importance of security when utilizing digital documents. At Fostoria High School we utilize a public server space to manage documents that all people can access, modify, and share. My students had been working for a week on a webquest and an interest group project where the students had to create a visual to discuss the viewpoints of a particular interest group. My students worked on these projects all the way through 6th period with no big issues other than problems working between newer versions of Word and older versions. Somewhere between 7th period and 8th period someone decided to do something that changed my whole plan. Someone decided to go into the public server and delete my folder in the P-drive (our label for the public server). This meant that all of the work students did and tried to submit were gone. I had to call the technology director to try and recover the files from the file backup. The problem became that the backup was only 8 hours so when the files were restored all the work students had done was gone. This was a great learning experience for our entire school. If we want to let students work in a 21st Century way we need to know the risks and how to minimize the effects of those risks. For example, I alerted students and fellow teachers that this could be avoided by having students save their work in their personal H server space (private) and then submit into the P Drive. Moreover, many teachers had no idea that they could call and have files restored, that files are backed up, and/or that students could delete files. It is really sad that students would destroy others work, but it is something that must be looked at when trying to incorporate technology into the classroom.

As I watched the YouTube Clip I thought of a few things that will create problems
 * Are my students ready to compete?- I would say that not all my students are ready to compete in a global or even regional economy. I think there is a definite hurdle of culture in my district that will hinder learners from competing in a meaningful way no matter what century skill set they are trying to use.
 * Is using technology the best means for my students all the time? I think that technology is useful (obviously), but there are some times when I think that the push for technology often misses the need for basic universal skills. At Fostoria, we have many students who cannot write, read, or speak at their grade level. If a student cannot spell or write effectively I am not sure how much creative learning is going to help them. For example, when my students created mini-movies over the Bill of Rights there were so many mis-spellings and misinterpretations because of an inability to read content that it really effected their product.
 * I thought it was odd that we were criticizing ourselves for having 1960's styled learning environments, but the pictures of the other countries (who are supposedly ahead of us) classrooms looked very similar (rows, teacher at front, etc.).
 * I wonder about the concept of collaboration and how far that should go. I agree with the idea that collaboration will be important. Students need to learn to work together and share information. However, I also think that there are students who cannot handle collaborating because they end up leaching off of the students that are hard workers. I am not sure how to alleviate that. As a student I didn't mind collaborating, but I always knew that there were going to be those with no motivation that would leach off of my work.
 * My big question is how do we evaluate and assess learning (individual standards based learning) in this Utopian knowledge sharing bean bag and computer environment? How do we reconcile the vast differences between structured, standardized, individual score focused world that has a bottom line of higher scores or penalties with a concept that wants to push collaborative shared knowledge where no one person is better than the other and we all collectively help each other learn and create. I think there is strong argument that this is much like discussing the differences between a capitalist and a communist society. There are strong arguments for both sides, but there are also glaring negatives.
 * Why do we constantly compare ourselves to other countries in a way that downplays our accomplishments. Yes we will compete with other people and we should push for our students to be competitive. However, to think that we are behind is a little bit of hyperbole. We decide to educate all of our students while other countries do not. Moreover, technology or not, our schools will not get all children on board with education for two reasons. 1. Environment ad culture- there is a segment of our culture that is not focused on, believe in, or feel strongly about education (parents, etc.). 2. There are students out there who DO NOT want to learn or be part of the educational environment. Moreover, we compare our entire country (The U.S.A.) against other countries like Norway and Germany. The issue I have (mind you I am a government teacher) is that we are a UNION of 50 unique "states". "State" in the global term means what we call a "country". Therefore, we are 50 unique countries that chose to be united together. If there was no United States these 50 "states" would be akin to Germany, France, Norway, China, etc. Why are we comparing ourselves as if we are all the same?
 * I truly believe that we do need to push for ourselves to compete in a global economy by being creative and pushing new ideas and strategies. However, many of the jobs that are going to other countries are jobs we are losing because our workers have become educated enough and skilled enough to command a higher wage, not because we have been out smarted. Jobs are leaving the U.S. because there are people who will work for lower than minimum wage, not because they are better than us at those jobs. With that said, we should be pushing our student to be creative, use technology, and more. However, we should do it in the name of making ourselves better and coming up with the new jobs of our future.

I think Media Literacy is critical. Media Literacy was a major component to my graduate coursework at BGSU. i think that of all the skills that students should learn this is it. There is so much information and advertising out there that students need to be critical thinkers. There is so much information that borders on propaganda that students need to be able to think for themselves. At the end of the day students may not remember the middling details of a subject, but is imperative that students learn to think, solve problems, etc. I agree that 21st Century skills like media literacy are important, but I am not sure that the utopian view of education mentioned in the Youtube video makes total sense. The saddest part of my job is when students blindly state propagandized statements such as "Bush is....." or "Obama is..." or "I hate middle easterners because they are terrorists". These issues could be avoided if there was even a modicum of media literacy and intelligent conversation going on in our classrooms more often.