I was presented with a lot of new information during this week’s reading from the Richardson text. Here are some thoughts about what I read.
As I read Chapter 3, I realized that I, most of my fellow instructors, and the instructors I had as an undergraduate in college are way behind the K-12 teachers in trying to publish student work so that it can be shared by a wider audience. I have not provided those opportunities for my students, and through my work with the Louisville Writing Project, I know that primary and secondary teachers do provide them. My students write and share their writing with each other, but I have not taken the time to serious focus on how to share what they do with a real world audience—the trait of a truly “transactive” piece. It seems that Blogs may be one way for us to attempt to open up to a wider audience. It would be tempting to start my students blogging now because we are still fairly early into our semester. But, I want to resist the temptation to begin blogging because of the excitement in trying out a new technology. I need to think carefully about the goals of my classes and see if blogging is a way to meet those goals. The chapter convinced me that there are many ways that blogging can be pedagogically effective. I need to see what ways might be effective for the context of the next class I teach.
I admit to feeling really overwhelmed with Chapter 5—not the content but the call to begin to attempt to take advantage of abundance of new information made available to use through the web and its related technology. I know that the idea in skillfully using RSS is to not be overwhelmed and to make that abundance work in our favor, but taking the time now to figure out what I would like to read on a daily basis or what subjects it would be helpful for me to keep a consistent eye upon causes a slight but perceptible rise in my blood pressure and pulse rate. I think it would be best to jump in with one subject and try to follow the guidelines presented in the chapter, but I must admit, in spite of the plea of the author for this to be the one technology that we implement today (or that we should have implemented yesterday) that this is one I will probably wait to make the leap—unless we work through the process as part of this class.
However, Flickr is something that I will definitely use soon. My students are developing a multi-modal argument, and this will be a great source for images to be included in their projects without the difficulty with copyright permission. For my students and for K-12 students, using this program would be a great opportunity to begin conversations re: ownership issues and the concept of “intellectual property.” Also, it’s a way to open up discussions re: plagiarism. I think it is a possibility that students might better understand the concept of “intellectual theft” (as much as I don’t like the term) with a tangible object such as a picture though they struggle with the concept that ideas and words can also be “stolen” from the rightful owner.
Again, I am grateful for the great information and the basic approach to the technology that the book provides—especially the instructions that deal with the fundamentals of just getting started.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
What do I do when I research
I use google when I am doing what I would call "casual" research, meaning I am trying to get a broad overview of a subject or obtain a quick answer to a specific question. When I am doing "serious" research, meaning I am finding sources for scholarly or research driven work that will be going to a larger audience (or to a teacher when I was a student),I stick to peer-reviewed journals from the academic databases. I have found that when I locate a book that is really pertient or helpful, the bibliography from that book can often be a great tool for finding other helpful and appropriate sources. If I am trying to get a very complete look on an subject, I will go to the hard copies of specific journals, and go through them looking for helpful items. I also depend on serendipity when I am looking through the shelves, so I am a bit distressed (but enjoy watching) the robotic retrieval system. Often, I get overwhelmed when I am researching a new subject.
technology autobiography
Cynthia Britt
Professor Amy Berry
ED 504
16 January 2006
Spreading My “Techno” Wings
Yesterday evening, I was sitting at my kitchen table and thinking about what I might want to communicate to you through this technology autobiography. My fingers poised over the keyboard on my laptop, I looked up, and my introduction to this piece was set out as a tableau before me. My eighteen-year-old daughter, Katherine, was working on her laptop, downloading pictures from her digital camera to her facebook account. She is still on her winter break from college, and she occasionally would laugh or relay to me some story or item of news to catch me up on the lives of her friends. My seventeen-year-old son, Jonathan, was working on his e-school course (much despised Algebra II) with his laptop while downloading music to his IPOD, his head keeping time with the bass I could hear thumping through his earphones. The only person missing from the picture was my husband; I had just opened an e-mail he had sent from his Blackberry with “Elvis is back in Kentucky.” This let me know his plane had landed, and he was on his way home. Soon his laptop would join ours and make the last corner of the technological square on our kitchen table. This is a typical scenario for our 21st century family.
It is a cliché but undeniably true to say that things have changed since I was a child. I remember my best Christmas gift when I was nine-years-old was a tape recorder. I had to drop out of my freshman college journalism course because I didn’t have a typewriter to complete the assignments. With a family of six, my parents struggled financially, and I didn’t have the heart to ask them to buy one. My list of firsts includes a microwave, car phone, laser disks, and a VCR. I remember a surreal conversation I had with my children during which I tried to explain to them what a record player was. In high school, I learned to type on an electric typewriter—a wonderful leap from manuals. It seems like we have traveled light years since then.
I am not at the point where I take all the technology I benefit from for granted. I am deeply in love with the following: the fact that my car has both a cassette player and a CD player, so I can listen to books-on-tape; the fact that I have a laptop that weighs four pounds, and I have access to wireless internet at many places; the fact that I can take pictures and see them immediately on my digital camera, the fact that my children can reach me 24/7.
I am not at the point where I appreciate all the technology that invades my life. I resent the fact that my cell phone allows anyone and everyone to reach me 24/7. I had difficulty explaining to my summer business writing class why I would not give them my cell phone number. I have to routinely and kindly remind my husband that the world will not end if he doesn’t constantly check his e-mail through his Blackberry on weekends, days off, holidays, etc., especially while he is driving! I resent the fact that my internet account allows me to be contacted by people who entreat me to enlarge my penis, trim my figure, increase my sex-drive, and give me the privilege of sharing with them millions of dollars they legitimately should have but just can’t access without my help. Like most of you, I enjoy the benefits of technology without embracing all it brings with it—a type of technoschizophrenia. Also, maybe like some of you, I am intimidated by the accelerated pace of change in technology and how it influences my daily life.
However, there is one aspect of technology about which I don’t have mixed feelings—my desire to incorporate more use of technology in my classroom. I strongly feel that using technology in a purposeful and thoughtful way through my pedagogy and practice can improve the learning environment in the classroom, increase my student’s participation in their learning, and augment my instruction. However, I have quite a learning curve to accomplish those goals.
I have made some inroads to correct my digital fear and ignorance. I purposefully team taught the last two semesters with an instructor who uses technology in interesting and productive ways. With her help, my class developed surveys on Blackboard based on available on-line calendar programs, down-loaded the survey results into an excel database, and created scientific reports based on those results. We took pictures of the different stages as my students built Lego models so that they could use them in the instructions they were creating. We carried out usability studies on items as varied as cell phone camera, on-line pizza ordering interfaces, on-line mailing companies, and electric can openers vs. pop-top cans. My co-instructor utilizes many advanced features of Blackboard, and, therefore, I have become more Blackboard literate. The last semesters have been a bit of overload but the learning experience was well worth it.
The second way I hope to make further inroads in my understanding of and ability to use technology is through this class. I have nebulous, half-formed ideas about the things I would like technology to help me do—but my ideas are immature and still require confidence, information, and practice (years of that, I am sure) to begin to come to fruition.
Because I study rhetoric of science (which bleeds heavily into the rhetoric of technology), I am sometimes moved to view technological advances with suspicion and skepticism. As much as some aspects of “improvements” in science and technology have improved our culture they have also deformed it. However, I can’t help but have a sense of excitement and optimism about what technology can bring us through wise use and commendable motives. As a nurse, I have seen how medical care has been improved through new techniques and equipment and how that has directly influenced and improved the experiences of patients. I have enjoyed watching my son engage in a on-line video game play with people from all over the world. I have listened to the songs my daughter has composed through a music computer program that moved her easily through the composing process. And I have seen how my students respond to video messages that are delivered with power and give a visceral blow through the mixture of image, sound, and text.
I want to be a part of all that.
Professor Amy Berry
ED 504
16 January 2006
Spreading My “Techno” Wings
Yesterday evening, I was sitting at my kitchen table and thinking about what I might want to communicate to you through this technology autobiography. My fingers poised over the keyboard on my laptop, I looked up, and my introduction to this piece was set out as a tableau before me. My eighteen-year-old daughter, Katherine, was working on her laptop, downloading pictures from her digital camera to her facebook account. She is still on her winter break from college, and she occasionally would laugh or relay to me some story or item of news to catch me up on the lives of her friends. My seventeen-year-old son, Jonathan, was working on his e-school course (much despised Algebra II) with his laptop while downloading music to his IPOD, his head keeping time with the bass I could hear thumping through his earphones. The only person missing from the picture was my husband; I had just opened an e-mail he had sent from his Blackberry with “Elvis is back in Kentucky.” This let me know his plane had landed, and he was on his way home. Soon his laptop would join ours and make the last corner of the technological square on our kitchen table. This is a typical scenario for our 21st century family.
It is a cliché but undeniably true to say that things have changed since I was a child. I remember my best Christmas gift when I was nine-years-old was a tape recorder. I had to drop out of my freshman college journalism course because I didn’t have a typewriter to complete the assignments. With a family of six, my parents struggled financially, and I didn’t have the heart to ask them to buy one. My list of firsts includes a microwave, car phone, laser disks, and a VCR. I remember a surreal conversation I had with my children during which I tried to explain to them what a record player was. In high school, I learned to type on an electric typewriter—a wonderful leap from manuals. It seems like we have traveled light years since then.
I am not at the point where I take all the technology I benefit from for granted. I am deeply in love with the following: the fact that my car has both a cassette player and a CD player, so I can listen to books-on-tape; the fact that I have a laptop that weighs four pounds, and I have access to wireless internet at many places; the fact that I can take pictures and see them immediately on my digital camera, the fact that my children can reach me 24/7.
I am not at the point where I appreciate all the technology that invades my life. I resent the fact that my cell phone allows anyone and everyone to reach me 24/7. I had difficulty explaining to my summer business writing class why I would not give them my cell phone number. I have to routinely and kindly remind my husband that the world will not end if he doesn’t constantly check his e-mail through his Blackberry on weekends, days off, holidays, etc., especially while he is driving! I resent the fact that my internet account allows me to be contacted by people who entreat me to enlarge my penis, trim my figure, increase my sex-drive, and give me the privilege of sharing with them millions of dollars they legitimately should have but just can’t access without my help. Like most of you, I enjoy the benefits of technology without embracing all it brings with it—a type of technoschizophrenia. Also, maybe like some of you, I am intimidated by the accelerated pace of change in technology and how it influences my daily life.
However, there is one aspect of technology about which I don’t have mixed feelings—my desire to incorporate more use of technology in my classroom. I strongly feel that using technology in a purposeful and thoughtful way through my pedagogy and practice can improve the learning environment in the classroom, increase my student’s participation in their learning, and augment my instruction. However, I have quite a learning curve to accomplish those goals.
I have made some inroads to correct my digital fear and ignorance. I purposefully team taught the last two semesters with an instructor who uses technology in interesting and productive ways. With her help, my class developed surveys on Blackboard based on available on-line calendar programs, down-loaded the survey results into an excel database, and created scientific reports based on those results. We took pictures of the different stages as my students built Lego models so that they could use them in the instructions they were creating. We carried out usability studies on items as varied as cell phone camera, on-line pizza ordering interfaces, on-line mailing companies, and electric can openers vs. pop-top cans. My co-instructor utilizes many advanced features of Blackboard, and, therefore, I have become more Blackboard literate. The last semesters have been a bit of overload but the learning experience was well worth it.
The second way I hope to make further inroads in my understanding of and ability to use technology is through this class. I have nebulous, half-formed ideas about the things I would like technology to help me do—but my ideas are immature and still require confidence, information, and practice (years of that, I am sure) to begin to come to fruition.
Because I study rhetoric of science (which bleeds heavily into the rhetoric of technology), I am sometimes moved to view technological advances with suspicion and skepticism. As much as some aspects of “improvements” in science and technology have improved our culture they have also deformed it. However, I can’t help but have a sense of excitement and optimism about what technology can bring us through wise use and commendable motives. As a nurse, I have seen how medical care has been improved through new techniques and equipment and how that has directly influenced and improved the experiences of patients. I have enjoyed watching my son engage in a on-line video game play with people from all over the world. I have listened to the songs my daughter has composed through a music computer program that moved her easily through the composing process. And I have seen how my students respond to video messages that are delivered with power and give a visceral blow through the mixture of image, sound, and text.
I want to be a part of all that.
Opening blog Headline "excited and overwhelmed"
I greatly appreciated two aspects of the initiation of this class. First, the laid-back atmosphere of the teacher and the first night helped ease my apprehension. Although, I very much want to learn more about technology and how it might work to make my teaching more effective, I am intimidated by the mechanics and frustrated by my slowness in understanding and using the different tools and opportunities. I appreciated the reassurance that we would be working together and working through using the different tools and that I wasn't the only newbie. The second thing I appreciated was the style of the text and the voice of the author. Richardson used language that I could understand, and though I felt I was being initiated into the esoteric rites of a hidden lifestyle, I kept right up with him. His opinions and his rhetoric have already influenced how I view this subject and how it might affect my teaching. So, I have a sense of relaxation and satisfaction when I think about how the next weeks may go.
Several of the concepts Richardson touched on I feel are important. First, I thought his use of the terms "digital natives"and "digital immigrants" was right on the mark. I very much retain the accent that denotes my immigration status--but I can function in the language well enough to get by most of the time. At that point I accepted the fact that I will always be a digital immigrant. Just as Arnold Schwarzenegger can never be president, I can never be a techno native. However, we can both influence the welfare of the people we lead. My immigrant status allowed me to relax--after all, I am only striving up to my own technological potential for myself and my students and not to prove anything to anyone else!
Second, my view of using technology was immediately enlarged. I admit I looked at this class as a way to help me use techno tools to create better learning experiences, but I didn't think so much about bringing the world into my classroom and breaking down the walls. But not to dismantle the borders of my classroom would be limiting my resources. I was motivated to do something different with my freshman students in my 102 class. Because we were talking about argument, I downloaded the links to five different sites to place them at different places on a continuum that moved from a formed argument to just a statement or sound bite. We looked at three different commercials against drunk driving, a letter from the religious right against the human papillomavirus vaccine, and Bush beatboxen. This helped us define what an argument is and what is just a statement or a sound bite message. His thoughtful and persuasive treatment of weblogging has me inspired to use this as soon as I can as a classroom communication tool. I did take argument with Richardson's narrow view of more traditional composition. On pg. 31 he states, "The differences between blogging in this manner and writing as we traditionally think of it are clear: Writing stops: blogging continues. Writing is inside; blogging is outside. Writing is monologue; blogging is conversation. Writing is thesis; blogging is synthesis. For someone who is delivering a message that is bringing his opinions and experiences (or his inside) to a wider audience, who is synthesizing the words and experiences of others, who seems dedicated to opening and enlarging conversations re: his topic, this seems a overly simplistic and inaccurate statement. His following-up with " . . . none of which minimizes writing" is disingenuous and inaccurate. However, I think he is, overall, carrying out an important conversation in an accessible way, and I look forward to reading more.
Cindy
Several of the concepts Richardson touched on I feel are important. First, I thought his use of the terms "digital natives"and "digital immigrants" was right on the mark. I very much retain the accent that denotes my immigration status--but I can function in the language well enough to get by most of the time. At that point I accepted the fact that I will always be a digital immigrant. Just as Arnold Schwarzenegger can never be president, I can never be a techno native. However, we can both influence the welfare of the people we lead. My immigrant status allowed me to relax--after all, I am only striving up to my own technological potential for myself and my students and not to prove anything to anyone else!
Second, my view of using technology was immediately enlarged. I admit I looked at this class as a way to help me use techno tools to create better learning experiences, but I didn't think so much about bringing the world into my classroom and breaking down the walls. But not to dismantle the borders of my classroom would be limiting my resources. I was motivated to do something different with my freshman students in my 102 class. Because we were talking about argument, I downloaded the links to five different sites to place them at different places on a continuum that moved from a formed argument to just a statement or sound bite. We looked at three different commercials against drunk driving, a letter from the religious right against the human papillomavirus vaccine, and Bush beatboxen. This helped us define what an argument is and what is just a statement or a sound bite message. His thoughtful and persuasive treatment of weblogging has me inspired to use this as soon as I can as a classroom communication tool. I did take argument with Richardson's narrow view of more traditional composition. On pg. 31 he states, "The differences between blogging in this manner and writing as we traditionally think of it are clear: Writing stops: blogging continues. Writing is inside; blogging is outside. Writing is monologue; blogging is conversation. Writing is thesis; blogging is synthesis. For someone who is delivering a message that is bringing his opinions and experiences (or his inside) to a wider audience, who is synthesizing the words and experiences of others, who seems dedicated to opening and enlarging conversations re: his topic, this seems a overly simplistic and inaccurate statement. His following-up with " . . . none of which minimizes writing" is disingenuous and inaccurate. However, I think he is, overall, carrying out an important conversation in an accessible way, and I look forward to reading more.
Cindy
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