Article 8: Monster Mash: Learning Real-World Skills in a Creature-Creating Art Class

Summary:

          Inside the classroom of a high school in Berea, Ohio lie ferocious, drooling beasts with sharp claws and fangs; but it’s nothing to fear for they belong in the classroom.  Berea High School has a class in Visual Effects and Design where students collaborate on and create masks, props, characters and sculptures for independent films, private collectors, plays, etc.  It’s a class far beyond the concept of art.  It goes into correlating art and something based on the real world where the students can get excited about their work.  It still keeps those same qualities students would get from a basic art class such as drawing, painting, color mixing, balance, 3-D objects, etc.  But now, those objects get a purpose through moviemaking as the subject matter.  Although art is normally the first area to receive budget cuts, the program takes paying gigs for producing items and labor to pay for their program to keep running.  This, along with grants, a student yearly fee and donations help the class survive and get supplied in the day to day classroom. 

          There are a lot of skeptics and negative comments being thrown towards the program saying that if it wasn’t for the morbid attraction of today’s “CSI watchers”, this program wouldn’t exist.  And while students know that they aren’t there to “make fairies”, they still defend their trade in the maturity and development skills that are needed to create such masterpieces and professional pieces such as problem solving.  These high school students even collaborate with mid-career professionals in engineering, multimedia and graphic design.  This professional connection is a powerful classroom tool in order to prepare students through a vocational focus.  The instructor never expects the students to be great artists when they leave the program; his underlying goal is to make them creative problem solvers. 

Response:

          This article provided a lot of key points as to the possible positives and negatives to this program.  I don’t think that those naysayers are giving enough credit to the student’s maturity level in high school; especially in context of students actually interested in the vocation.  Blood and guts is a part of special effects and the students see it as a challenge to accomplish a realistic scene…not the need for blood and guts.  And I am glad that the teacher is not striving for the students to become fantastic artists but to become comfortable problem solvers.  Especially when you see the students working with other professionals in the field, you see the students leaving their comfort zones in order to accomplish these tasks. 

          I think that this class is great; I love the school’s ability to attach a high school topic that is normally tied to just what it stated: a basic art class such as drawing, painting, color mixing, balance, etc.  Tying these normal practices of art to an actual profession makes it more appeasing to the students and more practical.  This is especially true for those students that do not see themselves going onto college or are not able to go to college.  A $30 student fee is a lot more feasible than a $1000 college program (being generous with class price even).  Providing those opportunities for students is powerful to their future development into adulthood and creating a career path for themselves.  Even if it does not include special effects, it allows the students to develop themselves and become responsible adults.

APA Citation:

Bernard, S. (2008, January 10). Monster mash: Learning real-world skills in creature-creating art 

          class. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/classroom-special-effects-studio

Article 7: Tech gURLs: Closing the Technological Gender Gap

Summary:

        Educators are struggling to bridge that divide between genders; including in technological aspects.  The National Center for Women and Information Technology has reported that girls make up more than 50 percent of high school Advanced Placement test takers but girls only make 15 percent of those who take the computer science AP test.  Also, IT professions are dominated by 74 percent men and a mere 26 percent women.  The stereotype has remained true that when girls start reaching middle school age they become self-conscious about being smart, intelligent and showing interest in topics generally dominated by men.  This makes educators the best people to work to change this attitude by getting girls interested in computer science and related careers.  There is a program called Inspiring Girls Now In Technology Evolution (IGNITE) schools can invest in in order to engage young women in technology. 

        Teachers can provide professional female role models for them to look up to; give these students the chance to see a woman thriving in a profession that is in their IT interests.  The IGNITE program provides mentoring and job-shadowing programs with successful women working in various tech-related fields. 

        Even though we think of boys being the ones to embrace new challenges, girls generally prefer to put what they are learning into context.  IGNITE provides members with the tools to get girls involved in technology.  A school teacher at Roosevelt HS needed a webpage for the Roosevelt’s autism program site and the staff IGNITE member gave that task to two female students and they thrived at the opportunity.

        Teacher training is vital to the understanding of how gender differences appear in our classrooms subconsciously.  By understanding this concept, teachers can follow up with their female students more on technology questions and conceptions.  This also involves debunking and breaking down those stereotypes in order to get girls to express their interest in technology. 

        Student-run clubs are another way that schools can intrigue girls to start expressing their interests in technology.  At Thomas Jefferson High School in VA, a group of female students created Tomorrow’s Women In Science and Technology (TWIST).  By introducing clubs like this at schools, teachers are able to show girls that liking technology and being smart is not frowned upon.

Response

        I love this article and its focus on getting girls interested in technology; I wish that these types of stereotypes did not exist in the classroom.  School is supposed to be a safe place for students to come and explore learning concepts and celebrate their knowledge base.  Stereotypes have no place in the classroom because they carry negative connotations to a student’s development.  I know when I took AP classes in high school, they were very male oriented regardless of the subject.  I took AP Statistics and Euro History but had to drop them half way through the year due to scheduling conflicts.  I wish high schools offered computer science classes to the general population, not with the Advanced Placement target associated with them. 

        I liked how this article even had local examples of how the Seattle School District is involved in the IGNITE program.  With the examples given, the article inspired me to look into the IGNITE program and see what it entails.  Although it costs money, I can see how that it would be beneficial to become a member and incorporate it into your own classroom in order to level the playing field between girls and boys in the technology field.  After going to their website, I found out that they have impacted over 25,000 young women in middle school and high school.  Also, in the Seattle School District alone, female participation in technology classes has skyrocketed from 10 percent to 50 percent since IGNITE’s start in 1999.  In order to even the educational gap between boys and girls, we need to invest in more programs like this so that these jobs will be available to more people.

APA Citation:

Ring, S. (2008). Tech gurls: Closing the technological gender gap. Edutopia, Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/computer-science-technology-gender-gap

Article 6 (Podcast): 5 K-12 Technology Trends of 2010

APA Citation:

McCrea, B. (2009). 5 k-12 technology trends for 2010. The journal, Retrieved from

http://thejournal.com/Articles/2009/12/10/5-K12-Technology-Trends-for-2010.aspx?Page=1

 

Article 5: Assistive Technology for Kids with Learning Disabilities: An Overview

Summary:

This article discusses assistive technologies that can be useful to students who have learning disabilities.  Assistive technology is any device that helps bypass or compensate for an individual’s specific learning deficit.  Since the category of learning disabilities is so large, it goes on to discuss many different types and how they would be useful to different students.  Something to remember is that not all assistive technologies are good for every student with a learning disability.  It is a mission to find the best and most appropriate assistive technology for the students in order to help them through the challenge; compensating for a deficit that the student encounters in their ability to learn. 

Stanberry and Raskind divide the article into two sections; ‘What types of learning problems does assistive technology address?’ and ‘What kinds of assistive technology tools are available?’.  The types of learning problems that this article addresses are a student’s problems with listening, math, organizing and memory, reading and writing. The article also emphasizes that a student may have a difficulty in one subject like writing but may not struggle when they are reading or doing math.  The assistive technology tools that are discussed vary based on what the student may need.  For example, they have books on tape, speech synthesizers and talking calculators for students that have difficulties reading.  They also have electronic math work sheets, spell checkers, proofreading programs and word prediction software for students that have difficulties writing.  

Response:

This article would be very valuable to anyone looking, especially a teacher or a parent, for a source that supplied a list of possible assistive technologies that their student or child could use.  It would even be useful as a start to your research; to see the different types of things available and recommended for different learning disabilities.  With such a wide range of different learning disabilities, it is difficult to find or even basically comprehend what types of technologies might be available.  Unfortunately, these are not cures for learning disabilities, but these assistive technologies are aimed to aid the students in developing their learning further.  The assistive technology that I found most interesting was the abbreviation expanders.  This uses word processing and allows users to create, store and reuse abbreviations for frequent words which can save the user keystrokes and ensure for proper spelling as coded by the program previously. 

Some students say that these sorts of things are not fair because they think that the device the student gets to use makes it easy; but this is not the case.  It gets to an issue of fairness and how it does not mean equal.  Without assistive technologies, the classroom itself is not a fair environment.  If it was, then it would mean that every student is the same which we know is not the case.  Therefore, in order to make it fair, we can offer these assistive technologies to give every student the opportunity to learn because these tools are not in order to make learning easier but instead the process of learning so that they can get an education.   

APA Citation:

Stanberry, K., & Raskind, M. (2009). Assistive technology for kids with learning disabilities: An overview. Retrieved from http://www.readingrockets.org/article/33074/

Article 4: A School That's Too High on Gizmos

Summary:

At the beginning of the school year in 2008, TC Williams High School started teaching in a new $98 million building making it one of the most expensive high schools ever built.  Each room is equipped with the latest technologies such as LED screen projectors.  Teachers should be thrilled at this opportunity; but then why aren’t they?  According to a former superintendant to the district stated that teacher moral is the lowest and most negative it’s been in years because of a phenomenon known as “technolust” which is a disorder affecting publicity-obsessed school administrators nationwide that manifests itself in an insatiable need to acquire the latest and supposed best computer gadgets out there regardless of their actual need.

Teachers say that they are being forced to use these technologies even when they are not the most productive.  Math and science teachers are being told they cannot use overhead projectors even though they are very useful in getting concept and formulations across.  Teachers were even given a $500 device that underlines words on the boards that the teacher can control from anywhere in the room.  While convenient, it’s seen to be more of an expensive gadget that caters to the lazy.  It is also being seen as the steps moving toward replacing teachers with cyborgs. 

Students report that their favorite teachers are the ones not using this technology.  They appreciate their teacher’s energy and overall teaching style using the board and enthusiasm for the topic.  When it comes to each student being given a laptop, it’s frustrating for the teachers to walk around and see students surfing the web or playing video games.  Even when they are on task, most of class time is being spent downloading programs and waiting to connect to servers which can lead to the students getting distracted along with wasting precious learning time. 

Response:

This article was a very interesting read, especially in light of the positivity that we have explored in having technology in our classrooms that can help aide students.  I agree that technology has its place in the school setting, but there has to be a limit.  By creating this all technological school, we are asking our students not to be social and only learn from a screen, not other actual humans.  How would that affect students through their development of being able to work with and learn from other people; all of our answers do not come from a screen or the internet.  The social phenomenon from this article speaks volumes to what we are going to ‘expecting’ from our students one day; and apparently that is the ability to look at a screen and know everything.  The concept of a classroom and working through education requires engagement in the task at hand and not simply the task at keyboard. 

I understand wanting to have the new gadgets; why would they make new gadgets if they were not better than before and did not enhance the students ability to learn?  But this is not always going to be the case; it is also the idea that throwing money at an issue will make it all better.  We wouldn’t have invested so much time and resources into getting students into schools to be taught by teachers if it was as easy as flipping on a screen and letting students loose on the material. 

In the article, it also talks about the school installing 126 security cameras in the school.  While safety is an issue, there was no indication that safety had been an issue before and it seemed to be more of a control issue for the school.  I would hope that they could only be used for safety reasons and not as a ‘big brother’.  That leaves students no chance to explore and be individuals because they know they must conform to the rules because they are being watched all the time.  

APA Citation:

Welsh, P. (2008, February 10). A school that's too high on gizmos. Washington post. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/08/AR2008020803271.html

Article 3 (PP): Technology Integrations: Ideas that Work

APA Citation:

Starr, L. (2011, June 14). Technology integration: Ideas that work. Education World, Retrieved from http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/tech/tech176.shtml

Article 2: Beyond Social Networking: Building Toward Learning Communities

Summary:

                The issue of social networking has had recent research and publication on how educators can build off of the skills that students are developing through social networking.  However, it is not social networking at the center of this educational development; it is only the start of utilize the deeper points of learning of connection and socialization.  In psychology, social networking builds on the idea of social constructivism where students can build and create their own educational environment to build knowledge off of each of the other students in the class.  The deeper issue is getting students to go past the social networking and begin the social construction of knowledge piece.

                There are important keys that professors need to keep in mind in order to further develop the student’s social construction piece.  Social networking is not only during school hours, it requires a constant stream of being connected.  As a teacher, make sure that you are customizing your attention to each student and how they are using the social networking site.  Teachers are, also, responsible for keeping issues on topic and continually growing.  Students may grow bored or completely take the topic in a different, non-productive direction.  The students have grown accustomed to multi-tasking so, more than likely, they may have multiple different sites going at once (blogs, facebook, wiki, video sharing, etc.)  Teachers, in addition, need to make it easy for students to be active members of this learning community.  Through successful implication of social networking tools in the classroom, students can learn to interpret and construct real-world processes, pool knowledge plus compare notes and learn to respect multiple perspectives and understand diverse communities. 

                NOTE:

                It is crucial to note teacher’s NEED to be careful when creating groups on social networking sites such as Facebook; any conduct that seems social in nature can be construed as creepy and unsettling.  Teachers need to be clear and provide specific instructions on how social networking will be used in the classroom. 

Response:

                This day in age, we have come to think of social networking sites as damaging to the educational community.  It has become a distraction from the learning/educational process.  It has, also, become an area of controversy on the amount of personal information that can be found on social networking sites.  There are stories out there involving teachers getting fired for what was found on their personal accounts; so why would teachers want to put themselves at risk by creating a social networking setting for their class?

                However, just like the introduction of everyday technology to education (document cameras, Powerpoint presentations, slideshows, video sharing, typing papers, etc.), social networking is an overarching topic that will join in the importance of educational uses.  By providing this gateway for student communication, we can use their skills in computer communication to get them to share and develop ideas on a deeper level.  I have heard of school districts creating classroom blogs where students and teachers have an online blog area where students keep blogs describing what they are learning and they can go and read what each other is gathering and learning in class.  This allows them to see different perspectives and learn from different viewpoints of the classroom.  This also allows the teacher to have a contained center where they can control what is being put on the blog and see how their interests are developing and changing.

                In colleges, many are using other Web 2.0 sites in order to promote sharing such as Blackboard.  Students can engage in communication and sharing of information through discussion boards.  Although this is not a social networking site, it provides the type of discussion that we, as teachers, want to create in a social networking environment.  We want to tap into the sharing capabilities and range of individual focus/resources that students can gather through social networking. 

                I believe that this type of research we need to continue in order to tap into the world of social networking and create it into an effective process for our classrooms; just like the growing technology development.

APA Citation:

Reynard, R. (2009, July 22). Beyond social networking: Building toward learning communities. Campus technology, Retrieved from http://campustechnology.com/Articles/2009/07/22/Beyond-Social-Networking-Building-Toward-Learning-Communities.aspx?Page=1