Digital Edge Project

I found this resource to be very entertaining and I can see that it will be very helpful in my future teaching career. The Digital Edge Project provides archives of lessons, both written and in video form, that teachers have done. It gives the background setting of the class, teacher, and what the lessons are about, explains the lesson and assessment, and how it all went.
I wanted to share about two lessons. First, I reviewed one titled "Energy Explorations" which was designed and done with a 3rd grade classroom of boys and girls in Florida. It was taught by a teacher named Mrs. Dutton. She incorporates technology into the lesson a few times, creatively.
First, she gets the students interested in energy by encouraging the idea that energy is everywhere around them all of the time. She inflates a solar balloon to get the students asking questions and starts the inquiry process. I like that she chose to do an inquiry-based lesson to let the students carry out their own investigations. They studied energy in the form of heat, light, sound energy, and electricity by leading experiments. They collected data and recorded it in groups into their "Science Journals." Each group then got to use the program, HyperStudio4 to show their scientific findings on a visual slide. They had to use a picture somewhere on the page as well.
This program was probably new to many of the students, but keeping the requirements simple and open-ended allowed for everyone to participate. Finally, each group was able to "teach" their findings to the rest of the class, giving a small presentation with their visual they created. I feel like this was a very effective idea. Creating a summary of their findings forced the students to synthesize all of the evidence they collected about energy. Many times with science labs, we follow the procedure, record our data, and find a solution to our question, all without really thinking abou the meaning of the question or problem. So, in other words, rather than learning unconnected facts about energy, the students are left with several "take home" big ideas that they can remember and back up with their experiences and experiments.
My favorite part about this lesson is that it included real scanned versions of what the students had made. The website included copies of journal pages and lots of pages created using HyperStudio4.

The second lesson that I found and wanted to mention was "Why tell a digital story?"
This short video really showed how important story telling is and how easily it can be lost. Many cultures relied on storytelling as a tradition to have history "recorded" and remembered. Now, we have books, and writing to tell these stories, but creating a digital story is much more. I've personally made several digital stories using pictures, and words. It encourages creativity and they can be made about anything and used for almost any agegroup - over 3rd grade maybe. Whether the story is non-fiction or fiction, this lesson can teach students that they can be creative with writing all of the time.

Rethinking Learning in the Digital Age

Mitchel Resnick's article, "Rethinking Learning in the Digital Age," takes a look at technology's role in student learning and how today's education system should reform to incorporate the effective use of technology more often. Resnick rebuts the argument that technology stifles creativity and communication opportunities by explaining the many applications available on computers that, in fact, encourage and enhance creativity. The computer gives students a forum to express themselves in different ways than paper and pencil offer.
The article presents the idea that computers relay information as a common misconception and instead illustrates how the computer is "a new medium through which people can create and express" (33). Learning takes place here because students are able to be active in the process of understanding the world around them. Resnick clearly demonstrates his point using an example of Computer Clubhouses, or learning centers, and how they enhance student confidence and entrepreneurship.
Resnick stressed that technology skills should be taught and implemented early on in the school system, focusing on "strategies for learning the things [students] don't know" rather than "things to know" (36).


What does this mean to me?

Some of Resnick's ideas resonated with me while others,... not so much.
I really liked the concept of the Computer Clubhouses. I had never heard of these, though they're no new development. I can see the value in giving children the space to create without a "homework assignment." I thought it was really cool how some of the kids at these centers who may have had trouble in academic courses could find something that they were confident in and be successful. However, Resnick's urge to integrate computer technologies in early education made me feel uncomfortable. I already feel that kids know too much about computers at very young ages and though it can be an effective educational resource and medium, I feel that it is only necessary in the upper grades.
To me, face to face communication is a crucial skill to be successful in the working world. Yes, many application processes and even day to day jobs are entirely online, but being comfortable in an in-person interview is equally important. Showing confidence both with or without a computer is what makes one hireable. I feel that children will naturally pick up technology skills because technology is around them everyday. In the early years, education should focus on communicating and expressing ones self using ones self as a medium, not a computer.
Children need to be able to express their feelings and thoughts with words and body language and be able to understand other people in our real-time, three-dimensional world, not only a screen.
Lastly, I agree with one of his last points about how students should be "active and independent learners with the teacher serving as a consultant" and that "instead of dividing up the curriculum into separate discipline,...we should focus on themes and projects that cut across the disciplines, taking advantage of the rich connections among different domains of knowledge" (36). My high school took this latter approach. In my opinion, learning can be more meaningful if disciplines are connected than if separate. One simply way to actualize this is to plan curriculum around units or topics, for example regions of the world or time periods. When studying Ancient Rome, students could study Roman history, ancient Roman government, Roman literature, and ancient Roman art. Some subjects, math and science, are harder to coordinate.
This gives students a chance to delve deeper into a topic and see a more wholistic view.

Ultimately, I don't dis technology as a whole. I do think there are several positive ways to involve the computer in the classroom, some of which Resnick noted, but I would hate to see children brought up on technology depend on it as a source of creativity.