Week 3: Portal to Media Literacy

The videos this week have truly confimed and justified my feelings about technology in the classroom.  "Portal to Media Literacy" described how technology and 21st Century Skills can turn a traditional topic into a Global Awareness/World Literacy lesson.  My question, could this have been accomplished without the use of technology?

The survey conducted by the instructor was a little of an eye-opener for me as well...It was interesting to see that students (esp higher-ed) felt that they wanted to learn, loved learning, but were not satisfied with the methods used.  Now, if these students, the ones who WANT to learn were unmotivated, and displeased, I can imagine how students at the High School and Primary levels feel.

I recently read a survey conducted by the University of Minisota "21st Century Students Technology Survey" results and analysis.

P. 29 Begins the analysis of the open-ended questions.  A few of the question answers shocked me.  For example:
Many students use social networking sites (such as Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Orkut) to keep in touch with friends and acquaintances. If you use such a site, how would you feel about efforts to integrate that site into your academic experience – seeing announcements from your classes in Facebook, for instance? This question was included in the survey because of the recent and very rapid rise in the popularity of social networking sites (SNSs) among college students. That popularity has led many instructors and administrators to wonder how these sites could be leveraged so as to improve students’ academic lives.23The general student attitude toward this proposal is very clear, however:
"No. That would not be ok. Those sites are for pleasure outside of school. I would not want that incorporated."

"Facebook is for fun, family, and friends – not for school."

"I think it would be weird since these sites… are strictly social sites. Not only would I not want to deal with school things on a site that I use to keep up with friends in my personal life, but I would not want instructors to be able to look at my profile. I would be very uncomfortable with this."

"Announcements could be useful, but I wouldn’t necessarily want my professors and classmates to have access to my personal information on those sites. So, if there were some way to separate that, it might work."

QUESTION 23In the past, some students have expressed the concern that their professors do not make good use of educational technology. How could your professors improve their use of educational technology in the classes you have taken? Student responses to this question revealed the tendency among University students, manifested elsewhere in the survey results as well, to see educational technology’s primary function as content delivery. The responses leaned strongly in favor of using technology to provide PowerPoint slides or professors’ lecture notes online for class make-up or exam review: "I think that if a professor uses PowerPoint or other slideshows, that they should put it on WebVista after... when they are going quickly in class, it is amazing to go to WebVista and find the lecture on PowerPoint to get points that i missed or Further themes in the responses included:
• using technology for administrative functions (posting grades and syllabi online)
• never using technology for its own sake
• using technology well (i.e., uncluttered slides, well-organized Web sites, not reading from PowerPoint slides)

"Think of creative ways to include... audio, visual materials and use Moodle to improve and facilitate communication among students."
"PowerPoints are NOT effective when there is nothing but words covering a slide."
"We are all in college, and we all know how to read. Professors should never read their slides to us."
"By only using it [educational technology] if it’s USEFUL. Don’t just use technology to be using it."
"Education technology is good - in moderation. Many professors lean WAY too heavily on PowerPoint presentations and when someone
After reviewing their analysis and results, here is what I have summarized.  Students don't always want you to use the tools that they value as entertaining and use outside of school in their learning experience.  What I got from this was like, "you were ruining their fun".  It is ok for them to have technology as entertainment, we don't have to take everything away from them.  They know they can use it to communicate around the world, why force them?

Also, don't use technology just for the sake of using it.  This goes back to a previous posting.  As an educator, it is our job to know our audience.  It is our job to know our curriculum.  It should also now become our job to use technology responsibly.  Not just for the sake of using it.  We need to pick the right tool for the right lesson.

A great way to do that...Professional Development.  We entered the profession of education, hopefully because we like learning...so why not learn something...?
stops them to ask a question, they get frantic because now they are behind on their slides. I think PowerPoints make class structure sometimes too rigid and don’t allow for as much creativity or flexibility that is necessary in classrooms to facilitate learning."
to review for tests."