Wednesday, July 28, 2010

All the Lonely People...

...where do they all come from? Well, Beatles, not from Generation M!

Before I start with my thoughts about this week's reading, I feel the need to express that I am slightly nervous right now. You know, since my audience this week has increased exponentially due to an email Pat sent to the entire program. (Thanks, Monte!) If you're here for the first time, welcome. Feel free to stay awhile. I won't charge for restroom usage, and I also won't criticize your horrid choice of music. Moving on...

As one of the younger SMACers, I went to middle, high school, and undergrad with fellow Generation M'ers. My classmates built relationships both in person and via IM, email, text messages, social networking sites, and all those other gizmos and gadgets that were popular between 1999 and May 2010 (which I guess could be simplified to "now." Or "now enough.") While I rarely used my cell phone (to this day, I hate text messaging with a passion), I did utilize IM programs and social networking sites. While I see their value in maintaining relationships, since they allow me to keep in frequent contact with friends I may not get to see on a daily basis, I honestly much prefer to talk to people face-to-face. I love voices. I love facial expressions. I love the third dimension!

I never understood how some people prefer to IM friends who are only across the street or make small talk with friends for hours via text messaging when a phone call would have made that conversation move at a much faster pace. To me, IMing and texting makes friends seem almost mechanical. These forms of communication rob them of their voice, their facial expressions, and their third dimension! My friends are people, not machines! (Note: I have yet to pour buckets of water on my friends to test this theory.)

I also feel that the overuse of modern technology makes people in this generation unfriendly. Gone are the days when people randomly initiated conversations with strangers, as these days, everybody is too occupied with their iPods/phones/personal gaming systems/laptops to give strangers a second glance. It's sad; that was one of my favorite parts about summer camp back in middle school. Or how about when you're talking to somebody in person and they are simultaneously texting somebody else? Although the article says that most people in Generation M would not find such a behavior rude, most of the people around my age that I know, including me, would say otherwise. The odd thing is that, to me, such a behavior is perfectly fine when I'm sitting in the same room as somebody else and both of us have laptops and are supposedly doing homework. Hmm...

Can you imagine how this abundance of technology will carry over into the next generation? Fifteen-year-old girls will be writing in their public weblogs about their first kiss that took place via a webcam with a boy 800 miles away and texting her eight best friends about it immediately afterward. I don't know about you, but that just doesn't sound romantic to me. Especially the thought of cleaning the spit off of the camera afterward.

What about the abundance of personal information that members of Generation M choose to share online? It's true, we do have a lot of resources at our disposal that make the sharing of this information easy. Just about anybody can have access to the Internet and therefore social networking sites. Most people have a digital camera for taking pictures, which frequently end up shared on social networking sites, and recording movies, which can easily be uploaded to public video-sharing sites like YouTube. Most computers even come with a movie-editing program of some sort, which makes creating movies easy and fun. (Not that I've had experiences making silly movies with friends and putting them on YouTube...)

I agree with Klapperstuck and Kearns that most teens post these things on the Internet because they believe that only their friends will see them. I mean, there are so many movies on YouTube and so many blogs and personal profiles on the Internet, why would a stranger be specifically interested in yours? To these teens, I say this: there are some very bored and very perverted strangers out there. And also consider the possibility of other people you know seeing this information. Would you want your parents seeing what you're posting on the Internet? What about your teachers (if you think they don't Google their names to find out what students are saying about them, you are sadly mistaken)? If your answer to either of these questions is "no," that information probably shouldn't be on a public site.

I'm sorry that I have no cartoon for you today. I know my entry from last time and Pat's email probably got your hopes up, but I feel that a cartoon does not suit this entry as well as it did last week. Never fear! You can write out your frustrations in an email and send it to me. Maybe Shari will let that count as your reform project.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Cartoony Loony

Before I watched James Paul Gee's video interview, I never considered that the mastery of mindless video games closely parallels the process of learning in a school environment. Trying to make a connection between the two never crossed my mind, for, as childish as this may sound, I've always associated video games with free time and fun and learning with...sweating in a stuffy classroom that lacks air conditioning and being forced to do tasks that I probably wouldn't do by choice.

Gee points out, however, that video games can, in fact, function as a learning tool. In a video game, a player starts out with a small set of skills. The player must learn to use these skills effectively in order to complete a small number of tasks. Once a player completes these tasks, he must test his ability to use his skills in a battle against a boss. After he defeats the boss, he can advance to the next level.

Similarly, when a student enters a classroom, he brings a set of cognitive skills with him. The teacher assigns him homework and projects as a means for him to utilize these skills. If he finds success in using these skills on homework and projects, he is also likely to find success on an assessment (ie: BIG TEST!), where he is asked to once again demonstrate to the teacher ("BIG BOSS") that he is ready to advance to the next step of his academic journey.

Okay, so the parallels between video games and classroom learning exist. But why are video games still generally more enjoyable to students than going to class? Why would I rather role play as a blue hedgehog and run around in loops trying to collect golden rings when I could just be myself and do my homework and hopefully feel the same sense of accomplishment?

Let's say that my life was a video game.

For our purposes today, this is me.

In order for this game to have a purpose, I need a task to perform.



Okay, we've got our task. Now let's carry it out by using my amazing set of questioning skills to find my quantitative article.



Hmm...no success.
Hey, look at him!



He has a mustasche. Therefore, he MUST be a quantitative article. (Please don't ask me to explain my logic on this one.)

Good. Now the next challenge is getting him to go to class with me so I can turn him in for a Participation Assignment.





He doesn't want to go willingly, so I have to turn on my charm and make him a deal he can't refuse.

Oh hey, now we're facing the Big Boss. Hopefully my quantitative-article-finding skills are worthy enough to advance me to the next level!



AHHH! NOOO! I have to do that again?!

I think if I had to play this video game, this is the point where I would turn it off, throw it in the fire place, and ask my parents why they got me such a terrible Christmas present. What makes this game of my life so dull? Why would I much rather spend hours of my life lost in a foreign land as Sonic the Hedgehog or even as Pac Man, trapped in an endless loop of mazes? It's the fantasy factor, in my humble opinion. Sure, I have skills as a normal human. I can draw well, I can read, and I write - but what fun are those ordinary skills if I could be somebody else for a while who can shoot lasers out of her eyes or run at the speed of light or snack on others in order to attain their super powers (Kirby, anyone?)

Gee brings up a good point about one of the advantages of learning via a video game: those who play video games seem more encouraged to try failed tasks again. Video games come with extra lives, which serve as built-in tool to encourage gamers to go back and fix mistakes. Students do not always feel as encouraged to try again when they make mistakes in the classroom. Ordinarily, when a student makes a mistake, it sometimes takes a larger push to get that student to attempt the task again, especially if his failure to accomplish the task the first time took a toll on his self esteem.

I also read blog entries from the Cool Cat Teacher Blog. A particularly striking entry involved the questioning of why we, as people, don't always take a stand whenever something bad is happening around us. We commonly assume that somebody else is going to take action, and in many situations, nothing is done. That brings me back to a story I saw on the news a couple years ago. An elderly man was at the gas station and two younger men started to beat him up. Meanwhile, a large crowd of people stood and watched, nobody bothering to step in and do anything. What are we so afraid of? Responsibility? Embarassment? Are we just in shock that these situations can and do happen?

Something of a similar nature happened in Shari's class today. While our class was in the midst of "circle time," I heard a scream coming from outside. Nobody, including me, bothered looking out the window to see where it came from. Realistically, the scream probably came from a kid who was playing with another kid. But what if that wasn't the case? What if the scream was emitted by a kid who was being kidnapped? None of us would ever know, since none of us looked out the window. Therefore, nothing would have been done about it. Things like this make me sad. What makes me even sadder is knowing that I am part of the problem.

Anyway, to end on a lighter note: I did complete the quantitative article collection stage of my EDUC 695 video game and have advanced to the qualitative article stage. Wish me luck!!

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Just call me Smigglezz.

So I think the DIA is missing a valuable piece of art...

Taken from the Community Whiteboard in Friday's Webinar.


During class on Friday, I learned to Tweet. Yes, with a "big" T, not a little one. I already knew how to tweet (LOWER CASE) beforehand. I mean, maybe nobody would've actually mistaken me for a bird, but I sure as heck could articulate the "t" and the "weet" together...


So yeah, Tweeting with the big T. I set up my own professional Twitter account. I then professionally named myself Smigglezz Goop and professionally Tweeted that the Smigglezz had landed. Then I professionally located most of the Twitter accounts of my classmates and professionally followed them. In the second half of class, my classmates and I professionally used our computers to professionally engage in a professional webinar where there were professional technical difficulties that we professionally solved. What a day! Basically, I've got this professional thing in the bag.


I took a lesson out of Friday's class that I wasn't sure was the intended lesson. In the duration of the webinar, I found myself a bit distracted by Twitter. I just had this urge to constantly (and professionally!) refresh my Twitter page every couple of minutes to see if my classmates had posted any new Tweets. My mind just wasn't completely in the webinar, and the distractions only continued as the sound kept failing. Now, I would like to assume that I am more mature than many, if not most, fifteen year olds. Assuming that is true, if the technology surrounding me distracts me from paying attention to what's going on in class, how am I going to expect most fifteen year olds to focus in a class I am teaching if they are surrounded by the same technology? Basically, this class period taught me why it's important to not utilize Twitter in the classroom.


I can understand using Twitter outside the classroom. It can be used as a forum for sharing information. Shy students would probably feel more comfortable asking questions or sharing thoughts that they perhaps were too intimidated to bring up in class. Yes, there are benefits to websites like Twitter, but as for using the site in the classroom while class is going on...I'm going to say no on that one (in the most professional way possible, of course!) If I couldn't concentrate, I doubt the students would.


My favorite part of class was actually our class discussion about the readings. It was pretty incredible watching my fellow MACers take charge of a classroom, just like we'll be doing in the fall. I was just in awe at how comfortable everybody who took charge of the class seemed. Leading a classroom discussion just came so naturally to them. You all intimidate me greatly. Are you sure none of you have ever taught a class before? How am I supposed to be sure that you guys aren't all teachers who've achieved tenure and are sulking about U of M disguised as graduate students? Maybe this whole grad school thing is a joke on me, and you're all going to laugh at me when I'm confused as to why I'm miles behind the rest of you in my teaching skill level. If this is all a joke, you guys are good actors. You should all star in a hit movie. Or a "reality" TV show (those are all staged anyway.) What if this joke on me is actually a reality TV show? HEY, MOMMY, I'M LOOKING FOOLISH ON TV! I told you it would happen some day...

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Twits Tweets Twoots Twerps

I have such a hard time taking Twitter seriously. Honestly, 95% of it has to do with its ridiculous name. And then there's the lingo: Tweet. Retweet. Hootsuite. Tweeps. These words are just really horrible puns that go off of the whole bird idea. I mean, I love bad puns, but this is just too much for me. (Believe me, that's saying something.)


I've never seen Twitter as anything more than a forum where people deem it appropriate to post updates on all the mundane details of their lives: "I am sitting in my car." "I am using the toilet." "I am walking down the stairs." "I tripped and fell down the stairs." Do I really care about every mundane thing that you do? (Well, maybe yes for the person who just fell down the stairs, but if she can muster up the energy to tweet, what's keeping her from dialing 911?) Why do people bother posting Tweets like that? I mean, if somebody is honestly excited to hear about ALL the mundane details of your life, shouldn't that concern and/or disturb you in any way, shape, or form? I have my own life with its own mundane details, thank you very much.

Anyway, my experiences with posting on Twitter are far from professional. Basically, my younger sister and I both have accounts, but we only log into Twitter to make our Twitter aliases argue with one another (hence why we sometimes refer to one another as "he" in the screen cap below.)


I know, maturity-wise I am far beyond my years. I'll just leave you in awe for a few minutes.
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You should be in awe right now.
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You should still be in awe.
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Okay, you can stop now.

I suppose we're learning how to use this website in a more - erm - professional manner. It would be nice to see how this site is supposed to be used because as of right now, I just don't find it useful for anything except having hilarious e-arguments with my sister. Which I guess makes it useful enough, but a little birdie (AHHH, BAD PUN! HIT IT WITH A FRYING PAN!!) tells me that's not what the site is intended for.

Anyway, if you're looking for something fun to comment about, let me pose this question to you: if you could personify a bad pun, what would it look like? I'll leave you with your thoughts.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Shy Guy and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

During class on Friday, I got a chance to view "Shy Guy," a 1950s propagan--er, I mean "timeless classic"--film about a twenty(or thirty)-something-year-old "teenager" trying to fit in with the other twenty/thirty-something-year-old "teenagers" at his high school. It amazes me that during the 1950s, this was the only form of technology available in the classrooms. Did students at the time find films like these as horribly cheesy as we did? The lesson of the film was basically that if you talk to people, you'll make friends. I'm sure none of the teenagers ever thought of that one before....

My mom used to tell me that when she was growing up, she used to watch re-runs of "Leave It To Beaver." Even as an eight-year-old kid, my mom would always get frustrated at how dumb Beaver and Wally were. Even as an eighth grader in the later part of the series, Beaver still talked like a five year old. Every lesson that June and Ward tried to hammer into his head went in one ear and out the other, and he'd get himself into similar trouble a few episodes later (usually as a result of giving into peer pressure from his friends.) Then, when my mom was a teenager, she used to watch "The Brady Bunch." Like "Leave It To Beaver," she enjoyed the show, but found it extremely cheesy and unbelievable. The Brady children always won every award, made every team, and even became famous. (Did I mention that Marsha took Davy Jones to prom?)


The point of that tangent is this: if cheesy educational films like "Shy Guy" were used in classrooms as a legitimate attempt to teach teenagers manners, were they ever taken seriously? Did teenagers sit around avidly taking notes on this film? Were there tests on it? Could teachers have done a better job getting the point across?


In the afternoon, we worked in our blog groups to develop a lesson plan about the recent oil spill. First of all, let me state that it was nice to actually meet everybody in my blog group, since many of them are in Section B and we've had little to no contact these last couple of weeks. Our group was so diverse that we had a hard time figuring out what our common subject area was. We settled on foreign languages, including the not-so-foreign language of English. The next part was breaking up into smaller groups to design projects for foreign languages and English (the translating part of the project wouldn't apply to English classes, so we had to think of an alternative, meaningful assignment for a potential English class.) Since the group with English majors only contained two people, I decided to stick with my major and turn the duo into a trio. Danielle, Mallory, and I thought of a nice lesson that involved teaching students how to use one of the google search engines that we learned to use in the AM session of class. Through the search engine, students would find recent articles about the oil spill and read and compare the tone, perspective, and voice in the articles. The hardest part of this assignment for us was properly articulating our thoughts. One of us would come up with a good idea, and Mallory had her hands on the keyboard ready to type it into our wikispaces page, but we would struggle to find the clearest and most concise wording of that idea. Yep, we're English majors.


In closing, I feel that if Shy Guy wants to make friends, he should revolutionize his black-and-white world by wearing bright colors.

But that's just me.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

A Lesson on Prophet Dewey

So...let's talk about Dewey. I had never heard of him until I read the articles for Friday. I must say, with the way Rich and Reeves' article talks about him, one would believe that the man was some sort of prophet to the church of educational technology. The article opens by stating that although Dewey died over half a century ago, he would endorse the use of the modern technology used in today's classrooms because the use of such technology is in line with his philosophy of education. The article supports this argument by quoting Dewey as he states his distaste of objectivism and his support of learning by doing with moderate teacher supervision: two concepts that lie at the foundation of instruction with technology. The quotes from Dewey - written years ago in a world different from our own - were embedded into the text and surrounded by explanations of how his words endorse the use of technology in the classroom: an issue that we face today. I'm not going to lie, the entire time I was reading this text, I felt as if I was at a Bible study discussing the book of the prophet Dewey with six or seven strangers.

I think if there was a church of Dewey, members would have to recite his Pedagogic Creed at every service. That's a shame; that article wasn't exactly short... Also, children would be forced to memorize it before they could be confirmed. Poor children...

Anyway, the thing that struck me the most about Dewey's Pedagogic Creed is Dewey's belief that school should simplify a child's existing social life. I would love to see this work in real life. In my entire schooling career, going to school definitely never simplified my social life. If anything, it complicated it quite a bit. Before I started kindergarten, I really only knew my family. Then I went away to school and met all sorts of crazy people. Some were nice, some were mean, some were bossy, some were tall, some were smelly... And we need to deal with all of these people in as civil of a manner as possible. But we're all so different that somewhere down the line, we're going to have a conflict with somebody. Little kids argue over toys and friends. When we get older, kids start to form cliques and start alienating people who they perceive as undesirable to the social "image" that they're trying to attain - and that's BEFORE middle school. Once middle school rolls around, all these new changes and "feelings" are mixed into the already-complicated equation. People start dating. Some kids develop bad habits... And then high school. Let's not even go there. Basically, if I want to be in an environment where I have the most simplified social life, school is the last place I would go.

Also in Dewey's Creed: "I believe that next to deadness and dullness, formalism and routine, our education is threatened with no greater evil than sentimentalism." It looks like the church of Dewey has found itself a devil.

"Teaching Generation M" was an article that did exactly what the title implied it would do: teach me things! I learned all these interesting facts about Google that I never thought to research. First of all, I had always wondered whether Google or Yahoo! had existed first, and now I know that it was Yahoo! I can sleep well tonight knowing that that question is finally answered. And I had always wondered why hitting the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button after typing "miserable failure" into the Google Search Bar always brought me to George W. Bush's biography. The world makes so much sense now.

Also, the article talked about teenagers using Wikipedia and Google as sources in research projects: "They may still use [them], but cite information from other sources" (174). Gee, I've never seen that happen before...

So basically, I took a lot out of those readings.

One closing comment: Can we please appreciate Rich and Reeves' utter enthusiam for Dewey? "...The Collected Works of John Dewey, published by the University of Illinois Press, runs to 37 volumes!" (54). I mean, look at that exclamation point. Feel that enthusiasm. Exclamation points are very rare in scholarly articles such as these. Rich and Reeves want us to be just as excited as they are that Dewey has produced 37 whole volumes of material for us to read. I want to pick up a copy of each of those 37 volumes right now so I can read a chapter right before bed every night. That will give me enough bed time stories to last me until I'm old. Then, before I go to bed, I can recite Dewey's Pedagogic Creed wearing my Dewey-face PJs with a signed poster of Dewey over my bed that is covered in Dewey-face sheets. Some would call it an obsession; I think it's just a replication of what I believe Rich and Reeves' bedrooms look like.

Okay, I'm done.

Sunday, July 4, 2010

The Start of Something...

Using techology in the classroom... I'm nervous already.


I've never been the most tech-saavy person I know. I'm usually one of the last people to upgrade my technology. About a month ago, I bought a new cell phone. My old one was about six years outdated; the new one is only outdated by three years. Hurray, upgrade!


These newfangled phones you youngins use these days confuse me. I remember having to borrow my friend's iPhone to make a phone call not too long ago. That thing has so many pretty icons, but I couldn't figure out how to use the actual phone function. I find this very sad. And don't even get me started on my complete loathe of texting...


My favorite part of the first day of class was definitely the discussion about educational games that many of us remember from elementary school. I used to love to play The Oregon Trail and Number Munchers. At the time, it was very obvious to me how Number Munchers enhanced our curriculum: basically, you're a very hungry frog trapped on a game board that consists of thirty boxes. Within each of these boxes is a number. In each level, the top of the screen gives you a characteristic of all the numbers you need to eat in order to complete the level. Such characteristics include "prime number," "multiples of x" (as seen in the image to the left), or "equal to x" (if there are equations in each box.) All the while, you are trying to dodge these monsters who desire a number-munching froggie sandwich. The game was decently challenging for my third-grade self, and it made learning prime numbers fun.


Then there was the Oregon Trail. In elementary school, I wasn't really sure how this game was supposed to teach me anything. I mostly got giggles out of writing the names of my classmates as members of the wagon and watching to see which diseases would eventually kill them off. I always got frustrated because whenever my other friends would play the game and use my name in their wagon, I was always - by chance - the first one to die, usually of chlamydia. Maybe I need to get that checked out... When I was in college, I played this game once more for kicks, only instead of using the names of my friends, I used my least-favorite physics equations. I didn't try to kill them off that time, but all of the equations perished before reaching Oregon. I guess that means there is no physics in Oregon. Lucky.


Anyway, the point of that tangent is that Oregon Trail was fun, but I can't really say that I learned too much from it at the time. As an adult looking back, I can understand the thinking skills that it tries to impose upon children. It basically teaches them that there are consequences to every action and that there isn't always a "right" answer to every question.


Overall, I am looking forward to starting a class that focuses on using technology in the classroom. I feel, as somebody who is usually years behind current technology, that this is a class from which I will greatly benefit (assuming, of course, that my klutzy tendencies don't get in the way and cause me to damage said technology.)