Week 12

I found the topic of cellphones and QR codes in education very interesting. However, I'm still not completely convinced of the feasibility (or desirability) of incorporating mobile technology in the classroom. The staff and parents at the BYOD school presented in the introductory video kept referring to the heightened "engagement" they saw in the students. One parent said that her children found learning fun. 

While I agree that it's nice to see children eager to learn, I sometimes can't help feeling that we're going to such great lengths to make everything so palatable, enticing, intriguing, etc., that we're raising a generation of kids that expects to be catered to and can't conceive of doing anything that's not fun. Maybe it's a question of balance. Perhaps it's valid to incorporate the tools that students are used to using in their daily lives in their educational experience as long as they're expected to pick up a book (or kindle) and read an extensive, challenging text every once in a while as well. I suppose it's not really incorporating technology that bothers me, but rather the insistence that everything be fun.

As for uses in education, the treasure hunt seemed like a good idea. I suppose that the aspect of competition would keep them focused so that they wouldn't be checking their whatsapp every other minute. I know that in my own classroom I would love to be able to do Kahoot! quizzes, but there is absolutely no way the Rosh Yeshiva in my school would condone bringing cell phones into the classroom, even for educational purposes. I understand his perspective, since it's such a battle to keep them, and other distractions, out of the class. While I would be happy to adopt the "if you can't beat them, join them" approach, I see that even at the college level, telephones and other mobile devices can be a real distraction. In classes where teachers do not demand that students put away their phones or close their computers a large portion of the students are busy doing things (often important) unrelated to the class. I'm sure that this would be an even bigger problem in a high school population.

Week 10 Research Tools

It's very hard to give an overview of this week's topic -- research tools -- without getting lost in the endless options. I decided to focus on two tools that I thought would be useful in the ESL classroom . . . and I still found myself combating the urge to continue clicking on links.

The Simple English Wikipedia probably has the most relevance for the ESL classroom. Here students can find articles on topics in simple English. Of course, the list of topics available is not nearly as extensive as that on the regular English site. However, students can still find a wide range of topics for research papers and projects.

The George Washington Papers Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress provides information that teachers can use to enrich cultural or historical presentations. For example, there is a large exhibit about African American progress to full citizenship that contains interesting information that can be used to provide context for different works of literature. I clicked on the exhibit of the American Colony in Jerusalem from the late 19th century, but the website was not available. However, the link to the Bob Hope exhibit provided an extensive history of the movie industry's beginnings in vaudeville. This site is a good place to start if you have a specific topic in American culture or history that you'd like to present in an interesting manner.

Now I'm off to see what other sites my fellow classmates have discovered.