Is Google the new McDonald's?

There are many implications for technology in the 21st century generally, and in the realm of education specifically. One of the final questions we are addressing in the 518 Technology in the Classroom course looks at sourcing technology to schools as a single educational offering.  Microsoft has already been largely successful at having their software be the most-used in schools nationwide, and certainly Apple has tried to make inroads with their computers and tablets. Now Google is getting in on the game. They are offering schools not just the hardware, laptops and tablets, but a full spectrum of software. They hope to provide all the necessary classroom management tools that teachers will need as well as the applications that students will need. There is something very alluring about this single product opportunity. It promises to streamline everything to maximize communication and efficiency. On the other side of the coin, (the "dark" side, perhaps) there are many concerns that are raised about this "single product for everything and everyone" system. It would be incredibly unwise to push aside what we know to be true about the true purpose for companies in this capitalist society, and that is the bottom line. Sure, Google wants to make people's educational experience better, but what they really want is to sell you stuff. And everyone who studies economics and culture know that it's best to hook people while they're young. Just like McDonald's aims to snag lifetime customers at a very early age with their salty, fatty, sweet, comes-with-a-toy-happy meals, so Google is hoping to get loyal users as young as possible. Google has had numerous issues with their privacy policy, and that concern should be doubled when it comes to our children.

Gamification in Society and in the Classroom

A couple of years ago, my sons made some new friends. After picking them up from a play date, they told me that their new friend, Stephen, had a diamond pickax. I was a little surprised by that and commented that it surely must be pretend. They told me that, no, it was a real diamond pickax. I then asked exactly what that meant, and said that there must be diamonds on the handle. They told me that the pickax wasn't made of diamonds, but was used to mine diamonds. Incredulously, I asked why a 10 year old would have a real ax and why they would need one for mining. Exasperated, my 8 year old said, "Mom, it's for Minecraft."

Oh, Minecraft.

Yes, at this point I had been hearing many strange conversations that did not make sense to me from my boys and their friends. These conversations took place while they were using their tablets, when they were in the back of the car after school, while they were on the basketball court. Many months went by before I finally caught on that Minecraft was the subject of all of their conversations.

As a parent and a teacher, I have had many, many conversations about the impact of current digital technologies, including the many apps and games that children play. However, despite some of my concerns, I have had something of a deterministic point of view. The use of these devices and the gaming that goes along with them seems inevitable.

Several of the articles I read for this week are related to gamification. I think it's an exceptional idea for libraries to include gaming as part of their content. One of the articles from NPR talked with several libraries which claimed to have seen an increase in their circulation since they have incorporated on-site gaming. There are many people who, because of the Digital Divide, do not have consistent or quality access to the internet. That libraries can offer that aspect to them is laudable. Some opponents of using libraries for gaming claim that libraries should not be treated as community centers and that they should be places for intellectual/scholarly pursuits. I find this notion preposterous. My own public library offered a free class on wreath-making this past weekend. Is that an intellectual pursuit? No, but, for some, it's a valuable one. If libraries have to claim an intellectual or scholarly pursuit, then much of the books, fiction and non-fiction alike, along with videos, music and games would have to be removed from the library.

As for gamification in school, I love the sound of figuring out how to use games in a real context in a school environment. I am on the same page, however, as Joey Lee and Jessica Hammer from Teachers College Columbia University who say, "[we] must know what problems we are trying to fix, design systems that fix those specific problems, develop ways of evaluating whether those fixes work, and sustain those fixes over time," in their article, "Gamification in Education: What, How, Why Bother?" We cannot simply start adding new technologies into classrooms without understanding what we're doing and why. As it is, many studies have found that many educators are being required to add technology components to their classrooms, yet don't have the knowledge or experience to teach using those technologies, or troubleshoot them. 

Additionally, I think that we are making a huge mistake as a culture when we try and frame all aspects of life through a single lens -- that of technology. There are many valuable things that students learn in school, and I don't think we should replace them all with technology-driven curriculum. I do think that educators do need to constantly look at what they  are teaching and why, and revise their practices to meet the goals, standards and needs of the students they teach.

Podcasts, I-movies, and You-tube

There are so many ways to reach a greater audience these days. One of the aspects of current technologies that I love so much is the variety of media with which to express ideas. Using voice and video recordings are two excellent ways to break out of the norm for content.

I am a verbal/linguistic learner, so the written word has always had a strong influence on me. On the contrary, I find my students leaning much more heavily towards being visual learners.

There is no doubt that the increased availability of voice and video recording has made it so that anyone can post...anything, really.

There are countless ways I have used the available content for my own personal purposes. Just last night, I watched four different you-tube videos about how to fix my hair in a style that's called a "messy bun." I was able to pick the video that came closest to what I was looking for and watch and re-watch it until I had the information I was seeking. I have been using both podcasts and videos to teach myself how to play a ukulele.

As a student, one of the aspects of the Technology 518 course that I have liked more than any other course I have taken so far is the weekly podcast recordings. I am a distance learner, so all my courses are online. While there are many advantages and conveniences to this method of learning, there are also drawbacks. I much prefer the opportunity for class discussions and interaction. Though Dr. Tryon's lectures do not allow for verbal discussions, the recorded lecture does mimic the in-class lecture, an aspect that I find lends personalization to the course.

Facebook, Privacy, and Cyberbullying

I have mentioned in several other blogs some of the personal reasons why I have steered clear of Facebook, but in this blog I'd like to address the issue of privacy. There are several aspects of this to consider, the first of which is the Facebook privacy policy. This is a timely discussion considering the release for review of Facebook's most current privacy policy. Thanks to many complaints, Facebook has rewritten and revised its policy for the purpose of making it much shorter and clearer, though the effect is much the same as it has been. An article published in the Journal and Courier online magazine gives the highlights and its recommendations to users. Despite the uproar, I have found that the area in which users must be vigilant is being educated about how targeted advertising works. While it may seem naive or apathetic of me, I somehow feel a little better knowing that the primary purpose of all that data collection is to sell me stuff. Though I have certainly fallen prey to advertising, I am well-educated and able to recognize the practices. It seems then that education is the best defense. A 2010 study by Danah Boyd and Eszter Harittai looked at the privacy settings for Facebook users and found that their perception that younger users were not concerned about privacy was inaccurate, and that many users are aware of the issues and carefully manage their privacy settings. As has also been stated in an earlier post of mine, young people under the age of 30 are far less likely to use Facebook as their primary form of social networking. Of course, that does not mean that there are not similarly valid concerns about the other forms, including instagram, snapchat, and what's-app. Users can educate themselves using a variety of online sources that have very good information and recommendations that are written in plain English.

This leads, though, to another issue of concern, and that is the question of what happens to the children of the current generation growing up in such a digital, technical world. Just to convey one small aspect of this, I have a brief personal anecdote. When I got married in 1999, pocket sized film cameras were finally affordable for the average person. However, in fewer than five years, digital cameras also became  popular and affordable. When my first son was born in 2004, I had just purchased a somewhat bulky, but high quality digital camera. Gone were the days of carefully planning each shot because of the cost of film and developing. By the time my oldest son was 4 and my youngest was 2, I had taken over 10,000 photographs with that digital camera, the vast majority of them of my two children.  Along came the cell phone and no longer did I have to worry about having the camera with me to snap, snap, snap. They are now 10 and 8, and about three years ago, at their behest, I began taking far fewer pictures of them. In all, I have easily taken close to 20,000 pictures over the decade. Yes, I have a pretty amazing digital record of their childhood, yet, I sometimes wonder what the value is. Will they care that I have taken so many photographs of them? Does being the center of attention that way have an impact? I am not one who has gone on to post these countless images of them on Facebook and other social media, but it does beg the question of what it will mean to so many people whose entire lives have been documented online on services who lay ownership claim to those images just by their being posted. I currently have more than one student who has told me stories of not getting a job or accepted to a college program because of their online footprint. Will today's youth be happy that their baby photos are owned by Mark Zuckerberg?

Finally, I have done quite a bit of reading this past week about the issue of cyberbullying. Sometimes it seems that there is no end to the lengths we flawed human beings will go to be hateful and cruel to one another. The internet has provided an arena in which such cruelty can be perpetrated exponentially. And in eras past when bullies really had to be on the down low so as not to be found out by the adults in the vicinity, it seems that modern technology allows for a much more public humiliation - even though it is not in person. The research on this topic is abundant, and most of it reaches the same conclusions. The most important aspect in preventing and dealing with bullying that happens online (and, frankly, with most aspects of child-rearing in general and with digital aspects specifically) is parental involvement. Parents must not be apathetic about their children's use of digital media. They need to know what video games they are playing, what websites they are visiting, and parents should be monitoring the text messages, Facebook, email, and any other social media, sites/messages their children are sending and receiving. There are certainly those out there who want to use heavily loaded language such as "spying," "surveilling," and "tracking" to stimagatize parent's involvement in this aspect of their children's lives, but I contend that that is totally misjudging parents' rights and duty to their children's safety and well being. To use a parallel, I do not think that most parents would deny the extreme importance of watching children - even those who can swim - when they are in or around water. It is widely accepted that parents should not take for granted that their children will be safe. Likewise, we should adopt this same attitude with social media. I do not agree with parents who monitor their children's online activity surreptitiously; open and honest communication is at the heart of this matter. If every parent whose child uses digital media sat down on a regular basis (at least weekly) and went through their emails, text messages, instagrams, Facebook pages, and video games with them, much of the nonsense and damage that they produce could be avoided or stopped.
It is a parental responsibility to teach children how to navigate such situations. My children are still young, and I heavily regulate how much time they spend using their tablets; however, we sit down regularly and talk about the games they have on them. They show me what they are, how they are played, and we talk about what they like about each game. There are times when we talk about aspects that I find offensive or not appropriate and why. This helps them learn to make appropriate decisions. I read an article many years ago in which a mother discussed doing this with her teenaged son and daughter. They read Facebook pages together, discussed text messages/emails, and viewed photographs. It's not to say that children do not have "private" moments, but they can be taught that if they are embarrassed or ashamed of the comments or photos they or their friends are posting, then they might want to rethink who their friends are or what actions they are taking. If all parents did this, bullies would be stopped, and victims would be protected. It may seem or feel extreme, but it seems to me that safety concerns should be of extreme importance.
For a really great look at many of these issues, I urge you to check out the PBS program "Growing Up Digital."

Powerpoint vs. Prezi

And the winner is... Prezi.

I saw my first prezi presentation last spring during a talk that two of my dear friends were giving at our church. They were discussing their individual and joint spiritual journeys, and their talk was delightfully supported with a prezi. It reminds me of another friend of mine who was asked to speak at a Hickory Ted talk about two years ago. My friend was honored to have been asked to speak about the design and construction of her environmentally green house. This particular woman never does anything halfway, so before she even began to work on what she would say during her presentation, she did some research about how she should give her presentation. She told me she'd learned that when using powerpoint during a presentation, the point of the powerpoint wasn't to convey the main ideas of the speaker's topic but merely to serve as visual support during the talk. Of course, as anyone who's ever sat in a warm auditorium while a speaker read word for word from powerpoint slides would say, "No duh!" And yet, her comment intrigued me and mirrored what most of the criticisms from this week's reading have suggested. Too often, presenters rarely interact with the audience during a presentation, opting instead to read a presentation from the power point slides they have created. Coming back to the talk I heard at my church, not only did my friends really present a fresh and visually interesting presentation in their prezi, but they also know that people in the audience want to connect to a speaker, not sit while a speaker reads to them from a screen.

My own experience this past week with prezi mirrors that of my colleague, Dena Fulton, who wrote in a recent blog about how much fun it was to learn a new technology like prezi. While there were a few aspects of prezi that were not as user friendly as I would have liked, generally it was easy to pick up and fun to create. Unlike my friends from church, I found myself treating prezi much like I would a powerpoint, in that I was creating a presentation to be read by someone online rather than one I would present live to an audience. That being said, I did choose a topic for my prezi that reflects the information my college students are currently reading about, namely the various aspects of health and wellness. I used the opportunity to condense much of the information into a unique and visually interesting presentation, which I'll share with them on Monday morning. *Here it is:

*It is much better viewed at full screen, so be sure to maximize it.



A final, quick note on prezi. My oldest son, who is almost 10 and in the 4th grade, brought home a project on nutrition the other day. He had created a poster which was split into sections and had a variety of layers for including information. For example, one "tab" was labeled Fiber. Under it he asked and answered the question, "What is fiber?" He then had several other tabs that explained what foods it was found in, what systems in the body it aided, and finally, what the effects were of consuming too much or too little of it. My first thought when I looked at it: This would make a great prezi!

Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, Oh My!

As I stated in one of my earliest blogs, last spring I deleted my Facebook account. What a relief it was to learn that I would not be required to open it again for this technology course. My primary reason for suspending the account was that I was not frequenting it that often, but when I did, I really got sucked in. Even though I joined a Facebook group long ago at CVCC, I cannot ever remember using it. In fact, I have been among those who felt that there should be a clear line between personal and professional, so I never even entertained the idea of using Facebook as a teaching tool. Having read the Prof Hack Blog about using Facebook and Tumblr to engage students, I admit I am willing to consider the use of a facebook group in the future. As with any technology--really any aspect of a course--it is imperative to have a clear understanding of WHY a particular assignment or activity is used. The article explores the effective use of Facebook, noting specifically that almost everyone already has an account and knows how to use it. Other suggestions that really model best practices for any teaching are to start the project at the beginning of the class, rather than adding it in part way through, and provide clear and specific examples of what students are expected to post. Reading this article got me thinking about a few ways I could engage students. One would be to have them find examples in their online lives of written work that has errors. Grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors abound--especially with so many people composing using virtual keyboards on their smart phones.

This could be a way to get students looking for "careless" mistakes and maybe even getting them to apply those proofreading skills to their own work. The reverse exercise could also be beneficial; students could post well-written examples.




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Tumblr and Pinterest are two different methods of social bookmarking. I had not ever used tumblr before this course, and after spending a little time playing around with it, I probably will not use it in the future. While I felt that it had good content, I can see how easy it would be to spend many mindless hours following tumblr links. Like my comments above about the time suck factor of facebook, tumblr presents the same danger to me.

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As Dr. Tryon stated in his podcast on Pinterest, there is no social website that has caught the attention of women more than Pinterest. It is this very lure that has kept me from it. My female friends and co-workers have talked so much about their enjoyment, use, and overuse of this social networking site. I have maintained a clear and conscious avoidance of it for that very reason. I admit that I have followed links on to other people's Pinterest accounts to look for any number of interesting things such as sewing and crochet patterns, recipes, teacher lesson plans, and advice on children's toys. I have resisted the urge to join so as to save myself (once again) the hours upon hours which I would surely spend on this site.

One of the aspects of all of these social networking/bookmarking sites that comes to mind for me is that they each cater to the varied personality types/styles of different users. I am inherently a disorganized mess as those who know me well can attest. I am also at high risk for succumbing to the addictive nature of these technologies. An example of this occurred earlier this week pre- and post- midterm elections when I spent dozens of hours reading about the why's and wherefore's of the outcome this year. I recognize that there is value in being an informed and concerned citizen, and I consider myself to be one; yet, my information-seeking behavior resulted in very little tangible outcome. I voted, to no avail. As I discovered in the first eight weeks of my DRE courses this fall, the benefits of technology are sometimes underwhelming compared to the host of negative consequences, namely addiction and isolation. Though it may seem as if I've gone off on a tangent, all of this is really to reiterate that I acknowledge the many benefits of sites like facebook, tumblr, and Pinterest, yet I steer mostly clear of them due to the equally negative aspects. As it is, I sometimes feel I've given over my life to my electronic devices. It's telling when your seven-year-old son says, "Mom, sometimes it seems like you love your phone more than us." Ouch.

Storify

So I finally finished my Storify. What an amazing tool! It's user friendly and links to most any social media site you'd want to use. The difficult part is deciding what story you want to tell or what news item you'd like to chronicle and then wading through the millions of news stories, facebook posts, tweets, flickr images, and quotes you want to use. It's a great way to take a story and condense and link to the sources that tell the story.

I was so excited last month when North Carolina was forced to allow gay marriage that I chose that issue to create my storify. Here it is...

Ok, so I have to figure out how to resize my images on blogger, but here's a link to the storify so that it's easier to view the images.

The Impact of Digital Tools on Student Writing

There are pros and cons to using digital tools in the writing process. According to a Pew Research Internet Project, some of the advantages are that they "encourage student creativity and personal expression" as well as "allow students to share their work with a wider and more varied audience." Some disadvantages that are cited are the "blurring [...] lines between formal and informal writing," and their propensity to "take shortcuts [... and] write too fast and be careless."

My anecdotal experience supports this research. The experience is both personal and professional. For a long time, I always wrote my first drafts out by hand. There is some evidence to suggest that writers may be more creative in writing by hand because it slows down the process, allowing the writer to think longer. Additionally, when using a word processor to compose, it may be easy to lose the "flow" of writing because of the distraction of editing while composing. This has both pros and cons. I sometimes get stopped on the computer because I am too focused on fixing errors while I write. On the other hand, it seems I am more able to work on errors at a mirco-level-- revising individual sentences much more heavily as I type than I might if I were just transcribing as I type.

The most successful method of writing that I use to address any step in the process (prewriting, drafting, or revising) is writing by hand. I find that I am forced to slow down the process and do more thinking when I am writing by hand than when I am composing on the computer. I can apply this method at any stage. For example, if I am blocked before beginning, I will free write or use another prewriting activity to develop my writing. If I get stuck during the writing phase--even when I have been composing on the computer--I will print out what I have so far and start making additions by hand. If I get all the way through the process on a computer, I always print out a copy to edit by hand. There seems to me a disconnect between the screen and my brain when it comes to proofreading. If I only proof on the screen, I always miss something.

One comment I frequently make to my students is that I believe that when we compose on the computer, what we are writing looks final, even when it is not. In other words, something typed appears to be polished even when it is not. I think that adds pressure to the writer to produce a perfect product the first time around. For that reason, I encourage my students to write their first drafts in a kind of stream-of-consciousness so that they can get their ideas out and then go back for revisions. That's the other reason I like to compose by hand. My draft looks like a draft. I know it's not perfect. When I see a student's handwritten draft without even a single word crossed out, I am always suspicious.

I know my students are almost completely composing on word processors and I think that writing teachers can capitalize on this by encouraging it, but also encouraging, even requiring, students to put some ideas down on paper before they begin to compose.

Digital Tools in the Classroom

Grademark, Turnitin, Moodle, Blackboard, Google Docs...

Many of these tools are being used in classrooms across the country. The question is: To what end?

As a community college professor, I am required--at the barest minimum--to use the course management system (CMS) Blackboard to post student grades and my syllabus. Beyond those two requirements, the rest is up to me. Like many old dogs, I am somewhat slow to learn new tricks. In the late 90s, I was one of the first teachers to have a computer in my classroom in Georgia. It was one I had brought from home, and the IT guy at school helped me get it set up and online. For years, I used an excel spreadsheet that I created in 1996 to calculate student grades. Even in the early 2000s, I had a pretty extensive web page when I taught at Pennsylvania College of Technology. Even so, I have had difficulty utilizing the Blackboard resource to its fullest potential. After reading Lisa Lane's article “Insidious Pedagogy: How Course Management Systems Impact Teaching,” in the online journal First Monday, I now know why. Lane argues that there is a very real difference between instructors' teaching and discipline expertise and their information literacy expertise. In other words, individuals may excel at traditional classroom teaching but fall seriously short in their ability to use digital tools to instruct. Lane dubs us "novice faculty."

I am a prime example of what she talks about. Though I have experience with some technology, I am not trained to use technology to teach in the classroom. I have stayed primarily within the first tier surface layer of Blackboard and used it mostly as a course management tool to grade and provide information, rather than as a teaching tool to engage students is blogging, portfolios, instant messaging, and research. Lane says "Expert users contextualize their resources fluidly and organize materials effectively, while novices just upload and share files, hoping students will find them."

Lane also notes that "Blackboard can be highly intimidating to learn, and may 'seriously hinder' choices the faculty member makes while using the tool." It's not that I haven't been offered countless opportunities from my school's resident Blackboard expert, it's just that, like many others, I have not chosen to avail myself of them. Part of this stems from my own busy schedule and part of it, as Lane notes, is that "faculty requests for help focus on what the technology can do, rather than how their pedagogical goals can be achieved." What that means in practical terms is that too often the Blackboard training offerings are the same thing over and over, just trying to get faculty up to speed with the basic functions.

On the other hand, there is ample opportunity for me to tinker. In part because of this class, I have spent far more time fiddling with Blackboard and its myriad uses than I have in the past. In his most recent podcast, Dr. Chuck Tryon stated that part of his purpose in the Technology 518 course is to overwhelm us as students. It's an important reminder to us as faculty that our students are under pressure, not only to complete their assignments, but to learn new technologies along the way. Mission accomplished, Dr. Tryon!

Readers one and all, I sincerely apologize for getting behind in my blogging. 

My new posts will follow shortly!

Paper or iPad?

I am generally a pretty laid back teacher. I do teach at the college level and have only had one instance where a student's behavior was consistently distracting enough that I had to pull him aside and let him know that the continued behavior would result in him being dropped from my course.

That being said, the issue of the distractability of personal devices, including laptops, tablets and cell phones, is one that has become a frequent topic of discussion among educators. Knowing how easily I am distracted in the presence of these devices, it is not surprising that many educators have banned them from their classrooms. My current situation provides me the great fortune (?) of multiple perspectives on this issue: that of student, teacher, and parent.

My attitude from the student standpoint is twofold. First, I know myself well enough to know that using a laptop to take notes would not be effective for me. I have a very specific method for note taking, and while the computer might be useful to help me organize after the fact, I like to have the ability to write in the margins, draw arrows, and make other types of notations that would be difficult to make on a computer. Second, I know that during any real or perceived lull, I would be tempted to be off task and use the device for some other purpose. Am I likely to be browsing Facebook? Probably not. But it wouldn't be a surprise if I were using it to play spider solitaire or scrabble. These days, all my coursework as a student is on line, so the temptation is not there, but at a recent faculty in-service, the speaker was so dry that I sat, unabashedly (though pretty far in the back), and played games on my cell phone.

From the perspective of a teacher, I am fairly open to allowing students to use laptops. I'll admit, though, that the courses I teach do not require extensive note taking. In a matter of two or three class sessions, my students are aware that there is no real need for one and they tend to stop bringing theirs to class (or taking them out). Since I teach at a community college and my class sizes are small, I also learn all my student's names, and I call them out when I see them using their devices inappropriately. Having had my share of disruptive students when I taught high school, I can also appreciate that tablets or computers might at least prevent some students from being troublesome. I sometimes see my students texting under their desks or in their laps or using their phones somewhat furtively. I generally ignore them, and find that their classmates give them plenty of dirty looks for being rude and disrespectful. I sometimes comment on it, especially when there is some clear task that they are supposed to be working on. I have mentioned this in other posts, but I am fortunate (this semester anyway) to have all my classes in a special tech room that has both an inner U shape of tables for 20 students and an outer perimeter of computers. This setup is ideal because I can easily send students to computers when necessary and pull them back when they're not. This type of classroom should be the standard.

As a parent, my views get a little fuzzier about laptops and tablets in the classroom. My children are in second and fourth grades and I am adamantly opposed to electronics as a matter of course. Partially this is because I want them to be learning in a hands-on manner, and they are. Also, I know how easily they are distracted. But these is no denying that tablets especially are hands-on devices. Is there a difference between completing a math worksheet and working the same problems on a tablet? I'm not sure. The research that exists supports both perspectives.

This past spring, an article in the Atlantic Monthly titled "To Remember a Lecture Better, Take Notes by Hand" chronicled Princeton graduate student Pam Mueller who makes an interesting discovery when she forgets her laptop and has to take notes by hand. She  knows she must take excellent notes because she is the teaching assistant for the course and will be sharing her notes with others. In June, she co-published the findings of the research she conducted with the professor from that course in an article titled "The Pen is Mightier than the Keyboard." The gist of the findings is this: when we take notes with a computer, we are more likely to simply transcribe the lecture, word for word. When we take notes by hand, we are more likely to process the information as we write and listen so that what we have on our paper is not a transcription, but a fusion of listening and understanding. This is found on Bloom's taxonomy as students leap from knowledge to synthesis. It is the kind of critical thinking that we want for students.

Putting aside the pedagogy and best practices of the lecture as a teaching method, it is no surprise to me that, given the task of note taking, pen on paper is better than keyboard. My own personal experience supports this in many other settings as well, including solving math problems, revising papers, and conducting experiments.

A final caveat is that I do not contend that there is no place in the classroom for these devices. With careful planning and use, they should be excellent support tools in the classroom.

Diigo or Don't You?

I have to admit my reluctance towards using an online bookmarking application. I had never heard of Diigo or the numerous other free bookmarking apps until taking English 518. In fact, I confess that I don't even really use the bookmarking capability that I know my internet browser has.

I spent a little time reviewing Diigo and delicious and tried to determine for what purpose I would use them. The classes that I teach at Catawba Valley Community College have just been redesigned to an 8 week format, so we're on the verge of ending our first mini-mester and beginning our second. Since the course is so short, our department determined that we would use an overarching theme during each of the four mini-mesters to guide student reading and writing. This time around we are using the theme of technology, and the next theme will be health related.

Coincidentally, I received an email yesterday from one of the social sites I like to browse, LifeHack, which highlighted an article titled "5 Reasons Why Naps Should Be a Mandatory Part of Our Day" which also featured a picture of this adorable sleeping kitten (bonus!). 

Following that train of thought, I began brainstorming about how I could use sleep-related articles for a portion of the health theme.

Before I knew it, I began finding all sorts of excellent resources, both mainstream and scholarly, that could be used for the course. Then, like the proverbial lightbulb, I thought, "Diigo!" I downloaded the app, signed in on my computer and began bookmarking. Going along with the flow, I found myself in a peer's office and brainstorming further health related subtopics. My colleague downloaded Diigo, and we organized several subfolders and added many articles to them. Within 25 minutes, we had a big picture view of the next eight weeks.

Last night I accessed the articles  from my home computer (that's the beauty of this type of app), and began assessing their viability in terms of lexile levels and student interest.

And just like that, I'm converted!

The Internet Archive and Primary Sources

This spring, many students at CVCC will be reading the non-fiction book, Enrique's Journey. About a young man from Honduras who travels to the United States for a better life, Enrique's Journey puts a face on immigration. The topic of immigration, which has been highlighted recently in the political sphere, is one that is divisive and very heavily tied to our modern notions of the American Dream.

Our assignment for ENGL 518 this week was to explore the Internet Archives to learn what they contain, and suggest possible ways to use them in the classroom. Knowing that we will be reading Enrique's Journey and talking about immigration, I decided to find out what kinds of resources could be found using the archives.

What I discovered is overwhelming, to say the least, but also highly accessible. Through the Library of Congress on the Archive, teachers can access lesson plans and thousands of primary sources.

Just a basic search with the term "American Dream" produced thousands of hits. There are viewpoints like this one, and this one, and this one.

It is my thought that I can use the archive in multiple ways. First, I can have the students take a look at what the American Dream means in modern times. Then, I can use the primary resources about the immigration experience over the last century to provide some context for students.


Often, the messages that students get from watching and listening to current news are oversimplified. By using some primary resources to look at immigration from another perspective, students can develop their own opinions about the current immigration situation in the United States.

Wiki Reality

The debate over the reliability and efficacy of Wikipedia as a valid source of information rages on. I recently found out through my ENGL 518 Technology course that the word wiki-wiki means fast in Hawaiian. The first creator of a Wiki is Ward Cunningham. He apparently learned the word wiki-wiki on a trip to Hawaii when he was instructed to take the wiki-wiki bus - the very fast bus. Since the introduction of Wikipedia to the technological world, the standard paper encyclopedia has seen its hard copy demise. There are those who lament this demise and those who applaud the currency of the online format. The fact that there is even a debate about using encyclopedias as a source of information -- as a citation on a paper -- is clearly ridiculous.

Why? Because anyone who has taught writing at any level beyond middle school knows full well that encyclopedias are not academic sources for research. At the elementary and middle school level, when students are learning the basic concepts of research and fact finding, they are introduced to the encyclopedia as a credible source of accurate information. The information contained therein is meant to be factual and unbiased. Of course we know that there is really no such thing, but we allow younger students to experiment with using sources beginning with the encyclopedia.

Moving beyond that basic introduction to finding sources to support their ideas, students beginning as early as middle school and certainly no later than high school are taught more advanced methods of research. It is specifically stated at this level that encyclopedias are no longer valid sources for citation in academic papers. This is because encyclopedias represent what is considered to be general knowledge. Academic papers are meant to go beyond general knowledge into deeper analysis, including synthesis and evaluation. So, while students may use encyclopedias to gather some basic information in the beginning stages of research, it is expected that they will only use that information to advance their thesis, not as direct support for any thesis.

Maybe in all the confusion of this debate, that fact has become lost. I certainly consider Wikipedia a fairly reliable source for basic information, and I have used it on countless occasions. I appreciate that it is continually updated, and I value the idea of crowd-sourcing. Are there only certain experts who hold this knowledge? Absolutely not. And aren't we teaching our students to be active learners anyway? Wikipedia recognizes that there are many who can contribute to the body of general knowledge that is found in encyclopedias. In a well-written and insightful article on this topic by Maria Bustillos, the author relates the extensive process that Wikipedia uses to monitor and edit the articles it contains. She ends her own article by discussing the impact that the written word had on the oral word, which had previously been the guiding force of "general knowledge."  She states that this change resulted in a culture of individual ownership of ideas. This newest evolution focuses far more heavily on shared or collaborative efforts toward defining general knowledge. I, for one, believe that this progress will not only benefit the sphere of knowledge, but that it is probably the best chance for solving most of the modern day problems this world faces.

Diving In

It works out great that I am taking this course at the same time that I am teaching a new course this fall; both are focusing on technology. I've spent a lot of time considering my relationship with technology, both in the planning for my fall courses, and in my  personal life. After hours of grading last night, I finally put down my stack of papers, noted that I had less than six hours before the alarm would ring, and I still felt compelled to finish my game of scrabble. Scrabble!

This past spring I hit a breaking point with Facebook and what had begun as a plan to unfriend a bunch of people, quickly turned into a decision to suspend my facebook account altogether. Admittedly, I hadn't given more than a few hours a month to my facebook account in years; however,  when I did get on it, I found two things happening simultaneously that left me feeling worse than when I'd begun. First, I found that it was a time suck. Like the Lay's commercial, "You can't eat just one." My intention to just glance, inevitably turned into a marathon of catching up on months or more of posts. Second, the longer I was on, the more increasingly irritated I became with both the banal and the political and religious commentary that I read. Just like in personal encounters with the truly prejudiced who seem to have no qualms about spewing racism or sexism as though it's patently obvious that everyone around them surely agrees, I often felt somewhat assaulted by some of the views of my so-called friends - even my own family. So it was with determination, and even a little bit of pride, that I declared myself no longer active on Facebook.

Well, this week's reading and focus is not on Facebook, but on (in my mind, anyway) Facebook's evil twin, Twitter. Just when I'd taken a stand, I find myself in a course requiring me to get a Twitter account (and later in the semester, to reengage on Facebook).  

The required articles for my English 518 course have run parallel to the readings I have assigned my students and all of it has had me thinking deeply about my relationships online and offline. On the one hand, it's been a great experience to reflect on what it means to be a friend and how that plays out in both face to face and online interactions. As an instructor talking with my students about these same issues, I've struggled to find positive aspects of new technologies like Facebook and Twitter. I know that my students are engaging heavily in this atmosphere, and I don't want to view their participation as only a negative. This week I had them read an article titled, "Just How Many Facebook Friends Do You Need?" They recently wrote a rough draft responding to a writing prompt for an illustrative essay which read: New technologies help keep friends in close touch. They were to agree, disagree, or both, and provide thoughtful examples to support their position. After their first draft, I provided the Facebook article so that they could go in and add support from an article. Several students wanted to know immediately if they could also find another source to include in their essays. I agreed, and then shared the essay I had to read for English 518 by Clive Thompson titled, “Brave New World of Digital Intimacy,” from the New York Times Online. What I really like about both of these articles is that they offer differing perspectives. On the one hand, it is true that we should be aware as a society -- as a culture -- of our interactions, both online and off, and wary of too many superficial relationships or the dreaded #FOMO (that's fear of missing out, for the uninitiated). And I don't think it will ever cease to be true that intimate relationships require face to face contact. On the other hand, social media is not simply a narcissistic exercise. As the Times article, and others, suggest, there is something to be gained from following our friends and reading about their every move. There is a way to know them through these sites. On a less personal level, there is an opportunity through Twitter and these media to participate, globally and in real time.  



I will admit that, as I was preparing to obtain a twitter account and launch my first tweet, there was a pressure to be clever and relevant. Is this how my students feel? Despite reading Dr. Tryon's lecture notes and listening to his advice about creating an account, I still ended up attaching my name to my account, which I didn't completely mean to do. I also sent a pretty pathetic first tweet about my first tweet, as though millions of people haven't already sent the same or similar message. I guess, though, that I am an optimist, and I love learning, so I'm going to give it a heartfelt try.  I've already found some great resources out there. I'll also admit that I felt a surge of excitement after I followed Dr. Tryon @chutry and he immediately followed me. I have a follower!

By the way, I briefly polled my college students this morning in class and they confirmed what I have recently read/heard: they rarely use Facebook (since so many older people like me have signed up); instead they love Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat (unless, of course, we oldies invade that too heavily, too). In the meantime, I stand by my first tweet, "Now I'm as cool as my kids (my students, that is)!"

You can follow me @eebeeleebee