Ferdi’s Assignment for Zeitz’s Class

What technologies support students in mastering the ISTE NETS?

1. Creativity and Innovation
Students demonstrate creative thinking, construct knowledge, and develop innovative products and processes using technology. Students:
A. apply existing knowledge to generate new ideas, products, or processes.
B. create original works as a means of personal or group expression.
Students choose three emerging technologies (each student will have different technologies), research the technology, summarize their findings, find pictures, put info and pictures in a presentation format, present to class to ‘teach’ the other students about their emerging technology, and finally allow for questions and discussion.
C. use models and simulations to explore complex systems and issues.
D. identify trends and forecast possibilities.

2. Communication and Collaboration
Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others. Students:
A. interact, collaborate, and publish with peers, experts, or others employing a variety of digital environments and media.
B. communicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences using a variety of media and formats.
C. develop cultural understanding and global awareness by engaging with learners of other cultures.
Students from a school here and one from another country create a wiki that they share new information about how they use technology in their schools. Every time one of the schools uses a new technology or creates a new technology based project they share the ‘how to’s’ with the other school on the wiki. Students will be encouraged to share what they learned or valued out of the new technology project as well as the ‘how to’s’ of the project.
D. contribute to project teams to produce original works or solve problems.

3. Research and Information Fluency
Students apply digital tools to gather, evaluate, and use information. Students:
A. plan strategies to guide inquiry.
B. locate, organize, analyze, evaluate, synthesize, and ethically use information from a variety of sources and media.
C. evaluate and select information sources and digital tools based on the appropriateness to specific tasks.
D. process data and report results.
Students research a topic using the Internet and at least four different sources. Using OneNote the students organize their notes and summaries from the Internet sites, create a presentation of the information they gathered, and show their information in any type of technology presentation format which could be PowerPoint, Blog, Wiki, Podcast, Video, Web Page, etc. Students would be required to have a fully documented Reference page.

4. Critical Thinking, Problem-Solving, and Decision-Making
Students use critical thinking skills to plan and conduct research, manage projects, solve problems, and make informed decisions using appropriate digital tools and resources. Students:
A. identify and define authentic problems and significant questions for investigation.
B. plan and manage activities to develop a solution or complete a project.
C. collect and analyze data to identify solutions and/or make informed decisions.
Students are given pretend dollars to set-up a customer service department at a sales company. The students would have to identify the needs the business might have for technology, find what technology would work best, find the costs involved in purchasing the technology, plan a budget for the department, and then make suggestions for implementing their plan. Also, this could work well as a group project.
D. use multiple processes and diverse perspectives to explore alternative solutions.

5. Digital Citizenship
Students understand human, cultural, and societal issues related to technology and practice legal and ethical behavior. Students:
A. advocate and practice safe, legal, and responsible use of information and technology.
B. exhibit a positive attitude toward using technology that supports collaboration, learning, and productivity.
C. demonstrate personal responsibility for lifelong learning.
D. exhibit leadership for digital citizenship.
Students in groups of four, create a video that will be shown to the rest of the business classes at their school about the ethics of using information off the Internet and safety issues relating to the Internet.

6. Technology Operations and Concepts
Students demonstrate a sound understanding of technology concepts, systems, and operations. Students:
A. understand and use technology systems.
B. select and use applications effectively and productively.
Students are given ten scenarios from ten different types of businesses that have a problem that needs to be fixed. The students then are given time to research what would best ‘fix’ the problem. The scenarios would all have a technology based ‘fix’ for the problem. Example Scenario: A vet’s office is having trouble keeping track of customers that have not paid their bills, employee hours, and supplies used in the office.
C. troubleshoot systems and applications.
D. transfer current knowledge to learning of new technologies.

Horizon Report and Marc Prensky

In The Horizon Report 2007, the use of mobile phones in the classroom has a projected time for adoption of two to three years. I find this funny (and not in the ha ha way) that mobile phones will be used in the classroom in two years. My school is just coming up with tighter restrictions on the use of cell phones in the building, so it is hard for me to believe that in two years the feeling about cell phones will make an 180 degree turn. I realize that the article is talking more about colleges, but high schools should be looking at the emerging technologies just like colleges. We are supposed to be preparing students for college and should be looking at ways to incorporate more technology into the classroom at every level. There will definitely have to be different guidelines for the use of technology in my classroom, compared to a college classroom, just because of the age of the students.

In the Engage Me or Enrage Me article by Marc Prensky, I found no helpful information. I realize he is just trying to point out the problem schools are facing, but I would have appreciated more about how to work with the new type of student rather than just telling me about them. I am sure he has written other articles on the subject, but so far everything I have read from him has had the attitude that all teachers are slacking in their job and that they must not want to educate students if they don’t use a game to teach the lesson. As for his Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants article, I found his definition of each group of people interesting. I do believe that there is a difference in the two sets of people. I do want to help my students learn in the manner that is best for them, however, when they go to work they will also find that many of their bosses and co-workers are going to be digital immigrants and there is a need for understanding how to work with a person who might be less technologically savvy. The articles did get me thinking about how I could change my copyright lesson that I will be teaching soon to my Intro Computers II class to make it more interactive and more technology based.

So I went to the web and found the following links that I will be using to incorporate more technology in my Paraphrasing and Reference Citing lessons.

I am going to have my students start at: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/print/research/r_paraphr.html
After that we will go to the following link and work on lesson 6:
http://camellia.shc.edu/literacy/tablesversion/lessons/lesson6/citing.htm

Photo at http://www.mvrhs.org/library/Images/owl.jpeg