One point that especially resonated with me was that adolescents and children are the "largest consumers of email and instant message technologies" (Maloy et al p.215). In our discussions of digital citizenship thus far, I feel as though we haven't sufficiently addressed this point. As teachers, I feel we often focus our attention on the ethical use of and information obtained from internet sources and forget about the interpersonal communication that also occurs because of these technologies. Email, notes Maloy et al, is used for "workplace communication, business networking, online shopping, family talk, and recreational pursuits (p.215)." With such a variety of uses and purposes, it can be difficulty to navigate the appropriate structure, language, and tone necessary for composing an email to a particular recipient. In our 21st Century classrooms, I feel it is necessary to provided direct instruction addressing this.
In my own classroom, I use email to communicate with parents regularly. In fact, we encourage parents to communicate via email rather than by a note in their child's folder. In using this media, we have set clear guidelines as to how often teachers in our school check their email and when parents should expect a response. With smartphone technology it is easy to read and respond to emails anywhere and at anytime, making it hard to "leave work behind" at the end of the day. By specifying that we do not check our emails after 3:30pm and not over weekends or vacation times, we are able to set clear guidelines and expectations for families and keep "work" at work. We are also expected to email a weekly newsletter to all families in our class with updates about what we did academically and reminders for the following week. All these class newsletters as well as reminders, notices, and homework assignments are posted on our class pages for families convenience. Our principal continually reminds us that as public information, our class pages are also a huge marketing part of our school. Perspective families use the newsletters and class pages to gain insights into our classroom and school community.
Questions for the group:
1. Teachers around the world use blogs as a way to share ideas and stories from their own classrooms. Do you follow any teacher bloggers? Would you consider starting your own blog about your (current or future) classroom?
2. Chapter 9 highlighted some disadvantages of PowerPoint presentations (p.246). In your experience as a teacher and/or student do you find the use of PowerPoints advantageous or disadvantageous?
Rebecca, to answer your second question, I don't agree with Tufte's critique of power points. I personally love when teachers use power point. Tufte says that power points are more presenter oriented and not content or audience oriented but I feel that really depends on how the teacher creates and presents the power point presentation. I think using power point presentations in younger grades such as 1st or 2nd is very beneficial. In my opinion the colorful backgrounds, visuals, sounds, and print really would engage and excite almost anyone.
ReplyDeletePower point presentations can be beneficial, but it depends on how the teacher uses them. I have had teachers that literally read off of a power point, word for word, with little commentary in between. If their goal was to bore me to tears, it worked. However, I have had professors that read a power point slide, but then go into more detail about what was on the slide. That is, they used the slide as more of a guide rather than completely focusing on it. I found this use of power point more beneficial.
ReplyDeletei agree with Jason that it really depends on how teachers use power points. I find that if teachers really want to teach their students they need to involve their students and not just "read off the slides" because we can all do that ourselves. younger children especially have shorter attention spans and it would be much more difficult to just listen and look at slides than having a teacher who can have you reflect on prior knowledge or experience and make something meaningful of it. Powerpoint's don't need to be long or overly played with images and text.
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