Article Assessment #2: Teens and Technology

(full article here)

Overview

This article describes the increasing number of hours that young people spend using electronic media every day, and the role that parents can play in their children's technology habits. Young people (8-18 years of age) use electronic media an average of 7.5 hours a day. This includes television, mp3 players, video games, and computer use. The variety and interconnectedness of these devices makes it particularly challenging for parents and guardians to fully understand what their children are doing with their electronic devices (EDs). Only three in ten teenagers report having any rules regarding their use of EDs. Teens who do have limits set by parents spend about three hours less per day using EDs than other teens.

Reference Points

• Young people ages 8-18 spend about 7.5 hours a day using electronic media.
• Teens spend about 25 minutes a day reading books, and 3 minutes a day reading newspapers.
• About 50% of "heavy media users" earn fair to poor grades; about 25% of "light users" earn fair to poor grades.
• Only 3 in 10 teens report having rules at home about their use of electronic devices.
• When parents set limits on the use of electronic devices, young people use them about 3 fewer hours each day.
• Lack of familiarity with electronic devices does not excuse parents from setting limits on their use.

Reflection

This report says little that I have not heard before, and the numbers may be misleading. The difference between using an mp3 player to listen to music is significantly different than using a cell phone to text. Many of my students work better on certain tasks if allowed to listen to music on headphones; none work better if allowed to text while trying to concentrate on a specific task. For most of the last century young people have been listening to significant amounts of music, so including listening to mp3 players in these statistics seems questionable. However, the statistic about seven in ten teens having no limits set on their use of electronic devices is alarming. Young people need guidance in learning how to interpret the online world, and that guidance has to start with limits. Parents need education about how to set limits on the use of devices they don't fully understand, as much as young people need limits on their use of EDs.

Internet Resources

The ERIC (Education Resources Information Center) Database

The ERIC database, an index of articles related to education, is an important resource for educators to know about. Two parts of the site are particularly important to be aware of: the Thesaurus and the Advanced Search page. Every article in the database is tagged with words called "descriptors". These descriptors come from a closed set; indexers can not just make up their own descriptors for each new article entered into the database. This means the user does not have to guess whether articles are tagged with "mathematics" or "math". Looking up "math" in the thesaurus tells us that the word "math" is never used as a descriptor; looking up "mathematics" in the thesaurus brings up a list of about 30 specific descriptors, including the general term "mathematics", that are used to index articles relating to mathematics. More specific descriptors include "mathematics anxiety", "mathematics avoidance", and "mathematics materials". An understanding of the descriptor indexing system, and experience using the Thesaurus, is particularly important in conducting a thorough literature search. The Advanced Search page allows us to choose any number of descriptors to include or exclude, a date range, education levels, and more. Of particular interest is the "Full Text Only" option. This returns only articles which are freely downloadable, without a subscription to the journal they are published in. A quick search of the ERIC database can make a significant difference in staff discussions around many common school issues.


PEN (Public Education Network) Weekly Newsblast

Many of the education-related forums I have seen are unsatisfying. Many education forums are either inactive, or they resemble a bad teacher's lounge: a lot of complaining, with little constructive conversation. I once asked a professor to recommend a good source of education news and articles, and she recommended the PEN Weekly Newsblast. I have read the newsblast for the last year, and it is one of the most consistent sources of high-quality education news and articles I have seen. Each week there is a summary of recent education news and recently published articles, a section of shorter news briefs, and a section of grant and funding opportunities. Each brief is a link to the full article. I read the full newsblast each week, and I usually skim several of the full articles as well. I print out and share full articles with colleagues every couple weeks, so the newsblast ends up influencing our school's professional practice. As I continue to grow as an educator, I will use the grant funding referrals as well. I highly recommend that educators subscribe to the newsblast; it comes in on Friday mornings, a perfect time to be re-inspired as an educator.


Coding Horror and Joel on Software

As I have gotten back into programming, I have started to read a few blogs about bad programming. The blogs at first seem to be simply making light of bad programming examples, but there is a much deeper significance to them. By raising awareness of bad programming, they focus on good programming practice. The people who write these blogs are highly skilled programmers, frustrated at the bad reputation their profession gets by the work of mediocre and bad programmers. The best of these blogs is Coding Horror, written by Jeff Atwood. Coding Horror articles provide guidance on developing high-quality software, and inspire us to do excellent work, whatever our profession.

Jeff Atwood collaborates with Joel Spolsky, who built a unique software company called Fog Creek Software, founded on the principles of high-quality software design. The company puts programmers first, with management clearly in the role of supporting the programmers. They aimed to build the "ideal programming workspace", and did it all without outside funding, so they would be free from the obligations that dependence on venture capital brings. The Fog Creek culture raises the question: "What if schools were structured in a similar way, where administrators were set up to serve teachers, and students were given the best work space money could buy?" It's an exemplar worth reflecting on. Joel Spolsky writes another of the best software development blogs, Joel on Software.

For an example of how Coding Horror articles can inspire non-programmers to do excellent work, take a look at a post about execution, the difference between simply having a good idea and carrying that idea out fully.

PHSgeek Digital Story: Story Core and Story Map

Central Challenge

• Do we ignore technological waste and inefficiency, or do something about it?
• If we do something about it, do we just address our own needs, or the needs of the larger community?
• Note: "We" is the Pacific High School community - staff and students.

Challenges and Character Transformation

• How will we deal with unknowns as they come up?
• Will anyone donate computers? Will people donate too many computers? What about donations that are too old or nonfunctional to work?
• Will students want to do the work required to make the computers reusable?
• Will the district continue to support us as the project grows?
• Will we ostracize businesses that sell new computers?
• Will we have enough school time to carry out the project
• Will students learn enough academics through the project?
  

Resolution

Current benefits of the program:

• Refurbished computers that work better than existing school computers;
• Students who can refurbish computers on their own;
• Students who are using refurbished computers in their homes;
• Students who want refurbished computers;
• Members of the public who want refurbished computers and are being referred to our school;
• An improved reputation for our school in the larger community;
• Continued donations.

Ambitions as the project continues:

• Continuous donations accepted, rather than donation windows;
• Distribution of refurbished computers to students and the public;
• Sale of computers, appropriate uses of funds from sales, fund ongoing electronics recycling for the community;
• Best donated computers stay in the school, so school's technology infrastructure is steadily improving;
• Publicize our work with the goal of replicating the project in other communities.

Story Map

Article Assessment #1: Ohler, Digital Storytelling in the Classroom, Chapters 5 & 6

Overview

Chapters 5 and 6 of Digital Storytelling in the Classroom by Jason Ohler describes an approach to digital storytelling that helps storytellers create compelling stories. The goal is to create digital stories that demonstrate growth in characters, and avoid episodic stories that are simply a series of loosely-related events. These chapters discuss the story core, story maps, and briefly mention story boards. Story cores describe the central challenge that poses a problem for the main character, the tension and transformation that the challenge brings about, and a resolution to the challenge. The story map ensures that the story has emotional significance by mapping out the rising tension, struggle, and resolution that the main character goes through. The storyboard lays out the events and scenes in the story, along with technical notes to carry out the media work effectively.

Reference Points

• There are no formulas or rules in effective storytelling, only guidelines.
• Without a meaningful, significant problem or challenge to overcome, a story can rarely be compelling.
• The story core must be compelling before students begin doing media work; before they begin recording, compiling clips, and editing.
• Thinking in story core terms can help make school board and community presentations significantly more compelling. "What transformation do they [the school board, members of the community] need to undergo?"
• Many digital story rubrics make the mistake of being entirely technical. Thinking in story core terms, and basing rubrics on story map concepts, can avoid this problem.
• Requiring only a storyboard can produce technically proficient, but emotionally empty digital stories.
• The strongest stories bring about lasting changes in the audience as well as in the central characters of the story.

Reflection

While reading these chapters, it was easy to recognize how I and my students will create more compelling digital stories through the use of story maps. I have seen many projects in school that have little significance because they are episodic and lack tension or a central challenge. This even explains why some science and math writeups lack impact. If students focus clearly on the problem to which they are applying science and math concepts, we develop interest in their work. When there is no compelling problem to solve or challenge to resolve, we just see a bunch of operations or a bunch of facts or investigative steps. I look forward to applying the concepts of the story map to different kinds of content-focused work, and to a variety formats such as lab writeups and math investigations, as well as digital stories.

I also particularly like the emphasis on the universal application of story maps. Ohler makes the point that many school board and community presentations would be significantly stronger if the presentation were mapped out to include a strong challenge, period of tension, and resolution. I have been intending to make a presentation to our school board about our computer refurbishing project. If I had done that presentation before this reading, I would have made an interesting but fairly dry presentation about what we are doing. This reading makes me realize I need to focus as much on showing why we are doing the project, not just telling the board why we are doing it and assuming the significance of the problem is understood by everyone. I believe my final digital story, which will be presented at the April school board meeting, will do this well.

Reflection - Educational Philosophy Video

My educational philosophy video can be seen on youtube.

I really enjoyed this project. I have wanted to learn simple video editing for a long time, but have never put together a project. The process was fairly straightforward, and I have already been talking with students and colleagues about what kind of video projects might be worth pursuing. One possibility is the use of videos to create user guides for the software we are using in the PHSgeek project. The use of video screen capture programs, rather than just screenshots, would make this work interesting to students.

I completed this project using entirely open source software. I used kdenlive for the video editing, and found it easy to use after reading one tutorial. The program was not as polished as something like iMovie, but after reflecting on the question of which software to use with students I come back to the principles of open source. It's not about price, it's about access. If we can make high-quality video projects with programs like kdenlive, we can install the software on any computer in the school without any concerns about licensing issues. Even more important, anyone with a computer at home can make videos on their own time. This is a huge benefit of open source software, and the field of video editing is one where this is likely to be significant. Not many students are going to write a paper at home for fun because they can use an open source word processor, but many students might try their hand at video editing if they have unlimited access to the technology.



There are technical aspects of this video that I could improve, but they are easy details to address in subsequent projects. For the purposes of this project, having simply put all the pieces together to make an edited video was a significant step forward for me, and one that I will use with students shortly.

Reflection - Energy Project Presentation Video

The video recording of my Energy Project slideshow presentation can be seen on youtube.

After twelve years of teaching,I am quite comfortable speaking to groups of almost any size, and any age. That said, it is always good to reflect critically on presentation style.

I feel my presentation focuses on clear communication. I always strive to be honest about my level of understanding of the current subject, understand who my audience is, and gauge their ongoing level of understanding and interest in the subject. I use tools such as slideshow software to facilitate a two-way conversation, rather than simply perform a one-way delivery of information. I try to set up presentations that allow for flexible delivery; every slide in the presentation does not need to be shown, and every section of the slideshow does not need to be presented. The structure of the presentation, particularly the use of a navigation bar on every slide, means these decisions can be made during a presentation with no interruption of delivery by right-click menus or by returning to the design mode to find a particular slide or section of the presentation. This also means that one slideshow can be used for many different audiences, for different levels of depth and different presentation lengths. One presentation can be used in front of students, colleagues, the school board, and the public, always choosing to share appropriate sections for the current audience, and easily skipping over levels of detail that are not appropriate to the current audience. This also means that questions can be taken mid-presentation, without causing any difficulty by taking a nonlinear path through the material being presented.

I have found two things most valuable in preparing this presentation. The first is the chance to focus on this particular material. We have been so focused on the technical work of refurbishing computers and learning new software programs, that we have not dug too deeply into the specific environmental benefits of the project. The research for this presentation helped lay the groundwork for a deeper understanding of this work, and will lead into some independent study opportunities for students, or an entire science or social studies class focused on these issues. The second thing I gained is a better understanding of how to share files online. It was frustrating to sort out file format issues among the different sites. I found I had to convert my files to PDF format in order to post them effectively. I will sort out some of these technical issues and begin to use these file sharing sites with students and colleagues. I look forward to the way these services can enhance the collaborative atmosphere we foster at our school.

Energy Project Sideshow

My energy project is about PHSgeek, a program I have started at Pacific High School this fall. We accept donations of old computers, and students learn to refurbish them by installing the Ubuntu Linux operating system and a suite of open source software. The project is causing students and a number of adults to rethink the role of technology and school in everyone's lives. For some students, the concept that any program we use in the project at school is fully available to them at home is eye-opening. Students who have not done homework in years have started to do "school work" at home because technological barriers have been taken down, and school and computers have been made fun again.

The project and slideshow presentation focus on the environmental benefits of this project. The spreadsheet that I made for the project examines the impact of scaling up the PHSgeek project, examining the amount of hazardous materials that can be removed from the waste stream or disposed of properly. The project could expand by processing a higher volume of computers, or by serving as a model program that other schools can replicate.

The presentation includes one feature I feel all slideshows should have a website-style navigation system. This is simple to implement, and breaks the presenter out of the linear-presentation mode that slideshows tend pull people into. For example, it is easy for a presenter to respond to questions if there is a navigation system on-screen that does not require a right click menu to access, and it is easier for audience members to see the overall structure of the presentation.

I have had some trouble getting the slideshow and spreadsheet posted with proper formatting online, so I will sort that out shortly and post the links. The spreadsheet should now be visible, but you will probably need to play with the zoom buttons on the right side of Google's pdf viewer. The slideshow is also visible now, although the navigation bar at the bottom does not work in Google's pdf viewer. If you want to see how the navigation bar works, you can download the pdf file and the links should work.