e-books

I love e-books, and I believe that paper text books should be a thing of the past.  I am not a fan of text books to start with, and the textbook industry is as much as a rip off as the oil industry.  With e-books we don't have to use paper.  There are no chemicals involved in printing, and they don't have wear and tear issues.  They weigh nothing so they don't cause back strain problems by overloading back packs.  I don't even accept written papers.  All digital.  They are searchable, and when writing papers  students can copy and paste that all important quote.  Paper books should become antiques.  I know some people get that warm fuzzy feeling from having the book in their hand, but that last time I checked there's nothing warm and fuzzy about our (mostly poorly written) text books anyways.

Technology in my life

My technology enters my life the moment I wake up.  My blackberry is my alarm clock, which (of course) only goes off on weekdays.  I immediately check my email, Facebook, and text messages (waiting for me on my blackberry).  I have satellite TV to look at the news, traffic, and weather for the day because I (by choice) live in the boondocks.  Of course I didn't need to see the weather on TV because I already saw that on my blackberry as well.  When I get to the truck and start it my blackberry (which is also my mp3 player) connects to my truck through its "sync" system.  Through voice commands I can play music, call someone, request a vehicle health report, etc.  Not to mention if there is an accident the truck will call 911 for me.  (Skipping the work day and the trip home)  I do some school work on my laptop.  If I don't want to sit in the den, but still want to watch a Blu-ray disc, I connect my laptop (which doubles as a Blu-ray player) to the flat screen in the bedroom.  We have a virtual recording studio in the basement where I have a digital piano/ synthesizer, as well as an electronic drum set, and other digital musical devices.  When I get bored I will join one of my sons on the X-box or PS3.  We don't use our Wii that often anymore.  That's about it for me, except I skipped the parts of the day where I use the most technology. ;)  I don't see the demands the technology has on my life because I know how to not answer the phone or email.  Technology has organized me so that One or two devices do for me things that I either spent more time doing, or didn't get to at all.  It obviously have integrated much technology into my everyday life.  I didn't see it as something to fight as much as to embrace the benefits that it offered to me.  If I had to give it up.... I'm OK with that too, because I do see the simpler past as a better time.  I often think I would have preferred to live many years ago.  If I had to or could eliminate one piece of technology from modern life, I would eliminate cars.  But that's a different post for a different subject.

Social Networking and Education

I wanted a while back to use Facebook in my classroom.  I had an idea to create a closed group (by invitation only) where students within my chemistry classes could interact to discuss homework, classwork, study questions, etc.  I had the idea that students (when off campus) could (when they saw something related to class) could upload pictures of what they saw for homework points.  (It is difficult to relate my class to everyday life.... usually.)  It (the idea) was shot down because big brother (Fairfax County Schools) was not in control.  I found this odd because my school's FCA, guidance department, and other organizations have Facebook groups.  Fairfax County Schools has a group for  parents and students to join.  Why it couldn't be used for chemistry is beyond me.  Concerns would be student confidentiality and student - teacher interaction.  An AP and IT monitor could balance the student - teacher interaction issue, and Facebook groups can be made private.  I don't see the problem.

Online Collaboration

I think that online collaboration is a powerful tool that education and industry alike should be using more of.  I also believe we are just scratching the surface of the potential of these tools.  As technology increases synchronous collaboration will be used more and more.  I personally believe that Skype is a good start, but eventually the potential is there to conduct more and more kinds of meetings/ collaboration online.  Synchronous meetings could eventually (one day) replace classrooms having a huge environmental and economic effect on society.  Imagine someone rolling out of bed, throwing on a hat and logging on to math, English or chemistry class.  There would be no bus maintenance or fuel consumption, and employees could work from home using less oil still.  This is potentially the answer to the energy/ environmental crisis.  Not using 1000 gallons of oil to ship a car from japan in the name of not using fossil fuels.  (Yes it takes roughly 100 gallons of oil to ship every foreign made car here…. Buy domestic cars, trucks, and motorcycles.)  Asynchronous collaboration has purpose as well, but I do not believe that it has the potential that synchronous collaboration does.

Websites

First of all let me say that I thought I did this on Monday.  It's been one of those semesters!  When it comes to websites I have a couple that I use often, but often I reinvent the wheel.  The first being http://www.biblegateway.com/ .  It has several translations, an effective search tool and it is easy to use.  I use a chemistry website http://www.chemteam.info/ChemTeamIndex.html for questions to create practice work, and I steal animations from the government here http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/k-12/airplane/Animation/frglab.html.  Other than that I usually google what I am looking for because the seems to always be new information out there somewhere and I try to stay as current as possible.

Presentation

When it comes to me to learning something, presentation is everything.  I am sorry to say that I am over half way through my masters and I can actually recall very little of what I had learned in my earlier classes. The reason why is that the material was presented through a method where you read and write about what you read.  I have a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from an excellent institution of higher learning and other than two literature classes I did not read the text in any class I took.  I worked problems in the end of the chapters, but I gained no knowledge from the pages of instruction in my overpriced text books.  I am extremely auditory when it comes to learning.  If I don't hear it then it doesn't stick.  The one class that I will call an exception is the 638 class where Skype classes were held and I was able to hear what Dr. Holder was saying to us.  I can read and enjoy reading the right books.  But I do not learn anything when I read and Liberty classes are (for the most part) R&R all the way.  I find it interesting that we are told as educators to teach to multiple learning styles, but even in this technology (internet) based program the classes are still paper and pencil classes.  Maybe one day higher education will catch up to what they are teaching teachers to do....... Maybe

Social Media

While my family and  I have used several social media sites, the one that we all seem to have settled with is Facebook.  Initially we all had myspace pages.  We have always been connected to our boys pages.  Initially it was to monitor what was going on in their live, now I think it is just to keep up with what is going on in their lives.  Being unhappy with the lack of site monitors and the unwanted messages in our in boxes, we left myspace and went to Xianz.com, a Christian social media site.  The site was 180 degrees from the monitor perspective, and we felt secure with our boys on the site.  We also used it to promote our Christian band and it was through that site that we found a church in a town we moved to a year later in another state.  We also created a band site at faithfreaks.com, as well as a few other Christian media sites.  In addition to sharing our music ministry around the world we also were able to minister to hundreds through the various media sites.  It was a real ministry.  The end of our band and computer viruses (we felt we got on the sites) drove us away.  Eventually my oldest son created a facebook and we joined shortly after.  Now I use the site to keep up with family and former students, and I waste way too much time playing facebook games.  My oldest son communicates with friends and promote his Christian band.  My wife keeps up with old high school friends and family.  My middle son uses it and youtube to show people his ability to do splits in ways a man shouldn't be able to do.  My youngest son seems to stir up and keep up with his friends drama.  Honestly I miss the days of xianz and faith freaks.  Maybe because I enjoyed the ministry, maybe I felt like it was a better time, probably it was both.

Technology at Westfield High School

Technology is in the hand of the beholder.  Saying this I mean that how one views technology at Westfield depends on how one views technology.  If your idea of technology is one teacher laptop, a digital projector, sixteen student laptops shared between three teachers, and one SmartBoard shared between seven teachers then Westfield is looking good on the technology front.  If not then if you want technology, then be prepared to write a grant or spend some of your own money.  I bought a laptop and an Interwrite Pad just to get to what I consider to be the bare minimum.  I personally think that there should be enough laptops in a school for each student to have their own laptop.  Not buying the textbooks they don't read would go a long way to paying for some of those laptops.  In addition I believe that classes should have clickers or be allowed to use something like the "Vclicker" software that turns cell phones into clickers.  Westfield (and Fairfax County for that matter) is a frustrating place if one wants to be ahead of the technology curve.  I tried to get permission to use a free trial of a web based artificial intelligence chemistry tutoring software and was told that I had to go (way) up the ladder to have it approved.    The students now days don't respond to the same old same old methods of the past.  They were born with more technology than I had the first twenty-five years of my life.  With that said if the schools don't start adjusting on the fly we will lose our students (at least their interest) the way the church that I grew up in lost members through the eighties and nineties with the "If it ain't in the hymnal" (spoken with my most proper English) attitude that has all but about closed the doors in several churches.  We must do better!