Distance Education

Pros and Cons

PROs

1) For parents, the ability to completely oversee their child’s education at the elementary school level can be preferable to trusting an education to a teacher who may or may not have specific needs of the student in mind.

2) Students can work at their own pace, which is beneficial from two sides. A student who tends to learn at a slower pace might need the extra time and flexibility. On the other hand, students who need to work at a quick pace to keep their interest up would appreciate the ability to plow through assignments as desired.

3) At my school in Alaska, we didn’t have a wide range of AP classes to choose from. I took as many as I could, but would have liked to have taken some as early as my freshmen or sophomore year. Virtual schools would give students access to a wider range of courses.

4) Students are given technology equipment that is more upscale than a lot of families may have access to. With technology becoming such a prominent and encompassing part of our lives, students can learn from a young age how to maneuver computers with extreme ease.

5) Virtual classrooms have a lot of flexibility regarding the program that is set up for a student. On Washington’s Virtual K-8, the site boasts that a 4th grader who is doing 6th grade math and 4th grade reading can have his program tailored to that need. There is a lot of individual effort put into each child.


CONs

1) There is a huge social component of being in a physical classroom that is lost in virtual coursework. Granted, the online schools have “virtual classrooms” where students can chat and IM other classmates. They also have the ability to join extracurricular activities. Students don’t have to partake in these, though, which can hinder social development, especially at a young elementary age.

2) I read on the Washington Virtual School that students had to take physical education classes. They are given lessons and activities that they have to report back about. I’m not sure that these personally driven physical education classes would really be beneficial for a student. Parents may want to enroll students in an outside form of fitness.

3) To make up for the lab work done in biology and chemistry classrooms, schools have “virtual” experiments and dissections. Personally, there is a huge difference between doing an experiment in a pretend virtual lab and actually dealing with real and potentially dangerous chemicals. Likewise with dissections: when that smell hits your senses, it can be pretty pungent. That experience is lost in a virtual lab.

4) Students may believe they have the motivation to get their work done, but with the lenient schedules and due dates, students may find themselves becoming more lax with assignments.

5) On the Washington Virtual School FAQ, I read that students can present and debate in the conference rooms. Although this may begin to teach public speaking skills, there is certainly nothing that compares to standing in front of strangers and defending your opinion. Virtual classrooms take away the learning experience of public speaking or presenting.


To determine the readiness of students to participate in distance delivery, I think you would have to make sure that they are capable of staying motivated and on-track. The independence from virtual schooling brings the freedom to decide when you will (and won’t) do an assignment. Unless a student has a strong sense of will-power, they may not do well in an environment that forces them to be their own instigator.

To be able to teach in a virtual school, an educator would definitely need to be well-prepared in the subjects they are directing. Also, unlike in public school settings, teachers need to know all the lessons at all times since students would be submitting assignments at irregular times. Public school educators will receive thirty of the same assignments and can grade them all at once and move on. Virtual educators need to be on top of everything that is being covered.

Emerging Technologies Project

The world of technology is already making a significant impact on classrooms today; even the simple use of blogging and teacher websites give parents much more access to their student’s world in the classroom. To find out some more information about upcoming classroom technologies, I have studied three emerging technologies: virtual reality in education, interactive Smart Boards, and podcasting.

Virtual reality is essentially a technology that has students interact with a simulated environment. This could encompass simulated driving sequences, snowboarding, or even space exploration. No longer would students need to read out of a textbook about aquatic life in the darkest depths of the ocean! They could step into a computer-simulated environment and become the scuba diver!

This technology would have a tremendous impact on my teaching; imagine how engaged my students would be if they could enter some form of a virtual world in which everything that they touched gave them information about itself. I read an article by John Shaffer, a 7th grade science teacher in Colorado (http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/technology/shaffer.htm), which had a great idea for bilingual students: in a virtual reality world, a bilingual student could touch items and have the item description and name said to them in both languages. A technology like this, as a teacher with a classroom of up to thirty students, could benefit me by allowing me more time to work with all students rather than spending all my time with a student who couldn’t seem to pick up the language fast enough to stay on pace. I believe this would also benefit the student by giving them an environment that explained itself according to his/her interest. More information about virtual reality can be found at: http://www.sunrisevr.com/vrlearn.htm.

The interactive Smart Board is a technologically-enhanced version of a whiteboard. Using a projector to project the computer’s desktop onto the “white-board,” educators can then interact with the white board to open programs on the computer as though their fingers were the computer mouse. More impressively, educators can actually write on the board with “digital ink.”

Using a Smart Board in the classroom would be a huge aid for teachers and students. If I had access to this technology, I would make sure to save all the work I wrote out for students during lessons. Imagine being able to go back to all those scribbles on the board to jog students’ memories about a lesson a few weeks back. Not to mention it would eliminate the overhead transparencies as I could do everything through one technology. As for the students, the interactive format would help students engage in their learning. Thinking back on the Kiosk projects we made for this class, I could see making one of those that allowed students to access it through the white board. Not only would the whole class get to participate in this form of learning, but it would be so much more interactive than white boards and overheads ever were! For more information about Smart Boards, there is some information at: http://www.education-world.com/a_tech/tech/tech234.shtml.

The third emerging technology in classrooms that is making a huge difference in the classroom is podcasting. Podcasts are internet audio recording that can have any theme or topic; it is completely up to the creator.

Podcasting in the classrooms can be a great technology for students of any age, but particularly older ones. As a teacher, this would make a great ongoing project for students. I found an amazing idea on Education World (http://www.education-world.com/a_tech/tech/tech238.shtml) which suggested using podcasts to record greetings for pen pals around the world. Another idea would be to have older students read short stories written bi-monthly in the classroom. These podcasts would be shared with parents, which would give them a view into the classroom world. They could hear progress in their student’s writings with each recording. As a teacher, podcasting would serve as a great portfolio item to document student progress. The students would also benefit from such a technology. Simply turning in a story or a letter to me may not encourage as much enthusiasm and engagement as having to read the story aloud for others to hear. Not only would it encourage active learning, but it would help build public speaking confidence in students of all ages. More information on educational podcasts can be found at http://recap.ltd.uk/podcasting/index.php.

New technology is always going to be emerging from all around us, which excites me as I love learning how to work new programs and devices. I hope to stay up to date and open to new technologies as I believe it can greatly increase the engagement of students.

Engaging Students with Concept Mapping Activities

Concept mapping is a beneficial activity for helping students visualize how topics relate to each other. Eventually, having this ability to visualize topics and subpoints will lead to outlining papers (for older grades). I know for myself that I was never very good at visually creating an outline before diving into papers, but I think that it's a vital practice for creating papers that tie together effectively.

Concept mapping can engage students, especially visual students, by teaching them how to organize. I think students who can concept map will have an easier time drafting stories, writing research papers, or writing argumentations. Digital concept mapping, with programs like Inspiration, takes away the frustration of messy eraser marks and lack of room, which can encouage kids to have fun while organizing and conceptually creating a hierarchy of keypoints. For younger kids, concept mapping with pictures can be extremely valuable for students who can't necessarily read yet, but can understand concepts through pictures.

By having students use concept mapping, it gives me, as a teacher, a great tool for determining whether or not they have understanding the concepts I've been teaching. For example, if I have taught a music class the difference between the four instrument families in a Symphony Orchestra, I would have my students make a concept map with these instruments categorized correctly. I think kids would have a fun time organizing concept with this digital media, as well as showing me that they know the information. Concept mapping doesn't even have to be digital! I could have flashcards with instrument names, and they would have to categorize them into groups, which is a form of concept mapping.

Some ideas I have for students using Inspiration or Kidspiration media:

1) Family tree -- help younger students understand the branching of families.
2) Symphony Orchestra Instrument Families -- Classification of types of instruments.
3) Mammals, Amphibians, Aquatic, and birds -- Classification of these types of animals.
4) WWII Events -- Cause and effect points.

Teacher Web Evaluation

1) Grading the teacher webs was a bit challenging just because everybody has such diverse creativity that sometimes the pages weren’t very enticing to me, but it still followed the required criteria. I will also say that it was very difficult to peer review the teacher webs of the people at my table because those people are my friends, so they know that it was me who gave them the score I did. It would have been better to have assigned us random teacher webs (maybe by passing out papers with two teacher websites on them).

2) There were a lot of interesting aspects to reviewing other teacher webs. As I said before, everyone has different creative “geniuses,” and it was great to see some other ideas that I hadn’t thought of before (like some of the announcements people came up with and the pages they chose to use in addition). Both teacher webs that I perused were very thoughtful; the assignments and quizzes made sense for a particular grade level.

3) I’m not sure exactly what I would do differently, knowing what I know now. I think I might have chosen some different pictures for my about me; ones that flowed a little more. Don’t get me wrong, I think they gave a well-rounded image of me, but I might have written my captions to be aimed towards the younger students.

As for what could be different in TeacherWeb? I can think of a lot of things that can be different! TeacherWeb is very basic and certainly pretty user-friendly. However, when it comes to editing pictures, I found the site to be ridiculous! They need some kind of preview feature so that you aren’t sitting there making guesses about how to resize the picture, or what size border you should use. I found that to be completely irritating. A “before” and “after” view would have made that portion of TeacherWeb so much more sophisticated.

Another problem I have with TeacherWeb (which is completely my own preference) is that it is very cut-and-paste. There’s not a whole lot of room to play around with layout. The site is fantastic for teachers with little time and little technological background, but for me, I’d much prefer to create my own page from scratch. Even the Wiki gave me a bit more layout ability (though it was a bit frustrating as well). I’m not sure that I would use a TeacherWeb just because I was so frustrated with the strict format, but that’s nothing against TeacherWeb itself.

Blogs in Education

1) Google was my first choice for a search engine. I have definitely formed an addiction to Google over the years and was curious to see how it would compare to other engines. The first few sites were: Educational Weblogs, Kathy Schrock’s Home Page, and Top 100 Education Blogs. I moved onto Dogpile, which is supposed to be comprised of a variety of search engines, including Live search, Google, and Ask Jeeves. I found that its first few sites were identical to Google’s sites! Finally, I went to Ask Jeeves, and got some different results, including: Educational Blogs, Blogs for Your Students, and Free Blogs for Educators. I suppose the results were varied because of what each search engine company is affiliated with. I’ve heard that some engines get paid to basically “advertise” a searched page. I don’t know if that’s what made the difference in these instances, but it’s a possibility.

2) After perusing some different educational blogs, including the ones listed on the assignment page, I found that blogs are becoming incredibly prominent for technologically aware schools and educators. A major use of blogs in the K-12 classroom seemed to be as a form of “collaboration” between educators. On edublogs.org, you could share lesson plans with teachers across the internet! You don’t have to know the teacher, but you can bounce ideas with others across the nation, giving a much wider perspective. I also noticed a lot of blogs encouraged student-blogging, in which students could have online discussions of topics. This allows for a quicker sparking of interests and views than the typical homework assignment might allow. Finally, the third innovative use for a blog was through newsletters. I have noticed in my practicum this semester that the teacher sends newsletters home with her 2nd graders. She complained, though, that often times, those letters just don’t make it home for some reason or another. I can imagine that using an online newsletter blog would be immensely useful, especially for children at a younger age. This whole process could save paper, ensure delivery (assuming parents kept tabs on the blog), and make the teacher’s life less stressful.

3) I had never heard of “RSS readers/aggregators” before this research, but after finding the definition, I realize that I have been exposed to these aggregators. RSS readers/aggregators are basically an application for compiling (or “aggregating”) specified web content into a single location. These web contents can include news headlines, podcasts, blogs, etc., whatever the client desires. These act as a sort of “personal newspaper” that are specified to your desires! It also takes away the annoyance of searching a bunch of different internet sites for all the different headline stories! RSS readers can be used in the classroom to help guide student learning by compiling a bunch of resources for them into one place. This can eliminate stumbling over inappropriate content and get students quick information fast. I think they could also be a great tool for compiling information on a “class website” that can be accessed by students throughout the classroom.

4) Using RSS readers and blogging would have a tremendous impact in a K-12 classroom. First of all, the internet is such a prominent “way-of-life” in our nation that students need to be able to zoom around on it without confusion. Having these RSS readers and blogs would begin to help them see the full extent of the internet’s ability. Blogging itself could give a place for students to share opinions and ideas while gaining insight from others. The only fear I have from blogging is the elimination of face-to-face contact. Used moderately and appropriately, blogging would be time efficient and give students a place to discuss outside of the classroom. However, I wouldn’t want my class to solely depend on the computer screen “curtain.” Overuse of the internet and these technologies could cripple students’ abilities to converse in person, which is still a vital skill in our world. RSS readers could also hinder abilities to seek out desired information. Used in moderation, both can be helpful, but they shouldn’t completely replace other forms of communication and research.

5) As described in question four, blogs and RSS readers can be a positive for the K-12 classroom. They enable students to find information quickly (in the form of content-specified RSS readers) and to share ideas and opinions (in the form of blogs). Blogs can be a fantastic place to write teacher-parent newsletters, which eliminates the messy paper-trail. There are some down-sides to these technologies, though. Blogs can take away from the face-to-face contact that is vital in our society. All too often these days, it seems that people can’t discuss things in person. They would rather shy behind the computer screen so that they don’t have to be directly accountable for the ideas they share. RSS readers can take away from the research component that comes with searching for desired content. Having everything you want and need catered to your desires and convenience will hinder students if they don’t learn the process of finding information on their own. Again, used in moderation, both blogs and RSS readers can be beneficial.

Webquest & Wiki as Education Tools

Webquests and Wikis can be extremely powerful and beneficial tools for students, especially since the internet and technology are critical in our society. My group and I discussed our views of Webquests. I was very excited about the whole idea of making a huge project that would require students to access appropriate internet sources. I can't imagine living in our society without knowing how to find information on the web. I feel like students must have an understanding of computers, and Wikis can be an appropriate source to introduce them to new research techniques. One of my groupmates was not excited by the whole webquest ideas, mainly because she felt it was a lot of work, but she also felt that her mind would change once she actually understood how to set one up. I love the whole idea.

Students can be quite obsessed with computers these days. If the webquests were creative and intriguing, I can definitely see kids viewing an online project and getting as excited to do it as they do to play video games.

When I did the webquest worksheet, I actually didn't go to the Teacher Web -- Webquest. I'd just searched for webquests through the actual webquest website. In class today, my groupmates showed me some of the Teacher Web Webquests, and I was really impressed by how easy they could be for students to access and use without frustration! These would be great for young kids as well as older ones.

I definitely need to play with the Wiki more as I'm still a bit confused about its full range of abilities, but I'm definitely intrigued and excited to have this as a source for my classroom!

Applying Technology to Learning Styles

Technology can be a powerful resource for reinforcing good behavior or negating bad behavior. Students in today's society love computers and are eager to play games (even learning games)! We can build about this eagerness using positive reinforcement. Say, for example, that students are supposed to be silent and stay in a straight line while walking from the classroom to the lunchroom. For the week, I could give them points for how well they performed this task, and each point would earn them 5 freetime computer minutes. This positive reward would increase the good hallway behavior coming to and from lunch.

Going along with reinforcement and the example of computer freetime, I could go so far as to take away points if students don't behave down the hallway to lunch. Rather than giving them points, they could start with a specific number of points, and for each mishap, they would lose a point. This negative reinforcement would decrease the behavior of being rowdy in the hallway. Both positive and negative reinforcements are looking for the same results, but they get to that behavior by either positively rewarding or negatively taking away. Technology is so exciting for students, that it's easy to use it as a reward.