Do our students rely too much on technology?

In his article "Pros and cons of digital devices in the hands of young students" posted by K. Walsh on emergingedtech.com,  author Daniel Kimble discusses how the pervasive use of digital devices is impacting young people.

The article raises some good points, but does not really go into detail in explaining or defending a particular point of view; it's difficult to tell where the author stands on the issue. I guess that's a good thing, as it seems Kimble is really trying to identify an topic for debate and discussion. The pros and cons he lists do not attempt to answer the question of whether or not young students should have such ubiquitous access to iPads, laptops, smart phones, etc., but his list is a good starting point for further discussion.

The article raises some interesting questions, and I had to stop and really think about where I stand on the issue. It's a tough question to answer, and I think that we as educators will continue to grapple with this issue as the use of technology by our students continues to increase, and to is happening at younger and younger ages.

Be Careful About What You're Posting on Facebook

An article on the Huffington Post by Katherine Bindly entitled "Why You Shouldn't Post Facebook Statuses About Your Hangover or Hating Your Boss" describes a new Website called "We Know What You're Doing".

The site, which was created by  U.K. teenager Callum Haywood, essentially searches public Facebook posts for incriminating phrases like "hungover" and "hate my boss", and then compiles and posts them for the world to see. Since the posts are already public on Facebook, there's nothing illegal or even particularly unethical about it. It does serve as a reminder that we should all be careful about what we post anywhere on the Internet, and to review our Facebook settings (I know I just did!). It also reminds us that if we post something as public on Facebook, literally anyone online can see it.

As educators, we should also help our students be mindful of what can happen with the information that they post on the Internet, and that it may not be as private as they think. My middle and high school students can seem pretty unaware of these kinds of dangers, and as far as I know there has been no school-wide effort to try and inform the students of the risks involved by placing personal information online. While one of the benefits of living in a repressed society like China's is that there is a far less danger of Internet "stalkers" coming into physical contact with our students, this does not lessen the peril - not to mention embarrassment - of having sensitive personal information available to the Internet masses. I think that this will become a bigger issue for teachers as the ability to connect and share information online continues to become easier and more widespread amongst our students. It is our duty to help educate them of all the potential pitfalls of using the Internet to communicate.

Social Media in Education

It seems like many of the articles I've been reading lately have been about using social media in education as a way to get students to collaborate, express themselves to a wider audience, communicate in different ways, and a host of other innovative uses. Author Will Richardson in his book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms has some fantastic suggestions and ideas on how to implement blogs in eduction using a wide range of applications to the classroom. This all sounds very cool to me, and I would love to start using some of these ideas with my students for the next school year.

But I can't, at least not with most of it.

Where I currently live and teach in the People's Republic of China, most social media sites are blocked by  what we expats in China less-than-fondly refer to as the "Great Firewall of China". Twitter and Facebook are always blocked; video sharing sites like You Tube and Vimeo are always blocked. Any URL with the text string"blog" anywhere in the address will always be blocked. Wikispaces is sometimes unavailable. Several of our teachers have tried using Edmoto, but find that it is often blocked. (Why some sites are only blocked some of the time remains a mystery.)

Looking through this list, it seems as if the Chinese are blocking the sites that allow people to write to the Web. The PRC Government (read Communist Party) doesn't want anyone in China to have the ability to post their thoughts or ideas to the Internet. They don't block many news and information sites from outside of China, that is not until one of those sites posts something that they don't like. We first arrived in China in the summer of 2009 during the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown; several of the news Websites that I regularly read posted stories about Tiananmen in 1989, and were almost immediately blocked for several weeks. (The ongoing advice in China is that you should avoid talking about the "Three T's" with most Chinese: Tibet, Taiwan, and Tiananmen.)

We can get around all of this stuff by using a Virtual Private Network, or VPN. A VPN essentially connects you to a remote Internet server through an encrypted connection, so your ISP only sees the IP number of your computer, but not where it's connected. So once you're logged into a VPN, you're free to surf anonymously through the VPN provider's Internet connection. I have a VPN that is quite reliable which allows me to use sites like You Tube in my classroom, and to access any other sites I might need or want to view. Many of my students also routinely use VPNs, so they can access all of this information as well. Technically, VPNs are illegal in China, but since they have a hard time proving that you're using one, it's not really enforced. But, since many of my students do not routinely use a VPN, requiring them to acquire one - and the reliable ones have a subscription fee - is not possible.

So while all of these wonderful applications for blogging and using social media sound very promising and innovative to me, I'm just going to have to sit back and wait until China relaxes its Internet policies, which will not be any time soon, or wait to use all these great ideas until after I've left China to teach in another country. Since I am in Switzerland as I write this, I don't feel paranoid about voicing my opinions on the Chinese Internet censorship policies; if I was back in China, I probably wouldn't be posting all of this, VPN or not.

Authentic Projects

What Does It Take for a Project to be “Authentic”?

In his Blog post, "What does it Take for a Project to be Authentic, author John Larmer writes about Project Based Learning (PBL), and give some good insight on how to make sure that the projects we assign kids are "authentic".

I hear the authentic word a lot these days, and it took me a while to figure out that it's the new term for "real life" problems, assignments, or projects. Larmer's article has several good points about what makes a project authentic, and also some tips for how to design you projects to be authentic. He also includes a sliding scale of authenticity to gauge your own projects against.

The middle school I currently teach in uses (or attempts to use, with varying degrees of success) an inquiry-based educational model, so this article and its helpful descriptions and examples will be of much use to me in designing truly authentic projects in the future.

Is the cloud a good idea for schools?

I read an article on the Read Write Web site entitled "Are IT Fears Holding Back Cloud Computing?" that talks about how IT professionals in the corporate world are leery about incorporating cloud technology, as they fear it could lead to downsizing in both staff and budget. But in education, where we are seemingly always understaffed in IT departments, it seems that the utilization of the cloud could be the solution to several problems.

First, it could free up time for school IT professionals to spend time supporting teachers, which is their fundamental role in the first place. Not dealing with network and storage/retrieval problems could allow them to devote their efforts to more productive issues. Secondly, it seems that it would save schools a bundle of money by not having to purchase more physical server space located in the school buildings as their needs expand. Security may be an issue, but one would hope that the cloud server providers would have that well in hand as part of their service.

I only use small bits of the cloud to store data, on sites like Dropbox, and I don't ever upgrade and pay for more. I presume that educational institutions could purchase additional and sufficient amounts of storage to meet their needs. If there are not cloud providers out there who cater specifically to the needs of schools, I think they're missing out on a huge potential future market.

Anyone want to go in as partners with me?

Ten Tips for Integrating Technology

Grace Rubenstein's article found on edutopia.org entitled "Ten Tips for Personalized Learning via Technology" is an informative and useful list of ways that current technology is being used in classrooms.

The list has been derived from effective technology integration at Forrest Lake Elementary School, in Columbia, South Carolina. Seeing the list of available technology at this school made me very envious.
This helps illustrate that having the right tools for the job is essential. However, as Rubenstein points out, it's not just about the gadgets themselves, but how well they are implemented and used for instruction.

A couple of the things on the list don't really have anything to do with technology, but are simply good differentiation practices. The final tip is an important one to remember and try to use: plan with your colleagues, so that you have more time to focus on your actual teaching and implementation. If you can work collaboratively to plan lessons or units, and develop resources that work for all teachers who will be teaching the same grade level or course, this will save lots of time and effort for everyone while still producing valuable teaching resources.

This list is not ground-breaking news, but it is a nice, compact way to see some good ideas presented together. There are also some links in the article to view some other resources, so I will definitely be bookmarking this page as a handy future reference.

Apple Weak on Security?

In an article from the Read Write Web site entitled "Why Security Could be Apple's Greatest Threat", author Antone Gonsalves writes about how despite all of its claims, the Mac OS is really not as secure as Windows.

I think that it's probably to do with the fact that for so long Windows has been the predominate operating system, and most hackers just didn't bother with Mac. This has forced Microsoft to continually upgrade its defense and security systems, while the Apple folks really haven't had to worry about it. People just weren't attacking Macs like they were Windows systems.

I recently made the stupid mistake of opening an attachment in an unknown e-mail, and downloading a nasty little program that essentially hid all of my data. This was on my Dell desktop at school. The IT guy was able to help me find all of my data, which was completely unchanged. But it did bring home to me the need for care and to pay closer attention to computer security.

As a long-time Mac user for my home computers, I have been going along in the blissful thought that my  Apples were immune to this kind of viral infection. But as Gonsalves points out in his article, the lack of attacks on Macs has lulled Apple into a false sense of "security", and now that they are being targeted, we are finding big gaps in their security measures. This sense of security was shattered last April with the Flashback Trojan that infected hundreds of thousands of Macs.

So other Mac users like me who thought we were immune: Beware! Our time of being virus-free is seemingly coming to an end.

Web 2.0 Tools & Tutorials

This article at Edutopia is fantastic. Not only does it list some great resources, but has links to short introductory instructional videos. Well worth taking a look at for some good teaching applications and ideas!