Learning Aloud

If you are an iMovie user and searching for tips to improve your skills, here is a comprehensive FAQ.

Kidz Privacy, a new site sponsored by the Federal Trade Commission, deals with privacy issues outlined in the 1998 COPPA legislation. Federal Trade Commission has established new rules for website operators to make sure that kids’ privacy is protected while they’re online. Here are explanations – for kids, parents, teachers, and the business community.

Searching for a unique present for the holiday? From May 12-18, 2003, nearly 4,000 professional photographers and tens of thousands took more than a million digital photographs of American homes creating a collection called America 24/7. You can collect “coffee table” books from this collection – you can find a version for your state. Thbe online gallery is also interesting and consists of slide shows set to music.

Cindy has little interest in posting to my blog, but she does participate actively in several lists. A list she participants in recently began to discuss the topic of print vs. online resources with some members lament the increasing interest in online resources (because sites are not permanent).

Here is Cindy’s comment (my title relates to her comments about our “kids”)

I have sincerely enjoyed this conversation and decided to contribute.
Janice, the people that you talk to – at what point are they in their career? I ask this question as I bet they are mainly established professionals and not new to their careers. I have children that range from 20 -29 and spent time with them over the holidays. I watched as they used the Internet for everything from finding a quote from a certain author, to getting the lyrics to an old song, to comparing bridal gown prices and hunting for reception locations, to posting a college assignment to WebCt and contacting members of a study group, to keeping aware of job opportunities in a special field, to creating Christmas presents with digital images and the list goes on. This was a seamless process for them.

My real concern for children these days center around the digital divide. The divide that keeps some children from having the opportunities to participate in this seamless process outside of school and the divide that exists for all children that the world around us is growing exponentially with digital information and our education system is functioning in isolation as if it doesn’t exist. The children that take advantage of it at home become disinterested in school as they know better and the children who cannot take advantage of it at home are really left behind. Our kids really live in a world that is difficult for us to comprehend. How can we take advantage of the good and help our children be problem solvers in order to deal with what is not so good?

I also sometimes chuckle when we talk about inaccurate information in the Internet. At least the realization makes us question what we read – whoever said that everything written in a book was true? Yet, in most instances we did not question the validity.

We have programmed our database to keep track of the links visitors follow. From these stored data, we now generate a top 15 list. Following the trends revealed in this list has been interesting. For a while, the Apple iMovie site was most popular. At this time, the list is topped by the Highly Interactive Computing (Univ of Michigan) web site which focuses on handheld computing and student projects.

I must say that I tend to interpret proposed directions in K-12 technology from a personal perspective. I don’t think there is anything wrong with being egocentric as long as the perspective is conscious. At this point I have yet to be convinced that present handhelds are the answer to the desire for ubiquitous technology. While it is true that you can purchase at least a half dozen handhelds for the cost of a cheap laptop, the issue is still whether you can do enough with them. I try to listen to me saying this kind of thing because I know similar questions were asked about the first personal computers.

So, I am trying. I downloaded a copy of FreeWrite from the HLE site and I am using it to write this short piece. To tell you the truth, it is driving my crazy. For some reason, the software or my cheap keyboard, the handheld keeps trying to synch and I have to repeatedly reopen the application. At least all of the text I enter is automatically saved.

I must admit that I am glad there are those who take the initiative to try new things. Students appreciate the adventure and without the risk takers, the rest of us would continue in the same old rut.

Maybe I can find a 4th grader to show me how this is supposed to work.

I am exploring while recovering from today’s meal.

The Opti Project is an effort to map the Internet. A cool feature (unimplemented at present because of server pressure) will allow you to find your machine within this map.

When our kids were young, they would sometimes do something that was kind of cute and then do it again, and again, and again. We had a little saying that we applied in this situation – first time funny, second time stupid, third time a spanking. I don’t remember actually following through on the threat and I am not certain that our saying was original, but you get the idea.

I now have the same reaction when I hear certain expressions used in a professional environment (e.g., convention presentations). It is getting to the “third time” for “drill and kill”, “sage on the stage”. etc.

What is the “kill” in drill and kill supposed to mean anyway? Kill meaningful learning. Kill student interest.

If you commonly use “drill and kill”, I would recommend that you read a recent American Educational Research Journal article by Peladeau, Forget and Gagne (2003, 40, 769-801). The article concerns the use of practice items in college quantative methods courses. As part of the introduction to their research, the authors note that educators tend to belief that repeated practice has a negative effect on student attitudes and motivation and point to expressions such as “drill and kill” used by influential writers as part of the problem. They challenge the research community to produce a study showing such detrimental effects and point to several studies, including a study contrasting drill activities with other types of learning software, that appear to indicate a positive impact on student motivation. They conclude their article by returning again to the concern that focusing exclusively on complex learning situations (I assume such approaches as problem based learning) at the expense of sequenced instruction and practice may be counterproductive. Instead, they encourage a view that promotes how different methods might complement each other rather than focusing on differences and an either/or mentality. We have tried to say this same thing ourselves – it is balance among learning activities that we are promoting. We encourage greater, but not exclusive, use of project based learning and other experiences focused on promoting meaningful experiences.

The study itself demonstrates the value of practice and overlearning in the college classes studied.