TI calculators are so last year. Especially with the popular (and free) Graphing Calculator application being distributed in the App Store by Gabor Nagy. This app is, basically, a colorful TI calculator right on the iPod. Although it may not offer every functionality of a TI, the Graphic Calculator app allows for the most popular tasks, such as graphing up to five functions (all viewable on the same graph), tracing and plotting points, and a root finder. And to top it off, the graphs are colorful, and you can use the pinch-gesture to zoom and scroll the graph, much like when browsing the internet in Safari. You can even take a screenshot of the graph and email it to yourself. As of the most recent update, the following mathematical expressions are supported by Graphing Calculator:

There is no doubt that with innovative apps such as the Graphing Calculator being released, it won’t be long before not-so-new devices such as the TI calculators become outdated. As far as I know, we need more apps like this to give us an excuse to play with our iPods in class.

Darryle Bajomo is a junior Graphic Design major (in the journalism school) here at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  He is a native of Charlotte, North Carolina and likes to do video game design in his non-existient spare time, and plays on the UNC club football team.

Anthony Lobianco is a sophomore Computer Science major here at UNC, although he too is thinking of changing Graphic Design at some point.  He is from Hendersonville North Carolina.  He likes video game design, but also sports an iTouch for keeping up with life and things.

Both have started working with me on a regular basis and will continue along the same line I have been writing about for a long time: educational technology, web 2.0 technology and any technology that might help us better teach and reach students.  In addition to that, I hope they will add a new layer of insight form a student perspective. Welcome aboard!  We are so excited to have you!

• Dr. Sarah Glasco - Instructor of French, Foreign Languages, Elon University

Background - everything focuses on collaboration. Not just one way learning, but teachers learning from students and students learning from teachers.

The world is changing, and while it has it’s downfalls, it also the ability to bring us together in new ways. Never use technology for the sake of technology.

Evolve
Collaborate
Inspire
Be Inspired

This is all about creating a community in your classroom!

These are all tools to conjure up conversation… not dominate the discussion. Not passively sitting in front of a screen.

Transform this social and media entertainment into conversation.

Tools that she uses in Foreign Language Classes:

Facebook

• Discussion Board on Facebook (Better response than on Blackboard… Blackboard is for school… this is for fun, so school becomes naturally more fun)
• Create a Facebook Profile for your ideal roommate - This is the same as what you would do in any class, but when you throw Facebook it, it get’s to be more fun.

YouTube - You can reserve these type of activities for when you are going to be out of town.

• Virtual tours of houses and apartments in Paris (Drills and builds vocabulary from an authentic space)
• Give students an assignment to find authentic material on YouTube
• Listening Exercises and Movies you can post yourself. (Blackboard has a limited space.. you can put more there. Universal access.) (Some are already on YouTube… just need to find and create questions out of them)
• They can listen as much as they want.
• Contextualize Visual Cues

Music and Popular Music

• Music Video’s on YouTube
• Stand up Comedy on YouTube
• Promoting Tolerance and Discussing Cultural Differences
• Talk Radio

Other Tech Stuff

• Press - Newspapers and Magazines - Choose a topic you are passionate about to do some research.

Collaborative Projects involving Video Creation

• Presentations using PowerPoint and iMovie
• Students write and perform skits on a project with images and music in PowerPoint as a backdrop.
• An assignment where they research issues, write a narration, gather digital images to create a storyboard, add music and record the voice-over narration of their stories.
• Collaborative Documentary

She had some really great sum up information about why this is important in foreign language learning and the pedagogical goals and outcomes of using this type of technology. I have emailed her and asked for the power-point. I will post a link when I get it.

Thoughts Overall and Application at UNC

• You know… as I watch these projects I realize that this is the type of project that students can really sink their teeth into. This is one of the great things about using this technology in the classroom
• This was really good for me to see some of the ways we can use this technology in the classroom.
• Anyone interested in sitting down to see how we can use some of this in your classroom? Need some help getting started… let me know!

Presenters:

• Dr. Paula Hudson - Assistant Professor, Doctor of Physical Therapy Program - Elon University
• Rick Palmer - Instructional Designer, Instructional Design & Development - Elon University

Example Blog They Used in Classroom:

• Tests and Measures

Possible Assignment Candidate’s for Blogging

• A flat assignment - an assignment that is boring. Something that students hate to learn and teachers hate to teach.
• Bored?
• Collaboration is an active model, but you don’t have enough time in the classroom
• Struggle to stay Relevant

How does Blogging Address these Issues?

• Extends the time students are actively involved in the class
• Expands the collaboration between students in the classroom

Other Cool things:

• This assignment can go outside of the classroom
• Can tap into the innate competitiveness in the classroom to kick up the energy
• Small groups can easily work together to create content
• Comments can be moderated (beneficial posted, others not)

Cons

• There is some time and labor on the setup
• There are some things to learn from it.

Response from Students

• They loved it already
• They are looking for something that sets them apart from their peers when they graduate. They liked that they could put on their resume that they have a web publication.
• Anywhere - they can do this assignment at home, in PJ’s, in kitchen.
• My work matters - people are using it and coming to it.

Response from Teacher

• Less time in class
• Achieve goals
• Final product that is awesome, and can be shared
• Students were very engaged
• Liked that students could be competitive and responsive

Game we Played

This was really a cool part of the class. They set up a mystery activity where we all logged in and posted our clues and then read the clues and tried to post a solution. It was great!

Thoughts about Blogging and Us at UNC

I have had the opportunity to help a professor in the past with a cinema course. He had students post video’s online that they found on YouTube and other sites that had to do with the genre they were studying. He also had a course requirement that they post a certain number of posts and comment a certain number of times. It was really productive and when they were done it was a great resource for others.

It would be great to take a look at a syllabus with a faculty member to see what kind of ideas we could generate about boring, but necessary, activities.

Any takers?

Advantages of Wiki’s

• Co-editing: Howework done on wiki’s promote collaboration between students
• Co-assembly: Different people can contribute different parts
• Write more than a traditional word document
• Don’t have to worry about location and version (it’s all online and available)

Pitfalls

• Other’s can “deface” wiki pages (bots) - Precreate accounts and disable login, or don’t put links in public_html space.
• Some techonlogy-adverse students have trouble learning to use wiki’s
• Under FERPA, students need to consent for their required work to be posted publicly.
• Some students are uncomfortable with public writing
• Wiki’s use their own markup language, wich is not as flexible in HTML

Assessing Wikis

• Instructor/TA assessment (but there is a lot to go through and it can be time consuming)
• Student Assessment - Students write up short commentaries on their contributions and collaborations and suggest a grade.
• Wikis are new, so not everyone assesses …
• Peer Assessment - Score authors based on a rubric. (This seems to be the best in his opinion)

Advantages to Peer Assessment

• Adds a new dimension to collaboration
• Electronic peer review of wiki contribution like real world and real job.

Types of Assignments:

• Posting Links to other online resources
• Posting an assignment (using links to online resources and articles)
• Collaboration on Research Project
• Post class notes
• Comments on Articles
• Vocabulary List
• Research Report
• Online Debates
• Class Discussions
• Peer Review
• Really almost anything that can be done online…

There is a correlation between those that do a type of research assignment and those that responded that the wiki had helped them “think critically.”

How this might be important at UNC-CH and for me:

I support several foreign language departments and I think that the literature courses could really benefit from a classroom space where they can discuss what they are reading and link off to other spaces.

The real beauty of a wiki is that it is a webpage that is being built in real time.

I can also think that departments that need a lot of coordination could use a wiki to get stuff together. It is always updated and always available… at least on our campus.

Anyone at UNC want to get together and talk more?

For those who don’t know Michael Wesch, he is the author of the classic Web 2.0 video’s on YouTube that I wrote about a while ago.

This presentation was really great. A lot of it was taken from his “A Vision of Students Today” video. If you haven’t see it.. start out with that!

Notes:

Starts out with description of annual summer trips to New Guinea - no water, no running water, no electricity, and certainly no internet.

Built a house (240 people that helped build) - installed solar panels for computer - no email, but they give it a pilot once a month or two and will send emails off when he gets to somewhere.

Lessons we can learn from the small village in New Guinea

• Sustainable - they can continue to live the way they do now for thousands of years
• Equality - they share everything.

Tragedy of our time and problems with Education

We are clothing ourselves in the global fabric. Everything comes from all around the world… but we don’t realize it.

The most significant problem in higher education is the problem of significance itself.

This means they are just getting by and trying to figure out who they are and what they are doing.

Question - How many students don’t like school - 1/2 of them. How many don’t like learning - No hands. They don’t like the model we’ve set out for them to learn…

So… how do we engage them?

Solution

THIS is NOT just a TECHNOLOGY GAP… it is a CULTURAL GAP!

Teaching has not changed… but learning has.

8 books read - 3000 webpages read - profile reads - That is what they are reading.
They are writing in emails… not that much in papers.

Students are learning through technology… not as much through traditional methods.

Problems with Current System

He gave a great example about what the traditional lecture hall is teaching the students.

Students are not seeing the significance of the learning beyond the grade.

How things are Changing

There is something in the air… the web. WiFi. They have access to the entire human body of knowledge.

There is a massive amount of knowledge that is going to be created this year.

Digital information is different. This is how it being created.

What he is doing in his classroom and what we can do.

Focus less on content but connections. Content is still important, because that is what is used to make connections, but by focusing on connections, students become voracious learners trying to make connections.

Students become experts on some part of the world.

It should become less of an information dump and more of an interactive learning experience!

World of total information is that is enveloping us right now - This is what is going on with iPhone and GPS and always on Internet. A meta-level of data for the world. Imagine standing next to a tree and looking it up on wikipedia and seeing other pictures of that tree from others, and maybe even a history.

We need to move from just simply creating students who are knowledgeable, to those that are knowledge able. One’s that are able to use that knowledge to do good and make a difference!

How I can apply this at UNC-CH and my organization

You know… I’m not totally sure. This is all good information. I think we just need to really take a critical look at the way we are teaching our courses. Is there anything else we can do to engage the students? How can we use the tools here? Not just to incorporate them, but to use them if they are useful.

Anyone want to talk more about this?

So today I am attending a conference at Elon University. It is their 5th annual summer “Innovation in Instruction” conference.

You can see the the schedule here. I will post updates throughout the day. This is my schedule.

• Lessons from New Guinea for the Global Village and the Crisis of Significance in Higher Education. (Michael Wesch from Digital Enthnography at Kanas State… loved his Vision of Students Today Video… hoping to get more like that
• Online Reading & Writing with Wikis
• Applied Peda-Blog-y - Using Course Blogs as a Motivational Teaching Tool
• The Techno-human paradox: How “Keeping up with the kids” fosters community. (Foreign Language Focus)

Oh, and of course there will be a poster session. I will see what I can find out there too..

I just wish they would do one near me… maybe some day… Perhaps I can create my own curriculum…

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