Dealing with Cellphones in our Classrooms

This is an issue all teachers and administrative have to deal with these days. By one side is the students that argue they really need to be in touch with the outside world while they're in class and by the other, the teachers that think they are being violated in their privacy. Nobody is unaware of the bullying among students and of course the mocked teachers what what we have here is a new generation of grow ups and teen who had been born in techie environment. Most of schools are banning the use of cell phone while in its grounds, some other have strict rules for such devices.

The problem is some of our students are tapping teachers activities for very short period of time which creates a (distortioned) image of the classroom teacher. Let's look at the experiment conducted by Kevin Metcalf who happens to be teaching at North Rockland High School in Thiells, N.Y. He tries an experiment with his students. He asks them to whip out their cellphones —whose use is otherwise forbidden in the classroom under school rules— while he puts his head down on his desk for a second and acts as though he’s doing nothing. He then asks them that if they were to take a picture and put it on YouTube, what would people think of his teaching?

He'd got answers like ‘lazy,’ and ‘doesn’t care.’ He tries to explain his students he would be judged by their peers on one second of a 45-minute class. The experiment, he says, brings home to the students how such an action could misrepresent the truth and have serious consequences for someone. And this is not a threatening situation. Imagine how distorted might become an issue inside the classroom if an student just tapes seconds of a disruptive class?

Now, I am not against use of technology because we already are way ahead of the counterculture of the 6O's where the youngsters were thinking the computers were about to replace men. I am part and I am living the cyberculture generation (G-gen) and of course we have to learn and teach how to use technology in classrooms, we've moved beyond projectors and VHS. Now we have very small and reliable devices to register any kind of information. We do have to allow our kids to use their cell phones but we have to teach them no how to operate them because they might the teachers in that particular situation but, show them the consequences of not using it properly. How their very own safety is involved, their families, their loved ones and even their friends.

Once they learn the consequences it will be up to them. We all know (they too) the consequences of violating safety regulation, the secrecy of our personal acts and the power involved in having a device emitting short waves to highest frequencies. Unfortunately, according to Vaishali Honawar and his post Cellphones in Classrooms Land Teachers on Online Video Sites points to two cases in Court: Evens v. L.A. Unified School District; and, Roberts v. Houston Independent School District.

From those two cases we can conclude that only whether students refer to threatening comments, a Judge will pay attention to a teacher's complain. Legislation vary according to each state but the variety of issues with cellphones in schools, the United States, legal experts say, school districts tend to ignore videos that are simply embarrassing to a teacher, but do act when they find that the taping is a threat to the school or teacher or is disruptive to learning. The court holds that a teacher must always expect public dissemination of his or her classroomcommunications and activities.

A have a kid in 5th grade and he's not using a cellphone yet but I am about to give him one for Christmas and he knows how to use the lap top and links perfectly with YouTube. My question is: Will a fellow teacher feel ashamed if my kid shoots a photo and posts it on YouTube, modified or unmodified? It will be hard for the school to show disruption just because of it. We are talking about First Amendment speech here.

For more contributions read: [http://education.ning.com] or [http://dww.ed.gov]

Advocating a better education system for the 21st. century

This is the subtitle the author has been using in her page Change Agency. Stephanie Sandifer is a professional in education working in the southern Houston. I wasn't reading my subscriptions lately and I haven't realized how much information our mind had lost. We are followers of what Change Agency publishes everyday!

What today caught our attention was the dynamics of this page: interesting post links for teacher's business, introduction of new hand-on experiences, quotes, etc. Et al.

teh i11it3r4t3 o teh 21 c3ntury w0nt b th0s3 wh0 c4nt r34d & wr1t3 but th0s3 wh0 c4nt 134rn un134rn & re134rn

Why should we quote like this? Don't ask me, ask her!

Stephanie has being talking about interesting experiences that we believe every teacher should be paying attention, it's no matter of vanish some technology tools or application but how we teach them and a different approach how we are using the technology in education. Read her IMing experience.

Do you know what is the Ghost Walk concept? Well, let us ask again Stephanie Sandifer.

Don't leave yet. The most interesting topic still coming. Did you ever happen to use Google Doc in the classroom? I'm not. I do have this application in use but for other business than education. Follow the mob and for any reason miss this screencast that explains everything!

The Economist Debates Education -K12Online07

Education is a resource every country should pay close attention and the next moth two events are coming and are related to the Educational businesses. BizDeansTalk speaks of a The Economist organizing what they called Debate Series, five propositions have now been short-listed to address the most far-reaching and divisive aspects of the education debate: the place of foreign students in higher education; the position of corporate donors; and the role of technology in today's classrooms. The highest ranking propositions will be debated, with the first launching on Oct 15th.

The following are the propositions:

1. This house believes that the continuing introduction of newtechnologies and new media adds little to the quality of mosteducation.
2. This house proposes that governments and universities everywhereshould be competing to attract and educate all suitably-qualifiedstudents regardless of nationality and residence.
3. This house believes that companies donate to education mainly to winpublic goodwill and there is nothing wrong with this.
4. This house believes that the "digital divide" is a secondary problemin the educational needs of developing countries.
5. This house believes that social networking technologies will bringlarge changes to educational methods, in and out of the classroom.

In the other hand, October 8th, the k12 Online Conference 2007 is coming. I wasn't tagged but I would love to spread the word of mouth and list my three reason why I might be in such a conference:

1. Opportunities to meet new educational big tanks.
2. Learn at your own pace, in your own space.
3. Is your school district offering professional development at this level?

There might be more (there are for sure) reasons to attend. Welcome all educators.

How to validate online information?

It comes as a subject in Wesley Fryer' page. And it has to be with the approach Mr Obama just had to the popular Flickr. How do we know whether Obama is really behind that account? Yes, we know he's many people to help him out but as Fryer says, we can go to his page and verify effectively there is a link to his Flick account. So, no spoof at this point. However, in school how these kids and students can learn to validate this kind of info?

If one or more of your current or past students created a “spoof page” purportedly made by you on any social networking website, how would others be able to verify whether or not it was truly yours? Do you have a personal website where you link to other websites you maintain and have actually made? I know most teachers don’t, but should they? It’s an interesting question to consider.

Until then follow Wesley suggestion: check back with The Quality Information Checklist.

Great Public Schools: A Basic Right and Our Responsability

One thing almost all parents lack, is the great oportunity parents have to visit their son's schools and what a better opportunity to go and have meeting and chats with the teachers during the American Educacion Week scheduled to beging on November, 12th.

You should pay attention to this report: Childrens, Family, and Media: A Benchmark where the awarded Michael Cohen Group(Research & Consulting) arrive to interesting conclusions related to the Digital Divide in American Schools. A round of questions were answered during a chat-interview conducted by Janelle Callahan, associate of the EPE Research Center. What would it be you best answer for the following question:

Far too often teachers and school leaders assume that students have access to computers and the internet at home. Typically, homework and projects now require easy access to computers and the internet (even in the primary grades). Without it, low income students are "left behind." Not only do they earn poorer grades, they become "marginalized" early on...because they recognize that they are different. Can you suggest some realistic solutions, given the reality that income still dictates whether or not resources are available in homes and communities. -Annette Clayton, Lead School Social Worker, Newport News Public Schools.
Everyone outside US thinks we here don't have poverty or social issues, that everything seen and taught in the American society should be imitated. Far from the real thing! The Cohen Group points: "this study serves as a benchmark, allowing us to measure change over time for years to come. Identifying change in dynamics such as media ownership, media use, and preferred content provides an invaluable tool for researchers, policy makers,educators, and others.

"The results as they say, confirm mine/ours collective sense that media is increasingly integral to family and personal life. These are the five outstanding research conclusions:

1) A wide range of media and media technologies are owned and utilized by familiesand young children.
2) Families and individuals at every economic level participate in media andtechnology ownership and use.
3) There are differences in the incidence of ownership by income level for somemedia, particularly in more expensive and emerging media technologies that areless commonly found at lower income levels. Other technologies enjoy nearuniversal penetration.
4) Ownership and involvement in media and technology is about both affordabilityand perceived value(s); not everyone necessarily wants all media.
5) The use of media—or the functions that media technologies serve—is similaracross the income spectrum. Once owned, there is little variation in how thesetechnologies are used.

Exposure: Hispanic Students Don't Have the Same Oportunities as White Ones

The problems comes reflected of what's going on in society. Minorities for example can be heard throughout Radio or TV because big companies own such channels of distribution and then only people with those very same interest can use the waves to transmit messages to the consumers. Univision es a very large hispanic network but is the only one and it doesn't cover more than the 37 millions of hispanics in the US. How an black or Hispanic person can own a radio or channel of TV if they don't have the money to compete with big networks as MSNBC or any of the only six proprietors of the american opinion?

That's what happening in schools. A recent analysis of 93,845 public school enrollment data by the Pew Hispanic Center revealed some interesting findings. The Center examined ethnic make up in public schools between 1993-94 and 2005-06 and discovered that while non Hispanic white students were less isolated from minority students black and Hispanic students became a little more isolated from non Hispanic white students.

I would like to hear for example how many students from hispanic roots and studying in public school are trained in how to run a blog as an academic tool and what willbe the benefits of having a blogroll in one side of such a page. I would also like to get information of what will the impact on academic development if those same students learn how to optimize the observation and analysis of educational videos produced in YouTube but through the Firefox extention called, Better YouTube.

I have to say that in some cases from my very own experiences the parents had deep responsability on this matter. If kids spent more time with parents, if they were able to help them with homework, if they spend quality time with their family; hispanic students will outerperform those insolated ones in a very short time. Let us know your opinions.

Teaching how to read and write in different modes

Pushing Writing Literacy from W. Richardson says all:

I always ask how many of the teachers in the room are teaching their students to read and write in different modes, in hypertext, with art and photos, in audio and video, using all of them combined. I’m surprised if I get more than a hand or two going up.

Students are in charge of their own learning. Period!

I just got the report for the first marking period and after checking out percentages of my son I came to the conclusion that being a 10 years old kid, he's in charge of what he wants to learn. I know, many of you might be saying: yeah alright! Of course as David Warlick points out, our kids now are using the internet in a very different way that we were familiar 5-10 years ago:

Today, however, our children seem to be spending more time interacting in their social networks, and, in my opinion, discovering and even inventing new ways to learn through those interactions. But we don’t understand this.

However, the older generation still thinks of resourceful and ruthless process of learning. What about those kids without the computers, do they have to fall behind in knowledge just because the lack of skill and resources when other people don't even know what to do with their computers? We do have to rely on internet and our kids socialnetworking skills but please do not forget about those families without internet access or even those poor kids worldwide.

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