I thought Chapter 4 was a very interesting chapter in our textbook. I recognized most of the emerging technology the book touched on, but there were a few things in there that caught me off guard. Anyway, I can’t pick a single technological advancement contained in chapter four that will have the greatest effect on education in the next few years, because I think all of the ones dealing with education or the way students learn will have at least some impact. If I had to pick one that I’m excited about, however, it would have to be voice-recognition software.
Voice-recognition software achieves one of the primary goals of technology: convenience. Not only is it convenient, but it’s very reliable, too. “Speech and voice-recognition software,” state Bitter and Legacy, “usually allow the computer to be ‘trained’ to recognize your individual voice patterns, rhythms, syntax, and vocabularies” (Bitter, Legacy 94). Now that’s high-tech! Think about the applications: VR technology could not only help in the regular-ed classroom, but in the special-ed classroom as well, assisting students who have speech-related disabilities and tracking their progress. VR software could open up a whole new world of oral tests, thereby eliminating paper and allowing the teacher to conduct the tests all at once instead of scheduling them at separate times. Yes, I’m very excited to see what opportunities voice-recognition software presents to education in the next few years.
I can’t imagine a world without the instant availability of information the internet provides. The internet allows us to share things with others thousands of miles away, it gives us a means by which research may be performed without leaving home, and society itself is constantly shaped by services the internet provides us with.
Personally, I love the fact that so many reference books and anthologies are now being made available online. I find myself going to the library to access books like the Oxford English Dictionary and Encyclopedia Britannica less often. All of the major reference books like Encarta and The World Fact Book have seen the implications of the internet years ago and placed their respective publications online (82). This makes updating editions a lot easier. Fewer resources are necessary (paper, publishers, distributors, etc.), so the consumer only has to pay an access fee to use said reference companies’ products.
Since I’m such an avid user of reference resources, I can only hope more authors and editors turn to the world wide web for distributing their product to their customers. It’s a digital world, and it’s only going to get more digital as software and computer companies develop more efficient, cheaper, and innovative ways to make the internet more accessible to everyone.
Target Grade: 6-12
Key concept: Students will be able to identify the nine basic stage directions and should be able to cross to that part of the stage should a director tell them to do so. Student will also identify things they should and shoud not do on stage.
Spencer Podcast Project Fall 08:
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I really liked the To Kill a Mockingbird presentation on the digital storytelling website. To Kill a Mockingbird is one of my favorite books, and seeing that presentation made me think about other books I could present in a similar manner to an english class. As far as content goes, I think a presentation with video, music, and pictures could really engage my class. For example, if the book we were reading had a movie equivalent, I could incorporate a clip of the movie in the digital story. Or if the book were set in a specific time and place, music from that time period could be playing under the dialogue of the story the whole time. I suppose the only materials I would need would be a digital projector and a laptop, but a classroom with a Smartboard would be optimal, I suppose. This form of visual technology is something I look forward to using in my classroom in the future.
I’d say the grades this lesson could cater to would be a middle school english class, or maybe a remedial high school freshman english class. The worksheet is designed to address just a couple errors in grammar commonly encountered by high school underclassmen. The spreadsheet shows the students how his or her answers stack up to the answers of his or her classmates, as well as revealing how many errors the student typically found in each sentence, and whether or not that number is high, low, or in between. The concept map simple provides a visual for some elements in grammar usage.SpencerProductivityToolsProject
How can productivity software be used for teaching and learning? I suppose the first type of productivity software that comes to mind is word processing software. This software is a great tool for teachers and students alike in many subject areas. For instance, foreign language students use word processors to write assignments in other languages. A quick downloadable modification, and your word processor’s capabilities encompass other languages. Say you want your creative writing students to spend twenty minutes a class writing in free form. Assure them that they don’t have to worry about spelling or grammar, those things can be fixed later. Just write from the heart! They can save their documents and come back to them at a later date. I can definitely see the potential that word processing programs have in a well-funded classroom.
This presentation is geared towards high school students. It’s an analysis of a Alfred, Lord Tennyson poem. Students should know three poetic devices upon viewing the presentation.SpencerPowerpoint
Designed for high school students, this powerpoint analyzes a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
In this post, I’ll be responding to the second option that dealt with skills students have to master nowadays as opposed to skills they mastered in the 20th and 19th centuries. I thought the article we read covered a wide variety of topics and definitely shed some light on things like reading, writing, and learning habits of kids that we aren’t necessarily aware of. These days, I think kids are likely to enjoy a project more or be more willing to complete an assignment at school if they feel like they made it themselves or had a hand in creating it. Back in the 1980s and 1990s (seems more like the “Stone Age,” now!), only the most well-funded schools could afford those bulky desktop computers that would cause us to squirm in our seats while we anxiously waited to play “Oregon Trail” or “Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?” These days, it seems almost unnatural to walk into a classroom that doesn’t have at least one computer. Most students in the 20th century really didn’t have to worry about mastering word-processing programs or being proficient at blogging, two things that many English and Communications classes rely on in this day and age. Instead, trips to the library, mastery of the Dewey Decimal System, encyclopedias, and calculators were some of the more useful weapons in a 20th century student’s research arsenal. Now, the internet can all of those things and much more in only a fraction of the time. I think that’s what it all boils down to: 21st century kids want as much as they can as fast as they can get it.