technology autobiography update

Although I came to computers relatively late in life (I bought my first one (Mac G4) ten years ago when I was 28), they quickly became an integral and indispensable part of my daily life. At first, I mainly used the computer to keep up with friends and relatives via email. I then began to use them for more creative endeavors at work and at home. I would generate orders, reports, and analyze buying and selling trends with computers in my job as a buyer for a local small business. At home, I used the computer and recording software such as Digidesign Protools to record and edit my own and others musical groups.

After moving from Louisville to New York five years ago, I began to use the entire Microsoft Office suite on a Windows platform computer for the first time for work in my new job as national sales manager for a music distribution company. I used Acrobat Reader and (minimal) graphic editing software as well. Upon moving back to Louisville from New York two years ago I began working for and eventually took over a music marketing company, and continued using Excel, Word, and Entourage extensively. I am currently at the point where I couldn’t survive without them.

While on tour in Europe a few years ago with a musical group, I started a blog to document places where we played. It was nothing fancy, but it showed me how powerful a tool it could be for sharing ideas and photographs. In the past couple of years, I have jumped on the social networking bandwagon, joining and using facebook, myspace, twitter, and tumblr. Although I wouldn’t include myself in the “addict” category, I do use at least facebook pretty regularly as a way to stay in touch with my many friends that I don’t get to see much any more as I am in school.

Since being in the classroom, I have become spoiled by technology options (both classes I have been placed in have had Smartboards!) I have found these to be indispensable ways of staying organized and exposing students to engaging, interactive and fun modes of learning. I especially enjoy being able to quickly assess students using clickers, but the technology options are virtually endless when one has a Smartboard. I believe that using technology in the classroom adds a whole new level of engagement and incentive for students too. When students can be actively involved in the assignment, be it through publishing on a wiki, or being called on to come up to the Smartboard and add to the classroom discussion, active learning is increased.
Overall, I would say that I am fully “technologized” and have a very open attitude to learning new technologies for use in the classroom. I am especially excited to learn how to best use wikis and blogs for learning and teaching!

Since beginning EDTP 504 I have been exposed to a number of emerging technologies that are perfectly suited to the classroom. Blogs, wikis, podcast, digital stories, flikr, and RSS are all tools that I will certainly use in my time as a teacher. I look forward to using a classroom blog as some teachers had used bulletin boards or classroom newsletters in the past. A blog can act as a "home base" of sorts for the classroom: a place to find out what is happening and to view examples of student work. Blogs are an excellent way for students to have their work published to the world at large, and receive feedback from a number of different audiences as one would in real-world situations. It's a great way to prepare students for the collaborations and ways of working that they will inevitably encounter in the years to come.

One of the more exciting new technologies that I will using is the wiki. Its possibilities are nearly endless. Students can use them as places to collaborate on group activities such as writing, science labs or social studies projects. One great thing about a wiki is that you can track each student's contributions for the purpose of assessing. Another great thing about the wiki is that it is a great way to encourage peer scaffolding and vicarious learning - students see how other students are solving the problems of the assignment and are more likely to use similar strategies.

The podcast and digital story are two other great ways for students to use technology in the classroom. Nearly anything that can be reported on, from math to science to writing, to social studies, can be done so in these forums. I love the idea of having students use podcasts as a weather report during a science unit on weather. I love the idea of using a digital story or flikr to report on an inquiry based science activity such as dissecting fruit or other objects to describe properties. In this way, the digital story or flikr tells the story of the project in pictures. With flikr, the students are able to "tag" and describe the photographs and with a digital story, the students are able to describe the project using their own voice. Either way, the process of creating the flikr or digital story becomes a crucial part of the assignment, from creating a story board, to sequencing the images, to tagging and describing the images. Working in this way with other students becomes an invaluable exercise in cooperation that is analogous to real-world situations.

Another excellent emerging technology that I learned about is RSS. Since beginning EDTP 504, the way that I look for and receive information on the web has changed. I have been using RSS to receive information about my interests (music, politics, friends blogs) and about school-related topics in a funneled manner. It has been great to have RSS do the work of collecting this information for me since, as a teacher, time is at quite a premium.

Technology will no doubt continue to revolutionize the teaching profession in the years to come and I look forward to being a part of it. The aforementioned tools are likely just the tip of the iceberg of the read,write, collaborate web. It is an exciting time to be a teacher, and I look forward to taking advantage of these tools in the classroom, as they are invaluable to preparing students for 21st century living. Ultimately, using these emerging technologies in the classroom is a social justice issue: if we don't prepare our students for using these tools, life in the 21st century will be overwhelming. We owe it to every student to equip him or her with the tools necessary to thrive in the world, and technology will only become an increasingly bigger part of that equation.

Choose Your Tool

Dear Dr. Hensley,

I have been rejuvenated with fresh and exciting new ways to use technology as a result of my involvement in a Teaching With Technology course at the University of Louisville. In the class I have been exposed to many interesting and engaging ways to use emerging technology in the classroom. What I have found through using some of these tools is that students are highly motivated to work with technology and as a result end up learning much more of the content contained in lessons that incorporate technology. This is great news given how important technology literacy will continue to be as the 21st century moves on.

Recently I have been using a new web-based tool that I predict will change the way that many teachers think about teaching and many students think about learning. It is called Webquest, and it is essentially a safe environment (not open to student browsing of unintended websites) where a teacher can post an entire assignment or project online so that students can use it and refer to it at their own rate of learning. It is set up so that the student is taken through a lesson step by step so that there is no confusion as to what is expected of the student and what the exact directions are. The student can go back to parts of the lesson or directions as often as he/she sees fit to clarify confusions.

With Webquest, the teacher can provide an assignment overview, step-by-step directions, a rubric, links inside the lesson for students to use in researching a subject area, how the assignment is to be carried out, and a rationale for doing the assignment. As simple as this might sound, it could save teachers hours during a given work week which could be used to work with struggling students in small groups and individually as necessary. Everything that an elementary teacher might need to implement an engaging lesson can be assembled and made available through a Webquest, and I find this a very exciting proposition. Naturally, addressing the diverse learning needs and learning styles of students is easily met through using this fantastic tool.

Another great facet of Webquest is how easily it lends itself to teacher collaboration. One section of the Webquest is for teachers to explain their rationale for the lesson, core content addressed, and how/why it was developed. It would be so simple for a teacher to create a Webquest on a subject of his/her expertise and send it, for example, to a new teacher who is struggling with that subject to use with his/her students. The possibilities for collaboration and improving instruction in this way are virtually endless.

I think you will enjoy what Webquest has to offer your teachers. Give it a test spin at the following site (http://questgarden.com/46/54/6/070210123705/t-index.htm) and let me know what you think. I’m sure you will quickly think of many valuable applications for this tool, and will be recommending it to your teachers in short order.

Thanks much, Kevin Coultas

Chapter 9

Chapter 9

p. 130 – “(the massive amounts of information available on the web) requires that we teach our students to become more active consumers of that information instead of just passively accepting it as legitimate.”

If higher education programs are serious about equipping student teachers with the tools necessary to teach students in the 21st century, they are going to have to provide more than one 2 credit hour course in technology. We wouldn’t presume that a student teacher already understood best practice methods for teaching science, so why would we do the same for technology. This is too important an issue to gloss over. (sorry for the rant)

p. 132 – “ the Read/Write Web makes it easy for students to produce work in truly collaborative ways for large audiences. That work can have real purpose and real meaning for the audience that reads and consumes it.”

This is in keeping with what we’ve learned about the value of an assignment in general in the MAT program – it’s most effective if it reflects a real-world situation. This also acts as a motivating factory. I think anything less is a type of busy-work for students. If school is really to get students ready for life, we need to take this very seriously.


p. 133 – “our students are learning that their voices matter, that people are listening and responding, and that their ideas count. To not embrace those feelings by continuing to look at curriculum-as-lecture is to fight against a tide that we will not be able to keep back.”

Naturally, when a student’s voice matters, it acts as a great motivating factor, but it also is a foreshadow to how our democratic society works. If a student comes to understand that they really do have a say in the world, they are likely to take advantage of that situation in their life, rather than simply be a passive “member” of society. These are all civil right’s issues that we as teachers must deal with in a responsible manner.


p. 135 – “students can display mastery in countless ways that involve the creation of digital content for large audiences.”

I’m not one who is nostalgic for the days of cursive in the classroom being a big priority: the reality is that we don’t need it anymore. Most people use computers to do most of the communicating of ideas in their jobs now. Cursive, and ina way, handwriting in general, have become obsolete. Likewise, modes of communication have moved to the forefront in ways that have not been appropriately addressed by curriculum creators of school districts. It is no longer the case that we only communicate through writing and speech. There are many ways that professionals in the world use non-traditional means to communicate in their jobs. It would be wise to acknowledge this and prepare our students for this reality.

p. 135 – “Big Shift #10: Contribution, Not Completion, as the Ultimate Goal”

I wonder, with the emphasis on accountability and district control in our current education climate if this can become a reality. My hope is that it will, but it seems unlikely given how much control would be relinquished to the student (and to a lesser degree the teacher) in achieving this end. We shall see how much longer NCLB and similar outdated policies will stay in place. Something has to give in my opinion.

Chapter 6

Chapter 6

p. 87 – “(Twitter is) a pretty amazing, and potentially addicting, tool once you get into it. (That addicting part is why I also follow “InnerTwitter” at innertwitter.com”

I was intrigued, knowing a little about Twitter, so I checking out InnerTwotter, and it was kind of a zen-like version of Twitter that deals only with what is right in front of you. A great idea for sure – we’re waaaaay to inundated with information for sure, but isn’t this yet another addiction? I’m not sure, but either way I like it!

p. 88 – “Paul Allison of the East Bronx Academy of the Future has created a site called YouthTwitter.com where students are posting their 140-character updates in a permission-only environment.”

I like this, particularly for my future elementary school students, and also for JCPS in general who likely have a “no Twitter” policy.

p. 90 – “users of social bookmarking systems have created a new concept to deal with the change: The process is no longer taxonomy but “foksonomy.” The idea is that in working with your community of researchers, new tagging systems will emerge and become accepted that will allow us to participate in the process.”

This gives me great hope for the future of information and the responsible use of it on the Internet. This should be taught in school (and I will) because it is one road to a truly democratic society where all of the valuable information will be easily available to all. This is a civil right in my opinion.


p. 93 – “If we use (diigo stickynotes) with the groups function, just the two of us will be the only ones to see the highlights and sticky notes. That is very, very cool, I think, and makes Diigo a tool every teacher should experiment with.”

This has huge implications for utilizing Diigo with students to provide feedback on a web-based program. One-on-one conferenceing in the virtual world!

p. 94 – “the Diigo annotations page collects all of the feedback that’s been left on student work from across the individual blog posts, allowing them to get a useful view over time of how their writing is evolving.”

If this isn’t the future of how blog writing 101 portfolios will be created and graded, I don’t know what is. It seems like a much more streamlined way to keep a portfolio as well!

Chapter 8 refections

Week 6
Chapter 8

p. 110 – “The almost ubiquitous presence of photo-video-audio upload-it-as-you-go cell phones and free, as much space as you want hosting online have begun to blur many of the cultural definitions of privacy and communication that we’ve lived under for generations.”

This is something that I am acutely aware of as battles on copyright frontiers of music and video content rage within the music and film industry. I think it is important to continually reinforce such issues in the classroom by enforcing responsible and legal use of such content. This is another level of education that is sometimes overlooked by even well intentioned teachers.

p. 113 – “One way to get into the flow of education-related podcasting is to visit the Education Podcast Network.

If you haven’t done so yet, I would highly recommend it! Everything under the Education sun from math, science, social studies, language arts, to teaching with Smartboards, to current events and the arts is included. Some great ideas here for teaching. As a former teacher was wont to say, “we need to work smarter not necessarily harder”. Using this resource is one way to do so.

p. 117 – “If you have the means to create your own digital music, Garageband, for instance, you don’t have to worry about the copyright issues of using other people’s work.”

Not only does Gargeband (for Mac) allow you to easily create your own music, which you might use in the classroom in a number of different ways (such as creating songs to go with the content being taught), but it can also help you to create podcasts and other audio-based projects for use in the classroom. Yet another great free tool, but this time for the Apple platform!

p. 119 – “If the podcasting bug bites hard and you start creating regular “shows” don’t forget to go to the various directories to get yourself listed. Start with iTunes, but Podcastalley.com and Podcast.net are a couple you might want to go to as well.”

p. 120 – “These (videocasts) are done for real purposes, for real audiences, and are a great reminder as to the potential of the Read/Write Web.

I wondered what the best way to get the word out about a podcast outside of listing on one’s own blog was. Now I know. After all, the only way that these devices deliver is to publish to as many people as possible. Additionally, the realistic setting of any learning experience is what makes it valuable to students. If these podcasts and videocasts were created and then left on a hard drive to never be looked at again, their value to the students and (of course) to the audience is erased.

Week Four reflection - chapter 4

p. 57 – “That’s how each of Wikipedia’s millions of entries in over 200 languages have evolved, from the hands of people just like us with the concept that everyone together is smarter than anyone alone.”

This is a lesson that would be excellent for all students to learn through using this technology. It may seem apparent to most adults that we are smarter when we work together, but this it is much less so to children. Perfect for all subject areas, but I can very easily envision a social studies lesson with this as a sub-objective. This kind of cooperation encapsulates life skills that are so valuable for our students.

p. 59 – “ The best part is that if need be, you can easily use the history list to revert back to a previous version of the page should someone come and much things up.”

I wondered how this was easily achieved. Now I know!

p. 65 – “Or how about doing a book study on a wiki?”

What better way to get students to really get into reading and responding to in writing a book. I am considering setting up a wiki for a small group of advance readers in my 3rd grade class for them to respond to one another’s observations on their books. An online literature circle!

Flikr Project post

http://www.flickr.com/photos/35096101@N08/sets/72157613294024981/

RD-04-2.0.5
Students will identify and explain the sequence of activities needed to carry out a procedure.DOK 2

Week 3 (article - Student As Contributor: The Digital Learning Farm by Alan November)

Week 3
Student As Contributor: The Digital Learning Farm by Alan November

p. 1 – “To prepare for the industrial economy, students were required to attend schools where teachers became central figures and where children took on more passive roles within their communities.”

The notion that the industrial revolution brought about such a profound role reversal of children within their communities had never occurred to me until reading this. It makes perfect sense, and I wonder why it was that teachers felt they had to treat children simply as receptacles of knowledge. Probably because the evolution of teaching and learning has revealed many counterproductive practices.

p. 2 – “How many eyes do you think would be opened by the differing views that occur during the debate?”

In addition to the considerable benefit students would garner from working cooperatively with one another in contributing valuable skills to the classroom community, using technology in the classroom has a huge draw for many students, making the learning inherently rewarding. I have seen this in classrooms that I have been in this semester and last semester. Kids want to use the Smart Board, computers, and other technologies. It’s part of the life that they bring into the classroom, so why shouldn’t it be part of their classroom lives?

p. 3 – “Kiva is one of today’s most important social responsibility Web sites.”

I had heard of Kiva before but had never considered using it in the classroom. What a great way to tie in every discipline (Math, language arts, social studies, science, etc.) into one large socially conscious project!

Week two (ch 3, 5, 7)

Week 2
p. 46 “Giving each student a Weblog basically means a paperless classroom”.

While I love the idea of having no papers to keep up with, I can’t help but think that having no real (no-virtual) records of student work is asking for trouble down the road for students and educators.

p. 71 “There are also a few tools aimed at helping you consume all that information in more efficient and relevant ways. Meet RSS.”

Since reading this chapter a week ago, my time spent searching the numerous music web sites and blogs that I frequent has been streamlined to the point where I can actually complete my school work in a timely manner. ☺
While I’m joking a little here, I am amazed that I lived in a world without RSS before – it is a serious tool for anyone who uses the Internet that will definitely change the way that you use the Internet. The information that only you want to see (“The Daily Me!) literally comes to you rather than you going to it. I love it!


p.103 – “Oh, and since we’re talking about RSS, don’t forget that you can also “subscribe” to a particular tag so you can receive any new photos that people post with the keywords…)

I used to think that I knew how to use the Internet in a fairly reasonable way. Now I know that all of these free tools (such as RSS for images!) have been available and I feel a little silly for not having used them until now. Excellent information to be aware of! I also love the potential for collaborative learning with Flikr. I can’t wait to use it in my own classroom.

Week One reading reflection

p. 36 – “Blogging can teach critical reading and writing skills, and it can lead to greater information management skills. It can help students become much more media and information literate by clarifying the choices they make about the content they write about, and it teaches them about how networks function, both human and computer, and it can teach the essential skill of collaboration.”

The profound educational implications of blogging hadn’t hit home for me until reading the February '09 Harper's Magazine this week, where in the index was listed the following statement:
“Number of applications submitted last fall for a $10,000 collegiate “blogging scholarship”: 1,902”

As mentioned in Richardson’s text above, blogging gives students a set of essential tools to survive in the 21st century. There is so much information available online to sift through that knowing where and how to look is the only way one can reasonably make sense of it all. Higher educators are now acknowledging this fact and are encouraging and rewarding interest and skill in using these computer literacy tools. Interestingly, Harper's also pointed out the following fact, revealing the reality of our computer-age, only reinforcing Richardson’s point:

“Number that turned out to be spam: 557”

p.45 - "With younger students, you may want to show what other elementary schools are doing..."

This is something that I talked about with my former mentor teacher (Philip Wakeman at Simpsonville Elementary) and we agreed that it would be beneficial from a number of standpoints. We also talked about using Skype to communicate in real time, bring the diverse communities of Atkinson and Simpsonville together to conference, perhas, on writing. This technology has potential to be very powerful since you see the people you are talking to via a Smartboard. Free software too!

Technology Autobiography

Kevin Coultas’ Technology Autobiography

Although I came to computers relatively late in life (I bought my first one (Mac G4) ten years ago when I was 28), they quickly became an integral and indispensable part of my daily life. At first, I mainly used the computer to keep up with friends and relatives via email. I then began to use them for more creative endeavors at work and at home. I would generate orders, reports, and analyze buying and selling trends with computers in my job as a buyer for a local small business. At home, I used the computer and recording software such as Digidesign Protools to record and edit my own and others musical groups.
After moving from Louisville to New York five years ago, I began to use the entire Microsoft Office suite on a Windows platform computer for the first time for work in my new job as national sales manager for a music distribution company. I used Acrobat Reader and (minimal) graphic editing software as well. Upon moving back to Louisville from New York two years ago I began working for and eventually took over a music marketing company, and continued using Excel, Word, and Entourage extensively. I am currently at the point where I couldn’t survive without them.
While on tour in Europe a few years ago with a musical group, I started a blog to document places where we played. It was nothing fancy, but it showed me how powerful a tool it could be for sharing ideas and photographs. In the past couple of years, I have jumped on the social networking bandwagon, joining and using facebook, myspace, twitter, and tumblr. Although I wouldn’t include myself in the “addict” category, I do use at least facebook pretty regularly as a way to stay in touch with my many friends that I don’t get to see much any more as I am in school.
Since being in the classroom, I have become spoiled by technology options (both classes I have been placed in have had Smartboards!) I have found these to be indispensable ways of staying organized and exposing students to engaging, interactive and fun modes of learning. I especially enjoy being able to quickly assess students using clickers, but the technology options are virtually endless when one has a Smartboard. I believe that using technology in the classroom adds a whole new level of engagement and incentive for students too. When students can be actively involved in the assignment, be it through publishing on a wiki, or being called on to come up to the Smartboard and add to the classroom discussion, active learning is increased.
Overall, I would say that I am fully “technologized” and have a very open attitude to learning new technologies for use in the classroom. I am especially excited to learn how to best use wikis and blogs for learning and teaching!