Blogs: Taking Over Classrooms?

Referenced Article: Ana Concejero, “No Teachers, No School,” Ingles Rosaleda Blog, January 13, 2008. Accessed November 27, 2011.

http://inglesrosaleda.blogspot.com/2008/01/no-teachers-no-school.html

            As I approach some of the final topics covered in this blog on the future role of technology in classrooms, I thought it fitting that I look at the role of blogs themselves in classrooms and schools. As a student blogger, I personally believe that blogs encourage research and help students to develop their own opinions on current events relevant to their lives. Today I am focusing on blogs as a more extreme learning tool; in Ana Concejero’s article (referenced above), she describes a school outside of Minneapolis where blogs are the primary way that students learn on a daily basis. This revolutionary school goes so far as to eliminate teachers from its curriculum entirely, encouraging students to stimulate their own learning through the creativity of blogging.

            At the “New Country School”, students do not even have classes and “work in an environment that looks like an office” when they learn. The school is “one big room” and is filled with students sitting at computers, focusing on “interdisciplinary work” of their own interest. The students are not simply allowed to fool around or use the computers mindlessly; instead, there are advisors available to make sure that their projects fit the requirements of the Minnesota education system. The advisors do not teach the students, only make sure that their work is adequate enough to pass as they move through the school. If an advisor feels a student is falling behind with state requirements, they will offer advice for them to find a way to meet standards as quickly as possible. This guidance ensures that students are learning up to speed with traditional, even though they are not in a typical classroom setting. The New Country School is described as an “open environment” in which the students truly learn from expressing their work and opinion through blogs and through the conversations they have with each other as they share their projects.

            The New Country School opens up an entirely new door for the future of education through blogging technology. Allowing students to learn for themselves and develop opinions as they learn new materials is an important part of education that is clearly expressed through the creation of a blog. Students have the opportunity to seek important material independently and can discover new literature or math techniques on their own. Blogs encourage students to learn confidently and make learning a much more intimate, personal experience for the individual writing the posts. At the same time, the New Country School presents many potential concerns. Eliminating teachers makes it difficult for students to guide themselves to new learning material, even if they have advisors. Furthermore, students must teach themselves everything that they know. Having a teacher present to clarify misconceptions, challenge students appropriately, and channel students’ progress to maximize their success is, at least in most present-day classrooms, an invaluable part of a child’s education regardless of their age.

            Ultimately, blogging technology has already begun to play an increasing role in classrooms, and schools will continue to incorporate blogs into course materials as computers and Internet become even more integral parts of school curriculums. I don’t think blogs are sufficient to dominate a curriculum, but I strongly feel that the initiative to encourage blog use among students is a positive one. I look forward to hearing about the success of the New Country School as it continues to use blogs as its primary mode of education.

Alternative in Low-Technology Classrooms

Referenced Article: Tina Barseghian, “Five Ways to Bring High-Tech Ideas Into Low-Tech Classrooms,” Mind Shift, September 8, 2011.

http://mindshift.kqed.org/2011/09/five-ways-to-bring-high-tech-ideas-into-low-tech-classrooms/

            Technology has clearly proved itself important in education from elementary school through university-level classes in my earlier blog posts. Helping students to become more aware of their modern surroundings in society, technology-based education can better prepare children for computer-based careers in the future. This conclusion is by no means universal; others continue to argue that technology hinders the classroom experience by taking away from time spent on traditional learning. These clashing opinions meet at an interesting point: what happens to students who are not provided with advanced enough materials to even consider having high technology in the classroom? Tina Barseghian’s article touches on exactly that dilemma, offering solutions to technologically educate students even when they do not have high-tech materials with them in the classroom. Not only does this separate students from potentially distracting high technology, but it reconciles this lack of computer-based tools with the integration of technological ideas into class work.

            Barseghian’s article offers five main ways to accomplish this feat of merging high-tech and low-tech environments. She suggests “putting the Facebook page on paper,” encouraging students to use terminology such as “status updates” and a “wall” to engage students in their work (e.g. analyzing literature) by making it more relevant to the more familiar social networking of their life outside of school. She also suggests using reference books to make a “classroom search engine” where students can seek information. Keeping them motivated by books, the reference to a search engine can encourage discussion of how companies like “Google , Yahoo, and Bing” developed and achieved success. She goes on to recommend that students “tweet” in class by writing no more than twenty words on a particular subject on a piece of paper. This carries over into the general idea of a blog or “chat room” made up of sticky notes on a whiteboard to encourage written discussion. Finally, Berseghian encourages sporadic exercises in “text talk” in which students can write in whatever short form they choose so long as they get their idea across, allowing them to speak normally and fully express their ideas without worrying about the words they choose in the classroom.

            How do Barseghian’s ideas shed light on technology in the classroom? They certainly take the technology of the modern world and incorporate it into education where it lacks in technological tools. Berseghian’s ideas could most certainly help students relate to their course materials and are extremely creative ways of approaching learning to engage the students. Unfortunately, these ideas ultimately lack in technological credibility. Despite their names and relation to Internet communication, Berseghian’s ideas are, more or less, traditional classroom tools that are simply inspired by the much more complex world of technological communication. At the end of the day, Berseghian’s tools do not teach students the fundamentals of working with technology; they only encourage students to think in similar styles to Internet users. This creative style of teaching could perhaps be more effective in an environment in which technology is already somewhat present in students’ lives, helping them to combine multiple methods of learning. As for classrooms where high technology is not available, Berseghian offers a unique alternative to keep students aware of what is going on outside their classroom and in greater modern society.

Children's Take on the Future of Technology in the Classroom

Referenced Article: Jessica Campbell, “Students Unveil Fanciful Design for Classroom of the Future”, Gotham Schools, October 12, 2011. Accessed November 13, 2011.

http://gothamschools.org/2011/10/12/students-unveil-fanciful-designs-for-classrooms-of-the-future/

            My last blog post looked at the physical structure of classrooms and how they will potentially change in the future with new architectural technology suited to sustainability and community needs. I decided to continue with the idea of classroom design this week, but I have changed the perspective by looking at the opinions of children with respect to classroom technology. What do children think could help them learn in the future? What effect does new technology have on student thinking and learning in the classroom? These are two questions that are addressed in Jessica Campbell’s article, referenced above, as she remarks on a study at Queens’ P.S. 144, an elementary school that let its students think about technology in the classroom in 2050. Although their ideas may not have been the most logical or realistic, their work provides significant insight on technology and its role in students’ lives in the classroom even today.

            Campbell’s article opens with the futuristic suggestion by a fifth-grade student that in 2050, students will have the “Notebook 5X, which includes a fingerprint-activated lock, an optional keyboard, and wings for when students’ backpacks just can’t fit another thing.” This student, along with her classmates, participated in a one-week seminar in which they thought about what the next generations of students could use to facilitate their learning. The program included two designers, “Hsing Wei, of Pixelated Learning, and Katie Koch, of Project: Interaction,” who worked with the students to help them focus their ideas into ideas for innovation. The students also came up with a “Superdesk” that can be condensed to textbook size, listen to “voice command,” and have compartments that keep pencils and stationary from sliding around. They also suggested “mini-boards,” chalkboards that showed the teacher’s work to each student individually at their desk. Students even suggested virtual reality for assessments and/or lectures.

            This information about children’s perspective on technology in future classrooms provides insight into what kinds of technologies should be considered in classroom design in the future. More organized desks, condensed materials, and alternate methods of learning and studying are common and practical desires of the students. Instead of looking to find more complex technology such as computer programs for future classrooms, perhaps a better approach is seeking more efficient tools to facilitate learning for students in simpler, less drastic forms. Students want more personalized learning and tools that are less cumbersome so that they can focus more on the material at hand.

            Furthermore, the opinions of the students show how technology has affected creative and critical thinking even at a young age. The students are innovating at an elementary school level with considerable, pragmatic ideas that would not have even been fathomable several generations ago. The students take for granted more traditional classroom tools because they have been given more technology than students before them, but in return students are thinking like innovators and becoming more proactive about creating technology simply in the way that they think. Can these elementary school insights alone predict the increased role of technology in the future careers of today’s students? Only time will tell- I personally feel that hearing these ideas from students is a definite sign that we will become more and more technology-dependent both in the classroom and the working world in the very near future.

Technology and Architecture: Building the Classrooms of the Future

Referenced Article: Preston, “Eight Classrooms of the Future Finalists,” Jetson Green, August 5, 2009. Accessed November 6, 2011.

http://www.jetsongreen.com/2009/08/eight-classrooms-of-the-future-finalists.html

            After looking at various technologies such as laptops and their roles in future classrooms, I have decided to take a broader approach to my blog and look at the technology of a physical classroom itself. Most of the time, classroom technology is seen as cell phones or computer-related media. These physical items affect learning because of how they shape a school’s curriculum and encourage students to learn in different ways. When looking at technology in this respect, the school building and its individual classrooms do not play a role in student learning. In today’s article, Preston reports on the “Classrooms of the Future” competition in which eight international architects designed physical classrooms that, through technology alone, would have increased “feasibility, sustainability, innovation in design, and overall design quality.” Preston elaborates on the eight finalists’ works and how each proposed classroom would improve learning based on the structure’s own architectural technology.

            The first finalist’s classroom was the “Teksing Bamboowood School” in Nepal, a school designed to consist entirely of open, bamboo walls and natural materials from the local community. Using this open-walled technology would allow students to learn without power sources and encourage local businesses to supply the building materials. Another finalist classroom in an Indian saltpan community was designed to sit at the top of a dune, partially submerged in the sand to provide thermal heat as needed. A third architect designed “Adaptable Hillside Classrooms” so that countries like Uganda could use slanted, translucent classroom roofs for light and heat; these roofs would also rest on timber panels to eliminate the noise of rainfall that previously distracted students under traditional tin roofs. The “House in the Wood” design focused on furniture design for lower-income schools, in which the desks, chairs, and furniture doubled as movable, foldable storage containers and even additional tables. Other proposed technologies included terrace classrooms to add space for small school buildings, and the “Blurred Classroom” in which corridors literally passed through classrooms to encourage constant learning.

            What do these architectural proposals mean for the future of the classroom? Each of them uses technology to improve the environment of learning as opposed to changing the school’s curriculum. Using natural, sustainable materials and focusing classroom design on the needs of students and their communities helps to improve learning environments worldwide. Bamboo walls, translucent roofs, and other technologies limit distractions and help students focus on their schoolwork. These technologies are even cost efficient, helping schools to save money for their classroom supplies and teacher salaries. Ultimately, classrooms are physical structures that cannot lead to successful learning without devoted teachers and students; however, an efficient and technologically advanced classroom can truly help students at disadvantages to study with equal opportunity to other students around the world.

            The most important part of this “Classrooms of the Future” challenge is the message that classroom technology is not necessarily dependent on the financial situation of a school or its students. Technology as simple as the timber panels under Ugandan roofs can significantly improve a student’s chance to learn effectively without requiring extra cost or financial burden for the students or the school. Changing classrooms through new technology to better suit the needs of their students is an incredibly important step toward positively integrating technology into the classroom.