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Presentations Programs are Everywhere! PowerPoint’s pushy style seeks to set up a speaker’s dominance over the audience.

This article by Edward Tufte looks at the impact of presentation slide ware. He states: “particularly disturbing is the adoption of the PowerPoint cognitive style in our schools”. Students are being taught to formulate client pitches and infomercials rather than learning to write a report using sentences and structure. PowerPoint slides in primary school setting typically consist of 10 to 20 works and a piece of art in a presentation of three to six slides – a total of 80 words. “PowerPoint is a competent slide manager and projector… instead of supplementing a presentation is becomes a substitute for it… misuse ignores the most important rule of speaking; respect your audience”

From Wikipedia

the term collaborative writing “refers to projects where written works are created by multiple people together.”

In a true collaborative environment, each participant has an equal ability to add, edit and remove text. For successful collaboration: A good method of communication and discussion is essential; each participant making contributions to a common goal; each participant is held accountable for contribution.

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Technology affects how students communicate and how they learn. Todays technology is interactive. Students have always been social people and today more technology devices are compatible for students to use than before.

This article, How to Bring Our Schools of the 20th Century main points;

• Schools are being  left behind! Kids spend much of the say are their grandparent did: sitting in rows, listening to teachers lecture, scribbling notes by hand and reading from textbooks(that can often be out of date by the time they are printed).
• Kids are global citizens! Schools need to accommodate this fact. Thinking outside of the box, kids need to learn to think across disciplines. Becoming smarter about new sources of information.
• Students need to manage, interpret, validate and act on new source of information.  Developing good skills or emotional intelligence for success in todays workplace.
• A New Kind of literacy; classes that teach key aspects of information literacy are needed as the world grows ever more “deluged with information of variable quality”.
• lessons are important that teach students to show respect for others as well as to be punctual, responsible and work well in teams!

Computer games and stimulation software have become a billion dollar industry, using cutting edge technology the worlds bests minds are creating products that bedazzle and engage players of all ages from killing bad guys to performing life saving surgery.

Stimulation software gives students an interactive environment that allows for the experience of new things  and has no risks. Games allow the kids to become the experts.! This sort of software channels student interest into positive experiences for kids, bringing students and technology together ensures that students can make the connection to how mathematics and science etc skills from these subjects help when designing and playing such games. This Software all can expose students to experiences that otherwise wouldn’t have been possible in the classroom.

Is technology the education of the future?

This video talk about McKinley Technology school and the affects of their programs has for their students!

http://www.edutopia.org/node/3974

This video in teacher tube “Melissa’s world”

Melissa is nine years old and suffers from ceribal palsy, she can’t walk, has minimal hand function and can not speak. Melissa attends Elim Christian School, which helps with therapy and  technology that can assist her to communicate with the world.

Using a prototype that allows Melissa to control a computer mouse by gazing her eyes at a special computer monitor, which allows her to access any software. It opens a whole new world to her.

This technology is amazing, it reconnects Melissa and allows her to communicate to her family, and others.

The article present information on social technologies. Like all tools there are positive and negative aspects!

Social Technology = computer medicated communication environments that connect people for cooperation, collaboration and information sharing. Examples include; weblogs, wikis, forums, instant messaging and e-mail.

Most media is filled with scary stories about social technologies, not enough attention is given to the opportunities that this technology gives children to share ideas, debate issues, and fake global connections.

This software allows conversational interaction between groups/ individuals. It generally provides a mechanism for reacting to others. Teens are particularly drawn to this technology because it meets their socialization needs. Kids crave a sense of identity and being embraced by a group. And because everyone is using social networks, students want to be a part of the crowd.

Networking websites facilitate the creation of informal and formal connections among people with similar interest to form online communities.  Many contain digital sharing areas, including reviews, bookmarks, photos, audio, video or other digital documents.

for adults: The biggest online social network is MySpace.com, another is facebook.com

for primary students: Imbee.com or Thinkronzie.com

Many schools are developing Intranets that can be used for social technologies within the school. It is important to help students make the right decisions about networking, to be safe and responsible.

This article this about, digital story telling, Oral History of the Holocaust, students from a school in San Francisco  have gained  a new perspective on modern history through personal involvement in documenting the experiences of Holocaust Survivors. Students research and prepare interview questions, they travel to a survivors home, set up equipment and conduct a two hour interview. students then transcribe each interview and edit the digital video files and make a mini movie to put on the web.  “in most cases, this requires teachers to have the patience and confidence to allow their students to figure out often-complex applications on their own… while expanding student’s depth of understanding of the Holocaust, the project provides a public service through the publication of their interviews.”

Considerations before embarking on a project outlined in this article:

1. Choose the topic carefully: a passionate subject, take into account the community you live in etc
2. Set aside sufficient time
3. Keep the technology simple

Watch some of these stories on http://www.tellingstories.org/

NOTE: i think this sort of idea can be taken into the primary classroom, allowing students to work together and learn from a community memeber in a way that they can share with others is important!

The Learning Circle Teacher Guide provides a structural approach to promoting cross-classroom collaboration with telecommunications.

Organized into six phases, with an introduction and pointers as well as “teachers comments”:

1. Getting Ready: be prepared is a great motto! involves teacher and student preparation
2. Opening the learning circles: provides an opportunity; for teachers to team teach; for students to work collaboratively which gives them a greater understanding!
3. Planning Learning Circle Projects: integrate the learning network into your existing curriculum. Examine a topic, propose the type of information you want to receive, organize material, and prepare a summary for publication.
4. Exchanging student work: students can see responses to their project requests. enhance student learning. A goal in the learning circle is to help students develop their writing skills – the writing process approach planning, drafting and polishing!
5. Organizing the Circle Publication: the learning circle plays a role in motivating students to organize and evaluate information they received as feed back.
6. Closing the Learning Circle:  a closing date should be listed in a time-line. Summary of what was experiences, and thanking those you gave feedback. a good idea! Learning Circle Certificate is a good way to recognize students work!!!

For ideas in incorporating Learning Circle into your curriculum see: http://www.iearn.org/circles/lcguide/toc.html

“EDUTAINMENT” mating education with entertainment  does it work?

This portion of game developer article Seymour Papert talks about:

• interactive “edutainment” how most programs are not taking the right approach to joining education and entertainment. An example given talks about the “game” a were children are traveling to next chapters/ goals, at each stage they need to put in the answer to a math problems. Its too boring!
• TWO big lessons from computer games; “hard fun” its fun because its hard. learning happens best when one is deeply engaged in hard and challenging activities. As long as activities are interesting; cooperative learners learn far better than children who go mindlessly through the motions of learning.
• Two strategies; recognize that talking about games and learning is an important activity; encourage children to become game designers themselves