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Innovative Uses for a Computer Classroom?
flard asks: "I will be teaching a Freshman English class at a medium sized public university, in a computer classroom for next semester. Every student has their own machine with an internet connection. I am thinking about using a weblog for them to post their work and critique each other. Do you guys have any other cool ideas on what to do and what NOT to do?" How can the computers best be applied to assist in teaching a non-technical class? Use of a weblog is a start, but are there other pieces of software that can be deployed in such a setting?
I say, leave technology out of English. Time would be better spent teaching the way that it has worked for hundreds of years - without the computer. Sure, computers can aid those with good typing skills in getting a paper done faster, but they far and away are useless in such courses as a teaching aid. If it were an engineering course, I would say differently - the world has changed much through the transition from slide rules to calculators to computers. But leave English out of it.
Use the computers only where it makes sense.
The Weblogs are a good idea, because it allows the students to critique each others' papers on their at their convenience. And of course the Internet is a great research tool.
However most teachers fall victim to the temptation of using computers too often. Putting today's lesson into Flash may be "cool", but it doesn't help the student learn the material. English is about the written word, not about the latest technology.
Also, if you use the computers on a regular basis, there will always be a few students with poor computer skills or who crash the machine that will demand immediate attention. This iterrupts the flow of the class and cuts into precious class time.
Think twice about trying any of the suggestions here. Because college classes should be about learning first, using technology second (or third, or fourth...)
Why not? Well for starters it's not very relevant in a non-technical course to ask your students to become programmers. Its one thing to ask them to use something like Slashcode but kinda pointless to get them into modifying it without taking away from the course itself.
Computers have created a society without attention spans or connection to the real world around them. Writing is a physical activity that should take time to produce quality results. Blogs are useless and a horrible waste of time. Please have your students write well not in excess.
Check out this article from one of Americas best essayist/poet/fiction write
And since I'm replying to an "interesting" post, mine may not be flagged FLAIMBAIT... maybe :)
Computers are a tool. In this setting, they'll be a distraction. They're not going to make a very non-technical class like this more interesting. They'll just provide an outlet for disinterested people to keep themselves busy.
Back in my day, we used books and notebooks. When it came time to write a paper (a formal effort, not a weblog), we did use a computer. But that was not during class.
I think you really need to look elsewhere for ways to get students interested and involved. Computers will be a mistake.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
Imagine teaching a basic math class to second graders and giving them calculators. They'll learn how to use calculators. They won't learn basic arithmetic.
You'll have to look very closely at what you want your students to learn. This might be the ability to spell-check and grammar-check their own writing without being dependent on a word processor. It might be to write regularly. It might be to read available text and review them.
Whatever it is, you will want to make sure the computer is nothing more than a tool - like a pencil. As several others have pointed out, it is very easy to abuse computers in a classroom setting. Access to the Internet is very hard to control completely and IM/IRC are not much more effective than group discussions.
The main benefit of computers might be minimizing paper. Sending the assignments and notes to each computer and having students do their assignments on the computer to send to you could be a great savings in paper.
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
Now if there is an additional "writting lab" or something like that that isn't instructional, but hands on (in otherwords the students are expected to be doing something rather than lectured at) that is a great use for a computer lab. Each student can use the time to do what they need to do.
#include
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
My freshman year of college I had an English professor who focused on teaching us to write for an online audience.
To illustrate the difference between writing for print and writing for the web, one of our projects was to write a research paper and then adapt the content for a website. She taught us the bare basics of HTML, as well as some design styles.
But the main thing she focused on was how we had to adapt the content for the medium. Paragraphs had to be much shorter--preferably not paragraphs at all, but rather a list of bullet points. As a rule of thumb, she told us that we had to cut the length of the information to 25% of the length of the paper. Much less than that and you lose important information; much more and you lose the interest of the audience.
Also, she demanded that the websites be readable in any page order. No fair making users click through the pages in order, because they simply won't do it. So while you can lay out a nice long cohesive argument in a research paper, you can't do that in a website. You have to post your conclusions right on the home page, and then have links to other pages that have supporting material, but in such a way that each page can be read without having read or seen any of the other pages.
Competant communication in online media is a deceptively difficult skill, so if you can teach your students a few simple things like that (and if they actually learn) you will have helped them immensely.
I have taken 3 graduate classes that were internet based. My experience is that unless I just absolutely enjoy the subject being taught then forcing me to do online that which could be done, the real interactive way, in class is a horrible waste of your students' time. So,please don't rob your students of the valuable input that comes from the spontaneous interaction that can only happen in a classroom setting, especially when it comes to asking for critiques of one another. Doing this in class or face to face can save lots of their time. However, you can have students post the process that a particular paper is going through; their changes and what not. For instance: documenting in a blog what he/she incorporated from student X's critique. I have six years of paid teaching experience in Spanish and just as many in other areas on a volunteer basis...
This sounds like 1998 style overenthusiasm for the net.
Don't drop the soap, Tommy!
And, your Weblog idea falls in the memory space. You are trying to save the written conversations with one or many in a chronological fashion. So, in a way you are trying to create an institutional memory.
You could show your students what a wonderful "institutional memory" Google is. Do searches or exact quotes by remembering just a few words of the quote. By showing how easy it is, you can teach your students to be more precise in their use of references and paraphrasing ideas.
You could also show the students a wealth of english literature on the web that is freely available, You could introduce them to efforts like the Guttenburg project http://www.gutenberg.net/ and let them know that good books don't have to be expensive or out of easy reach locked up in some library somewhere.
You could explain to the students as to how things can be so easily checked for plagiarism, that it is better to give credit where it is due rather than claim it. It might help cultivate a new generation that has no hesitation in acknowledging where the ideas came from - thus, later allowing for a better public discourse in their civic life.
You could show them the power of weblogs in the evolution of ideas, by exposing the various stages of idea development to criticism by peers - seen and unseen. Though a lone author can come up with a great work after being in isolation, I think the probability if a great work is higher if it is exposed to some criticism as the ideas are coalescing in the writers mind. You could also introduce them to literary discussion groups.
You could expose your students to the chunking of ideas in electronic and cyberspace , because ideas have to be expressed in screenfuls, and thus a sort of an unnatural frame is created around the idea. You could also expose them to the different style of organization of chunks of ideas needed when the reader has some element of choice in deciding the sequence. If there is another post on this subject soon, I will try to put more of my thoughts across. I think, as long as you keep you focus correct, and not get caught in the computing aspect, by explore the networking aspect, you can't go wrong. After all, what is writing - it is just a network of words and ideas.
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
You want "Cool ideas"? It sounds to me like the computers in your classroom are there for novelty value rather than education purposes.
Focus on your job, which is teaching English, grading your students' papers, and discussing the appropriate literature.
J.R.R. Tolkien never had a computer, and he wrote masterpieces. Twain, Dickens, Kipling, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Faulkner, Melville, and Poe didn't have computers; can you imagine how computers would have affected their skills?
J.K. Rowling doesn't even use a word processor; she just writes her Harry Potter masterpieces in long hand on a yellow pad of paper. (That's a bit extreme.)
How many of your students are going to win a Pulitzer Prize or a Nobel Prize in literature? How many of your students will write a book worthy of Oprah's Book Club (TM)?
You should concentrate on that. If you want to be "innovative" in education, make sure you have a set of measurable results that you will achieve. Otherwise if you want an excuse to play with computers, switch to another job. Don't waste your students' or taxpayers' money just so you can goof around pretending to be "innovative".
Obviously YANAT. As someone who is, let me respond to this:
Just as you can't please all of the people all of the time, you are not going to have every student totally interested and completely focused all of the time. The only way you might be able to achieve this (for a brief period) is with some theatrics which probably adds nothing to the lesson as a whole.
Now, lets say a student mind wanders off... if there are few other distractions one of two things are likely to happen:
- The student will daydream a bit then snap out of it, or
- The student will daydream for the rest of the class.
Either way it's an isolated student. They may miss the lesson entirely, but that's their problem later on.
Now, lets create an environment where it is easy for someone to access the web, IRC, IM, etc:
The same student drifts off and decides to check, say, Slashdot. They start reading an article. Decide to post a response, etc. Suddenly 20 minutes has gone by. At this point even if they turn back to the lesson odds are they've fallen way behind in it and will have trouble following it. This can lead to less than brilliant questions about content covered 10 minutes before - wasting other peoples time (and irritating those who are paying attention). They may distract and disturb those around them.
You're right when you say if they're not interested they'll find ways of goofing off. But when it's a student on their own they aren't likely to disturb others, or encourage them to stop paying attention. If they're ICQing classmates, banging away during a lecture, and what not, they are far more likely to be a disturbance to others.
Since we are in networked computer lab, and actually need it for our classes, this sort of thing can happen. The students who are totally wiped out from work and need a few Zzzz's I'll tend to leave alone. Those who are just goofing off, well, they get called on a lot. Hearing your name and looking up to see the lecture has stopped and everyone is staring at you tends to encourage people to follow along.
Learning is work, nobody likes work. It's a balance though, a sterile and boring class will hold nobody's attention. You try to mix things up and keep it interesting as much as you can while keeping it relevant... but sometimes rules and enforcement are needed for the good of both the distracted student, as well as the class as a whole.
(and this is coming from a one time class clown turned into College teacher. If I ever had myself as a student, I'd have kicked my own ass!)
Blockwars: you know you wanna play.
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
The second year of my teaching career I had a principal who said that the teacher himself/herself was the curiculum. At the time I disagreed in that some classes necessitated the transference of knowledge regardless of who or what the teacher was.
Several years later I now see his point.
If the class is about computers and how to use them in a particular fashion then go for it. However, it is apparent that the class is about language and the use thereof to communicate. Typing on a computer is a slow means of communicating. It follows then that precious time can/might/will be lost via that means.
Well if its for an English class, get them to do something interesting witht a wiki. Weblogs are all well and good but people get enough practice critiquing others work.
With a Wiki you could see how they go when they have to work together to get something done. Simple wiki software such as UseMod, might not cut the mustard but you could try setting up a PediaWiki based site for them to work with.
I'd imagine that there would be lessons in online anonymity to be learnt here as well....