"Going backwards" may be helpful.
I teach in a private school.
After three years of "exclusive lap top use," I saw classroom performance change significantly. In these past three years, I gave my first "F's." (I've taught for 23 years.) Next year, I am prohibiting lap-tops in my class room. I want my students to engage with me and each other and the material they are working with . . . not with their laptops.
*The amount of paper wasted is tremendous because most teachers still want a paper copy to get away from their laptops.
*The "reviewing" (correcting) capabilities in MS Word are much more time consuming than putting proofreading marks by hand on a paper. (The advantage to electronic grading is you have an electronic copy to refer to when writing quarter comments to parents.)
*Textbooks are still lugged around because textbooks are not available in electronic format yet. So now we have kids with textbooks AND laptops, carrying two backpacks. Sometimes the backpacks weigh 50 lbs! (I see a problem with that!)
*Assignments turned in electronically have problems with "whiz kids" using open source documents that won't open in MS Word; with e-mail systems; assignments going to junk e-mail; attachments being stripped from e-mails; lines going down; or the "moodle" system being screwed up the evening the kids are to submit their homework.
*Tests are automatically scored IF you use "multiple guess." (Even short answers have problems in the electronic world.) Multiple guess is not the best assessment tool.
*Students are googling or gaming when they need to be listening or working on their assignments. (Ah, yes, that little "not on task" smile on their faces gives them away.)
*Students do not take helpful notes because they are trying to "take dictation" of the lecture. I see a definite problem with kids struggling to put concepts into their own words.
*Google and Wikipedia are not credible sources for most areas of study. I put together an entire lecture from Wikipedia (for demonstration purposes) in which most of the information was WRONG. I gave the lecture and at the end told the kids that the information was all wrong. Boy, were the kids angry with me. I said, "Now you know how I feel when I read your papers." They then had to find the mistakes and correct them (Which also did not go over well. Ah, the challenges of having to work while learning!)
*Most classrooms are not equipped for safe "plug-in." I have Power strips hanging out of the walls and then I have to carefully walk between all the power cords plugged into the power strip. It feels like Indiana Jones and the Electric Web. NOBODY MOVE or you may break your neck!
As a high school teacher, I can see a lot of benefits to having students with laptops. You could save a LOT of paper (it's amazing how much paper and toner is used on making handouts in our school every day), textbooks wouldn't have to be lugged around, assignments could be turned in electronically (no more "the teacher lost my assignment"), tests could be automatically corrected and students would have instant feedback., along with a lot of other benefits.
What is being discussed in the original article really isn't "tech literacy" per se as it is "information literacy." This is the realm of current library pedagogy and covers not only how to vet a web-site and knowing how to use keywords for searching databases, but goes far beyond these two skills.
What I have found is we have students who can regurgitate facts, fill in "multiple guess" bubbles, and cut and paste beautifully. However, they cannot define a task, define keywords, ask pertinent questions about topics, narrow a topic, postulate a thesis, search using indices and tables of contents, skim and scan text for information, locate print and electronic sources, extract relevant information, paraphrase, organize information from various sources, properly attribute sources, and create a logical well-thought out project in their own words.
I've been working specifically with information literacy for the past four years and have discovered that even the most "tech" savvy students are the most deceived by their supposed fluency with the internet. They are information illiterate. In addition, they generally do not access print sources that, in some academic areas, still have better vetted, broader and deeper information than can be found on the net.
The American Association of School Librarians (1998), the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (1988), and the California Library Association (2004) have set 9 standards with ~160 specific skills for grades K-12.
Synthesis is the correct word in "educationalese" and has been around since Benjamin Bloom in the 1950s. It has to do with truly taking two kinds of information to come up with a conclusion. Synthesis is correct.
I teach at a school where we have laptops in the HS and will institute a program in the middle school next year.
Laptops are a tool. For those who think that it negatively impacts learning, learning is always impacted in classes where teachers are not aware of what their students are doing.
In my class, student discussion is augmented by their ability to access subscription databases to check their facts, or even find facts to support their assertions.
Our science deparments use experiment paraphenalia where the students plug in, data is collected. Mathematics classes use Mathematica.
BTW, students at my school get into major universities (Harvard, Yale, U PENN, MIT, U of Chicago, Carnegie Mellon, Cal Tech, UC Berkeley, Stanford) many of them in mathematics and science.
I am a teacher. I have spent the past two years revamping my curriculum to meet the needs of high schoolers who do not know how to use the information technology available at their fingertips. In conjunction with the librarians at my school, we have just completed a K-12 information literacy scope and sequence that covers the following:
*How to access information (digital & print)
*How to critically evaluate information (includes vetting sources)
*How to use the information for academic use
In the scope and sequence,we also include:
*How to use information for personal use
*The importance of accurate information in a democratic society (includ. 1st Amendment rights)
*Ethical behavior (which includes not only accuracy but also attributions,citations, copyright and fair use, plagiarism) *Positive contributions to the learning community
We hope to incorporate this scope and sequence into all classes for the next academic year. In addition to print sources, my school library has invested in reliable databases and online resources for students to use.
Ask your children's school and public librarians what they are doing with information literacy. Support your local libraries to subscribe to reliable databases. Maybe even teach a class at your local library on how to vet information found online!
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"Going backwards" may be helpful. I teach in a private school. After three years of "exclusive lap top use," I saw classroom performance change significantly. In these past three years, I gave my first "F's." (I've taught for 23 years.) Next year, I am prohibiting lap-tops in my class room. I want my students to engage with me and each other and the material they are working with . . . not with their laptops. *The amount of paper wasted is tremendous because most teachers still want a paper copy to get away from their laptops. *The "reviewing" (correcting) capabilities in MS Word are much more time consuming than putting proofreading marks by hand on a paper. (The advantage to electronic grading is you have an electronic copy to refer to when writing quarter comments to parents.) *Textbooks are still lugged around because textbooks are not available in electronic format yet. So now we have kids with textbooks AND laptops, carrying two backpacks. Sometimes the backpacks weigh 50 lbs! (I see a problem with that!) *Assignments turned in electronically have problems with "whiz kids" using open source documents that won't open in MS Word; with e-mail systems; assignments going to junk e-mail; attachments being stripped from e-mails; lines going down; or the "moodle" system being screwed up the evening the kids are to submit their homework. *Tests are automatically scored IF you use "multiple guess." (Even short answers have problems in the electronic world.) Multiple guess is not the best assessment tool. *Students are googling or gaming when they need to be listening or working on their assignments. (Ah, yes, that little "not on task" smile on their faces gives them away.) *Students do not take helpful notes because they are trying to "take dictation" of the lecture. I see a definite problem with kids struggling to put concepts into their own words. *Google and Wikipedia are not credible sources for most areas of study. I put together an entire lecture from Wikipedia (for demonstration purposes) in which most of the information was WRONG. I gave the lecture and at the end told the kids that the information was all wrong. Boy, were the kids angry with me. I said, "Now you know how I feel when I read your papers." They then had to find the mistakes and correct them (Which also did not go over well. Ah, the challenges of having to work while learning!) *Most classrooms are not equipped for safe "plug-in." I have Power strips hanging out of the walls and then I have to carefully walk between all the power cords plugged into the power strip. It feels like Indiana Jones and the Electric Web. NOBODY MOVE or you may break your neck! As a high school teacher, I can see a lot of benefits to having students with laptops. You could save a LOT of paper (it's amazing how much paper and toner is used on making handouts in our school every day), textbooks wouldn't have to be lugged around, assignments could be turned in electronically (no more "the teacher lost my assignment"), tests could be automatically corrected and students would have instant feedback., along with a lot of other benefits.
What I have found is we have students who can regurgitate facts, fill in "multiple guess" bubbles, and cut and paste beautifully. However, they cannot define a task, define keywords, ask pertinent questions about topics, narrow a topic, postulate a thesis, search using indices and tables of contents, skim and scan text for information, locate print and electronic sources, extract relevant information, paraphrase, organize information from various sources, properly attribute sources, and create a logical well-thought out project in their own words.
I've been working specifically with information literacy for the past four years and have discovered that even the most "tech" savvy students are the most deceived by their supposed fluency with the internet. They are information illiterate. In addition, they generally do not access print sources that, in some academic areas, still have better vetted, broader and deeper information than can be found on the net.
The American Association of School Librarians (1998), the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (1988), and the California Library Association (2004) have set 9 standards with ~160 specific skills for grades K-12.
Synthesis is the correct word in "educationalese" and has been around since Benjamin Bloom in the 1950s. It has to do with truly taking two kinds of information to come up with a conclusion. Synthesis is correct.
I teach at a school where we have laptops in the HS and will institute a program in the middle school next year. Laptops are a tool. For those who think that it negatively impacts learning, learning is always impacted in classes where teachers are not aware of what their students are doing. In my class, student discussion is augmented by their ability to access subscription databases to check their facts, or even find facts to support their assertions. Our science deparments use experiment paraphenalia where the students plug in, data is collected. Mathematics classes use Mathematica. BTW, students at my school get into major universities (Harvard, Yale, U PENN, MIT, U of Chicago, Carnegie Mellon, Cal Tech, UC Berkeley, Stanford) many of them in mathematics and science.
I am a teacher. I have spent the past two years revamping my curriculum to meet the needs of high schoolers who do not know how to use the information technology available at their fingertips. In conjunction with the librarians at my school, we have just completed a K-12 information literacy scope and sequence that covers the following:
*How to access information (digital & print)
*How to critically evaluate information (includes vetting sources)
*How to use the information for academic use
In the scope and sequence,we also include:
*How to use information for personal use
*The importance of accurate information in a democratic society (includ. 1st Amendment rights)
*Ethical behavior (which includes not only accuracy but also attributions,citations, copyright and fair use, plagiarism)
*Positive contributions to the learning community
We hope to incorporate this scope and sequence into all classes for the next academic year. In addition to print sources, my school library has invested in reliable databases and online resources for students to use.
Ask your children's school and public librarians what they are doing with information literacy. Support your local libraries to subscribe to reliable databases. Maybe even teach a class at your local library on how to vet information found online!