Mr. Benesh’s Online Community

Finals are finally done, and this semester, the last semester of my life, is coming to an end. I passed all my classes this semester, with the lowest mark being an 80, so I am quite happy with my performance. What will become of this edublog when I am no longer required by ECMP 455 to keep updating it?

It would be hard for me to continuously update it when I feel like the positive things being discussed on it are not seen by enough people to make it worthwhile. Yet, it will never get that audience unless I continuously put worthwhile things on it. Chicken or the egg? Maybe once business education has a more predominate face in the education world, this blog might pertain to more people. Yet, these issues pertain to everyone, as one French major made some connections to it a while back.

Technology has helped me a lot this semester, as well as in my internship. Just recently, I used technology to win an online tournament where first prize was $4000 cash, and a $10,000 entry into the most prestigious poker event in the world, the World Series of Poker Main event, $10,000 No-Limit Hold’em. July 8th, I play, and I might be on TV! I can thank technology for that, or I can thank my three hard years of poker learning and playing for that. Either way, I am living in a dream world at the moment. Also, electronic posting of final grades. I don’t know how long this has been going on for, but I shudder to think what life was like before it was this easy. Did you have to wait for a letter? Or *shudder* drive down to the University? Either way, this way saves time, effort, money, and stress, waiting for those final grades.

Also, I finally procured the resources with which I can create my Moodle course. It will be Accounting 10, but it is quite difficult to work with the test feature, and create it to be exactly how you want it to be. I’m working on it, though, and should be done in the coming week.

WORLD SERIES OF POKER – I don’t believe it.

Also, SGI sells engines for $1200 for the car that I need to replace the motor in. Various engines of the same style sell on eBay for $200-$400. Even if I buy one and it is junk, I save myself a few hundred. And if the first one is good, BONUS, I save a lot, and get a good car for cheap. It is finally the end of plaid-car.

In the future, I want to professionally blog, but I also want an audience. Perhaps once parents of my future students want to know what sort of things are going on in some of their teachers’ heads they will tune into my blog, thus making it more worthwhile. I don’t mind blogging personally, either, as a diary-like thing, or just as a way of keeping anyone who cares interested in my day-to-day life. Although, as it turns out, not too many people are really interested. Maybe I need to start teaching and make more teacher friends?

That is all for now. A few more posts to follow, along with a completed Moodle course soon.

Dan

I recently watched a PowerPoint presentation in a night class of mine, and every time the presenter advanced the slides, she would right click, and click “Next Slide”. I wondered if she also hit the Ring Road to get to her neighbour’s house. This led me to question my role as a Business Educator. With computers, one of our main tools, there are often various ways to perform a certain task. For example, in most Microsoft Office programs, to start a new document, you can:
a) Click File, click New…
b) Click the “New file” button on the toolbar.
c) Hold CTRL, press N.
d) Open up an entire new instance of the program.

While all of these are acceptable, is it enough that teachers teach a student how to do something? Do we have a responsibility to teach students to not only be proficient while at a computer, but also efficient? I think we do. If you watch a Computer Master at work using the CTRL functions, and the SHIFT, end, and home keys, it is simply awe-inspiring.

For example, if it takes 0.5 seconds to use CTRL-N, and it takes 1.8 seconds to click file –> New, you save 1.3 seconds every time you create a new, for example, Word document. I estimate I have created 2500 Word documents in my 5 years of University. I saved 54 minutes at the computer, just by using that one CTRL-N function. Then there’s CTRL-B for bold, mouse-wheels to scroll, the possibilities for efficiency are endless.

I truly feel that in any subject, there are various efficient and inefficient ways of doing things, and both should be introduced if possible. Sometimes, it is nice to know how long somethings takes the inefficient way for one to truly appreciate how short it is using the alternative method.

Dan

Technology making my life easier:

1) Being able to do a multimedia presentation in lieu of a 15 page paper for EADM.
2) Completing and filing my taxes last night in 20 minutes, for free using ufile.
3) Being able to take a course entirely online, instead of having another 32.5 hours in a classroom at some inconvenient time during my already busy semester.
4) Being able to create an e-portfolio to even further impress prospective school divisions looking to hire me.
5) Saving money text messaging short messages as opposed to 5 second phone calls costing me 1min of air time.
6) Electronic sticky notes making sure I never miss an assignment date. They stick right to my desktop!
7) My favourite board game online, Settlers of Catan. It always calms me down and keeps me sane, and there’s always a game going on. In real life, you need 4 players, and you all have to meet at a real house. Kind of troublesome, sometimes.

These just off the top of my head. In a world where everyone says they are stressed out more and more often, I wish I could teach people all the things that I do to save time and relieve stress. This is the best I can do. Hopefully, I can pass some of these on to my students.

Dan

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What you are about to read is a book review about deeply rooted in Humanistic properties, which I am very much in favour of. Since you are not supposed to discuss religion or politics with friends, I warn you beforehand. This is a mix of information about myself and how this book and myself interacted.

******** DISCLAIMER ************ DISCLAIMER ************
Recently, I have been on a religious quest of sorts. Initially, I was brought up to believe in God, and to do good things in his name, and follow the teachings of the church. Somewhere around grade 7, my education was already too good for me to be quite so gullible anymore. I lost touch with religion and with morality in general. I was focused only on myself and friends. High school taught me more about morals, and I started doing things for others as well. Eventually, graduating high school, I was in an altruistic stage. I still consider myself to be there. Every decision I make is based on two questions – a) will this hurt anybody else? b) will I make the world a better place by doing so? If the answers are no and yes respectively, I will do the action. Sometimes you are forced to do something when only one of those questions is answered the way you want it to be, but that is where morality comes in, I suppose.

In any case, I agreed to review God: The Failed Hypothesis for the publisher Prometheus Books. It was touted as “Scientific proof that God does not exist”. Initially, I thought “yeah right” – there is NO way you can legitimately prove that God does not exist. Essentially, I still believe that. However, Victor Stenger has done a remarkable job that is hard to refute. The main reason for my disbelief in God stems from the fact that we are organisms, just like any other ones on earth. Just because we have the mental ability to fathom a God exists, does not make it correct. Victor proves scientifically (that is, using various models and logical statements, such as “IF this God we are describing has these certain attributes, it is irrefutable to say He exists”) that the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God, described to us in scriptures and teachings without a doubt does not exist.

Being of a scientific mind, yet also having a very religious childhood, I tried as hard as I could to argue with his points. The best I could come up with regarding his discussion of the investigation of the effects of prayers. Scientific studies were done where various groups of people prayed for others (either known or unknown), and then a group of sick people were either a) prayed for, and knew it, b) not prayed for, and not knew it, or c) either prayed for or not prayed for, and either knew it or didn’t know it. The results showed that prayer does not help at all, and actually had a negative effect to the people who knew they were being prayed for. My rebuttal, however, would be that prayer (if effective, at all) would not be effective in this situation. It is not genuine, and it is only being done for the purpose of discovering if God will answer your prayers, and thus answering your test. If God exists, and is omniscient, he knows of your TRUE motives, and would not reveal himself through this. Prayer is also a very sketchy subject to talk about in general. Prayer is not always just asking for something and getting what you ask for. Prayer is used by many as just a way of talking with God – it is calming, relaxing, comforting, and makes some feel content with the status quo.

Aside from this one point, I could not find anything else that I disagreed with. In fact, I loved reading his chapters discussing the creation of the Universe – order and disorder. It is truly astounding the work that physicists and astronomists do to understand the Universe. If I were to recommend any part of this book to anyone, it would be the Cosmic Evidence chapter. Here, he has proven to me without a doubt that the Universe creation and existence does not disobey any currently known physical or biological law that we know today to be true. This was often something that I struggled through in my disbelief of a God. “How can the Universe, being so vast and filled with debris, have just appeared?” I would have typically thought it disobeyed the conservation of mass, yet I have been shown it does not. Stenger also debunks the notion that “the Universe is so fine-tuned, it could not have happened by accident. If ____ were different by just ____ degree, the Universe could not exist!”. I loved reading about how non-fine-tuned some things really are. How they are more just a case of nature taking the simplest course (ie. star formation and nuclear reactions in stars)

This book does not get into very much detail about how sickening it is to think of how many people have died in the names of various Gods. Personally, I think it is disgusting, what people of the past (and present) have done (and still do!) under the guise of religion. While it is an empirical fact that people are more generous in giving to charities when they believe in God, it is also an empirical fact that the morality of religious and non-religious people are equal. How can this be possible? How can it be that non-religious people do just as many bad things as religious people? Our values do not come from God, then. We see in the animal world that creatures are innately driven to perform various compassionate acts. Yet religious believers will put us above animals – God has given us our morals, they will say. God has created Man to be above all other creatures on the earth. I’m sorry, I just don’t believe that. As comforting as it may be to believe that we are created to be rulers of this earth, it is simply not so. We are simply an insignificant abnormality in this Universe. As Stenger says, a single spot of order in an otherwise chaotic Universe. I understand some people may feel sad to think that when we die, that is it, but there is simply no evidence to believe otherwise. “With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil – that takes religion.” – Steven Weinberg.

Here is a point to ponder: The Paradox of Omnipotence.
1. Either God can create a stone that he cannot lift, or he cannot create a stone that he cannot life.
2. If God can create a stone that he cannot lift, then he is not omnipotent.
3. If God cannot create a stone that he cannot lift, then he is not omnipotent.
4. Therefore, God is not omnipotent.

I read this and laughed out loud. Why would God waste time creating (or not creating) stones that he can (or cannot) lift! However, the logic is flawless. There are many more similar ones in the book that are hard to disagree with.

Lastly, I particularly enjoyed reading about the problem of evil in the world. If God exists, and he is a perfectly loving God, why has he allowed so much evil in the world? There are various arguments to this, but none of them seem to make sense to me. The only logical conclusion for me is that a perfectly loving God does not exist.

That being said, that is a perfectly logical conclusion for me. A religious person will read this book, and shrug it off, because you cannot prove or disprove God, they believe. I do still firmly believe that the belief in God has some major purpose. People struggling through difficult times can use God as a crutch or support – someone they KNOW will always be there for them. It has often been said that when recovering from a serious addiction, the only way to stay sober is to give yourself over to God. In the end, you are never going to be able to prove to people who want to believe. That is what it comes down to. If someone wants to believe in the inanimate object of God, they can choose to do so. I know for 100% that He does not exist. Humanity happened by chance, and will soon end by chance. It seems fruitless to write books about how God does not exist when it will not change a believer’s mind (as they likely wouldn’t have the conviction to challenge their born-in beliefs). This book has given me ammunition, at least, so if I get into a theological debate, I can hold my own.

Scientifically speaking, this book is quite sound. I believe the science 100%, and I have since grade 6 and I will forever. I have been educated too well to be so gullible. I mean, honestly – how can anyone believe evolution didn’t really happen? It is mind-boggling. You can’t fake fossils. Stenger says he “finds it amusing that opponents of evolution undermine it by calling it ‘just a theory’.” I tend to agree that this is laughable – particularly when they fail to realize that God is still a theory. A hypothesis. A Failed Hypothesis. Thank you Stenger.

Dan

A favourite topic of mine in the past, as some of you may know, is the subject of wireless internet – WiFi, as it is often called. I may not be as dumb as this gentleman, and Google “How to commit murder” before killing your wife, so everything following this is purely hypothetical.

Suppose a hypothetical person was playing in a poker tournament online to win a first place prize of $14,000, when their Internet connection goes down. Suppose Access… uhh… his/her service provider says that it will be over an hour before they get it fixed, but there are only, oh let’s say, 8 people left in this said tournament. With time of the essence, suppose this person drives down the street, opens up his/her laptop, and finds, lo!, there is a weak WiFi signal floating around, but he/she does not know where it is coming from, so he can not ask the permission of the owner to use it.

Hypothetically speaking, if this person were to connect to, and use this WiFi signal, that would be illegal. However, under most circumstances, if there were time, and a way of finding out who the owner was, I personally doubt that there would be an issue at all with it, especially given the circumstances. If that could somehow be ascertained, would it still be criminal to do this?

The only connection I can make between this and teaching is that often there are issues that are “immoral” or “illegal”, and we have to be sure we know where we stand on each issue, and where the law stands on each issue. I personally know exactly where I stand on this issue (The hypothetical individual told me he won $1131!), but can I tell that to my students? No, you have to be steadfast with what the law says is legal, regardless of your personal feelings. If the day ever comes where someone is sitting outside my house roaming freely on my unsecured wireless signal, I will be happy.

In fact, I think that soon enough the government will just supply free WiFi to the entire country, and tax people for it. I would love that so much.

Read this quick article snipit – “We keep seeing ridiculous stories about how much productivity is lost through things like employees watching March Madness or personal surfing at work. However, the latest report on where companies are losing out on productivity actually makes some sense. It seems that basic IT illiteracy is a productivity killer. The better trained employees are in basic computer skills, the less likely they are to waste half a day trying to figure out how they gummed up their system with spyware, for example. Apparently studies have shown that a lack of good IT literacy can have someone waste up to 40 minutes per day. Of course, the real question is how to solve this problem. As the article notes, the answer is in better training for employees — but it’s not yet clear what kind of training is really needed. Perhaps part of the problem is that it’s different elements of basic IT skills that are tripping up people and there isn’t really one silver bullet for solving all those problems.” (http://techdirt.com/articles/20070319/182517.shtml).

What I wonder is how much I have to do with this, as a Business Ed teacher. How much do I have to do with increasing the mean level of computer literacy? I mean, another article spoke about how we can’t train “techniques”, like how to search the web effectively, by only using Google. But you can! All we can do as educators is use the software that is available today to teach the techniques today. It is important that we don’t get bogged down with the dynamics/options of one particular program, but instead focus on the skills needed in that program, so when it is obsolete down the line, your students can easily adapt to whatever program replaces it.

Moreover, getting back to some basic IT literacy, this is going to be a big issue in the future. Spyware is getting more advanced as we are. They don’t just say “Click here for a worm!” anymore, they disguise themselves to look exactly like something that Windows (maybe there’s the problem) would be giving you to save your system, and all of a sudden, you are infected. Sometimes, I just don’t know how to teach this any other way except just CLOSE everything and anything that pops up. Never click “Okay”, don’t even click “Cancel”, because either of those could mean whatever they want if they are made by programmers. It’s sometimes a scary place out there.

My essential point is, I agree with this article – sure, you can blame people for watching basketball highlights while they should be working, but when your productivity is down because your workers do not know how to most effectively use their computers when they are working… you have an issue. I would guess most business have “some issues”. And all teachers will have “some issues” in this area.

I have no problem sharing the fact that I am struggling to deal with my alcoholic father. Tonight, it came to a head when in three hours of me being away, all he had to do was screw ten screws into some boards, and he got only six done. I came home, and he was very very drunk.

In any case, I immediately turned to my first support circle – MSN! How nice it is to always have friends available. They helped immensely, offering everything from advice, to a bed in a safe place, to consoling. Unfortunately, Regina-ians usually sleep at midnight or so. After that, I Googled “Alcohol addiction chat room”, and found one! And it was hopping (15 or so) with people that had a wealth of experience and advice. I went from feeling very alone to feeling very not alone. And that felt good tonight.

Just another plug for the wonderful powers of the Internet. And I believe in the good of mankind again.

Dan

Well, if you were captivated by this title, I’m sure you’re expecting to hear about how bad cell phones are in schools, and how they are banned in various areas, and should be outlawed. However, I love cell phones – and more importantly, so do today’s youth. Why we spend so much time and energy into banning them during school is not hard to see. They are distracting and disrupting to class and work. However, what about not during school?

I came up with an excellent idea that I think I will implement in some future classrooms. It will be the “Electronic Challenge!” Every ______ (day? week? biweek?) I will propose a question. I haven’t thought all of this completely through yet, but technology has the innate ability to get students excited about education. I also consider myself a charismatic leader, so this will help. I will send the question out via text message or email (student’s choice). The first correct response that I receive back will win a prize of some sort. All other correct responses will win their name in a draw or something (perhaps even bonus marks for this? But that brings about the question of equity, particularly in a poor school where half the students may not have cell phone/internet).

I would lean towards doing this in the older grades where intrinsic motivation is often higher (especially in electives), and competition is rampant.  I just honestly see this as a great way to get to the students at their level. They often think that they know so much more about technology than we (teachers) do, and we don’t understand their culture, or we don’t see them text messaging at the front of the class (”I swear, I was just using my calculator!”).

I’d love some input on this. Obvious down-side I see already: privacy. Is it okay to have students’ cell phone numbers? If you are text messaging them, will they have my number? I can get around this, as you can also email text messages to cell phones from any email address. Obvious up-side: if students are competing, searching for information outside of school time, and they DYING to get to class the next day to find out who won, and what the answer is, how can that be bad?

I just wanted to have an exciting title that would get people’s attention. I recently heard a story about an intern who was almost thrown out of his internship, and would have been out of the faculty, I’m sure, if the story ended up being true.

What happened was some students thought it would be funny to create a picture in Photoshop where they took a picture of him and inserted him into a picture of a student party, making it appear as if he were partying with the students. Some person in power got a hold of this picture and it went to someone else and someone else, and then all of a sudden, he was being faced with this picture as if it really happened.

He was essentially about to be kicked out without any chance of coming back, when the students who did it eventually admitted to making this picture, after realizing the gravity of what they had done.

I’d be curious to hear what anyone has to say about this topic…

I’ve recently been using Moodle to create an online course, based on the Saskatchewan Curriculum. It is for an Accounting 10 course, and it has lead me to some interesting thoughts lately. The first one has been about the majority of people teaching in their first year of school. All you typically hear is stories about how teachers are so stressed in their first year. They are so busy prepping new course material, teaching things they are unfamiliar with, and wishing there were some easier way of doing things. Then I thought, imagine if the world were ideal, and you always knew exactly what you were going to teach a few months before you taught it. You would have 2 months to create the course material (notes, tests, assignments, syllabuses), and then on day one, you go into the computer lab, and review the syllabus, and learn how to log in, and you explain how the rest of the year is going to be done. Imagine in a more perfect world, you are already IN your computer lab. All your students have laptops, and your WiFi is going strong.

I get depressed, because I know that for all my classes, I will not have the benefit of this. At least not right now. Let’s say that best case scenario, I will have two Business classes, and one Chemistry, and one random one that someone had to teach. Being in the Business field, I will always have the benefit of being near a computer lab, but likely will not have one of my own, particularly being a first year teacher.

In any case, let’s get back to my first statement. Moodle, after seeing all her capabilities and ease of use, I get inspired to go through every single Chemistry class, and every single (within reason) Business class, and create courses on Moodle. I try to envision what my life would be like in that perfect world (and I do think it is coming some day!), and it makes me happy.

At the very least, if I have one course prepared online for a class to which I have constant access to the computer lab, it will make my life so much easier. And hopefully make the learning better for the students. Here is a practical example of what I mean. On Moodle, you can make quizzes with as many questions as you want. Instead of just having the students take a quiz, give them a mark, and move on to a new unit, and (in their minds) forget everything they’ve done in previous units, with Moodle, you can create random question selections and make it so that students have to get 100%. Talk about teaching mastery. They can do the quiz as many times as they want (maybe on another day, lunch time, spare, at home?, after school, etc…) and the questions may be different, and some may be the same, but answers are in different order, and feedback is given after each question. I know I’m rambling, but I’m really excited about this.

The one big down side that I see to this is that some teachers could get in a rut, continuously teaching the same Moodle course, and never updating the material. The equivalent of putting up the same notes on overhead, year after year, and sitting at the back. Giving the same quizzes, tests, finals, year after year, taking your paycheck, and not really teaching anything. Watching movies in class, so you have to teach less, and so the kids will shut up. I’m sure we all have had a teacher like that at some point in our schooling.

I think the positives definitely outweigh the negatives, and I am very excited about using this in my future. I love the final year of education, it seems just so much more pertinent to my education and what I am going to be doing in the future.

Dan

I find I get incredibly discouraged by blogs that post multiple multiple multiple MULTIPLE messages daily. When I come to my bloglines and I see that there are thirty new posts from one page, and I just checked it two days ago, I make an assumption. My assumption is that there is no way in hell that you can post thirty posts in two days and have them all be quality. In fact, I make another assumption that nothing you have to say is worthwhile at all. I love discretion – one post every one to three days is just perfect! That gives you a day or two to think about what is really important, get an opinion on it, and then drive your point home. It also gives time to readers (if you have any) to think about what you have to say, and respond to it, without feeling that the post is now out of date, or the thread is dead. That’s my two cents. And YES I DO see the irony in posting multiple messages in one day telling you to not do exactly that.

I bought a laptop a few months ago, and I have been using it in all my classes to take notes. Along with this, however, comes a bonus – games, MSN, email, and other such distractions. This article, http://graphic.pepperdine.edu/perspectives/2007/2007-02-22-staffed.htm, talks about who is really responsible for laptop usage. Should individual teachers ban laptop usage in their classrooms because students are misusing them and not paying attention? Obviously not! Students need to learn how to use these wonderful tools properly instead of forcing teachers to ban them.

This article refers to University classrooms, but soon high school teachers are going to be facing some of the same dilemmas. Personally, I use my laptop mostly in my Chem 210 class. Here is typically what happens: Professor writes a paragraph on the board (while I play Spider Solitaire), then as soon as she is done (mostly), I stop, and take 1/10th of the time to key out what she wrote, and then I follow along (mostly) as she does the example problem. Spider Solitaire is not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is when I go out on a tangent. Often she will say something that will spark my imagination – Chemistry-ally speaking, anyway – and I will go to wikipedia or yahoo and try to find the answer. However, I will often drift back into her lecture five minutes later and have trouble picking up how she got to the point she did. Is this troublesome? YES! What do I do? Jot note what she said to look at it later? I guess I might have to do that.

My main point is that I have read in various articles that “every time you walk by a University class, people on laptops are playing solitaire”. Honestly – I am mature enough right now to know when I can and cannot play solitaire in my class and in my life, okay? This quote from the article is dead on, “Even if the students did not have Internet access or laptops to waste time, they could still pass notes or doodle and draw as they previously did before laptops were commonplace.” Teachers have to evolve and learn how to turn distractions into useful learning opportunities.

Which leads me to my last point. How does this affect me as a teacher? Like I previously mentioned, children having laptops in school is not all that far away. Learning how to deal with them is going to be a big part of everyone’s professional development over the next many years. Whether they are school issued, or come from the home, laptops in high schools are close, and once they are there, instead of seeing articles like this about how laptops might be banned because students are being distracted by them, I want to see (and maybe MAKE!) posts about how great (MY!) students are utilizing these wonderful boxes they have at their disposal. Still, what do you do about the ones who would ignore you whether or not they had a laptop in front of them or not? The ones that play hangman and doodle in class – solitaire is just a click away… That’s my question to anyone reading this. Is it just a matter of engaging? Do we dismantle the games features on the computers? Does this stop them from downloading other games at home? Oh, technology, you are a harsh mistress at times…

Dan

Well, the school break is over, and delightfully I can get back to homework and educational blogging for fun. To start, I came across this http://tinyurl.com/39453g article to which I had dealt with in my internship. The article talks about the usage of IMspeak in essays. It appears students are starting to use “ur” for your and you’re, or “dat” for that. I had students responding to discussions online, and they immediately turned to using these short sayings instead of typing the real words.

Where to start on this one? The last line in this article says, ” There is a time and a place for innovational World Wide Web expression, just like everything else in life.” I agree with this contention. I do not think that IMspeak would be a problem, except for the fact that it is detracting from the already low English skills of the youth today. I am not an English major, nor will I pretend to have done any research on this topic, but is it feasible to think that this may be the future of the written English language? Perhaps content is what is really important, anyway, not exactly how it is written, but rather what is really being said.

The way that I dealt with this in my internship was first, establishing the arena for our discussions. One was formal and one was informal. In the informal arena, I allowed students to discuss and “chat” via whatever methods they found appropriate. Secondly, in the formal arena, their answers were graded like an essay – marks deducted for non-English conventions. I feel that I responded to this technological dilemma quite well. What is most important in this area is getting across that, right NOW at least, there is a time and a place to use PROPER English, and that there are more important elements than just the content.

One thing I had trouble with is the new favourite form of expressing confusion, “wtf?”. If a student in your class were to say “What the fuck?”, you would likely have to warn them about language, or perhaps send them to the office, as such language is prohibited. However, this slang term has taken on a completely different meaning. It doesn’t literally mean those three words anymore, it is simply an expression of confusion in a simple 3-letter saying. Initially, I did not even notice it, because of my age and level of computer usage. However, after seeing it a few times, I told students that it was inappropriate and they stopped using it after that.

As a business educator, I am highly curious as to where this is going to take me in my 30-40 years of teaching. One advocate of the IMspeak in schools says, “Teachers should credit their students with inventing a new language ideal for communicating in a high-tech world.” However, he is quickly rebutted by another who says, “Last time I checked, there were few problems with our existing language. What makes a bunch of cell-phone-charged 13- and 14-year-olds think they can “invent a new language”?” However, I tend to lean towards the former of these two arguments. There are things wrong with our language. It is cumbersome for quick, digital communications when this is exactly what the users are demanding. It is evolution. Plain and simple. I can’t wait to see where it takes us.

Dan

Bud the Teacher wrote a nice post about what seven qualities he possesses that would make him a good leader in the classroom. (http://budtheteacher.typepad.com/bud_the_teacher/2007/02/leading_meme.html)

One point resonated particularly well with me:

5.  I don’t like ham.  (Okay — I don’t like metaphorical ham.  But I’ve nothing against the real stuff.)  When I took my current position, an administrator told me about a woman, let’s call her Linda, who, every year at Christmas, cut the ends off of the ham she prepared for the holiday meal before sticking it into the oven.  One year, someone asked her why she did so.  She did so because that’s how her mother had always done it.  Linda called her mother to ask why she cut the ends off of the ham. Linda’s mother laughed and told Linda that when Linda was a little girl, the family didn’t have a roasting pan that could accommodate the size of ham that she always bought — so she cut off the ends so the ham would fit.

When I say that I don’t like ham, I mean that I always like to know why something is either being done TO me or BY me.  If the “why” doesn’t make sense, I work as best as I can to change the situation so that it does.   Good leaders are always looking for the ham stuff in their organizations, groups, or selves.

Ever since I can remember, I have always asked the hardest question to answer: Why? The first time I ever really encountered a problem with it was when I began working. At McDonald’s, I would ask, “Why do we store these coke tanks here?”, or “Why do we do this procedure this way?”. In each case, my questioning was met with anger, like why is this person questioning me? The people in power did not like people asking questions about why they do things the way they do — particularly when they had no good reasons for why they are doing it that way! Being an efficient and quality worker, this angered me. My job was made harder because of inefficient, outdated, or antiquated procedures. Whatever rationale may have once existed is often lost in high turnover rates, and then becomes ingrained in the culture of the workplace, and is often hard to change unless you get strong people in leadership positions.

What does this have to do with education? Often times, policies and procedures will anger or confuse you as a teacher. It becomes hard, at times, knowing when to rebel or when to speak up to suggest a different way of doing things, or when to sit back and wait and not “step on toes” of anyone. Particularly when just entering the profession, often times you need to just wait it out until you are in a position of power if you wish to change something. It just irks me to no end that so many people will blindly do things they way they have always been done, without ever taking a second to question why. And then we wonder why education seems best at simply reproducing conditions that were already existing.

I think what it takes to get things changed, is first finding out what you want to get changed, and then you need to get yourself into a position to be able to change it. This can be done in a variety of ways, but first and foremost, you have to be good at what you do, and become well-respected and then you can have a chance. But at the center of everything is finding out WHY. Quit doing things the way they have always been done, and then complaining to everyone about how it is done, just get out there and do something about it.

I recently read this article (http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0129/p13s01-stct.html), and it contained some useful information for all educators within the next 5 or 10 years. Don’t get me wrong, these are designed for third world countries, and places where low income is a huge barrier for technology. Not here in CANADA where we are always afforded such luxuries. Heh.

In any case, my favourite quote was:

“One of the misconceptions about computers and kids is that kids need training, they need to be taught how to use a computer,” Mr. Bender says. “There’s overwhelming evidence over 40 years that that is not the case.”

I don’t know exactly how I feel about this. For myself, no, I essentially need no computer training, and have not had much formal computer training in my life. I just played around, learned from my brother, learned from my family computer, learned at school. However, I am a very highly motivated self-learner. I also had experiences at my Internship that would tell me that not everyone is like this anymore. These students not only required training/teaching (save one special girl), they essentially wanted everything spoon fed to them. You try to get them to do a little bit of digging to find out how to do something, and they have their hand up so fast, it makes your head spin. Or makes you run around the room trying to help everyone (aka. give them the answer).

I do think that the general computer knowledge of children is increasing. But what happens, then, when the average knowledge/skill level keeps going up, is that we continuously have to create teachers who are above that average. And that is hard. What is the future? I think we might end up having students teaching teachers some things. Formally, I mean; there are already many times when they teach us things informally. Also, perhaps a $100 laptop wouldn’t be a bad idea in Regina schools. A bulky laptop would be easier to break, spill juice on, get crums in. I shudder to think how some students would treat these machines. Likely as poorly as they treat their textbooks? In that case, I’ll look forward to picking one up off the road, like I did in my Internship. Hah.

I recently read this blog post (http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/2007/01/24/greatest-challenge/) and commented on it, too. My comment was from January 31st, and it will be near the bottom, if you choose to read it. Here was the question: “What is your greatest challenge in teaching appropriate, ethical use of web-based media to your students?”

Note: What an interesting way to get the world to do your answering for you. He was asked to answer a question, he puts the question on his blog, and his readers give him the information he needs. Brilliant!

Dan

I recently read this (old) article. I had saved it in my Bloglines until I wanted to read it. It is now a few months later, but I finally felt like I would read it. And I am sure glad I did. The article (http://techdirt.com/articles/20061210/230620.shtml) was not much in itself. A few paragraphs at best, but the conversation that followed was the best part. The gist of the article was that if you give laptops to high school students without first training the teachers how to use the new technology properly and most efficiently in the classroom, they were going to be mostly useless for anything but games. The comments that followed seemed to say that most confirmed this belief through various experiences.

Here was one comment that really struck a chord with me:

Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic will get you a job in a factory or fast food.

Technology will get you a career.

It’s time we updated our educational priorities to recognize it’s not just the 3 Rs anymore. We need to start with the teachers.

I would like to think that this is what the Regina Public School system is actually trying to do. First, they are starting by simply getting the infrastructure in place. They give out the equipment. Not too much help has been seen yet, and many teachers are wondering exactly how they should be using these boxes to increase or aid in student learning. Mainly, they are a tool for teachers to make their work more portable, and, in some cases, necessary tools to do day to day tasks (attendance and grades). I truly feel that the real learning will come later. Once they have EVERY teacher with a computer, they will (I hope!) start having more PD days regarding what to do with these, and also what the future is (every child with a laptop?).

If this is not the direction they are going, I would be saddened by the system. I’m sure any long time teacher would say that they are often saddened by the direction the system goes sometimes, but I really feel they are heading in a good direction. What does this mean for me? I have a laptop. Will I be forced to have two now, if I work for RPS? Or will they just cut me a $1500 cheque, and let me use my own? Hah… Joke. But what does this really mean for me? I think it means that I just have to keep doing what I am doing. If I can demonstrate to anyone interviewing me that I am already “on board” with what their system is doing, and already more skilled at it than the majority of their teachers, how could I not get a job?

Moreover, I should start to focus my searching, perusing, and working efforts towards resources, skills, and activities that I can use in the classroom where a) Only I have a computer, or b) I, and every student, has a computer. They can be very useful tools, if used properly.

Here is one more comment that really hit home:

Students are too easily distracted and the internet is more often than not, while in school, used for all but school topics. We sit in class IMing, playing games, checking myspace.
The overreliance on computers, wifi and the internet to have an answer to everything has quickly resulted in a high tech learning resulting in low quality learning and teaching. Honestly, how many teachers have even mastered how to give powerpoint presentations where a student can actually learn when in fact they are just being bombarded with information at a pace that very very few people can withstand? Teachers are slowly coming to understand that more information does not mean better, but how the information is sorted can lead to better assimilation of the points made.

In March, I will be giving a PowerPoint presentation in my EADM class. Nobody else is taking advantage of the projector system we have in there, but I certainly will. However, I will be sure to keep this in mind, and not just bombard information, but rather have some interaction (if possible), and use the multimedia features accordingly (audio/video clips/website links). As far as laptops being distractions to students… well, I don’t know if that will ever change. Attention spans are short of late, and laptops have Spider Solitaire! My new obsession while taking notes in my Chemistry 210 class, because she can not write as fast as I can type, so I play while she’s writing and then type out what she wrote in 5 minutes in 30 seconds. Awesome.

I’d love to hear responses from anyone who read that blog and those comments. It was quite an interesting discussion. I wish I had participated when it was still active.

Dan

Today, I read this article (http://techdirt.com/articles/20070125/002737.shtml) talking about how “short attention spans, and quick hits rule the day”. And some people blame the Internet. In brief summary, the Internet has made people so familiar with funny thirty-second video clips, flashy webpage intros, and getting anything whenever you want it (immediate gratification), that the long term attention spans are now lacking.

What does this mean for my teaching? Immediately, being of an entrepreneurial mindset so often, I saw this as an opportunity! At first, I though that this meant as teachers that we could/should make some/all portions of our classes available to do in portions, or at the student’s convenience. Imagine a self-directed student course, I though, where you act sort of like a University Professor, giving direction, and each student decides what portion of the class s/he would do at that point. However, that is a little too much freedom for high school at this point in time.

Then, I thought that perhaps having one or two sort of “Independent” assignments, with much choice involved for the student, could really help address this issue and allow students to work at their own pace. Similarly, you could make checkpoints along the way, giving marks to the progress. The purpose of this, obviously, is because procrastination is such a huge problem in our educational world that we have to be aware and even teach skills and give positive reinforcement to those that are using good planning skills and work ethic.

What are some up-sides and down-sides to this lacking of attention spans? This is a question that teachers should answer, and adapt to if they wish to teach at their potential. What holds students’ attention nowadays? Ahh, now we’re heading in the right direction…

I, myself, have a PVR, and I don’t know if I could live without it. I just am not at home every time CSI: Miami is on, and if I miss the continuation to this one episode that I saw last Monday, I will absolutely not be able to continue on in this world.

Dan

This article (http://uregina.ca/~benesh2d/net.doc) was in today’s paper. The title caught my eye, for sure, and I thought that this would be a great article with which to start my professional blogging part of my career.

In summary, the article stated that, “many children are still oblivious to the public nature of the Internet and the dangers that may lurk there”. It gave various statistics, and went on to say that various amounts of kids do not know every person they have on their MSN lists (I pride myself on personally knowing everyone of my contacts), have been asked for various personal information, and would be comfortable meeting someone that they only knew from the Internet. However, to counteract these seemingly dangerous trends is the fact that, “Nearly all parents [supposedly] (96 per cent) say they talk to their children about online dangers”. But really, how educated are those parents? I would say most likely their kids know more about the dangers on the Internet than they do!

What does this mean for me, pedagogically speaking? It means that very likely, most students will come in to my high school classes with some Internet skills, some will likely know both what positive and what negative things you can do on the Internet, mostly because of the anonymity. A hurtful comment here, a spiteful email there, a slanderous MSN bully there… I was once “bullied” myself over ICQ. It is strange how scary faceless text can be when it knows a lot about you (where you live, what you drive, where you go to school), tells you that he hates you (among other things), and threatens to beat you up. I was wise enough, somehow, being on in high school, to let it just roll off my back, and not escalate the matter. But obviously any time I am in a computer class, I have the obligation to ensure to the best of my ability that these things do not occur. On top of that, I can even do preventative things, such as warn of the dangers of I.P. address tracking, and show that the Internet may not be quite so anonymous as they may think.

It is promising, however, that parents are speaking to their children about Internet dangers. This goes to show, possibly, that some of the education that has been going on over the years (and some of the scary emails about identity theft, etc…) have showed parents that they have to parent, and teach, because kids are always going to be kids, as this article pointed out.

One quote to finish this blog off: “One of the most surprising and revealing report findings to him was that 85 per cent of children have access to the Internet outside their homes, enabling 15 per cent of them to visit Web sites their parents have declared off-limits”. I don’t see how this is “surprising” or “revealing”. Internet is available at schools, libraries, and at most friends’ houses, before their parents come home. It is always available. How is this any different from off-limit books or off-limit to go in mommy’s closet? You tell a kid they can’t do it, and it will be the first thing they want to do. I am not saying to advocate pornography to your children, but you can’t keep them from it forever if they want to view it. Unless you get some sort of filter/parental controls. Which you really should. I’ll likely have a keystroke logger on my children… Invasion of privacy? Definitely. Gotta love being a parent!

Dan

This is my first post for the ECMP 455 class with Alec Couros as my mentor/professor. This self-directed course will end up gaining me a wealth of experience with blogging, and the entire blogging community, creating/maintaining an electronic portfolio, and creating a course online with Moodle, my chosen creation tool. More to come.