The Google Effect in Teaching

A discussion which I often encounter in conversations with teachers, parents, or at education conferences has to do with the ability to engage students in the classroom.  This has been part of the reason for education techniques to shift from direct instruction to more inquiry based learning.  Every teacher had their own opinion of how to engage their students, and there are no guarantees that one way is going to be the answer to the engagement question very year.  There are just too many variables that are introduced in the dynamics of a classroom or school.  In an effort to research the topic of student engagement, I used Google to search the question "how to engage students".

Using the time range feature on the Google search engine I discovered that in the past hour there were over 9,000 results about this topic, over 150,000 results in the past 24 hours and over 382,000,000 results in just the past year.  This basic information tells me that engaging students is an endless topic of discussion, and almost is almost the "holy grail" of education.

Many teachers agree, and from my own experience as a student and teacher I agree that an essential part of engaging students in their learning is to bring them as close to the learning as possible.  During a medieval unit at school, we take a field trip to a history museum where the students can try on medieval armor.  When the students studied weather and tornadoes in science, they had a Skype session with school in Missouri to ask questions to other students who have experienced actual tornadoes.  Unfortunately schools do not have endless budgets to allow for trips around the world to experience all the topics covered in the curriculum.  This is where Web 2.0 and Google are able to contribute greatly to providing access to distant places on a computer screen.  

A intriguing tool I wanted to explore as part of this inquiry project was using Google Art Project (http://www.googleartproject.com/) my classroom.  Google Art Project essentially allows someone to tour art museums in the world.  On the screen is an image of a room in the museum, with the actual paintings on the wall.  By clicking through different parts of the museum, you are able to travel through the rooms as though you were walking through the actual museum.  This is the same idea as using the "Street View" feature on Google Earth where you can see real life images of the streets you are searching for.  When you see artwork you would like to explore, you simply click that work of art and the art appears on your screen in a high definition image which you can zoom in so close that you can actually study minute paint strokes.  

Take a visit to the Palace of Versaille

Choose a work of art to examine 

Then take a much closer look

Although I am not a trained art teacher, I truly enjoy having my students complete art projects in class.  It has always been my goal to use art classes to provide my students with an awareness of art history, and we therefore spend a little time studying a historical artist before starting a project based on that artist.  A recent project in class studied Vincent van Gogh and specifically his painting The Starry Night.  In order to introduce van Gogh and this particular painting, we took a virtual visit to the The Museum of Modern Art in New York City to see where the painting actually sits in the world today as well as to give a perspective of the actual size of the painting compared to other paintings.  Google Art Project allows you to locate a specific work of art from a list or you can explore the museum to find it.  

The room which contains The Starry Night.  It is hanging on the wall on the right side. 

The screen appears after selecting the painting.

Using the zoom in feature allowed the students to get very up close to see how van Gogh created the famous swirling sky.

A room that is not so exciting to visit in Google Art Project

Aside from learning that the image in The Starry Night is from the view van Gogh had while looking out the window of an asylum, the students were amazed at being able to tour through a museum and look so closely at a painting.  Using Google Art Project actually allows you to get closer to a painting then most security guards would allow.  A downside to Google Art Project at the moment is that not all works of art from a particular museum are shown as represented in the picture below.  Many painting will appear as blurs on the wall.  Also, at the moment there are only 17 museums that are available to tour.  Considering that Google Art Project was started in February of 2011, this is still an impressive feat, and something I will use often as a way to explore art in my classroom.

Completed representation by a student

How Do I Read?

I admit openly that the iPhone has changed my life.  According to a study published by The Guardian magazine in the United Kingdom;

• 47% of British teenagers and 27% of adults own a smartphone

• Sixty per cent of adults and 37% percent of smartphone owners describe themselves as "highly addicted" to their device

• Nearly half (47%) of teenage smartphone owners admit using their device in the toilet, compared to 22% of adults.  (Halliday, 2011)

I use my iPhone for multiple purposes throughout the day from communicating with people, checking the news/weather, or playing games.  Ironically, making actual phone calls is one of functions on my iPhone which is used the least.  One of my most common uses of the iPhone is checking social media sites.  Through this inquiry project, I have learned to utilize the features of RSS and Google Reader to efficiently read through various blogs and websites.  A problem I had in the beginning was that I spent more time using the iPhone then my laptop, and even though I had organized a variety of sites on Google Reader, I did not find myself checking them very often.  I needed to find a better way and fortunately after exploring a few apps (and speaking to the assistant principal/tech investigator at my school) I discovered Pulse News by Alphonso Labs (http://www.pulse.me/).  Pulse is essentially a news reader app that lets you set up the app to download articles from various news sites.  There is also a feature though that allows you to add sites from your Google Reader page.

Choosing Content

Accessing Google Reader

Pulse News lets you easily login to your Google Reader account by using the tab at the bottom left of the screen.  You can then choose which sites from Google Reader you would like to include on your Pulse reader.  Pulse lets you organize the different sources by pages which you can scroll through on the top of the screen.  When using the Pulse app, you are able to scroll horizontally through the different articles or posts for a particular site.  

You drag your finger horizontally across the posts to look at older articles. 

I have also made a focus of utilizing Twitter more frequently throughout this project.  I find that I am constantly learning new ways to use this tool, and there was an initial challenge of figuring out how it could be useful for me in the beginning.  I initially did not find Twitter to be very intuitive to use unless I just wanted to read the posts of the people I happened to be following.  I knew that I would get the most use from Twitter when I could figure out how to utilize the hashtag feature.  The iPhone again came to my rescue when I discovered TweetDeck (http://www.tweetdeck.com/).  The TweetDeck app is organized in columns so that I can have different columns to follow different timelines, or hashtags.  This became important for me when I wanted to follow specific hashtags or specific people.  As I have mentioned in previous posts, I work at a school which uses Twitter as a way to share information about school events.  TweetDeck allows me to determine which account I would like to post under whether it is my personal account or the school.  I have found the use of TweetDeck to be very intuitive, and along with the iPhone it has drastically increased my use of Twitter as a tool.

By using the touchscreen, I can scroll vertically through the different columns I am following, and I can scroll vertically through the actual posts.  The thin, broken line at the top of each column shows me which columns have posts that I have not read.  Creating posts and adding columns is accessed easily through the tabs at the top of the screen.

Halliday, J.  (2011, August 4).  Facebook and Twitter fuel iPhone and Blackberry addiction, says Ofcom.  The Guardian.  Retrieved December 2, 2011 from http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/aug/04/facebook-twitter-iphone-blackberry-addiction-ofcom 

21st Century Library

http://central.wmrhsd.org/CUSTOM_FILES/4/images/local-library-tip-lg.jpg

As a grade 5 teacher, I am reminded everyday of the importance of reading and developing comprehension skills.  Whether working in Science, Social Studies, solving Math word problems, or Language Arts, a weak reader has an obvious disadvantage.  A lot of money has been spent on resources, and specific classroom lessons are taught to teach comprehension skills, but I have discovered an essential element to becoming a strong reader is through reading.  A student needs books or reading materials which are engaging and appropriate for the student's reading level.  Although I have always loved to read, it became a challenge for me as a new teacher to understand how to get all of my students to love reading also.  This was primarily due to an understanding of children's literature that basically consisted of Harry Potter.  I made a challenge for myself during my second year of teaching to read and obtain as many children's books as possible so that I am never stuck when a student asks "what should I read."

I have always enjoyed the social aspect of reading such as talking about books, suggesting books to friends, and learning about new books.  I make this a priority in my class because students are much more willing to try a book when I am able to talk about it and when their friends can talk about it also.  My search for children's book started using a social media tool found on www.amazon.com where I soon discovered that I could make a search for books I read and enjoyed, and one of the options that appears on the page is the "Listmania!".  Through this feature, I essentially built my classroom library.  Listmania! is a feature where users of Amazon can create lists of books that they like or that fit a similar genre.  Depending on the user, the lists can be quite extensive with comments about individual books and ideas of what type of reader would enjoy it.  I never thought that I was actually using social networking during this time, but after working through my inquiry project, I realize now this is exactly what I was doing.  My interest in engaging my students to read and learning about more books prompted me to investigate Shelfari (www.shelfari.com) as part of this project.  Shelfari takes the ideas of Listmania! and allows the user to create an individual "shelf" of book.  I immediately started to search for the books I have read in order to add them to my shelf on Shelfari.  The shelf looks very similar to the display used by Apple for their books app.  

  
In Shelfari, I am able to organize the books according to books I have read, plan to read, or that I am reading.  There are features that allow me to rate the books out of five stars, write a review, and get recommendations of similar books.  Like most Web 2.0 tools, Shelfari has much more to offer than just displaying books.  A feature which would be very useful in engaging readers and providing them with exposure to new books is the ability to create discussion groups.  Students would be responsible for contributing to the group much like a reading group in the classroom.  Casey Oberhauser, a middle school teacher in Ohio observed that "Shelfari is able to do what I often struggle to achieve: create both exposure to and motivation for reading books they normally would not read."  (2011, p.28)  My initial intentions with Shelfari involved first setting up my own shelf with books I have available in my classroom library.  Step two would be to make the site accessible my students and their families so they can discover books at home.  In the future I would be interested in using the group discussion feature, but I am not sure if this will be accessible to my fifth grade students.  I realize I have only scratched the surface with Shelfari, and I am excited about how easy it is to update books as well as add very specific comments and reviews that would be useful for my students.  I have introduced my students to the site by demonstrating on the interactive whiteboard in my class, and I hope by the end of the school year to have them accessing the site at home or on the laptop in my classroom for picking new books.  An asset of most Web 2.0 tools is that the tool itself can be engaging for students, and I hoping this is the case with Shelfari.  Oberhauser also noted that "Shelfari is so appealing to students due to its social and interactive nature that they are virtually unaware that they are maturing as readers."  (2011, p.29)  Shelfari even allows a user to post their shelf to their blog as you can see at the bottom of this blog. 


As I see more and more readers using tools like Kobo, Kindle, or an iPad to read books, I think it is more important than ever to adapt our libraries to the 21st century.  I cannot imagine society will ever lose the attractiveness of a book cover, but I can envision a time when the only way we glance through book covers is only in a virtual environment.

http://workshop.chromeexperiments.com/bookcase/

Oberhauser, C., Kist, W., Tollafield, K.,  & Rudd, L. (2011).  Updates from the classroom: Students and teachers at work.  Ohio Journal of English Language Arts, 51(1), 27 - 30.  Retrieved November 30, 2011 from http://www.octela.org/Resources/PDF/OJELA/Vol_51.1.pdf

Why Comics?

Over the course of this inquiry project I have spent a large amount of time thinking about social Web 2.0 tools such as Twitter and Google Reader.  I have noted how they are used in my life, and I have spoken to a variety of people about how they use them, and I would say I have developed a better appreciation for how these tools can serve my life and the world.  A part of my inquiry project which I have yet to present about is the use of comics in the classroom.  I originally wanted to create comics that coincided with a unit I was teaching, and eventually get to the point that my students could create their own comics about a part of the curriculum.  The tool I wanted to investigate is www.pixton.com.  This site claims on it's home page to be the "World's Best Way to Make Comics."  The site is available in 12 different languages, and is extremely friendly to use.  I originally thought comic making would be an escape from the social world of Web 2.0, but I am quickly discovering that we are now surrounded by the opportunity to be social.  On Pixton, I am able to browse through comics created by authors around the world, give ratings, post comments, and post comics to Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites.  There is even an option to put any comic on a t-shirt.  The main site is free to use, and I can even log in with my Google account.  For educators, Pixton has a separate site which requires a fee and allows teachers to set up individual students accounts, private sharing, and even the options to post grades.  At this point, I am not prepared to step into the Educator side of Pixton.  There are endless options for investigation and practice through the use of the free Pixton site.

Last week at my school, I had to make a case to one of the parents that there is a purpose for my grade 5 students to read graphic novels other than just entertainment.  It was simply a coincidence that this was a topic I have been thinking so much about lately.  In the past few years there has been an abundance of graphic novels/comics which have streamed through my classroom such as Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Bone.  The majority of my students have loved reading them, and I have always had the belief that if something inspires a child to read then it is useful.  Being able to understand comics are part of standardized reading comprehension tests, and they are a used as a critical thinking tool for studying history such as the classic political comics from newspapers.  The video posted at the top of the page by Scott McCloud gives an academic explanation for why comics are useful.  A key point which stuck out for me from his presentation is that comics create a "visual medium that embraces all senses within it."  (McCloud, 2005)  As a teacher, I try to provide as many situations as possible which emphasize the multiple intelligences of my students.  I teach my students to write, and provide numerous opportunities for them to use show the five senses in their writing.  Comics provide yet another medium for practicing this essential writing skill.  I have yet to find a student who is not engaged by a comic.  Either when it is used to introduce a lesson, or to study a concept.  Comics can be used to engage struggling readers and writers.  In the presentation, McCloud also describes comics as a "balance between the visible and the invisible."  (2005)  After hearing that I immediately thought about how difficult it can be sometimes to teach a lesson on poetry which I feel is also a balance between visible words and invisible meanings.  Would a student be able to develop a better understanding of a poem if that student had the opportunity to create a comic about it?

While watching Scott McCloud discuss the history and future of comics from the ancient Egyptian drawings to the use of computers to create a flowing comic, I was reminded of the first time I saw someone make a presentation using the Prezi tool.  A quality Prezi has a flow which wants the viewer to focus on one screen shot at a time with the purpose of tying together the purpose of the presentation.  A comic works the same way with its individual boxes, and according to Scott McCloud this has been used for thousands of years by humans.  The two books which I used to emphasize the skeptical parent last week were The Arrival by Shaun Tan and The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick.  The Arrival gives stories of immigrants and is told through illustrations.  The author created images that expresses emotions, conversations, and thoughts without actually using words.  The Invention of Hugo Cabret uses illustrations as part of the experience of reading a novel.  Parts of the novel are told through traditional text and parts are told through the use of illustrations.  The two flow together perfectly to create an extremely creative and effective story.

'Ticket' 

'Inspection'

William Kist asks the question, "What is the relationship between entertainment and education?"  (2010, p. 118)  Kist further comments that teachers worry about the "Entertainment Factor" of utilizing new types of media in the classroom.  "By opening up their classrooms to Web 2.0 and other new literacies, they disrupt the seriousness of school and 'dumb it down.'  All this cyberspace activity is seen as too much fun for the kids and not enough 'rigor'." (2010, p. 118)  This was part of the clarification I had to defend when speaking to the parent last week.  If used appropriately much like all Web 2.0 tools, students can feel more engaged in the classroom, and even learn something while having fun.  Students can tap into their visual intelligence when reading and writing.  Students can also become better critical thinkers as they try to express or comprehend complicated concepts through pictures and minimal words.  To create a high quality comic requires a great sense of language, and the ability to express the senses through facial expressions or onomatopoeia.  Perhaps the world of comics has received a bad reputation through low quality works which often appear in the Sunday newspapers, but is used correctly, comics and graphic novels can provide an enriching and challenging tool for sharing information.




McCloud, S. (2005, February). Scott McCloud on comics [Video file]. Retrieved from
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/scott_mccloud_on_comics.html

Kist, W. (2010). The Socially Networked Classroom; Teaching in the New Media Age. Thousand Oaks, California, USA: Corwin.

Tan, Shaun. (2007, October 1). Inspection [pencil on paper]. Retrieved from
http://www.shauntan.net/books/the-arrival.html

Tan, Shaun. (2007, October 1). Ticket [pencil on paper]. Retrieved from
http://www.shauntan.net/books/the-arrival.html

Will Richardson (check his book and/or his blog) talks about the progression that bloggers go through from simple to real to complex blogging. What does this mean to you given your own ongoing journey into the blogosphere?

Einstein's journal

I have always kept a journal, and I have a pile of journals that I drag around with me which contain thoughts and feeling from the last 15 years of my life.  I have always used my journals as a form of therapy, and a way to just think out loud without actually having to speak to someone.  If I look back on my journals, I will see times in my life when I was truly dedicated to writing complex thoughts and working through serious life situations.  Other times in my journals are simple documentations of my daily life.  For me, the essence of blogging is a shared journal.  At least from the blogs I have read, it seems to be the primary focus.  The key to a useful journal and blog, is quantity and the ability to connect meaning from the beginning of the blog to the present state.  I feel like a blog documents a journey, and a blog without a purpose is sometimes too confusing to even bother reading.  I enjoy looking to early entries on the blogs I read to see where this blogger came from and what was the reason they started the blog.  The progression from simple to real to complex blog is a matter or the blogger's level of commitment and purpose.  Occasionally I will use the "next blog" tab on Blogspot just to take a look at random blogs in the world.  By just looking at 10-20 random blogs you can start to develop an understanding of what qualifies as a simple or complex blog.  Many bloggers are simply using this tool to document simple observations or thoughts much like a standard diary.  Then there are complex blogs which reveal deeper insights into specific subjects, and seem more like a magazine.  After looking at a few of these blogs, I start to realize that I have been looking at blog like tools for a very long time.  The Opinion section of a newspaper and magazines use the same techniques as blogs.  Blogs now allow more people to make their thoughts available, and just like with newspapers, readers eventually start to follow or read the writers they are most interested in.

With that being said, I have to admit that I have enjoyed working on the blog for this course.  Although it has been a forced assignment, I have found myself frequently thinking about what I will include on my blog while driving or taking a walk.  I get excited when I see that someone in the world has looked at my blog even though I have no idea who it is.  I have also felt like my ability to post on my blog has improved since the beginning.  I have tried to stick to the standards dictated by the course assignment, but I have also attempted to make the blog my own and to use my own voice.  I find that blogs become more meaningful when I can understand the perspective of the blogger.  I think it takes time to become a complex blogger, and I am not sure if I will ever reach that point or whether I want to.  I certainly could not continue to blog if it ever started to feel like a job.  I have to enjoy it in order to do it right.  I absolutely understand the usefulness of a blog much like I have felt the benefit of keeping a journal about my life.  The great quality of a blog is that it is always there.  If I decide I do not have a use for a blog in the next few months, I can know that there will always be the blog for me to come back to if the inspiration returns.

Only 140 Characters to Go

"I learned to follow hunches even though you can't necessarily justify them or know where they're going to go."  - Evan Williams, 2009

I have finally accepted that Twitter can be a useful part of my life.  For the past few years I heard people talk about "twitter", "tweets", "hashtags", and "140 characters".  Being a relatively introverted person, I never thought this idea would be useful for me.  I have been barely a Facebook user, MySpace never caught my attention, so the idea of checking a social networking site that seemed to be filled with mundane and random comments by people seemed a little too unnecessary for me.

I was unaware that Twitter has been in existence since 2006.  When I look at the big picture of social media I also notice that Facebook had recently arrived in 2004 and perhaps most importantly the iPhone or smartphone came into existence in 2007.  In my opinion, a site like Twitter would have been useless without a tool like a smartphone to allow people to record their thoughts instantly.  My own experience with Twitter started with the iPod Touch.  Being able to have the internet in my hands and to check Twitter while waiting at a coffee shop became as common as flipping through a magazine while waiting in line at the grocery store.  I did not become completely immersed in Twitter until I joined the world of the iPhone, and I soon discovered people to mentor me through the Twitter world such as how to retweet, use hashtags and other features.  After listening to the Ted Talk by Evan Williams and reading the 2009 Time article by Steven Johnson, I was most amazed at the truly unique feature of Twitter is how it has been adapted by the users.  Steven Johnson writes, "the key development with Twitter is how we've jury-rigged the system to do things that its creators never dreamed of.  In short, the most fascinating thing about Twitter is not what it's doing to us. It's what we're doing to it." (2009)  The users of Twitter created features that allowed them to search for people, identify people in Tweets, or to post to certain groups by using symbols such as @ or #.  The developers of Twitter simply allowed the users to create their own tool which I think is essence of a social networking tool.  Twitter also allows programmers to develop different types of software or apps that change how Twitter is accessed on computers, tablets, or smartphones.  These open ended features of Twitter are what have made it so powerful in delivering information in the world today.  Johnson writes, "the tools you're offered if you visit Twitter.com have changed very little in the past two years. But there's an entire Home Depot of Twitter tools available everywhere else."  (2009)


What hooked me on the usefulness of Twitter is realising how it can be useful for me, and this seems to be the trend throughout the world.  People may use Twitter to follow news stories as they are happening, tracking the personal life of their favorite movie star, or creating a conversation at a conference.  I am still not convinced I need to know what random people are doing at various moments of their day and so I choose carefully who I will "follow" based on whether the person provides quality opinions about topics I am interested in.  My favorite use for Twitter has been the ability to access a world of educators and resources about education.  I will often spend a few minutes in bed on a Saturday morning just reading through my favorite hashtags such as #edchat and #mathchat.  After a short period of time I typically have 5-10 new resources which I will read or investigate throughout the week.  


Twitter has also become a useful tool for advertising.  The school where I teach adopted the use of Twitter as an advertising tool to inform current and perspective parents about the unique events that happen frequently in the school.  This sharing of information was always a challenge in the past as it was typically accomplished through monthly newsletters.  Twitter provides a free and extremely easy way for teachers to share this information instantly from anywhere as long as they have a smartphone.  One teacher may post images of an art project at school, while another teacher is posting images about a field trip to the science center.  The Twitter feed is instantly accessed through the school website, and anyone can learn about the events at school.  


As with all social networking, the usefulness of the tool is determined by the user.  Twitter is constantly evolving and expanding as more and more people join in the conversation.  Twitter provides a perfect tool which is easily accessible and adaptable to however the user wants to incorporate 






Johnson, S. (2009, June 5). How Twitter will change the way we live. Time Magazine. Retrieved November 24, 2011, from http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1902818,00.html


Williams, E. (2009, February). Evan Williams on listening to Twitter users [Video file]. Retrieved November 24, 2011 from

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/evan_williams_on_listening_to_twitter_users.html

Is Web 2.0 redefining what it means to be social?

Is Web 2.0 redefining what it means to be social?  It is still common to refer to someone who does not talk very much to other people as "antisocial."  And on the other side, a person who loves to talk to other people is called a "social butterfly."  In 1921 the psychologist Carl Jung published a book entitled Psychological Types which studies the different behaviors people possess.  From Jung's work, the mother and daughter team of Katherine Briggs and Isabel Myers began the process of creating an instrument that could be used to discover the unique personality traits of an individual.  One of the main categories in the Myers-Briggs Indicator is the introverted and extroverted qualities of a person. This tool is one of the most popular personality tools available, and I have personally taken the test a number of times.  My thought now is in regards to the word "social."  If Web 2.0 is about being social, then is it possible to be introverted in your normal human interactions but extroverted in the world of Web 2.0?  Will we reach a point in the world where a person can be considered anti-social if they are not participating in the Web 2.0 environment?  After spending so much time investigating just a few Web 2.0 tools, I have noticed that social is becoming a prefix for most of these tools, and having the ability to post, comment, and rate is a common feature to all of the social sites.  By using Twitter or Facebook, people can be more social than ever almost to the point of being too social.  On Facebook, we can truly decide who we are friends are and what information we want them to know about our lives, and when we are tired of that person, we can "unfriend" them.  From using Facebook and Twitter, I have a fairly good idea of which friends are doing well in life, who is having a hard time, what significant events are going on even though I have not heard that friend's voice for over 20 years.  Is this being social?  Is the behavior of being social changing throughout the world, and how does this effect what we teach in classrooms and how we are to act as human beings?  Those are just some light thoughts as I try to wrap up the social networking side of my inquiry project which focuses on using LiveBinder, Google Reader, Twitter, and Shelfari.




MBTI Type Today. (n.d.). About the MBTI. A mini-history of the MBTI intrument. Retrieved November 20, 2011, from

http://mbtitoday.org/about-the-mbti-indicator/a-mini-history-of-the-myers-briggs-type-indicator/.