The Analog Generation...

With all this talk of digital generations, digital culture, digital age, etc.... I find myself seeking a phrase to define my generation, culture, or age. I remember as a child having an unquenchable thirst to figure out how things worked. Given any opportunity I would take a watch or clock apart to see how the gears interacted. Of course, there are some of you out there who can't remember that watches used to be wound by hand!!! What this all is leading to is the revelation that I grew up in the analog generation!!!!

Many of us in the classroom belong to the analog generation and teach students of the digital generation and there is undeniably a disconnect. Those of us from the analog generation make sense of our world by taking things apart physically or visualizing the interactions of the components. We were born into an age of radio, television, and land line telephones. We were okay with walkie-talkies and the concept of radio waves passing information through the atmosphere because we still had a nearly physical understanding of wavelengths and energy. But somewhere along the road, technology leaped ahead to a point where we do not have physical explanations for how computers work or how a device that fits in your palm can connect you anytime, anywhere with anyone in the world.

Our students were born to these technologies and embrace it without question. Some of them may have learned their alphabet on a computer keyboard leading to their first experiences with reading and writing.....digitally! But has our teaching and education system adapted to meet the needs of this new generation? If your classroom and curriculum looks much the same as the one you grew up with, then you know it is time for a change. It is incumbent upon us to provide our students with experiences and lessons that will prepare them for the world outside the school walls. We are all hindered by budgets, assessments, and a range of external measurements we are meant to meet, but look for ways to tap into the culture your students belong to. Learn how to use blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, etc... in the context of your course. Make connection with other teachers facing the same challenges through professional listservs or educational sites. Be aware of the conflict of your generation and that of your students, but do your best to catch up and embrace the vast possibilities offered by a new and exciting digital world!

PODetc Courses Still Open for Summer

It's not too late to get some of your recertification credits before the start of the new school year!!! Join us at PODetc for courses that directly address ISTE student and teacher standards to help you become proficient with the latest instructional technologies!

Our late Summer courses start on August 3rd and include:

Introduction to Instructional Technology in the Classroom (3 weeks)
What does it mean to be truly technologically literate? In this 3-week course, participants will be exploring each of the 6 International Society of Technology Education (ISTE) student standards for technology proficiency. It is our belief that in order to be able to deliver these types of learning experiences for our students, we must experience learning in this way ourselves.
The course is divided into three weeks. Each week a different instructor will take the lead in leading explorations in two of the six themes. Our schedule is as follows:
Week 1: Explorations in Creativity & Innovation and Technology Operations and Concepts
Week 2: Explorations in Communication & Collaboration and Digital Citizenship
Week 3: Research and Information Fluency and Critical thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making
In this course we will be putting new tools and learning opportunities into your virtual sandbox. We hope you will enjoy playing with us and come away with new ideas for transforming teaching & learning experiences with the use of technology.

Survey of Emerging Technologies (4 weeks)
Through exploration and investigation, course participants will become more in-tune to the innovations in the K-12 education field and developing their skills to be leaders in their own organizations. Educators will examine the latest educational technologies and look into ways to effectively incorporate new technology into their curriculum.
Participants will be active learners completing specific projects and course-long assignments that will assist them in developing new skills.


Technology Literacy 103: Utilizing Social Networking Tools in a Leadership Capacity (4 weeks)
This course examines the intersection of three topics: technical knowledge, learning pedagogy, and digital culture. Participants will learn about best practices for serving in a leadership capacity by creating knowledge sharing social networks in their organizations through the use of Web 2.0 and social networking tools. Educators will assess existing resources and peer evaluate one anothers work to practice evaluating components of a well designed online technical resource. Participants will demonstrate their knowledge through creation of an online technical resource designed to help colleagues in their organization. Throughout the course we will model a community of practice so that participants can go out and help foster these types of learning environments in their own learning organizations.
This course is appropriate for administrators, teachers, library media specialists, and technology leaders.


Courses are available with an option of earning graduate credit through the University of Wisconsin.
Go to http://podetc.com to view our catalog and register for courses.

Questioning in the Classroom

In a recent assignment for a PODetc course (Introduction to Instructional Technology in the Classroom), a student delivered a well-organized post which demonstrated nicely a train of thought that might occur when we really start to evaluate a seemingly common process: questioning.

The activity prompt is as follows:
Discussion Forum: Sharing Your Research Question
Post your research question in the discussion forum below. Share the context of the curriculum and desired outcome of this research question. Identify what level of Blooms taxonomy your question falls under. Finally, Identify how technology can be used as a tool to promote critical thinking, problem solving, and or decision-making.

Chris from Chilton posted the following:
When I began this assignment, I thought about different units that teachers do at my school already, and came up with a combination of an English unit on Brave New World and a Psychology unit on advertising. I thought it might be neat if these two teachers could get together at some point and work on these questions:

Main Question: Are our minds manipulated by outside sources, such as the media and government? If so, is it always bad for us? Take a side and be prepared to defend your view.

Then one thing led to another and I thought of more questions to go along with that:

How can we become critical consumers of information?

If you were able to create your own “Brave New World”, how would you deal with issues of the media, advertising, and mind manipulation?

I believe these questions would involve analysis, evaluation and synthesis. Students would work in groups and would first need to do some research on different kinds of advertising and its effects on people. I would direct them to the library research databases that we have at the school, which include EBSCO, ProQuest, America's Newspapers and SIRS. They might use technologies such as cellphones, flipvideo cams, digital cameras, camcorders or DVD's to record examples of different types of advertising. Later they could even make sample commercials of their own with these technologies. I can see students using tables or spreadsheets to compare the goals and techniques of modern advertising with the brainwashing techniques of the novel Brave New World. They might find using Inspiration or the Seeing Reason Tool to help them organize their thoughts. If the teachers want to get really involved, they could use Second Life to help students create their own “Brave New World”.

I think the main technology tool though would be the "Showing Evidence Tool" from the Intel Thinking Tools. Once they have decided whether the media and government is using mind manipulation and have taken a stand for or against, they would use this tool to assemble their research and arguments, in order to defend their viewpoints. After using this tool and others as mentioned above, students have spent a lot of time using critical thinking skills on something that is relevant to them today, and that they need to be aware of. Students could be asked to present their viewpoint either in a debate style format or other presentation format.

Given the right type of question to start with and with support from the tools that we have encountered in this class, students will learn to think more critically, and at higher levels than just recording facts and memorizing. This will serve them well as they progress through school, and into the world of work.

Chris@Chilton

Well done, Chris, and thanks for letting me share it!