problem solving

Just now I observed an email exchange between a number of colleagues. One teacher is trying to put together a school store with a group of students, and to help them determine what to stock he set up an online survey. His email set off a flurry of responses - all from teachers complaining that when they clicked on the link it didn't work. He then apologized and sent out a new email. However, one teacher wrote back and pointed out that the link could work - all you had to do was copy/ paste it into your url. The interesting thing for me was that no one else who responded to the message seemed to have figured out this simple work around. It brought home something that I have observed with my students time and again - people know how to do all sorts of stuff with computers, but few of them are good at solving problems. If things don't work as they are supposed to, they tend to give up, rather than try to work around the issue. What we seem to have is a serious lack of problem solving skills.

I had an experience with this just this past Monday - a student came up to me and said that she didn't have her homework because her printer was broken. (Assuming that was true) I asked her why she didn't problem solve (I actually did use these words) - she could have emailed it to herself and printed it at school - she could have bounced it to a stick drive - she could have emailed it to me.

It seems obvious that we should think about teaching problem solving skills while we also teach specific computer applications. But then, if you start thinking about this seriously, you realize that problem solving on a computer is hard to directly teach. What do you do - show kids every possible problem that could occur with any given app, and then how to solve it? That would be an exercise in futility...

Therefore it seems more sensible to simply teach problem solving skills themselves - and not necessarily married to the computer. Kids don't need so much to have a battery of problems and fixes memorized in their heads as they need to learn to attack new problems and look for any possible solutions. Now that would a real skill worth developing....

REALLY Reluctant Writers

I am certain that I want to focus on the effects of digital writing on reluctant writers, but I may need to tweak my question. As it stands now, it's a little vague: How does digital writing affect reluctant writers? To be more specific, I certainly want to improve my students' attitudes toward writing, but I, of course, ultimately want to make them better writers. So, how about this: How can digital writing improve students' attitudes toward writing and improve the quality of the writing?

I have several plans in mind. First, I have established Moodle courses for each class and intend to become more Moodle savvy. In fact, I attended a workshop last week and have a group of colleagues at school who are meeting to help one another. Moodle became available to us last year, but I never used it to its full capacity.

So today I launched my first attempt to write digitally using the forum option on Moodle. As a reading activity, I had my students (the class I'm focusing on for this inquiry) read an article about banning books since it's Banned Books Week. I then posted a question and began a forum (online discussion) about what they believed about the issue. Every student pecked away fervently for what seemed like hours, but when responses were posted, I realized they were spending more time playing with fonts and text color than composing pithy statements. BUT, they were certainly engaged. Here's an example: i agree with what you say. i think banning books is stupid.

So, this is what I'm wondering: What kinds of parameters or expectations should I establish for online discussions? Should I allow the type of writing we use when texting? Does this eventually lead to better writing? The opportunities for digital writing seem endless, but it's still new, unchartered territory.

New Inquiry Question

New Inquiry Question:

How does the use of digital media foster students writing and motivation as they work to create a yearlong timeline of their learning?

My Vision (My Plan):

• I will create templates for each month on Impress that will be shared on each student’s computer.
• I will take pictures/video of students working in the classroom and upload them for students to choose from.
• Students will learn to open a saved file in Impress each lab session.
• Students will learn how to choose photos so they can write about one photo a month and tell what they learned/liked about that lesson.
• Students will learn how to keyboard well enough to tell a story. I will teach how to capitalize letters, how to punctuate sentences and how to spell check.
• I will document my work on my laptop. Entries will include lessons taught as well as problems and successes!

What Help do I Need at October Meeting:

• I need to learn how to use Impress well enough to teach it. I know it is similar to PowerPoint and I have a basic understanding of that.
• Is Impress the best program to use for this work?
• How do I create templates that can be sent to all kids’ computers?
• I don’t know how to download pictures onto our computers (Thin Clients). Hopefully someone is going to show me this week.
• I want to learn how to share movies on Impress so students can have the movies we create in their yearly timeline.
• I need to learn how to podcast so clips can be added to the timeline.
• These timelines will be shared with families-haven’t decided on the format yet.

Problems I may encounter:

• The server is often down. What will I do if I am not able to have the kids do this work because of the server??

Multimedia Help

I just came across the step-by-step narrated slideshow tutorial for iMovie users. I'm using it with my students, and of course driving home the point that everything comes down to the writing in the end.

And for those of you considering creating MP3s with kids for any kind of multimedia, this is an interesting - and quite cool - text to speech program.

http://vozme.com

The male voice is good for pretending you're a robot. The female voice is a little better.

Inquiry change,

I have changed my Inquiry from when to put down the pen to

How is digital media affecting the way preschool age children learn? I realize this is a broad question. I plan on narrowing it down to maybe the following.

As i interview teachers and get a better feel for what is currently being used in shcools i feel it will become more focused.

1. How does digital media affect the way preschool children learn to read?
2. What specific programs are local Maine schools using in their pre-k /kindergarten classrooms.
3. How much time is spent using digital media to teach preschool age students in local Maine Schools .
4. How do local teachers feel about digital media use in the preschool / kindergarten setting?

My Plan of Execution:


Read / Research books/articles written on this topic.

Observe and Document the time and different digital media programs my two daughters are using at home.

Interview local pre-school teachers. What digital media are they using, if any. How much time is spent per child/per digital media etc. How has teaching/learning changed when digital media is used. What are the benefits/detriments of digital media?

Interview parents of preschool age children, what type of digital media are they exposing their children to, if any.

What I need for help/October

Input of what fellow classmates know about what is being used in their schools and households.

Try out programs available, especially ones that are being used in local classrooms. Research these programs online.

*Discuss options with an early childhood Literacy Specialist/reading recovery person/ etc. One that is schooled in Early childhood literacy and would have information about how digital media effects preschool age children.

Inquiry Questions

Jonathan York’s Action Research Plan

Question: How can I explore, make use of, and learn about digital media options to enrich and expand my student’s experience with writing? I am at a place where I need to collect as many ideas as possible and see what can be done.

Plan of execution: The plan is to gather new ideas and implement as many as possible while simultaneously developing my own, and/ or synthesizing ideas from other sources. I have already spent the last several weeks with my Freshman preparing an autobiography assignment, which offered my students an array of options – some digital – some more traditional for them to explore. I heard my first class today as they read their work in small groups, and when several students read for the whole class. They were the best ones that I have received thus far, so I think I am getting better at supporting and facilitating this activity so that my students can be increasingly more successful.

With both my Freshman and Juniors I plan on expanding the research projects that I started last year. The project had students create web pages as a group. Students researched their topics in the traditional way, creating works cited pages etc. But instead of writing the standard research paper, they each wrote multiple articles for their web pages – covering different angles of their over arching topic. This year I want to expand this project to include more varied types of media presentation – such as video. I also will be searching for ideas to use and expand upon.

What I will need: More than anything I will need ideas, ideas, ideas! I also will need a good sounding board to bounce ideas off of. This forum has already provided that service, and I benefitted quite a bit from earlier discussion leading up to my Freshman’s autobiographies.

I also need ideas about creative ways to handle SAT prep, and boost scores/ readiness. I use the SAT online course with my students, but more is always required.

My Query - Reading: The other end of literacy

Questions:
How does a transition from carrying around paper and ink books to digital sources affect student engagement? How does this add to the mix of equity in terms of access to education? What specific skills do students need to work with electronic written work?

Rationale:
Literacy is clearly a thing of two parts: writing and reading. Everybody is extolling the virtues of going green and we hear a lot about paperless classrooms and workplaces. Most of the focus is on producing reports, memos, and data that never see ink. Many of these are probably printed out on local printers rather than printed and then mailed. Certainly paper is saved, but, I suspect, most of the saving is in ease of transporting the documents to the place they will be ultimately printed.

We heard about the reading side of paperless classrooms when Cushing Academy made news last year by announcing that it was replacing its stacks with a cappuccino machine and the books themselves with Kindles. Major text book companies are increasingly offering books online, or on CD. These certainly cut down on textbook loss, but they raise questions of equity of access. Do all students have computers and internet available to them? Is reading online the same as reading paper and ink? What are the issues around annotating digital text?

I agree with people who have commented that we seem to assume that today's youth live and breathe digital communication. It is cliche to say "Ask a teen" if you don't know how to do something with a computer. Kids are pretty good at communicating what they know, but are often pitiful when it comes to inferring information not explicit in instructions. Sometimes they don't even deal with instructions. Experience in the classroom suggests that editing skills are not consistent in terms of acquiring, manipulating, or creating digital text.

I would like to examine the skills and strategies used to deal with finding and reading digital texts. How are they different from those used with paper texts? What do students need to know in order to be successful readers of these texts? How is equity of access to education reflected in this debate?