Design. Learn. Solve.

Change Isn’t Bad, Is It? Part 1

The following articles both analyze the state of current technology and the impact it has upon our culture. I don’t have time tonight to write what I really think about these articles but I will publish my analysis tomorrow. For now, I want to present you the two articles so you can begin to make your own decisions upon the current impact of technology.

Anti Technology

This is an article written by Nicholas Carr of the Atlantic. The article is aptly titled, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”. Carr takes a negative look at the advancement of technology and its influence upon our culture and how we think.

Pro Technology

An article written in the Economist, “From Literacy to Digiracy”, presents a more balanced view on the idea of technology and it’s influence upon our society.

Whether you agree with either author, they are engaging articles that will make you think about how technology is changing the way we think and work, for good or bad.

More tomorrow…

Students CAN Learn During the Summer

Many educators believe that the summer months bring a halt to the learning process for our students. This doesn’t have to be the case. There are many innovative and engaging methods that will get our students involved and thinking over the summer months.

Here are a few suggestions that I found on Dangerously Irrelevant, a great blog by Dr. Scott McLeod. The following are ideas that were contributed by a variety of teachers.

Summer “Learning” Projects

• Try geocaching.


• Make a commercial for your city. Use a camcorder and post it on YouTube.


• Use Stellarium to find the view from your home. Then go outside at night to locate the sky features shown by the software.


• Do a service project using TakingITGlobal.


• Map out your summer travels on Google Earth.


• Research a topic that you may want to learn more about and create an article on Wikipedia.


• Create an oral history project. Visit your grandparents, the local VFW or nursing home. Armed with questions and a digital voice recorder, document your subject’s past. Post the oral histories as a series of podcasts.


• Create a visual tour of your city using Flickr. Using a digital camera take pictures of all the sites in your city. Once uploaded, write descriptions about each location and then create a set for all the pictures in Flickr. The set could be used as a guide to the sites the student deemed interesting.

The point of these projects is to instill in our students that learning does not only have to take place in a classroom but rather, learning is an organic process that involves inquiry and thought and can happen anywhere at any time. Whether it involves technology or not, the point of projects like these is to engage our students and make them understand that learning shouldn’t stop when their last exam is done in June.

photo credit: greg.turner

Welcome

I have recently been hired as the Director of Academic Technology at Worcester Academy and this is my first entry on my new site. In this role I will be integrating technology at both the departmental and classroom levels. I will help faculty, staff, and students understand and utilize the technologies available to assist the learning process.

Previously, I was solely teaching World History and the focus of my thinking was on incorporating technology into the history classroom. This blog and my future entries will go beyond simply the humanities. I will investigate the state of education and how we can improve and support it with creative and innovative teaching methods across all disciplines. This blog will not simply identify potential technologies, rather the goal is to bring awareness to how technology as well as creative and innovative teaching methods are improving our profession. Topics will range from learning environments to lesson plans.