Hello Integrating Technology colleagues,
You may have seen that Integrating Technology member Iola Duncan has written that her students use their cellphones to text and chat, and that technology also helps them to apply for jobs, pay bills and register for classes. She added in another post that technology enables teachers to record class presentations so, for example, students can review key information from instruction that was presented.
What other ways are your students using, or do they want to use, technology -- portable digital devices as well as desktop computers -- in the classroom, at home or elsewhere? How are they using technology for learning and, as Iola pointed out, for daily living, work, or communicating with their children's teachers, and more?
David J. Rosen, Moderator
LINCS Community Integrating Technology group
Comments
Has anyone used software such as Reading Horizons to teach adults to read? If so, what is your opinion of any of these online programs?
Reading Horizons is widely used to effectively teach reading to adults. More information may be found on their website.
Good Monday, David and colleagues!
To your point above, David, I take advantage of a recorded ZOOM session when a student cannot attend our class and lets me know in advance. I publish the link on our GOOGLE Classroom, so he can watch it and if he does, the time spent for watching, counts towards his attendance. In this case, your student is not missing the material.
Colleagues!
I have a follow up question and curious what technology worked for you the best while writing a news letter with your students or your organization if any.
Would be great to hear from you.
Thank you!
Since switching to completely asynchronous online instruction over the last few months, I've noticed many of my students searching the internet for additional information related to the class. If the videos I provide don't explain the concepts in a way that resonates with students they often go searching for other explanations. While it opens up the possibility of them referring to misinformation, they are also demonstrating self-directed learning, so I think its a practice worth encouraging. But this means I have to help them critically evaluate the information they encounter.
This trend also has me thinking about the need to bring a critical lens to search engines in general. From conversation with students in the past, I know many of them are unaware of how search engines work despite using them regularly. I just finished reading Algorithms of Oppression by Sofia Umoja Noble which challenges the idea that search engines are somehow "neutral" conveyers of information, instead suggesting that search engines often serve to reinforce racism, sexism and other destructive ideologies. So my present challenge is finding ways to support my students' inquisitiveness and motivation to make sense of the class content, while simultaneously finding time and ways to help them develop a critical lens to use while searching the internet.
Hello Tyler, and others,
You wrote, "Since switching to completely asynchronous online instruction over the last few months, I've noticed many of my students searching the internet for additional information related to the class. If the videos I provide don't explain the concepts in a way that resonates with students they often go searching for other explanations. While it opens up the possibility of them referring to misinformation, they are also demonstrating self-directed learning, so I think its a practice worth encouraging. But this means I have to help them critically evaluate the information they encounter."
Many, especially younger, adult learners search for additional instruction to support what they are learning in class. Sometimes teachers provide lists of especially useful supplemental websites; sometime students search on their own, most often using YouTube as their primary search engine. You have identified the opportunity,self-directed learning, and the risk, misinformation. I am sure there are many good ways to address both; here's one possibility:
Periodically announce that as an assignment students will be asked, using a specific search engine, to find a video, audio, text, or multi-media information or instruction resource to answer a question or teach them how to do something (e.g. repair a broken appliance; replace a window screen; cook a dish; discourage squirrels or rabbits from eating vegetables in their garden; provide maintenance on their home computer; safely and efficiently keep digital passwords; write an essay; write a resume; do a successful job interview; etc.). Explain that they can do this assignment alone or in pairs. Provide a format for them that includes questions such as these:
Ask students to submit their assignments digitally, as an attached document, or possibly using a Google Form that has the questions.
Take the submitted assignments, strip out the students' names and, in a real-time (in-person or remote synchronous) class, ask students to look at the responses and to comment on the student's answers. The purpose is not to evaluate the student's work but to generate questions about a process aimed at: evaluating the source, doing successful and efficient searches, and how to know if you have a valid answer to a question or that you have learned to do something correctly.
You could describe the assignment's purpose as "getting good at using the Internet for learning, getting good information and learning about differences in search engines".
You might model in the class (whether in-person or real-time remote) doing a couple of these assignments yourself, and ask for students' questions and comments afterwards.
After doing a few of these different assignments with different search engines you could hold a discussion about what the students have learned about the different search engines.
At some point, you could ask each student to apply what they have learned to answering their own question(s) or learning what they want to learn.
It would be great to hear what you, and others think, of this approach, and also to hear other approaches to address the challenge of teaching self-directed learning using the Internet.
David J. Rosen, Moderator
LINCS Community Integrating Technology group
Hi David,
I really like this approach to helping students navigate the internet effectively. I've been asking some similar questions in an online math class, prompting my students to find helpful websites for learning the math concepts in the class. I've been doing all of this via discussion boards on our LMS, which did lead to students sharing helpful resources with each other. My students seemed ready to talk about how helpful content from particular websites was. Eliciting thinking about where they get information and how they search for it has been more challenging, but I think some of the ideas you're developing here could help push them to that kind of thinking. Asking the students to comment on anonymized answers from their classmates could really drive the discussion more toward navigation strategies. Also, thinking about your suggestion to explicitly point out which search engines students are using starts pointing the students toward that other set of questions I was grappling with in my initial post: how to help students think critically about who is conveying the information they find in a search engine. Like you mentioned, modeling a bit of this could be a helpful foundation for the students to build on. Even in an asynchronous class like mine, I could do a screen capture/think aloud of myself searching for something online. That could also be a platform for emphasizing the difference between things like URLs sending them straight to a website and a search engine mediating that process - something I have noticed isn't always clear to my students.