Creepy Treehouse

Cody posted an article about "creepy-tree-house" in a discussion forum a while ago. I spent some time reading it again today and reading the responses to it. One of the responders, Melanie, made some very good points that have me thinking about our use of technology in the classroom.

The thesis of the article is that students are turned off by teachers’ use of technology to lure them into the classroom. The author, Jared Stein, says that when professors require students to interact on things like networking sites or use “an institutionally controlled technology/tool that emulates or mimics pre-existing technologies or tools that may already be in use by the learners” that is “creepy treehouse.”

If that is true, then we are currently learning a lot of creepy treehouses. It seems to me that D2L is an example of the latter—an institutionally controlled technology.

Now Melanie responded to this article with some interesting thoughts. She said, “Negotiating power relationships and privacy issues is the greatest challenge for equity-focused classroom 2.0 educators. Unless you are teaching a web-focused course…asking students to participate in social and participatory media should require clearly defined intentions.”

We spent a good amount of time early in the class discussing privacy with media such as Facebook and Blogs. But most of that privacy had to do with keeping outsiders from reading the Blogs or not posting things on Facebook you wouldn’t want your mother to read. Is that enough to take away the creepy treehouse feel for students?

I also appreciate Melanie’s concern with power relationships. That’s an interesting concept for teachers. There is definitely a power imbalance in the classroom, and I don’t think teachers would want that to be different, otherwise there would be chaos. At the same time, some of the power can be negotiated as Melanie suggests. One way to do this is to present various technology options and find out from the class which ones feel more safe and comfortable for the students.

I also agree with Melanie when she says we must clearly define our intentions for the use of technology. If we make it clear to students why we are using a particular technology, what it will add to the class, how we hope students will use it and what we hope they will learn, it is less likely to feel like creepy treehouse.

This was a thought provoking article. Thank you, Cody, for bringing it to our attention.

Just for Fun

My husband has always said, "Technology can be used for good or evil." I don't know if that was an original quote or not, but I like it.

Here's a bit of technology--neither good nor evil (except if you don't like the way they used animals). It's just for fun...

sheep

More on Visual Literacy

It feels good to have the group presentation behind me. It was exciting to hear from the class all the different ways students bring visual literacy into their classes already. It felt like preaching to the choir. I think I learned more from the class than they learned from the presentation. But preparing the presentation was quite a learning experience. I found many websites that will be useful in the classroom. I also found some I was able to use for my teachnology presentation.

It was also useful to reflect on the whole idea of visual literacy. I found myself thinking back on the ways I learned visual literacy. We used to make posters, drawings, maps, and diagrams. We would tell stories through collages. So, like everything else, I think there has always been visual literacy in the classroom but it is evolving. There is more emphasis on it now because of the new technology. The “information age” includes more graphics and images than perhaps there was in the “olden days.” There is more reliance on the visual over alphabetic than in the past.

Selfe said without visual literacy composition studies may become irrelevant. I don’t believe that. Yes, students need to be visually literate, but I don’t see how composition studies can become irrelevant. Students still need to have the ability to write. They can’t do all their communication through images. I think they need to be taught side by side.

On another note--my husband is taking a class in video documentaries. He was interested in the digital storytelling websites I found. I’m not sure what the difference is between digital storytelling and a documentary. One site said that digital storytelling is more of a first person narrative—a personal story. However, I found some story examples on some of the sites that were very much like a documentary.

After reading Selfe’s chapter and preparing the class presentation, I’m sure I will be incorporating more new media texts and visual literacy into my ESL teaching.

Neat sites

I've been digging around looking for interesting sites I might want to include in my web portfolio. I've found some pretty neat things that I can see myself using in ESL classes. They offer interesting ways for students to practice using English--reading, writing, speaking, and listening.

Here's one where you can read the headlines from newspapers all over the world:
Newseum

Here's one that lets you draw comics. I think ESL students might enjoy being creative with this:
make believe
I tried my hand at comic writing--it's not very good, but it was fun: my comic

Comic Creator is similar to makebeliefscomix.

This one helps students learn spelling through interactive games. It has an audio file so students can hear how the word is pronounced and it gives an example of the word in a sentence.
spelling

Sketchcast acts like a whiteboard where you can sketch, draw, write, or whatever.
What makes this more interesting is that you can record audio as you are sketching. This would be a good opportunity for students to practice speaking.

Clover lets individuals to write vignettes including animation.

This site allows students to create multimedia presentations. You can use audeio, video, still images and text to put together a digital show:
surweb

I've used ask.com many times but now I know about answers.com. This is a tool that let's you get definitions of words as well as other information just by highlighting the word. You download the software onto your computer. This could be a very handy tool for English learners to easily find definitions of unknown words as they read webpages.
answers

Many students don't take the time to proofread their work. This is probably more true of ESL students. And even when they do proof their papers, they don't see many errors. Here's a site that helps students practice proofreading. It can be a nice exercise for developing grammar skills as well.
proofreading

Those are some of the recent sites I've found that will let my ESL students practice English in a number of fun, interesting, and educational ways.

Visual Literacy

I’ve been preparing for our upcoming group presentation on Selfe’s chapter on Visual Literacy. It’s been quite interesting. I’ve found some good sites for photos and images. I’ve learned about digital storytelling. I’ve seen some good lesson plans to help students learn visual literacy.

Through all this, I can see myself using new texts in my ESL class. I think it would be very good practice for students to listen to some of the digital stories on the internet and to have to author a digital story of their own. Through each other’s digital story, students can get to know each other better and increase their sense of community.

Many ESL teachers have students make presentations to the class. Often they suggest a cultural theme. Public speaking is an important skill and needs some attention. However, visual literacy is also important.

I wonder how/if visual literacy translates between cultures? Would a Middle Eastern student have trouble understanding a digital story made by an Asian student? Hum…something to research.

New Social Networking Site?

Today I was invited to join a Twine. Anyone ever heard of it? I joined because I got 50 reward points for doing so. I'll join lots of things for reward points! I haven't looked around the site much, but from what I can tell, it looks like a sophisticated Facebook. In fact, there's a technology trends twine that looks pretty interesting. I've found another way for me to explore the world of technology.

Here's the link if anyone is interested...

twine

Technology Problems

When I went to my blog last night to write about Medical Technology, none of my writing was there. Titles of the blogs showed up, and my pictures and profile were there, but none of the words I had written. It was an awful sight!

I thought maybe if I wrote a new blog it would stimulate the old blogs to return, so I wrote and posted the new entry. Unfortunatly, the title was there, but still no words.

I went into "Help" to see if there was something there that could, well, help. I found out that there had been others reporting inability to see their posts. They said they were working on it. Who knows what that means.

Judy thought maybe I had changed my font color. That is a possibility. I remember I had tried to change the font color for my heading and maybe I changed it for my blogs. But, the fix I chose is to go with a different template. So my blog has a new look. I don’t like it as well, but at least it now can be read. Besides that, maybe green is more fitting of a flamingo nest.

Medical Technology

I know we're studying pedagogy and technology, but I thought I would talk just a little bit about my recent experience with medical technology.

I came back from Ecuador with some kind of ailment. After three weeks without improvement, I went to the Dr. She ordered the routine tests--blood, urine, sinus and chest x-ray to look for infection or pneumonia. Everything came back normal except for the sinus x-ray which showed some congestion. The Dr. wanted to know what that was so she ordered a CT scan of my sinuses. It was scheduled for last Tuesday.

A couple days after seeing that Dr., I received a call from the specialist in infectious disease I had seen before my trip to Ecuador to consult about immunizations and prevention. He had reviewed my chart and wanted to see me. I scheduled that appointment for Tuesday since I was already going to be near his office for the sinus CT. Why make two trips to town when you can do it in one?

He was quite concerned because I had had a fever for a month. He said that shouldn't be happening and wanted to do a work-up for "fever of unknown origin." At that point, I had not had a fever for a day and a half so I thought maybe I should wait and see if I was getting better. He said that was an option, but thought it would be better to check it out since it could be a sign of something serious. I agreed and was promptly escorted to the lab where for the next 20 minutes I was poked and prodded and forced to donate a liter of blood that was separated into maybe 15 different vials and 4 different bottles for cultures. I won't go into a description of the paraphernalia that they gave me for "homework."

The most interesting test, though, was the CT. He wanted to see all my insides. That CT Scan is really some kind of technology! You lie on a bed, they shoot some “contrast” solution into your veins that you can feel coursing through your system with an interesting feeling of warmth, and they take pictures. It is so amazing to me that they can look right inside your body and see everything that is going on. When I went back on Thursday I was able to see my insides, there on the computer monitor. It boggled my mind.

Problem is, they could see something in my lungs that didn’t belong there, but even with all that technology, they couldn’t tell what it is. So now they are talking about more tests with more technology. I will talk to the Pulmonologist tomorrow to find out about that option. Personally, I think I’ve seen enough medical technology for right now. Since I’m feeling a lot better and believe I’m getting well, I think I’ll forego the next bit of tests and stick to technology I can use in the classroom.