Educators are largely missing out on
what could be a huge opportunity to capitalize on their
students’ appetite for electronic games and simulations
to teach them about core curriculum topics, results from
a new national survey suggest. Project Tomorrow’s fifth
annual Speak Up Survey, the largest annual survey
addressing the attitudes and opinions of K-12 students,
teachers, parents, and school administrators toward the
use of technology in education, reveals that online or
electronic gaming is one of the technologies that
students use most frequently—and that educational gaming
is one of the emerging technologies that students would
most like to see implemented in their schools. Yet, only
one in 10 teachers has adopted gaming as an
instructional tool. During the past four years of the
survey, the technology that students most wanted to see
implemented in their classrooms was a personal laptop
for each student. For the first time this year, laptops
for students also topped the list of teachers’ and
school leaders’ most desired technologies. However, this
year’s survey also reports that gaming is now listed by
students as a classroom must-have.
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WHAT'S HAPPENING? We are on Summer Break. Stay tuned for corrections, updates and changes throughout June & July. School resumes in mid-August. About The Computer Electives Program at Mann REQUIRED SUPPLIES FOR COMPUTER ELECTIVES - BRING DAILY
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Questions or Comments?
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TIPS & TRICKS
This Clustr Map Was Started 3/8/09
COMPUTER HELP LABS I will be happy to give you extra help if you make an appointment. (See me in class or email me at shankLs@d11.org.) NEWS & NEW CONTENT (Continued)
GR8 news for worried parents: frequent use
of text abbreviations does not harm children's literacy - and
may even improve it.
Concerns have been raised that an
explosion in the use of "textisms" like "CUL8R" and "wot u
doin 2nite?" could be damaging children's reading and
spelling ability. To investigate, Beverly Plester and her
colleagues at Coventry University in the UK asked 88
children aged 10 to 12 to write text messages describing 10
different scenarios. When they compared the number of
textisms used to a separate study of the children's reading
ability, they found that those who used more textisms were
better readers (British Journal of Developmental
Psychology,
DOI: 10.1348/026151008X320507).
But do textisms improve literacy, or do better readers use more textisms? The preliminary results of a follow-up study seem to suggest the former, Plester says. She believes that this is because textisms are phonetically based: "Phonological awareness has long been associated with good reading skills." Exposure to the written word in any form is also linked to improved literacy. "These kids are engaging with more written language and they're doing it for fun." This new report from American Psychologist, a journal of the American Psychological Association, challenges some of our commonly-held beliefs about the topic. Online ‘Predators’ and Their Victims: Myths, Realities and Implications for Prevention, is based on a study involving three surveys conducted in 2000 and 2005, including Internet users from age 10 to 17, and federal, state, and local law enforcement officials. "...In spite of public concern, the authors found: *Adolescents’ use of popular social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook do not appear to increase their risk of being victimized by online predators. Rather, it is risky online interactions such as talking online about sex to unknown people that increases vulnerability, according to the researchers. * Internet offenders pretended to be teenagers in only 5 percent of the crimes studied by researchers. * Nearly 75 percent of victims who met offenders face-to-face did so more than once. * Online sex offenders are seldom violent, and cases involving stalking or abduction are very rare. * Youth who engaged in four or more risky online behaviors were much more likely to report receiving online sexual solicitations. The online risky behaviors included maintaining buddy lists that included strangers, discussing sex online with people they did not know in person and being rude or nasty online. * Boys who are gay or are questioning their sexuality may be more susceptible to Internet-initiated sex crimes than other populations. Researchers found boys were the victims in nearly one-quarter of criminal cases, and most cases included facts that suggested victims were gay or questioning their sexuality. from Mills, Kim. “‘INTERNET PREDATOR’ STEREOTYPES DEBUNKED IN NEW STUDY.” APA Online. 18 Feb 2008. American Psychological Association. 21 Feb 2008 http://www.apa.org/releases/sexoffender0208.htmlSchool Boards Rule, Internet No Longer Dangerous The National School Boards Association, which represents 95,000 school board members, just released a report declaring fears of the internet are overblown. In fact, after surveying 1,277 students, "the researchers found exactly one student who reported they'd actually met a stranger from the internet without their parents' permission. (They described this as "0.08 percent of all students.") The report reminds educators that schools initially banned internet use before they'd realized how educational it was. Now instead they're urging schools to include social networks in their curriculum!" From SlashdotWhat is Web 2.0? The term "Web 2.0“ usually refer to web-based teaching activities that are more interactive, conversational, student-directed, or project- and inquiry- based. For more, visit the Web 2.0 page of this site.
For more, visit Twitter and the Web 2.0 page of this site.
'Digital Disconnect' divides kids,
educators
Students and educators disagree on
whether their schools are preparing graduates adequately for
the jobs of the 21st century, a speaker at an Oct. 15
webcast said.
Two-thirds of principals in a recent survey said they believe their school is preparing students to be competitive in the global workforce. But most tech-savvy students didn't share that view, said Julie Evans, CEO of Project Tomorrow (formerly known as NetDay). Project Tomorrow surveyed more than 370,000 students, teachers, parents, and administrators about their views on technology and education during its Speak Up 2007 research. Of the nearly 320,000 students surveyed, 24 percent considered themselves to be "advanced tech users." "Of these advanced tech users, less than a quarter of them think their school is preparing them for jobs in the future," said Evans, speaking at a webcast sponsored by the Consortium for School Networking. "The ‘digital disconnect' is alive and well," Evans added. "Kids tell us they power down to come to school."
Students who took the survey said the
major obstacles to their use of technology at school include
filters that block the web sites they need and
administrators who impose rules that limit their technology
use.
Contrary to what some people might believe, students say they've noticed more limits to their use of technology at school in recent years, not less--a finding that Evans attributed partly to training that teachers and administrators have undergone. "Now that teachers know more, they're more skittish, so to speak, about using the internet in the classroom," she said. "Students say things were better [for them] a few years ago." In the Speak Up survey, students said they generally use technology for online and computer gaming, downloading music, communicating through eMail, instant messaging and texting, or maintaining a personal web site, such as a Facebook or MySpace page. They said their technology use for schoolwork usually includes researching online, checking assignments or grades online, creating multimedia projects, or communicating with classmates about assignments. Project Tomorrow found that mobile devices, online learning, and gaming are three areas where schools can use emerging technologies to teach students if they aren't already. Many of the students surveyed said they have access to mobile devices such as cell phones, laptop computers, MP3 players, or smart phones and PDAs (personal digital assistants). They said they'd like to use these mobile devices to communicate, collaborate, create and share documents, and increase their productivity. Nearly one in four high school students has had experience with online learning, according to the survey--and a significant percentage of younger students said they were interested in taking a course online. Although the majority of high school students who are interested in taking online courses would like to do so to earn college credit, students in third through eighth grade said they were interested in online classes primarily because these classes would give them extra help.
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