Non-Linear PowerPoint

What I love about non-linear PowerPoints is they allow students to almost have a conversation with the material.  Depending on what they want, they can go from slide to slide, forwards, back, and sideways.  I wanted to create a PowerPoint where students use the slides as a form of reference, almost like an encyclopedia.

So I took a soliloquy from Shakespeare's Macbeth and highlighted certain words in the excerpt that might confuse students.  Student can click on whichever word they want and are led to a definition.  Even if students don't need definitions, they can still use the PowerPoint as a reference because I added articles and videos to the presentation as well.  On the bottom of each slide, I allow students to click back to the soliloquy.  On the bottom of the soliloquy slide, I have links to different interpretations and a video of Sir Ian Mckellen performing the soliloquy.

I'm happy with this PowerPoint.  I can actually imagine students using this presentation, especially if they were doing a specific writing assignment on this excerpt and needed help understanding it.  

Bridging the Digital Divide

Before I read these two articles about the digital divide in public schools, I imagined the "divide" meant that low-income schools in urban areas had little to no access to technology, so their students performed poorly, compared to high-income schools with lots of technology.  Parts of my initial understanding were true; low-income schools do not have access to as much technology as high income schools.  And low-income students are often identified as needing remedial help on state/national exams.

However, the most important thing I learned about the digitial divide is that the "divide" has nothing to do with how much technology students are exposed to.  Minority students in low-income schools have laptops and cellphones, and use them often.  No, the "divide" has to do with the type of technology these low-income schools are given.  Furthermore, just because kids are given remedial computer programs to raise test scores doesn't mean those programs will work!  Computers do not euqal amazing performance. 

They can, if computer programs are used in tandem with excellent instruction from a competent teacher.

As Alec MacGillis writes in his article Law, Softward Fuel 'Digital Divid', "When students are drilled over and over on the same standards that they're going to be tested on, skeptics say, one would expect that their scores would go up somewhat. What is more important is whether the software is benefiting students in ways that will stick after the tests are done" (Macgillis).

If a bad teacher is drilling students on testing materials, it doesn't mean the students will score higher because they were drilled over and over again.  Students will score higher if an exceptional teacher is drilling them, and hopefully, teaching them some useful reading, writing, and math skills along the way they can use after the test is over.  The same rule applies to technology.  It's not enough to give a school millions of dollars to use a computer program if that program is ineffective and not backed by research.     

In her article Understanding the New Digital Divide, Mary Beth Hertz explains the Divide can be understood if we consider the kind of access students have to technology, not whether they have access at all.  So as teachers, we need to be wary of any remedial programs that come our way.  Just because it's been funded by millions of dollars and promoted around the district does not mean it will help our students.  Schools and teachers should not be so "desperate," as MacGillis describes, to get our kids in front of computers because we want to raise test scores.  There is no substitute for excellent, hands-on teaching.  One excerpt from MacGillis' article really struck me:

"At one station, a student from an eighth-grade special-needs class was doing an exercise on identifying the roots of words, a skill included in New Jersey's state content standards. The exercise was dressed up as a baseball game: a word appeared on a base on a diamond, and the boy, the "batter," had to choose one of four words that described the meaning of the word's root. The word "missile" appeared on first base. Confused, the boy clicked on the "help" icon, and was told by the computer that the root of "missile" means "send." But he didn't understand that he was being given the answer, and instead clicked on a wrong choice, "miss." The program proceeded to the next example anyway: "dictation" appeared on second base. Again, the boy clicked for help, which told him the nswer was "say." This time he realized he was being given the answer, and he dutifully picked that choice. The program congratulated him: He had hit a double! Despite the boy's troubles, he wasn't about to get any help from his teacher, Sharae Huff. She was watching the class from a distance, holding back from approaching those who were stuck. For Huff, the Compass period was a time to let someone else - the computer - do the teaching."

We can't allow computer programs to do the teaching for us!  Technology should be used to enhance teaching, not take the place of it. 

Don't even get me started on standardized testing and the pressure it puts on school systems.  Or on its ability to waste months of meaningful teaching time.  If this country weren't so focused on getting those "great" scores, the digitial divide would be easier to bridge.   

Girls Can be Computer Geeks Too

This article by associate professor Diane McGrath entitled "Closing the Gender Gap," addresses the question of why boys often dominate the field of technology.  Why is Best Buy's "Geek Squad" usually made up of tech savvy boys?  McGrath argues its not because girls are less engaged with or adept at using media resources.  She argues its because of the way math and technology is taught to students in primary and secondary school.

She compares technology to the dilemma girls have with math.  Studies show that girls can struggle with and have less proficiency in math than their male classmates, and are less likely to choose a career in the math or science fields.  Female astrophysicists, for example, are an anomoly, an exception to the rule.  McGrath says the best way to teach math, science, and technology so this gender gap doesn't happen is to use a project based learning (PBL) approach.  In contrast to traditional teaching methods, PBL allows students to "become more deeply involved with technology to enhance their understanding of what they are learning."  With PBL, students are using technology and science to complete projects that can be used in the real world, like an astronomy project made on MicroWorlds that can teach kids astronomy. 

It seems like a no-brainer that such projects would promote literacy and confidence in using technology.  It harkens back to that question we always asked in math class: "Why am I learning this?  Why do I need this?"  With PBL, students don't have to ask that question.  They're not just learning concepts, they're applying those concepts.  Raife Esquith, who's won national awards and recongnitions for his work at Hobart Elementary in LA, says he takes students to baseball games so they can practice math.  They think about and compare player statistics to determine the lineup!  Cool, right?  Math has meaning.  PBL makes technology have meaning too.

McGrath closes her argument stating that as teachers, we need to be aware of girls' social and spacial needs when doing PBL.  That's what brings it all together.  She writes:

"Answering to girls' needs for social   able to participate, and they want the social, cognitive, and physical space in which to do so. They want to have their issues listened to and addressed. And when we do these things, when we teach in a connected way and take into account girls’ need to engage deeply with the subject matter, then girls do work-even in math and technology, fìelds we always thought girls didn’t like."

Makes sense to me!