Come back often!

« December 2006 | Main | February 2007 »

January 25, 2007

In the classroom with GPS

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to work with five classes of fifth and sixth graders to give them their first introduction to the world of GPS.  I had anywhere from 35 to 45 minutes so I had to work fast.   Here’s what we accomplished.

1. Students took about 2 minutes to record in their science notebooks what they already knew about GPS.   For some, all they could do was spell GPS. Others knew what the letters meant. And a few had a vague notion that the GPS would enable folks to find their way.
2. I did a mini-lecture/questioning session to draw out prior knowledge and to get the very basics down. The knowledge was limited to these facts.
1. GPS means Global Positioning System
2. The system relies on 24 satellites.
3. We did a student participation demo using students as the satellites, myself as a GPSr (receiver), and strings to represent the communication between us.   Adding one satellite at a time, we discovered one more fact.
1. It takes a minimum of 4 satellites to determine an exact point on the earth’s surface. (Here’s a great explanation.)
2. This only works because the satellites are geosynchronous.  (Took time out for examining the roots of the word.)
3. Location is reported back in latitude and longitude, with reference back to prior geography lessons.
4. Using digital photos of the screen of my GPSr from a previous day, we looked at the buttons to push and what was to be expected on the screen.
5.  Then we took a field trip.  Actually, we walked out the door and teams of three got a GPSr each.  From here, we accomplished the following.
1. Each student got a fix by turning on the GPSr until it gave latitude and longitude.
2. Then they walked to some spot in the field (about the size of a football field) and marked their location.
3. Each team brought their unit back and another team tried to use the GPSr to go back to the location of the previous team.
6. Back to the classroom and we took a quick look at the items hidden nearby on geocaching.com

WHEW!!!   I never guessed we’d get that much done in the period and there is much to be followed up on, but overall the kids seemed to understand.  Teachers now plan to follow up with other lessons and gradually incorporate the units for other  purposes. 

Posted by Pat on 4:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 17, 2007

Geography is Cool Again!

I came across this today as an example of something that is just cool – geogreeting.com. When I got there I created my own GeoGreeting.

My original career was as a middle school social studies teacher and, of the social studies, my favorites were and are geography and economics. I'm old enough now to have lived through the laments of kids not knowing where they were in the world. With GPS-enabled phones and now GPS locator information on Instant Messaging clients, perhaps we are turning the corner.

At any rate, this is just a fun thing to try and to imagine the possibilities!

Posted by Pat on 10:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 10, 2007

Realities of the Net Generation

The latest ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology for 2006 was recently released. The findings in this report should give us both cause for celebration and cause for consideration. The study reports that 97.8% of students reported for college with a PC and 38.3% brought both a laptop and a desktop computer. The use of e-mail is at 99.9% and instant messaging at 80%. One interesting item here is that students seem to understand the relative value and appropriateness of each medium; they prefer to get official communication via e-mail. Among a wide variety of activities, the study reported that 27.7% report "using software to create or edit video and audio files." (p. 3-4)

According to ECAR, "respondents are generally confident in their skills using information technologies." However, the recent results from the ETS ICT Literacy Assessment had some evidence that either their definition is incomplete or the bar is rising.

Some of the most surprising preliminary research findings are that only 52% of test takers could correctly judge the objectivity of a Web site, and only 65% could correctly judge the site's authoritativeness. In a Web search task, only 40% entered multiple search terms to narrow the results. And when selecting a research statement for a class assignment, only 44% identified a statement that captured the demands of the assignment.

We also regularly hear that students crave more technology in their courses. The ECAR survey revealed that about 24% wanted extensive or exclusive use of IT, but 21% wanted limited or no IT use. Looks like college students are pretty much like the rest of the population with most (56%) wanting "moderate" amounts of IT.

One finding jumped out at me as pertinent to planning of classes or courses. "It remains clear after three years of study that a student's choice of academic major is closely associated with a set of IT skills, choices and preferences." (p. 9) This is where we, as teachers, really need to provide more opportunities within substantive, authentic experiences so that students can increase the range of the careers they view as viable options for themselves.

Posted by Pat on 11:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 9, 2007

Rediscovered: Poor Man's Multimedia

While working on a presentation about "multimedia assignments" for the UD Winter Faculty Institute, I revisited some tools I had played with before. Both of them have added features and just generally got better.

First is BubbleShare. This is an online version of PhotoStory 3 or the narrated slide show features of iMovie. You can upload images and then add narration right in the web site. This saves you the trouble of getting the software and of learning how to publish.

Second is EyeSpot. This is the online version of iMovie. You can upload video clips and then edit them together in real time. The interface on this has made great strides allowing you to reorder clips and edit them, add transitions and titles, and then mix your video for publication right on the site. You can even pull from the clip libraries that are available on the site.

For people who want to get into digital storytelling and publishing to the web, these sites are certainly a no muss - no full way to get started.

Posted by Pat on 1:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Why do people post on the Web?

Here's something that caught my eye today -- Why Do People Contribute to Digg or Wikipedia? This is of particular interest after Time named You as the 2006 Person of the Year.

This really affects us on two levels. First, as we use this site for research or information, it's very useful and interesting to know about why people might post to these sites. Knowing what the motivation of the folks who contribute may help make more informed decisions about what to trust.

Second, knowing why people contribute may help in crafting assignments with "authentic audiences." Why will some students shine and others shy away from these? Are there strategies in creating those assignments that we should take into account?

I don't know the answers to either of these questions, but I do think it's important to think more about the questions than the answers and develop new questions every day.

Posted by Pat on 11:53 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack