Kid-Tested, Administration-Approved Twitter for your Class

High School teachers and even elementary teachers, it's time to get hip and join the social media networking frenzy.  It has become an increasing debate on if teachers should cross that line from privacy to public domain with their social networking profiles on Twitter, Facebook, etc., especially those who are fresh out of college within the past 5 years and witnessed the beginnings of "TheFacebook" (Facebook's original website title).  So how can educators still have a private life, write on friends walls about the upcoming gathering on the weekend, yet still be professional with students that live and breathe social media?  Introducing sites like Twiducate, "an opportunity for students to explore web 2.0 without the barriers and blocks of existing social networking websites."

School networks are keen to block trance-inducing sites like Facebook and Myspace, so incorporating social media into the classroom with the thumbs up from administration may be a bit tricky.  With Twiducate, it's a website solely designed for the classroom, controlled by the teachers, and just for the purpose to help connect the classroom... well, outside of the classroom.  A teacher is able to create her own profile and a unique classroom that she manages.  From there, the teachers actually create the students' profiles so as to disallow just any student, or any person for that matter to join the online class profile.  Creating a student under the controlled classroom profile churns out a unique passcode that a student can use once provided by the instructor to login to the specific classroom.

Once the classroom profile is set up and the students have their codes, the class can tweet away to one another, have discussions, comment on other topics, and even have quirky avatars to keep it light.  It's a safe website, safe in the sense that it's darn near impossible to do anything wrong on it.  Images or files can't be posted, and posts can be deleted by the teacher if need be.  Students can't wander into another "classroom," and they can't post official bookmarks to the group's page (only the teacher can).  It allows for a teacher to communicate with students over the weekend without the worry of providing phone numbers or facebook messages, yet its personal enough to be answered quicker than an email since it's within the community setting.

With Twiducate being so basic, there's hardly any options or profile changes anyone can alter or change.  After playing around with it for a few moments, one can even see a value in adding this into the elementary school classroom for 4th or 5th graders that may want to become wet behind the ears with social media (aka web 2.0).  As a matter of fact, Twidicate itself says on its website: "It is a fact that students will need social networking, blogging and basic internet skills to compete in today's business world."  I'd be very interested to see if school administration catches onto the need of students using and breathing social media.  Whether Twiducate or another website that offers such a web 2.0 service in an approved academic setting, it may be their only shot to keep up with these tech-savvy students.

Map making companies must give more than just a picture

A globe helps a student understand the fact that the earth is round...this is good, although there still seems to be a few that were daydreaming during that lesson and eventually end up on the Flat Earth Society forums in their developing years.  But besides that concept and the study of outer space, what else are globes used for in the subject of geography?  The location of countries?  nothing a wall map or even computer software cannot provide these days.

As a matter of fact, with the rise of GPS, Google Earth, and even map databases like David Rumsey that let's a student view maps from 100 to 200 years ago, geography has exploded in the past 10 years alone.  Just to think, ten years ago we were still looking at paper maps and asking for directions.  Now, the man that had too much pride to stop and ask for directions doesn't think twice about letting the smooth-talking GPS lady lead the way.  Even iPhone apps are supplying our geography needs.  Now we have a globe in our pockets on a little screen (At the time of this post the Flat Earth Society has still not yet released an iPhone app).

So what does this mean for the education realm and for companies that provide tools for education?  It seems that outside of primary schools, a customer need for physical items like wall maps, transparencies, and globes is becoming an unnecessary expenditure.  Online sources on the other hand never become obsolete, they are simply updated from the server side.  They don't need to be carried around.  They don't receive wear and tear.  They don't need to be purchased more than once.  They can be brought to a student's home computer if they are needed to be used for homework.

In order to stay in business, it sounds like map making companies will have to provide something more than just a picture with some borders and lines to stay in business.  Pre-1995, this was how map-making companies made money.  After all, that's all anyone knew since the capacity for information exchange and its availability was nothing compared to today's capability.

So then, what will make a school actually spend money if they can receive all of this information for free already on applications like Google Earth?  Today they will have to add value to their product, something that an educator cannot get for free, and something that will undoubtedly improve grades, excitement, and understanding on the topic at hand.  Information, knowledge, comprehension all must be provided as solutions that will engage, intrigue, and challenge the student.  Instead of lecturing at the students with the materials, the tool must grow with the students by not only letting them take control of the learning process but also by empowering them with enough success to be excited about learning the world around us.

Little need for calculators in middle schools

Time to beat a dead horse... or in this case, reincarnate it and then have at it again.  Yes, we're going there: calculators in the classroom.  This debate was a full scale battle for ten years once the adoption of the 1991 National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) Curriculum and Evaluation Standards recommended that "every teacher at every level promote the use of calculators to enhance mathematics instruction."  But for some strange reason, the outcries seem to have just faded away.  No recent articles or arguments have been posted since the early 2000's.  Why is that?  It was such a heated debate, it seemed almost as never-ending as the Mac vs. PC situation we have at our hands today.

But in all seriousness, let's look at this topic from a fresh perspective after a few new years of technological advancement, which, as we know, is leaps and bounds ahead of where we were from just the turn of the century.  Looking at one of the older articles from 2002 which, at the time, maintained the discussion, both sides seemed pretty even in their respective weights.  For example, a proponent could argue that graphing calculators help students understand calculus break-even points when intersecting two variable graphs of cost and revenue.  That is very reasonable and easily defended.  Instead, let's discuss the use of calculators for simple mathematical calculations that, until as of late, were all learned on a multiplication times tables in primary school.

In the Teachers Manual of one of the math textbooks that a Washington State School District uses, the following is explained on the topic of long division: "Mastery of the intricacies such as algorithms is a huge endeavor, one that experience tells us is doomed to failure for many students.  It is simply counter-productive to invest many hours of previous class time on such algorithms.  The mathematical payoff is not worth the cost, particularly because quotients can be found quickly and accurately with a calculator."

Weren't education authorities supposed to be optimistic?  Now, it's great to be a proponent for technology to help understand a desired concept in a given topic, but for some reason this statements jumps out as a bit concerning.  This may be too brash of an assumption, but isn't there a large difference between using software to plot and analyze a set of data than to thoughtlessly plug in the problem and immediately receive the answer?

With strong statements such as these shifting the calculator paradigm, these little super-computers have become rampant in middle schools where typically a foundation of algebra is nurtured and maintained. So how does that affect our students that go to college today? In an October 2009 report released by ENLACE Florida, "over 20,000 state university students in Florida either withdrew or did not receive a passing grade in key math courses required for them to fulfill university requirements during the 2007-2008 academic year."  In other words, these are not math-heavy courses that require terribly advanced logical or mathematical reasoning.  These are rudimentary basic courses like College Algebra and Trigonometry that any student, regardless of discipline should be able to pass and succeed in.  Now, please don't be that critic who gleefully points to Florida Virtual Schools as the scapegoat for a figure like this without considering the facts.  All states have pass/fail rates similar to this.  States like California and Michigan are concerned about the very same issues.  Just as the New York Times points out that math aptitude was higher before the passing of "No Child Left Behind", we are beginning to see the aftermath that the act has had on a state's ability to oversee their curriculum (inside and outside of mathematics).

Unless that is, the goals of math education are changing before our very eyes. In other words, should we even have students understand how numbers work?  Because if not, then let's move on to concepts and story problems and forget about algorithms while calculators do all of that "mish-mash."  But then what happens to trigonometry, to algebra, to calculus?  Most lesson plans within these math subjects thrive on a solid familiarity of simple math concepts and calculations.  When trying to FOIL, does one take out her calculator to find out what 13 * 3 equals?  It takes a student twice as long to do such a simple process when thoughtlessly punching the numbers into a calculator.  I've seen it… even in a rather well-off 8th grade class.  How disheartening it was to know these students were going to be taking calculus one day when a student tugged on my sleeve and pointed to a double digit multiplication problem asked, "How do I multiply this out?"

Outside of square roots and logarithms (Not mental math), let's get serious about the level of usage of these potent little pieces of technology in the non-high school classrooms.  They are extremely beneficial to understanding high school and college math concepts, but is it really all that justifiable in the long run to save your own skin as a middle school teacher for a student to have good grades because of using a calculator, only to later let the student struggle in college calculus?

No more textbooks?

Remember that poor 4-foot-tall boy who toppled over with the backpack that weighed as much as he did?  Well, it seems like we're approaching a time when he'll just have to bring his electronic reader to school.  Maybe a few folders, too.

Introducing the Amazon Kindle - a thin, lightweight, electronic reader that holds up to 1,500 books (3,500 for the DX version) in the palm of your hand.  We don't necessarily have to showcase the Kindle, really.  For the point at hand, any electronic reader will do (Amazon just happens to be the most obvious to use an example for price, use, etc.).  What becomes so fascinating however is the potential this could yield for the educational field.  At first glance this hand held device is a bit pricey at $259.  But we know this is temporary.  After all, just looking at the iPhone's initial release of $599 is laughable when comparing to today's Apple advertisement of a mere $99.  It's only a matter of time before technology becomes financially accessible to everyone and reaches critical mass market share.

Electronic readers will be no exception, and now that publishing companies are catching on so will schools.  Speaking about publishers, let's consider textbooks.  Consulting a few teachers, it was found that on average, a school buys a set of textbooks to last 8-10 years, and a textbook, depending on its subject, could vary between $65 and $90 a pop when buying in bulk.  Now we know our students take excellent care of these textbooks during the 9 months they borrow them, but every once in a while a student enjoys a textbook so very much that she decides to make personal notes in it or keep it and use it through college.  With publishers pumping out new editions of textbooks every other year, it becomes a bit frustrating when trying to order just a few textbooks to replenish your school's supply, only to find it has been discontinued from print.  There may be a few extra copies of this History textbook at the Texas used book depository...that is if you don't mind a chapter of history being Texas State history instead."

When an electronic reader decreases only $150 to an inevitable $99, a school could possibly begin integrating electronic readers into the curriculum, encouraging families to buy their students a reader that would last them their 4 years of high school.  Now, all that a school would have to put up front would be a minimal cost per site license of an e-textbook.  With everything being wireless, the school could control which students view which textbooks after registering each student's reader.  Whether or not this is all even possible right now, companies like CourseSmart are beginning to emerge that are on the right track.

Critics may argue that an electronic reader just can't compare to a true textbook, one where students can actually search through the pages, bookmark, look at multiple pages at the flip of a hand, etc.  True, this may affect studying in the traditional sense.  But how different is this to the development of printed works over oratory?  Or video over printed works?  Or MP3 over CD, even, a debate that still rages over fanatics clinging to their jewel cases and special-release booklets for dear life.  It's guaranteed, some little things will be lost in the transition, and not everyone will operate on e-documents everywhere, but it appears that society has time and time again voted for the more convenient over the traditional.

Like the teachers at Montgomery County where "each employee has a monthly limit of copies" or are being "urged to reconsider their paper-dependent ways," they can now look at an electronic reader and see the potential to distribute PDF worksheets to a student's hand held device.  Why not continue with this idea and flirt with teacher accessibility?  It doesn't seem too far away when students can submit their completed worksheets over a 3G network, and an instructor can take his 1/3 inch reader home to grade their students' papers instead of stacks upon stacks of paper-clipped and stapled packets of paper.  A teacher really could take his work wherever he goes, grading papers on the subway, on the plane, or even standing in line at the bank--all without the need to set up a home base of operations, papers scattered everywhere about him.  User friendliness and screen size to make it feasible to navigate through different textbooks and assignments would undoubtedly come with time.

I can see the advertising slogan now: "Heavy backpacks: Now a thing of the past!"

*Update* 6/3/2010 : The future has arrived!  Seen here in this article, one Florida school does exactly this!