Observations on Student Tech Use

by Shelly Blake-Plock

Wandering around the cafe today during a lunch duty, I took mental notes on the tech usage by high school students.

Counted a half-dozen kids on Skype; one of them was sharing photos from a school event. A handful of kids were listening to stuff on iPods; at least two students were downloading songs from sites I'm not familiar with -- one looked to be some sort of message board (isn't that so 90's?).

One student was sitting at a table of gamers making a proxy to hack passed the school's firewall. About a half-dozen students were playing MMOGs. One student was playing a beta version of a first-person game called MineWars, or something of that sort.

One student was using Google Translate to read a Chinese newspaper. One student was watching a YouTube video of a ballet recital, another was showing her friends videos of cheerleading practice. One student was busy on his iPhone and a few others were texting.

Two students were on Facebook (despite the fact it's, um, "blocked"). And three students were on Twitter -- which is not blocked.

No one seemed to be doing any software-based stuff; everything was online. Oh, and from what I could tell, about 90% of the kids were using Google Chrome.

Talked to kids about IM'ing and everyone said they used Skype the most (as in, it was always on). Facebook came in second. No one -- as in not a single kid -- said they use Google Chat or Google Talk. They said passwords were a pain in the butt. And they don't like email.

By and large, according to the students, Twitter was something you might use for class. Very "business-like". Though one student loves it to follow ESPN writers. In fact, ESPN was mentioned several times.

One student was obsessed with Google News -- it's where he gets his news. Another uses four different gaming interfaces "daily". Just about every student said Facebook was the place to be outside of school (as though it were a "place" -- like the mall) -- and several mentioned that the thing they liked about FB was the "privacy". Huh.

I think it's a good idea now and then to pay attention to what the kids are doing -- to see what's trending and to see what's not. More than anything, I'm interested in seeing what develops as the "normal", the "standard", and the "go-to". Because the tools we use tell volumes about our needs and desires.

More on Why I Want Students to Blog

Yesterday, I posted about a Freshman who had published over 100 blog posts in a single semester of my West Civ class. A few readers asked if he was one of those outliers who stand apart from the crowd.

That's a tough one to answer. Because in one sense, yes of course any kid who writes that much over the course of a semester is an 'outlier' of sorts. But so are the kids who only produce a dozen posts. In my classes, over 80% of the students posted more than what was required. What does that mean? "Why" are some kids compelled to write so much and put so much time into their blogs? I come back to the idea that a student writes 100+ posts in a semester because the student owns the learning.

I've posted here screenclips of blog archives of four students in my Latin III class. These are high school juniors in a year-long class. Collectively, they produced five-hundred-and-fourteen posts in a single semester. They comprise everything from notes on vocab to student translations of Latin primary sources to pieces that consider current events from the eyes of ancient historians.

And by-and-large, few of these posts were instigated by me. Rather, the students decided what, when, and how to blog. Each student used her or his blog in a slightly different way. Some use them as their primary 'notebooks' while others use them more for personal reflection on issues both within and without the classroom. The students post tests, translations, and bibliographies directly to their blogs: this way, they have easy searchable access to all of that material available on the Cloud via any computer or device.

As a blogger myself, I certainly subscribe to the notion that our blogs are extensions of our personalities and windows into our thought processes. On a personal level, blogs are searchable web-based archives of our own formation and development as thinkers and learners. In recognizing that, we come face to face with a new reality about the way that we should be assessing our students -- as well as ourselves.

Why I Want Students to Blog

Got a screen-clipping I'd like to share with you.

This is from the blog of one of my Freshmen in West Civ class. You can see the titles of his recent posts: "Exam Practice", "Battle of Tours Wiki Source", "Notes West Civ 5/20/10", "Is Monarchy More or Less Effective Than Democracy?", etc.

You'll also notice the number of posts this student published in 2010. He published 113 blog posts.

One-hundred and thirteen blog posts.

During a semester long course.

The required number of blog posts for the course?

65.

What is going on here?

What's going on here is a case where we've got a student who OWNS his blog. We've got a student who has turned his blog into a veritable compendium of West Civ that he is going to be able to use as a searchable reference throughout his high school career.

He is going to eat AP Modern Euro for lunch. He is going to pwn British Literature in his senior year.

Because he owns his knowledge. He owns his understanding. And he's made something authentic: his own personal resource... and a record of the history of his own ideas.

That's why I want students to blog.

The Further Adventures of Students Designing Their Own Final Exam

So my Latin III students have begun the process of designing their own final exam.

They've decided to collaborate on writing an eBook about life as a Latin student in the year 2010.

I've given them a broad outline of what I'd "like" to see them accomplish in the exam -- demonstrate understanding of selected poems of Horace, Ovid, Catullus (poems mostly from the old AP syllabus with a few of my personal favorites thrown in); demonstrate mastery in morphology and vocab; and show the development of their skill in translating by comparing translations they did in Freshman year to translations they are producing now (easy to do because they've been keeping a blog of all of their translations since day one of Freshman year).

I'd also like them to show what they've learned about ancient cultures and show what they've learned about themselves over the course of three years studying a language that most folks figure is good for getting by on the SAT and not much else.

The students are working on developing a series of assessments; each one will correspond to one of the items I've suggested, but they will be approached individually from the point-of-view of each student's personal interest -- history, politics, creative writing, etc.

Combined, the assessments will take the format of the chapters of a book. We'll then publish on Blurb or Lulu or somewhere cool so that all students will have a complete eBook and if they choose to they can order a print copy (one student already wants to give one to her mom).

Imagine that: wanting to give a copy of your final exam to your mom as a present.

I think we're on the right track.

Final Exams: Of the Students, By the Students, For the Students

It's that time of year again.

That time of year when teachers start reviewing months' worth of information and learning for the sake of cramming enough into the minds of students that they'll be able to sit in a chair for two hours and complete a final exam without throwing the curve off by too much.

I'm not a huge fan of final exams; but I am a huge fan of finding out what students know. So, this year, my Latin III students -- kids I've taught for three straight years -- will be designing their own final exam as a way of showing me what it is that they know.

I've given them all next week to collaborate on the design of the exam -- the questions, the content, the way the whole thing should be assessed. I'll be there to help out, to meddle, and to instigate them to dig deeper into what they have learned to produce an exam that will ultimately better demonstrate how it is that they've developed as learners over these three years.

But ultimately it'll be there's.

If they make it purposefully easy, well, by our agreement that's what it'll be: an easy exam. But I've told them expressly that I expect them to push themselves to and beyond their max -- and not to give in to the easy option.

And time and again -- in fact most everytime I've given them complete control over their learning destiny -- they've pushed themselves harder than I would have thought to push them.

Which, of course, ups the ante.

So here they are with one week to prepare the exam that will accurately assess the learning they've done over the past three years, the trust we have fostered over that span, and the quality of their development as they see it -- not with them as bit-players -- entries in a gradebook -- but as young adults with full awareness of what they are capable of, full cognizance of what the challenges are, and full responsibility for pushing themselves further than they thought they could go.

My students are writing their own final exam.

And I'd bet my last nickel that it's going to be the most challenging exam they've ever sat for.

Student Access

TechCrunch reports on big news on the Google front today. It's about 'Froyo', the new Android 2.2, and it has huge implications for web access in schools:

Froyo will have built in USB tethering so you can share your data connection with your laptop... And even better: you can turn your Android phone into a portable wifi hotspot as well.

@concretekax asks four great questions this morning on his blog that all school admins and teachers should be thinking about right about now:

• Will this type of technology make cable connections obsolete
• Is paying to put Wi-Fi hotspots in school buildings also a waste of money?
• Will schools allow students to use this technology or pay waste money on equipment to block the signals?
• Will this help end the filtering debates and make CIPA irrelevant?

Are you ready for students creating their own wi-fi hotspots? You better be. Because this is the type of thing that more than anything suggests what the future looks like: it's mobile, it's accessible, what used to be public is personal and what used to be personal is public.

Better get to work on those new digital health classes you are going to be offering. You'll have a couple extra bucks to pay for 'em now that your Internet blocking software is obsolete.

"We launched our own computer lab in my classroom."

I continue to be absolutely humbled by the fearlessness of teachers and students who took part in last week's Paperless Earth Day.

A few days back, I published a post of things teachers had done to go paperless in their classrooms.  Some were high-tech and some were lo-tech. They were all creative, thoughtful, determined, and pro-student.

This evening I got word of another project a teacher and his students took on. And I'm in awe.

"My 130 + students decided that we were not going to go paperless for just Earth Day, but rather the remainder of the year. We discussed a plan and then put that plan into action. My students and I were able to take a laptop cart that had been abandoned by most at the school due to the operating issue of the machines, which are about six years old. We spent the next few weeks leading up to Earth Day repairing and cleaning the machines up after school.

"On April 22, we launched our own computer lab in my classroom."

That's from a post by Mike Meechin, a high school teacher in Florida. He posted it on his blog -- Innovate Education -- and I, for one, am looking forward to checking in throughout these last several weeks of the school year to see how he and his students are doing.

Open Blog: What Device is it that Students and Teachers are Looking For?

So, the Google Tablet is imminent.

And so it's time to open up the bloglines to some reader opinion and comments.

For you iPad-wielding folks, based on your experience so far, what's needed to make these types of devices more applicable for students and teachers? Or is the 'right' device something entirely different?

Can/Would education benefit from a ubiquitous device? And let's just talk devices for a moment.

What do we teachers 'need' in terms of a device? What do our students need? What exactly is it that we 'need' to get to -- and use -- all our stuff out there on the Web?

Lot's of questions. Let's hear what you've got to say.