Engaging 21sth Century Learners

This video was made for college students, but it applies to all learners. It shows "NetGen" behaviors:

Today’s students are overloaded with information, over scheduled and disconnected from traditional classroom teaching. As we see in the video, NetGen behaviors include:

• Using personal digital devices during class
• Working on something else instead of focusing on the lecture
• Not doing the reading assignments
• Communicating non-verbally

To reach students you have to use their own weapons against them. If they want to collaborate; design a collaborative document using Google or Zoho documents. If they want to communicate non-verbally; set up a bulletin board.

My attempt to engage students was with a seventh grade typing class. Every 8^th period, the students filed into a room to type practice exercises from a book into Microsoft Word. Although they are all in the same room, there is no interaction and the teacher stressed “no talking”.

I put the class “online” by creating a virtual classroom. At http://ny.globalclassroom.us/ I created the class and uploaded the student accounts. Now the students do their typing into blogs. They interact with each other by seeing each other's work. The teacher posts the typing assignments and the students then do the work. My intention is to allow the typing class to be a non-scheduled class. Students log into the classroom and do their typing assignment when they have a free period. It will no longer be necessary to schedule everyone into the same room at the same time.

In the First Chapter of “Educating the Net Generation”, Bob Pletka writes about how students are bored with current teaching methods. They have a need for a sense of community, teamwork and collaboration. Creating virtual classrooms helps because students are doing the work “on their time”, not being forced into a classroom for 45 minutes.

The associated press report today that there were nearly 4.3 million births in 2006. This is the highest number since 1961 (near the end of the baby boom). As these babies become students, how will the school accommodate them? By adding classrooms in trailers as they did in the 1970s or by adding virtual classrooms?

Another thing that students do today is to question authority. Back in the day, when a teacher told us something, we took it at face value and didn’t question the information. Now students are using the Internet to find the answers for themselves.

Now more than ever we have to realize that students are not an empty bucket that we need to fill. Time recently did an article on this subject. You can read more here:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1568480,00.html

As educators, we’ve got a lot of work to do.

Kim

A New Year - A New Semester

It is a new semester and I've started with my first class. It seems interesting and I hope to learn more than I did in the last class. The first assignment is a "getting to know you" essay, so I thought I'd share it here:

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EST 571 January 8, 2008

Written Perspective 1 Kim Bunchuck

Understanding and Use of Educational Technology

The IBM Personal Computers and I started in technology the same year, 1981. I was in college trying to decide what I wanted to do when I grew up when I stumbled into a BASIC programming class. I was hooked! I took as many computer electives as an English Literature major could and graduated college in 1982 with a minor in computer programming. While in college, I was employed to write programs in FORTRAN to collect and report surveys results.

I’ve worked in IT ever since. In 1985, I started teaching evening classes at Strayer College (now University) in Washington DC. My students learned Harvard Total Project Manager, WordPerfect, and Lotus 1-2-3. By day I was Assistant Director of the technology department for the Wilderness Society. We used an IBM System 38 to perform all the fundraising for the large organization.

A move to Long Island in 1989 brought me to Suffolk Community College to teach Adult Education classes, something I have done now for 17 years. Currently I serve as the Technology Director of Greenport School District, a position that I’ve held since 1997. It is a small district, so I get to do it all, from printer jams to network implementation. I am not classroom faculty, so my teaching is limited to staff development. I do teach one night a week at Suffolk Community College.

My hobby through all this time has been quilting. In a mid-life crisis decision, I started a quilt related business in 1999. I registered SunbonnetSue.com and started an e-commerce web business that sells fabric and patterns. I have changed the website over the years, first programming it with CGI scripts, but now managing my inventory and customer databases with SQL and PHP pages.

Even though I have been involved in education for most of my career, I never went back to college to get a Master’s Degree. I’m doing that now. I hope to complete my Degree at the end of 2008 with a thesis focusing on incorporating e-commerce into a college curriculum. I’d like to leave the K-12 environment and work at the college level for the last 20 years of my career.

In the 27 years that I’ve worked in IT, I think I’ve forgotten more information than I currently use. I remember teaching “Introduction to Personal Computers” classes where we worked from a DOS prompt. My favorite application has always been spreadsheets. I current work in EXCEL, but I’ve worked in Symphony, VisiCalc, Lotus (1-2-3 & Symphony). I also have done quite a bit a Database Administration. I used to teach dBASE II, III and IV. Currently I work in Access and SQL using mySQL and phpMyAdmin. I am a big supporter of open source software. I’ve downloaded and implemented all open source programs to run my website. Currently I’m using Gallery and OSCommerce. I have been searching for open source software to put on the Greenport Web Server that I manage. I have a copy of XOOPS downloaded (website management), but I haven’t implemented it yet. I would also like to deploy Moodle on the Greenport Server.

As for my online life, I have training videos posted on Teachertube and Youtube. I have two blogs, one for my quilting life and this one.

The joy of working in IT is that there is always more to learn. I look forward to doing that in this class.