The Impact of Facebook

The TIME article “Kids Who Use Facebook Do Worse in School” highlights research findings (good and bad) on how using Facebook impacts a child’s overall personality and performance in school. The findings were delivered at the 119th annual convention of the American Psychological Association by Larry Rosen, a professor of psychology at California State University, who researches the psychology of technology.

The researchers observed kids’ study behavior and found that every three minutes they were off-task. (Three minutes?!) The more time elapsed, the more windows students opened on the computer, with the highest number of windows at 8-10 minutes. When students toggled between windows and other tasks, they performed worse. Not surprising – these findings echo other research studies that show multi-tasking is actually inefficient. Yet, how often do you jump between windows and tasks? (I’m so guilty of this!) Unfortunately, it’s almost become the nature of work these days.

Here is a quick recap of the findings:

The bad news…

• Those middle school, high school, and college students who checked Facebook at least once during a 15 minute period got lower grades.
• Teens who use Facebook tend to have more narcissistic tendencies.

The good news…

• Kids who spent more time online were the kids most able to demonstrate “virtual empathy”, through supportive comments online. This, Rosen, says translates to real-world empathy, “We are finding that kids who are able to express more virtual empathy are able to express more real-world empathy… They feel more supported socially by online and offline networks.”

A few strategies:

• Metacognition – use this as an opportune time to teach kids about metacognition, knowing how your brain works and how you learn/study best.
• “Tech breaks” – teachers scaffold students in expanding their attention span. Ask them to work for 15 minutes and then give students a one minute tech break.

 

Facebook for Educators

Ok, teachers, summer is here.  Hopefully, you’ll have some time to indulge in some luxuries – a good read perhaps, an art class, a trip off island…  If you have some time, you may want to check out this resource, Facebook for Educators.  It’s comprehensive in scope, covering everything from the basics of Facebook to creating a school Facebook policy to how to use Facebook to support collaboration and communication in the classroom.  Not to worry – leveraging the social networking affordances of Facebook does not require you to friend your students but rather make use of the Pages and Groups features within Facebook.  The information is easy to navigate (chunked well) and there are handouts that offer application ideas and tips.  Happy Facebooking!

Technology changing our cognitive power or just our soul?

IAAK is an educational technology solutions company.  We like technology, we see the value of technology, and, of course, we promote technology.  However, we believe that the technology needs to enhance or extend the learning.  Before integrating any new piece of hardware of software, school leaders and teachers should pause and evaluate the benefits or affordances the technology brings to teaching and learning.  If the technology does not add true value, is it needed?  Making this distinction requires:  1) understanding pedagogy, 2) understanding your students and their developmental capabilities, 3) understanding the technology solution as it applies to your context, and 4) guts to stick to what you know and believe.   

The New York Times article The Twitter Trap by Bill Keller sparks lots of thinking and resonates with many of the conversations I’ve had over the last few weeks.  The author comments on the effect technology (especially social media like Twitter and Facebook) has on our cognitive abilities as well as on our ways of being ‘social’.  It’s worth the read.  Here are a couple quotes to pique your interest:

• “Basically, we are outsourcing our brains to the cloud.”
• Twitter “…demands attention and response. It is the enemy of contemplation.”
• “So let me be clear that Twitter is a brilliant device — a megaphone for promotion, a seine for information, a helpful organizing tool for everything from dog-lover meet-ups to revolutions. It restores serendipity to the flow of information.”

And the best is the last – he ends the piece by citing a novelist, Meg Wolitzer, who describes the high-school generation as, “The generation that had information, but no context.  Butter, but no bread.  Craving, but no longing.”

The Twitter Revolution

Ok, ok, I admit.  Twitter is not part of my daily life.  However, it soon may be.  Andrew Revkin’s Dot Earth piece titled “Can 140 Characters Matter?” has inspired me to want to dive in and immerse myself in Twitter.  In his piece he shares an example of how an ecology professor, teaching about birds, asks students to tweet every time they see bird behavior.  The result?  Engaged students and a running record of their output.  Revkin summarizes, “Most important, at the end of the term, many students told her they’d never really observed birds until that exercise — which exploited their screen and key focus as a route back to the “real” world.”

Revkin also shares some tweeters’ thoughts about tweeting.  Here are some interesting ones:

• What inspires you to tweet?
  An observation or idea that is incomplete, that could excite, amuse, inform or spread. A question in search of an answering cloud.
• 140 characters of advice for a new user?
  Tweet global. Follow someone from Bhutan, Mali. Test beliefs by following some who seem different. Tweet what inspires more than what angers.
• What is one of the biggest misconceptions of Twitter?
  The big misconception is that Twitter is for TELLING OTHERS what you’re lunching on. The truth is, Twitter is for LISTENING & learning.

Punahou School Summer Tech Lab 2010

This week I’m attending Punahou School’s Summer Technology Lab, four days of keynote speakers, classroom observations, and lots of chatting with interesting and diverse educators and administrators about interactive technologies.  The major themes for the conference are 1) interactive technologies and online learning environments, 2) humanities and technology, 3) mobile technologies, and 4) STEM. 

Here are my highlights/take-aways from day one:

• There are always new cool applications that make teaching/collaborating/working more efficient and seamless.  The challenge?  Finding them (staying current), learning them (some are easier than others), integrating them with other applications (seamlessly), and then filtering (eliminating those that don’t meet your needs or are too cumbersome for what they’re worth).  I’m always impressed with the “homework” Punahou teachers do… you can rest assured that the resources have been tested.  So, here are some new ones I came across today:
  • Elgg – www.elgg.org – open source social networking engine.  Similar to Moodle but integrates more “facebook” type functionality.  Key tip mentioned today when using Elgg (or any other similar online learning community) – be deliberate in defining groups.  Connie (teacher presenter) said that in the future she plans to create a group between herself and each student (1:1 group) as well as class (i.e. 10:00 am class) groups.  Great way to have personal and public forums for communication.
  • Google Voice – instead of giving out your personal cell phone number (especially to students) and voice messages go directly to email as transcription.
  • Zamzar.com – converts anything.  Simply upload a file and select what file type you want it converted to… pretty cool.
• ActivClassroom in action!  I attended a presentation by a fifth grade teacher who shared the way she uses Promethean’s ActivClassroom.  It was really fun to see how well she used the features and functionality of the software and board (teachers are so creative!) and to hear about her “journey” becoming a fluent Promethean user.  Even more wonderful though was seeing the teacher participants light up during the presentation.  It was evident that the teacher participants were amazed at the endless possibilities.  My only wish is that students were present.  I think teacher participants would have been even more struck by how intuitive the tools are for students and how engaging learning can be!  Let’s harness this power!

Stay tuned for more…

Games, not Grades

Since Daniel Pink recommended this Edutopia video interview with James Paul Gee, professor at Arizona State University, I thought I’d give it a quick review.  It is definitely worth the time – dense with powerful messages.  While most of his messages align with good learning theory (constructivism) and pedagogy, he frames his messages in a 21^st century context, urging the need for educational reform.  Here are my big take-aways:

• We need a major reform in the design of our schools.  Today’s schools are “test prep academies”.  Schooling must focus on helping students learn how to solve problems, collaboratively, so they are able to compete in today’s global economy.  “The group is smarter than the smartest person in the group.”  This aligns with project-based and problem-based learning (not new)… but demands a shift in assessment as well (which leads to his next point about games as assessment)… 
• Games are wonderful models of learning problem-solving skills – essentially, in a game, the player is constantly assessed.  Games do not make the mistake of separating the learning from the assessment.  The use of continuous and immediate feedback helps the player learn as he/she solves a problem.  In this way, knowledge is something that is produced not consumed.
• In games, language is presented “just in time”, allowing the player to immediately apply the language to solve the task at hand.
• Digital tools, including social networking tools, enable youth to easily and quickly join communities centered on their passions.  These “passion communities” are very different than school in that anyone can teach and learn, essentially, roles are fluid.  He mentions that there are very high standards within these communities. 
• Kids seem to understand (better than the baby boomer generation) that media is converging.
• Teachers need to be rewarded for innovation.  The need exists to “re-professionalize” teaching, empowering teachers to build their own curriculum, develop their own practices, etc. – instead of using what the “top” pushes down. 
• We need to make teaching a sexy job.  It isn’t right now because schools are not cool.  Until we design different, innovative educational environments, teaching will not be a “cool” job. 
• Encouragingly, he states that the U.S. does a good job at reform when they are really scared (references the Sputnik period), and we could be at a tipping point.  The new competition schools have coupled with the innovation crisis could lead to a paradigm shift in education.

Are you motivated to join the reform movement?  I am!  It starts within a classroom… so, let’s go for it!

Did You Know? 4.0

Be sure to check out the new Did You Know? 4.0 video.  It is a refreshed version of the original Did You Know?  (Shift Happens) video published three years ago.  It’s well done – and the message is powerful and timely.