2007_03_01_archive

Life-Long Computer Skills

In one of my favorite blogs to read "The Blue Skunk Blog" by Doug

Johnson he shares a list of life-long computer skills written by Jacob

Nielson. Here they are:

o Search strategies, like forming good queries and judging relevance

of results

o Weighing the credibility of online information

o Techniques for dealing with information overload

o Writing hyperlinked online text

o Computer presentation skills (nip bad PowerPoint habits in the bud!)

o Workplace ergonomics

o Debugging -- not the heavy-duty stuff, but the logical process of

tracking down errors

o Usability basics, for making informed decisions on a product's ease

of use

This makes SO MUCH sense to me. Rather than teaching how to do

PowerPoint it makes sense to focus on what is a good presentation!

What would you add or subtract from this list?

I want to add asking good questions and using the power of the

computer to find the answers.

Janice

Labels: change, johnson, technology

posted by janice at 7:26 AM 0 comments links to this post

Computers in Classrooms (observations of a sub)

I haven't written for a while about my observations of how computers

are used as I go through many schools as a substitute. That is mainly

because it is basically all the same. So far I have seen three levels

of use:

1. The computers are off most of the time. I suppose they are

occasionally used as a reward.

2. The computers are used as a center. In the best cases the

computers are set up with a certain website and the students have

instructions for what to do. (Starfall and FunBrain are common

sites). It is hard to tell when I am subbing what is really

expected and done on a normal day.

3. In one third grade classroom the computers were not all set up in

one corner or along one wall. They were placed in different

"reading nooks" around the room and it was clear that they were

used for writing because of typed pages and other things showing

around the classroom.

I have also observed how hard it is to use them well. There is so much

going on in a classroom and so much that a teacher needs to be

thinking about. Adding to that whether students are using the

computers well can be overload. We really need to help teachers to use

these powerful tools in ways that promote learning. The center

approach is a step in the right direction. At least they are being

used and everyone gets a chance. But have you ever sat next to a kid

doing one of those games and observed what they are really learning?

In so many of them they have a choice to rack up points somehow and

they figure out how to do it without reading or doing any math. They

are developing some skills, but different ones than most teachers

think they are developing.

Right now I am thinking that if I was in the classroom very early in

the year.... maybe in the first week of school, I would sign up for a

simple online project that would motivate the kids and help them to

learn about using the computer. It might be something that we mostly

do with the whole class like an email project that we send letters as

a class. Then as the year went on I would look for ways to use the

computer for projects that support the curriculum. If a classroom has

5 computers some sharing will have to happen. It might be a centers

approach... or maybe like the Inspired Classrooms approach. But it is

all SOOOOO far from what is happening in most classrooms that I just