Computer Software in Education

The different ways to incorporate computer software into the classroom all seem to be very useful when applied in the correct situation. While I like the constructivist/student-directed inquiry the most I can see merit in all formats as other people had mentioned in their blogs. I would tend to gravitate towards this method because as a future biology teacher I remember how much I enjoyed learning the information through trial and error myself, this approach is also how most of what we know in biology and science was discovered and it would be a great thing for the students to experience this same thing. While I feel that this approach works especially well in a science classroom I would also still use this method while teaching other subjects as well. It may become more difficult in other areas which I can easily see but the idea of letting the students have some autonomy in discovering information could help students move at their own pace as well as letting them build their own interest in it rather then a very drilled approach.
While I do enjoy the student directed approach more a drill/tutoring method could be useful in certain areas such as learning the periodic table. Certain information just needs to be memorized and while trying to have students learn it in another format should be applauded it may come down to time spent trying to learn something in a creative method versus a very drilled/memorized approach and with so much information that you need to try and teach your students time constraints often force your decisions. Utilizing computer software to help in this process is a great thing because it helps add a little creativity to a somewhat structured lesson such as the brainpop website. For a teacher-directed inquiry we went over the webquests and while I looked through as many as I could a lot of them seemed to be lacking certain aspects of a lesson you would want to incorporate into a regular class lecture/discussion. I think that a webquest can be a very useful instrument to a class lesson it seems like its hard to construct one that can reach all the students, much like the one I reviewed it about rocks it had some good information but a lot of it seemed more like links to textbooks with pictures. This is less a use of computer software it seems and more of just an online book to look through to keep students busy. If someone were to create a webquest and really invest the time needed as well as the teacher serving as a good resource for students this format could actually be very productive and foster a great learning environment but from the few we saw and those that were reviewed for us the webquests came up short. Finally the student-directed is the approach I enjoyed the most when I was a student and that may be the reason I enjoy it so much myself. The example we used in class the Etoys was a lot of fun for me and at the same time I was doing a fair amount of learning because I had never used anything like that before. I enjoyed the discovery that you were allowed to make on your own as well as the moments were you got stumped and had to think around the problem for the solution. An approach like this with a teacher that is very knowledgeable about the material to step in for certain problems much like our last class is a great learning approach and the one I would gravitate to more often than not. In a class lesson using the student directed I could see a lot of possibilities such as allowing students to study a food web by providing them with animals in an ecosystem then through trial and error and their own research they would be able to create a working food web of their own.

Media in the lives of 8-18 year olds

It is interesting reading the results from this study not because I wasn't expecting this to be the case but how certain results were split so drastically by racial lines and personal feelings and grades correlated to media use by the students. With technology moving forward so quickly and more groundbreaking devices being created everyday to increase the ease of media absorbption the only possible result would be an increse in how much media these kids would take in. I like how they noted that students would often take in almost 10 hours of media in the time span of 7.5 hours because they were often streaming this information from several sources. I also think back to when I was this age and honestly could never imagine anything like this in my time because I was still using a typewriter to type papers for class had no cell phone let alone one that streamed media, and we had one television in the whole house. Looking at how much they have advanced this technology in such a short time and how students are cramming more and more media into less and less time I am curious what the results of a similar study like this will be in 15 years from now.
The part where students personal feelings were directly related to the amount of internet usage is what was interesting. Students who have heavy internet use have lower grades and personal content. I could see how this is the case because the students who spend all their time using this technology even social networking sites are missing out on the personal interactions and social experiences that light users may make more use of. Even though you can reach people through technology its just not the same result as actually spending that time with a group of peers which is what I feel may be the cause of their lower level on contentment. As far as lower grades again technology can be a great tool in helping further students in their learning but when it was breaking down how the participants used media it was mostly in watching televison, listening to music, and not as much in the pursuit of academic knowledge. These students pushed aside valuable study time to have more time using their media devices which can easily be seen as a reason for poor grades. As well as personal contentment and grades they also mentioned that the amount of time spent using media drastically differed depending on the racial background of the child. While there are probably a lot of differing views on why this is the case I think this is one of the more important results to look at from this study and a reason that I am going to read the remainder of this article. I feel getting a better grasp on this as well as lowered personal contentment and grades would help any teacher or parent learn some valuable lessons and help them be more prepared for dealing with people in this age range.