Technology in the Classroom: Blogs

 

Scrabble tiles spelling "blog"

What is Educational Blogging

In my Educational Technology class, we've had to create several blogs about what we are passionate about in the classroom.  These educational blogs allow teachers to express their opinions and beliefs about teaching and its culture and act as a platform to do so.  This soapbox, so to speak, invites discussions and analysis from both peers and students alike.  In addition to just sharing opinions, a piece from Edutopia recommends that teachers share their resources for other educators to use.  At the end of the day, educational blogging is about sharing your ideas and practices in relation to the classroom with other teachers, students, parents, and administrators.

What I Have Learned From Peers

A student sketching

Through my Educational Technology class, I have been exposed to ideas and topics from other students that I had previously yet to consider.  For instance, my classmate Bailey Timmer wrote a blog about the Whole Child Approach to teaching.  I was previously unfamiliar with this concept, but she laid out what it was and how it could and should be used and I agreed with her argument.  Another blog important to me was Tom Frank's blog about the importance of the arts in school.  He discusses how the Arts are vital in schools for students and their social and mental development.  A third blog I found interesting was Kate Shelton's blog on teachers' salaries.  She brings up many reasons why teachers should be paid more, and I couldn't agree more.  By reading through my peers' blogs, I feel that I have learned more about the profession and the problems I'll have to face within it.

My Thoughts on Blogging

Over the past four weeks, I've maintained and updated my blog about important issues in education to me.  During this time, I've learned a lot about blogging and how it could be used.  It could be the cynic in me, but blogging seems a little antiquated for my taste.  I'm sure there are situations where blogging can be a great medium (and maybe education will prove to be one of these), but feels like there are much better options now.  Blogs just don't feel like a necessity for a high school class to me.  I think that now there are much better means to communicate with students, parents, peers, and administrators that are simpler and more effective.  As of now, I don't plan on integrating blogging into my classroom for myself or for students.

Technology in the Classroom: Adblock

 

A stop sign

What is an Adblocker?

We all know the feeling of annoyance when an ad interrupts a video or when a popup blocks us from reading a page.  Fortunately, there are small programs and extensions that block these nuisances; the aptly titled adblockers.  These work by scrubbing a webpage clean of its ads to better the user experience.  The right adblocker can block popups, banners, videos, and other different types of advertisements.  By using an adblocker, websites are not only cleaner and less obnoxious-looking, but they are also safer.  By removing unwanted targeted ads, the user can't click on links that will take them to malicious websites that compromise their data and online security through the use of phishing and viruses, even the FBI put out a statement advising people to use an adblocker for this very reason.  One downside, however, is that the person or organization whose content you're looking at does not get ad revenue from your visit.  It is worth noting, though, that the people who know to use an adblock wouldn't typically click the ads regardless.

Its Place in the Classroom

Child covering their eyes

I believe that all computers used in schools should have adblockers on by default.  Too often have I seen teachers frustrated with ads that block the material they are trying to use for instruction.  This makes teachers less inclined to use valuable resources, such as YouTube, for supplemental instruction.  In addition to them being annoying in general, they can also show inappropriate content without cause.  I highly recommend turning off targeted ads for safety reasons, but a downside is that this makes ads unpredictable and could possibly show inappropriate images or words.  For instance, this exact scenario happened in a class of mine recently when an irrelevant and inappropriate ad popped up.  I also don't think that the loss of ad revenue is a big problem for these content creators because (generally) any group or person who is uploading educational content has some type of external sponsor, so the ads just generate a compatibly smaller portion of their income.  I think that all in all, there is no reason not to use an adblocker as an educator or student.  The benefits far exceed the slight negatives of using them and keep everyone safer online.

Technology in the Classroom: Videos

Projector on a table

The Benenfits

Students watching a video

I think it's safe to assume that most people people who are or have been students in the past 30+ have watched some type of video in class.  While there may be different reasons for a teacher to play different videos or movies, they can have a positive impact in the classroom in terms of understanding a topic or just associating your class with a more relaxed environment.  As a history teacher, I think that there are some topics that can be better represented or explained by a video or a movie (such as John Green's Crash Course).  I also think that there is a place for days in the class that rest the brain.  By playing relevant and engaging vidoes or movies in the classroom, I believe my students will be able to learn and retain important information while also having a mental break from the standard rigorous teaching methods.  I don't think I would ever show a video or movie in lieu of teaching material though.  While videos or movies can be beneficial as an introduction or review of a topic, they should not be used to replace traditional instruction.

The Downfalls

Bored student

While movies do have a place in the classroom, there are certainly some areas where it becomes more of a hinderance.  For instance, when I was in high school, I had a teacher who would play Shark Tank every Friday and we just had to take notes.  This is incredibly unengaging and unfun for students most of the time.  These types of random and irrelevant videos only create boredom in the classroom.  While some students may enjoy this lack of effort in a class, it is ultimately detrimental to them and their learning.  I think it ultimately comes down to the type of video or movie that's played and how it relates to what is going on in class.  I think that students also have a tendency to get bored quickly so the video or movie should also be engaging on its own.  Another aspect that students don't like when having to watch a video or movie for class is the required skeleton notes.  I personally believe that these assignments only leave students paying attention to key words that match their skeleton notes.  While notetaking is important, I think that it is more important for a student to develop and use their own notetaking system and mark down only what they think is beneficial to.

Recap

Videos and movies, like many other nontraditional teaching methods, have pros and cons.  They can give students an easily digestible lesson while being visually engaging.  On the flip side, though, they can be boring or too complex for the purposes of your class.  I think there is a place at the beginning or end of a unit for some type of relevant video or movie, but it is important to understand its place within the learning environment.  I also believe that a teacher shouldn't dictate how a student watches whatever media with the use of skeleton notes, but should encourage students to develop their own notetaking style themselves.

Technology in the Classroom: ChatGPT

Person and technology interacting

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is a new tool that uses AI and other high-end computing to answer questions with quality responses.  It became widely prominent and famous recently because of how accurate and helpful it can be.  For instance, I asked it to define itself and this is how it responded:

ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence tool that uses large amounts of text data and deep learning techniques to generate human-like responses to text-based conversations. By analyzing patterns and relationships in the text data, ChatGPT learns to provide relevant and high-quality information to users. The more data it is trained on and the more conversations it has, the better it becomes at generating accurate and helpful responses.

As well, you can redefine your question with different parameters which will yield a brand-new result.  As an example, I asked it to rewrite the phrase "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away" in pirate-speak and it replied with this: 

"Many a league in a starry realm far, far beyond the horizon!"

Practical Applications

Beyond the goofy and fun things you can do with ChatGPT, it can be a great resource in an academic and professional setting.  I've personally been using it a lot recently for some of my history classes.  I was having trouble finding quality and accessible primary sources in relation to Isabella of France, so I turned to AI to help.  All I asked it was "give me quality primary sources on isabella of france" and within a matter of seconds it gave me a list of amazing sources that I couldn't find even after a good amount of time searching.

Just as well, a good friend of mine works in a Computer Science research lab and uses the tool all the time to generate simple yet effective code to help him.  It can return any language you ask of it and will follow strict parameters.  This can be incredibly helpful to someone who has zero experience with programming to write effective code in little-to-no time at all.

In the Classroom

As technology changes around us rapidly, I feel that it is important to keep up with it, and I think that ChatGPT is a great example of why.  This AI constantly learns and adapts to inputs and can give great information.  In a recent post to The New York Times, author Kevin Roose claims that AI like ChatGPT "can be an effective teaching tool."  Using this technology will be able to open up new methodologies for teaching and conveying information to students.  For example, you can ask the tool to simplify a complex idea, such as the Cold War, and it will return a condensed (but informative) blurb.

One aspect to keep in mind, though, is that there are two big setbacks to this technology and its use in the classroom.  The first being the obvious — cheating.  This tool provides students with a new, amazing, and sometimes undetectable form of cheating.  All a student would need to do is give it the rubric to an assignment and it will return a good essay following the right parameters.  An answer I agree with to address these concerns is to acknowledge this tool and have students cite their use of it.  There should also be an important distinction that assignments given should be used not as just a means of collecting known information, but to have the student expand on it and contribute their own ideas and give new thoughts to a topic.

The other setback with ChatGPT (in its current state at least) is that it is not always 100% accurate.  If you push it to an area where it doesn't know much, it will start to make educated guesses and present them as facts.  I've experienced this firsthand while working on an assignment for a class.  I asked it to give me some information about the experiences of someone at a certain time and it gave me information that seemed credible at first glance, but little-to-no digging or a basic understanding proved the information to be false.  However, I think this is even better for use in the classroom and for students because while it gives good surface-level information, it still requires research and an understanding of the topic to make sure the information is correct.

Teacher working with students on technology

Despite these setbacks, I think that ChatGPT and similar tools should be embraced and used throughout the class.  Technology is not going away anytime soon and trying to forbid students from using it is a war of attrition that a teacher can never win.  By trying to outlaw certain technologies in the class, it is only inviting sneakiness and a teacher-student disconnect.  Instead, a teacher should teach their students how to properly and appropriately use this technology to better their own understanding of a particular topic.

Recap

ChatGPT is a learning and adapting artificial intelligence that returns decent information for anything one could ask of it.  Because of how it works, anyone can use it and get results that answer exactly what was asked of it.  This will prove to be invaluable, especially for researchers and students.  It opens up a new frontier for requesting new information that is relevant and easily obtainable.  Although there are some setbacks when used inappropriately, it is by and large a great tool to be used by teachers and students in a classroom as a new and insightful tool that should be embraced.