Computers and education

Nope, but your experience makes sense. Regardless its hard for me not to see that as rather enabling towards cheaters.

 

I kind of feel differently about cheating. I think everyone has at some point cheated on a test. But even at a young age, kids know that cheating only gives them the good score temporarily. All my teachers growing up used to give us different versions of the same test to prevent it. Worked really well, even on computer testing. But the mentality of the kid who cheats will ultimately hurt him/her in the long run. I see it like educational Darwinism.

Had I cheated in x-ray or ultrasound school, I wouldn't be nearly the tech that I am today. How you were as a student directly reflects to how well you do professionally. If you were a habitual cheater when it really counted, it will show. There was a girl in my ultrasound class who was one of the absolute most retarded people I ever knew. She used to cheat on the computer tests and only get 60% because we all had different versions. And because her work ethic was so poor, she couldn't even land a job when she finished. Only helped me to stand out that much easier.

 

Lets hope so. As enabling as computers could be for cheaters (maybe), on the flip side I suppose the educators could (should) be further enabled to prevent cheating. I'm playing devil's advocate there, just curious.

This comes off as somewhat apathetic. Besides since you were competing against her it makes sense that you wouldn't mind her cheating. Teachers and society overall has different motives than you did (I think).

 

Thats a good point. I guess it is rather apathetic. One should encourage good work ethic on kids. As adults though, in my type of schooling, grades really didn't matter as long as you passed. In her situation, her laziness translated directly to her clinical skills. She couldn't do the book work very well, therefore her understanding of the clinical work lacked severely. No one cared how high your test grades were if your exam skills are shit. Thats where I profit.

 

I'm really curious about how this might turn out as either a great idea, epic fail, or somewhere in the middle. My brother and I have talked about how younger kids are growing up with tablets, computers, and smart phones. Because of that they seem to be able to pick up newer technology better than the older generations. He was saying that he thinks he'll get his daughter an iPad pretty young because they learn so quickly, she's 4 and he might have bought it already.

I love the idea of using technology to aid learning and I think it has a lot of potential to be a good thing. I also know the type of kid I was and think I would have gotten myself into a lot more trouble with a smart phone, cell phone, facebook, whatever back in the day. Ultimately I think it will be a great thing for good students and terrible for those who don't care about school. There might be some who will better engage with the different teaching styles this would allow for.

Long story short, I think it will be good for kids who want to learn. Might be rough for kids who don't care and some teachers but it is coming so we may as well embrace the future and help shape it.

 

On cheating: I have had kids cheat. Every single teacher in the school has. A couple of examples:
Last semester I had my kids write a paper. About 1/3 coped/pasted from the internet. I started typing parts of a paper into Google and up popped their "source," so I wrote "0, copied from..." And showed them I knew where they got it. Literally gave over 20 kids zeroes. The reaction from one kid? "This guy is good..." They were too dumb to put it in their own words, and I sure as hell know their vocabulary capabilities, so it wasn't hard to catch.

As for tests, they cheat like crazy, so I have had to adjust. As of now they sit in rows, and each row gets a different version of the test. Makes it virtually impossible to look off someone else cause the only people with your test are directly in front of or behind you. I've also given two different versions but left the questions in the same order, only mixed up the answers. I also didn't say anything to the kids. The result? The "cheaters" bombed out in a massive way. When I told them what I did I saw some kids faces turn ghost white.

Finally, I just gave a speech to my cheating class after that (one class was much worse than the rest), amounting too a harsher version of "cheaters never prosper." My words were "I'm not punishing those who have to cheat, because life will punish you far more than I ever could."

Those teachers that already have computers have had kids googling answers, and the solution there is make all the kids face one way, and stand behind them, so you can see all their screens. Because of the randomized nature of the online tests, they can't look at a neighbor and because you can see their screen (and they know you can see their screen) they won't pull up extra windows.

The reality is: you can't stop all cheaters. It's impossible. Kids who take the test first hour can tell kids who take it 7th hour what is on it, and I can't stop that. They can say "I remember number 1 was A, 4 was C..." They can say "they ask about this and that..." And I can't do a damn thing about it. All I can do is minimize their opportunities and let them know cheating is only fucking themselves over.

 

I'd be all on board with your logic there if it weren't for it hinging on the "properly administered system" in combination with this other reality:

 

This shit right here. This is genius.

 

No risk, no reward. Fair enough- we can agree on that. I just see lots of risk here, giving many potentially incompetent teachers the reins. Go back and read the first post in this thread, I mean does that give you much confidence in the average educator here?

Since it seems most students' (and likewise, teachers') performance standards are largely test-based, and my concerns focus on test taking integrity, it places more importance on the issue to me. We could say "Ah, pfffft, they'll figure it out" but I see a trainwreck coming if everyone isn't going to be on board. If D26 didn't indicate that so many teachers might not be nearly able to handle it, I wouldn't be saying this.

 

We have mandatory tech professional development once a month, plus we're required to do 6 hours tech professional development on our own time. The school arranges lots of tech PD to help teachers implement this stuff, including training on all the potential websites we could use and other uses for tech in the classroom. They're clearly concerned and offering tons of training. I've found most of the training to be mundane and boring, going over very basic stuff, that I figured out from 10 minutes of playing around on the device or given website. However, some of the old timers are still struggling to figure some of this stuff out.

It's worth nothing they're not asking us to do crazy tech shit, just have a functional knowledge of how to use basic websites and searches. We don't have to teach them to be hackers or anything, just basic shit, only slightly more advanced than basic word processing or using Facebook.

They've been amping up the wifi, by putting a wireless router in each classroom, to ensure full coverage. They're also putting in a fiber optic line and doing all kinds of other technical stuff to amp up our network. The tech department is actually really good despite the head of the tech department being terrible. Basically, everyone in our IT department is great besides the dude that runs it, who treats everyone with nothing more than thinly veiled contempt, and hilariously has tech fuckups in every presentation he has given us. I can't figure out how he got his job.

They've been rolling out this program slowly so far. Two years ago they did laptop carts in 4 classrooms. This year they added 6 more, and tested iPads in some rooms along with laptops in others.

The plan for next year was more carts in about 10 more rooms (mine included). We (the 10 they knew were getting the devices next year) have gone through a lot of training to use and implement them, and we've been in constant communication with "mentor teachers" who have had the devices and used then, so we can learn from their experiences. I've been ready for this.

However, because they decided to go with Chromebooks (which are cheaper than the district expected), they're rushing ahead with a full rollout and giving the devices to students to keep and use at home and school. The rushing part is what is concerning, because they had been preparing for about 1/2 of the school to have devices, but now everyone will. The teachers that weren't expecting it, and haven't done all the training that people like me have, had it thrown at them a couple of weeks ago, and they're freaking out a bit.

I fully expect our network to crash and burn throughout the first month, honestly.

 

Edit* this is disjointed, and the tone is weird. This is just how I would start using these if I had a 1:1 initiative.

I would kill for a 1:1 Chromebook initiative. Last year I set up Google Apps for Education (GAFE) for our school, and we are now up to 24 Chromebooks.

I'm not a history teacher, but as an English teacher I have basically tried to move as much of what I do online as possible with (GAFE), and it has made my life so much easier.

I have a lot to say about this. I don't know what outside test thing you are going to use, but you should acquaint yourself with Google Forms and Flubaroo. All of your quizzes are now online, and can be graded within a few clicks. It would also be easy to send different quizzes to different contact groups so you eliminate/minimize cheating easily. You should also check out Doctopus (tutorial for an update to it I haven't messed with) and Goobric. .

Also, if you do research papers, have them use Evernote specifically with the web clipper add-on to collect information. If you need to teach them how to evaluate information, teach them the CRAAP Test from Chico State. The name will stick if nothing else.

Actually I skipped a step. Students (or at least my students) are also clueless about how to use Google. Google has some lesson plansthat you should use. That is essentially the most important skill they will learn anyway in high school.

I'm assuming you have a lot of PowerPoints as a history teacher, if you do transfer them to Google Slides. Make them view them at home. Have them leave a comment on it to receive X points the night before.

Here is one tip though. Don't let them take notes with the computer. Some new research just came out saying that it isn't as effective overall as handwriting, and either way this will minimize distractions. If they want their shit in the cloud, have them handwrite it but take a photo of it and put it into Evernote where they can tag and organize it.

As a few other people have said, I'd love to hear your rollout plan. I don't know how savvy your students are. Mine don't really know how to copy-paste effectively, and that is a challenge. I would expect to have to explicitly teach shit that you think is so simple that it hurts (i.e sending emails.) Creating screencasts for what you want them to do and how to do it is helpful as well. They can watch those at home if they get confused. And that way there is no dumb excuse of I didn't know how.

Overall, as a young teacher it is fucking awesome to be able to do this. Hell, I mentioned the movie Restrepo in the R&R thread a few days ago. A lot of my students will be gone the next few days. I just sent them a Google Doc with the background info, some things I want them to focus on, a link to the trailer, a link to the movie on youtube, and some supplemental stuff. Last year, my kids were so clueless all I could do was loan out my DVD. Fuck that noise.

I do have to say though, I have had to put up with a lot of student bitching about the value of technology and the use of computers. Hell, I got into another argument today about it. So it didn't feel so hot when my students were typing research papers in Google Docs, and Google Drive went down for an hour. Completely fucked up my lesson plans.

 

This has been an interesting read so far. The school I'm at is about to purchase a couple sets of "Learnpads" which is a tablet that can be locked to only access certain programs or documents. Any information can be added to the pads through the website. As a math teacher, I really don't see much I could do with kids having a computer (other than geometry).

I had a couple seniors who were enrolled in the dual credit college algebra class who would occasionally stop by my room for help, but I quickly realized that they had resources online that would spit out the answer for them if they knew how to type the question into the program (mathway).


The stories about kids texting on their cell phones during class blows my mind. At my school if a student is caught with a cell phone it is an automatic 1 day suspension. If they are using the cell it is bumped to a 2 day suspension. I've been at the school for a year and a half now and have seen no cell phones in my class. I teach all 4 math subjects algebra 1,2/ geometry / adv. math, so I do have all age ranges of students.

 

My school has been using Google Docs for a couple of years, so my students are all VERY familiar with it. Every paper I've had them write or presentation they've done, they automatically load up Google Docs and make slide shows or type their papers there. Most of them say they prefer it to Word because they can access it at home.

I've been trained in Google Forms and Flubaroo, but the big drawback there is it doesn't automatically randomize the test for you, so I don't know that I'll use it. My school LOVES google docs and use it like crazy for virtually everything, but a lot of that stems from the fact that the tech director loves all things Google (hence the Chromebooks). They're pushing us to use one website specifically because it works with (and was created by, conveniently) our web filter company. I've been trained in that pretty extensively. It randomizes test questions, and lets you upload test banks you're already using in a matter of minutes, so no re-typing questions and answers. Because I'm not the only US History teacher in my school, we have an agreement to use the same test bank so our kids are at least learning the same stuff and at the same level, even if we teach it differently. As we go we add and take away questions from the mutual test bank, but it is a pain in the ass to switch them between teachers. Doing it online would be a breeze.

They also supported Moodle for a long time, but they're talking about getting rid of all Moodle courses. There is another website a bunch of teachers use, but fuck if I can remember it off the top of my head. They rave about it as a test/teaching website, though, but I haven't had any training on it.

I've seen a Webinar on Evernote, but maybe it was the guy presenting it, but I found it to be really... inconvenient. Just looked like a lot of work for what amounted to an online, somewhat organized scrapbook that was easy to search.

I plan to spend the first two days with my freshmen getting them up to speed on Google Docs, Google Searches, identifying good sources (NEVER USE WIKIPEDIA OR I WILL FAIL YOU kind of stuff), and getting them signed up and registered for whatever website I'm using and making sure they're in my class/group, plus going over class rules and all the other fun "first day" kind of stuff.

For the first year, I still plan to use the books as a guide, and do similar assignments to what I do now, but integrate the computers into those assignments. No more paper assignments, turn things in online (no "I lost it" bullshit). As we go, I'll be looking for good websites, videos, and other stuff to use to ultimately replace the book, so hopefully within 2 years (the goal is 3) I'll be doing everything without any kind of textbook, just online resources.

Of course, if the internet goes out, we're fucked with a capital F, so I have to keep a classroom set of books and tons of backup assignments and paper tests handy just in case.

 

It sounds like you are way ahead of us.

I haven't messed with Moodle or anything like it. Google just announced Google Classroom which will probably be 10x better than the alternatives, so you might want to get on that. I think my low number of students (60-ish across 6 classes) eliminates the need for that stuff.

I just have them email me things directly. I sort through it with labels and filters in gmail without issue. Except for when they don't name documents correctly. Shoot, the seniors are done in a week and a lot of them still can't grasp Firstname Lastname - NameOfAssignment.

I would really encourage you to take a second look at Evernote even just for research. It basically means they won't ever lose a source. I mean the alternative is to just create a document with the URLS to the sources, so it's easier to have the sources clipped into it right away.

Hell as a teacher, it is invaluable. I'm constantly finding new ideas and materials for lessons I want to do, so I just clip it and tag it. Next year when I'm going to start teaching Macbeth, I just click on the Macbeth tag and everything I have on it pops up.

Another thing you might want to teach your kids, is the use of extensions for chrome. Ad-block will change their lives.

But let's be honest, what they really need to know about computers is how to browse the internet in incognito mode.

 

The discussion has already covered basically everything I would have suggested. The only thing I can add is that if you're teaching American History and World History you could use the Crash Course video lessons on youtube to introduce the topics/supplement your classes. They have covered those two subjects in significant detail and their videos are really fun and engaging:

https://www.youtube.com/user/crashcourse

 

Get an app that takes the drudgery out of marking. Kids can submit their work using the app, and you can write custom comments that can be inserted repeatedly. Some examples are https://www.showme.com/markup/ and http://www.elearning.uq.edu.au/content/elearningUpdates/new-ipad-marking-app-and-turnitin-grademark