The teacher Connie has been teaching for 27 years and 149 out of the 150 students she was teaching got permission from their parents to read the book.  This is a clear case of censorship and narrow-mindedness on the part of the school board.  Is anyone one else aggravated by this?

An interesting article from Ars Technica brings up the idea of using microblogging as a part of classes. Though I havn’t tried it, Twitter seems to be a useless application. Why would I want to talk about what I am doing in 140 characters? And why would people care? Yet, as I think more deeply about its possibilities I begin to see some possible uses. Dorothea Salo has said she has seen reference questions passed around and answered fairly quickly on Twitter networks. Twitter also seems very similar to Facebook’s “status” feature. This can be useful to see what people are up to, how they are feeling, and the like. It can be a very useful social tool for communicating your feelings or exploits or knowing others. It is much easier to read than mannerisms or body language.

It was fascinating to see that students Twittering away outside of class were able to bond better as a community in class. I think this is similar to discussion boards on courseware but much quicker and sexier. I have actually used blogs in multiple class settings and thought it was somewhat useful. You could subscribe to your classmates blog and read their posts on the reading or different questions that came up. The only problem with this is length. Students already have enough reading as it is. Reading 10-20 or more blog posts is just asking too much. The outside of classroom discussion is very useful but is difficult to do in addition to all the other class work. A solution could be limiting blog posts to one short or medium length paragraph and then have longer discussions in the comments. Another good possibility is something like Twitter. With only a few characters to get your message across, the Twitter posts would not be a chore to read or write.

I guess I am starting to see the utility of something like Twitter after all. Maybe I’ll try it out. Are there any other Twitter uses that I have left out? Is microblogging an effective tool for classroom communication?

To teach a class you first need to figure out what you want the students to be able to do after the class is over.  In other words you must design learning outcomes.  Secondly, you have to figure out how you are going to teach them these skills.  Finally you have to make them prove it.  This means you need to design an activity or worksheet or some other method of seeing whether they can actually do what you want them to.  These steps are not easy either.  They take a lot of thought and creativity.  On top of that you actually have to get up “on stage” and teach them these things, making sure they get it.  Teachers are pretty talented people.

My last post was about how much I enjoy having online tools to further my education. I do not believe though, that these tools could take the place of the learning I do in real life. The students in this article simply did not want to get up for an 8am class (I remember how hard it was), but learning in the physical classroom cannot easily replace learning on the web.

With the web you can either watch the lecture or not. Being in the classroom is much more engaging. You can react, ask questions, and take personal notes (less likely if you can just refer back to the video lecture). Notes make the experience more personal. You make the material your own when you put it in words you can understand. And if there is any discussion portion to the class, then you are missing a lot of valuable interactions.

Web-learning and distance education are great. I think they partner well with the classroom, but it seems to me that it is difficult to completely replace classroom learning. I could be wrong. Can students thrive in an online only environment?