Students Love Technology

After reading both of these articles, I'm not sure my position on technology in the classroom changed much. I've always felt that technology is an important aspect of any classroom and a great tool to capture the attention and therefore the minds of our students. As Christine Greenhow points out, "using computers was the one activity that all ethnicities...liked best in school" (Greenhow, 2008, p. 17). The fondness by students towards lessons rich in technology has been proven and must be used to help students enrich their educational careers. Any technology found in my future classroom I plan on utilizing for instructional purposes, as this has been shown to be most effective way of reaching students. I understand that economic conditions keep many people from owning computers and I intend to create assignments that are not dependent on outside technology (such as computers). If they are dependent on technology then I will make time in class to complete such assignments. None of my students will be punished for not owning a computer. I would like to assess all of my students during the first couple of days to get an idea how accessible computers are outside of school and use this information to help build assignments that wont put any of my students at a disadvantage.

The Future of Cell Phones

It' s hard for me to listen to Josh Allen's argument against cell phones in the classroom, when he completely dismisses the idea of children with Blackberrys. When I checked the publication date it made since it was written in 2007. Seeing how it is now 2009 and two years is a lot of time in the tech world, many things have obviously changed because more kids have Blackberrys and iPhones than adults it seems (at least the adults I socialize with). These days new cell phones act like laptop computers that fit in your pants pocket. Too be honest I actually quit reading Allen's article due to his lack of foresight. We all know that computers and phones are outdated within months of being released, so why wouldn't phones continue to evolve into minicomputers. We wouldn't ask our students to stop using their computer would we? Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating the use of phones in classroom for social communication, but rather what Liz Kolb describes as the ideal purposes of cell phones in school, "Cell phones can be audio recorders, digital video camcorders, still cameras, note-taking devices, calculation devices, scheduling and man- agement tools, phone conferencing devices, Internet researching tools, faxing and scanning devices, blog and Web page editors, or even audio assessment recorders" (Kolb, 2007, p. 9). The amount of uses and applications that phones have coupled with their small size and availability make them an ideal tool in a classroom. I don't think that I am quite ready to start creating cell phone based projects but that time isn't too far away. Give those that are behind the technology curve time to catch up (such as myself) and as phones continue to become more capable, it will be possible to turn the normal classroom into a computer lab just by asking our students to pull out their cell phones. *My phone policy will be strict in that they will only be allowed when prompted and will be taken away if they ring or cause a distraction.

The Most Efficient Way to Speak English

Before I read the articles on chatspeak I had already made up my mind. Just like Greg Monfils' argument, the first thing I thought about regarding this topic was how students are taught spanish without concern that their grasp on the english language will suffer. Monfils makes a great point that you can despise chatspeak while still understanding that it is an important aspect of your students' daily lives. No one will be able to successfully crusade against chatspeak and remove it from the dialect of students; the best we can hope for is to accept it and move on. As teachers I think it is important to recognize this type of conversational/casual language but we cannot allow it on classroom assignments (unless the assignment calls for it). By having this precedent, students will understand where and when it is appropriate to use chatspeak (mainly with friends outside of class). As a teen and still to this day, I try to control my use of vulgar language around my parents and my efforts have been mostly successful (with the occasional slip up). With written language such as chatspeak, I think students are more in control of what they write and can easily recognize what type of language is acceptable depending on the setting. Another great point that Monfils makes is that "we’ve standardized grammar, spelling, and so on since Chaucer, but kids live to challenge standards" (Monfils, 2007, p.9). In order for kids to challange standards, like Monfils is proposing, they must have some idea what those standards are and I think they do. He also brings up the point that students may be motivated by rebellion and the desire to separate themselves from older generations, and I couldn't agree with him more. As a youngster I can still remember the use of pig latin to speak in code or a secret alphabet to send coded letters. Neither of these activities seemed to have any impact on my scholastic work, yet alone writing assignments. Let kids be kids and enjoy a language that they are helping to develop. It is our job to let students be creative, at the same time we should teach them that chatspeak isnt always the best form of communication (esspecially at school and work). To the h8ers of chatspeak all I can say is ocusfay onway away iggerbay oblempray (focus on a bigger problem).