Record Players in the Classroom?

We've talked in the past about what types of technology we would want in our respective classrooms to contain; everything from overheads to Elmo projector things and an iPad at each desk.  These are all educationally useful in a variety of ways but I'm starting to wonder about the use of "old" technology in the classroom.  See Exhibit A:

Exhibit A

My mentor teacher broke this bad boy out of hiding this week to play an old-school record for our students.  The record player is stashed away in his office otherwise and according to the permanent marker on the outside case, it belongs to my school's media center. We're doing a few scary, sci-fi stories this week in honor of Halloween, so yesterday we spent the day reading a play about Orson Welle's War of the Worlds broadcast on the radio in 1938.  This year marks the 75th anniversary of the enactment, and there was a special on PBS this past Tuesday about it.  We spent most of the hour reading aloud the play, each taking a separate part and then at the end of the class my teacher explained more about the importance of radio during this time period, and how people received all of their national news and information from the radio.  Thus, it was quite easy to understand how hearing theses fake news reports on the radio lead people to believe there was an actual alien invasion.  Needless to say, many of the students were fascinated that people used to sit in front of radios with no screen, listening to the news and shows of the day, similar to this happy family:

My mentor teacher is in possession of an original record recording of the 1938 radio broadcast that terrified many along the Eastern seaboard of the United States that night before was under attack. This  showcases the power of description and human reenactment of written scenes.  We ended each class period by taking a listen to the original broadcast of War of the Worlds and quite frankly I think I would have been convinced aliens were here if I had originally only heard this on the radio.  It retained that old record sound that's kinda scratchy and with voices that are occasionally muffled by old microphones.  It just seems more academically and culturally authentic coming from an old-fashioned record player than playing an up-to-date Youtube video.  You can hear the same recording online here.

What was really fascinating to watch was how intrigued the students were by this seemingly archaic piece of technology.  There were a few kids who had no idea what the thing was!  The majority of my students were born in either 2000 or 2001 and to many of them a record player is something a really old relative might still have at their house or something they would see in an antique store.  They all wanted to take turns putting the needle on the record and asked my mentor teacher numerous questions about it throughout the day.

While we may talk about the newest types of technology we want in our classrooms I was really impressed with my mentor teacher and his inclusion of the record player in our class yesterday.  I think that some "older" forms of technology really offer a new learning experience for our students.  The Larry Cuban reading from this summer states that useful instructional technology is anything that instructs students "in a more efficient and stimulating manner than sole use of the teacher's voice" (p. 4).  This particular example allowed them to imagine some aspects of life when radios were the most prevalent form of technology available to the average American and they could really only achieve this envisionment by listening to an old-fashioned record player.

Technology at My Placement

When thinking about Ann Arbor Public Schools, many might think that technology plays a integral roll in a child's education.  It seems like a pretty up-to-date and relatively prosperous city, why wouldn't our students have access to one-to-one technology or inclusion of cell phones in the classroom?  However, this isn't really the case.  There are still processes to follow in terms of checking out computers and cell phones are prohibited from being used.  Needless to say I've been pretty intrigued by the uses of technology at my placement site thus far.

There have been no initiatives as of late to start providing all AAPS students with laptops and iPads like other districts around the nation, but there are some steps being taken in order to allow students and faculty to integrate technology into their academic lives.  Although it's not required, most students have a Gmail account, and as of last week, use Google Docs with relative ease for writing a paper (we're working on analyses of biographies in my English classes).  There are several Mac laptop carts available for teachers to use throughout the school, so my students have been able to remain at their seats and type their papers over the last week.  There's also two brand new Mac-filled computer labs in the school!  These computers are filled with exciting programs that I've never even heard of (which leads me to suspect that many teachers in the building have no idea about them).  I was really interested a program that can make comic strips and a few other graphic design/artistic programs with names like Scratch, Fetch, Sketch Up and Art Rage.  Since I'll be teaching full-time next semester, I hope to become more aware of what the school computers can offer in terms of making student projects just a little cooler!

My school has access to a variety of databases to help students research for educational purposes, but how much of this is used by the middle school population?  I don't really remember doing too many research projects in middle school, but maybe times have changed; I'll have to look more closely at what these databases can do for my students.  One of the more interesting things about the technology at my placement is that the firewall blocking access to sites like Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter is easily removable.  A staff member can unlock the firewall to show a Youtube clip in their class, but if they neglect to reauthorize the firewall, those "forbidden" sites are open to the general public at my school.  For our 504 survey, I went to a computer in the library and proceeded to log onto my Facebook, access our class wiki and even was allowed to proceed onto Twitter (even though I don't have an account).  While students are forbidden from using any personal cell phones or internet-accessible devices during class time, I thought this was really interesting.  I can remember my days in middle and high school where the sites were always blocked and we could proceed no further even if we tried.

However, I think one of the bigger issues with technology at my placement is just the general ease of use.  My mentor teacher has complained before about how none of the LCD projectors are mounted to the ceiling, thus making it a "big" hassle to roll the cart out into the middle of the already cramped classroom area to deliver a slide show presentation (which are not the norm in our class).  If anything, I believe that if the projectors were on the ceiling and all students had easy access to a laptop/iPad (something like one-to-one technology), more teachers in my school would be ecstatic about technology in the classroom.  Instead of planning ahead to check-out the laptop cart or to schedule time in the media center with the computer labs, teachers and students would be able to use technology right in their respective rooms when needed.  It sounds cool, but like we've become aware of these initiatives are costly, and might not be the best instructional strategy for our students.  Once again, there is always more to think about than meets the eye when discussing technology in our placements for the year!  What have you been noticing at your placement?

Student use of Capzles?

After presenting about podcasting in our Teaching with Technology class this past week I thought more about a question Rory had posed to our group.  Did we find any examples of student work with podcasts during our research?  When I thought about it further I realized that throughout the whole process of researching about podcasts, we had never really discussed showing examples of student podcasts in our presentation.  We were primarily focused on how teachers could create and use these tool both in their classrooms and for professional development.  Yet, it's also important to realize that our students could use these very same tools we're talking about for class assignments and larger projects.  So while I hope to find more information about student podcasts examples on the web, I was interested in the next groups presentation about Capzles.  You can typically find their website here if your internet is working: http://www.capzles.com/

Capzles is basically a linear showcase of pictures but you can also include PDFs and Word Documents.  It's similar to Prezi is some sense, but not as potentially nauseating with twists and turns.  It's called "Social Storytelling" because you can add pictures and label it with a date, then the pictures are shown in a timeline fashion.  In essence, you can add music to set the stage to talk about the Renaissance in Europe through a scan of impressive pictures depicting paintings from the time.  There are a host of Capzles pre-made on the website, which is great for perusal and if you don't want to spend time making one on your own.  But it's so simple to make, you might as well take the few minutes to upload a bunch of pictures before class starts!  Some of the few drawbacks I noticed so far was that you can't embed things like Youtube videos as seamlessly as one might hope.  And we're all still confused as to how PDFs and Word Documents can successfully be uploaded and used via Capzles.

One of the things I liked most about Capzles was that there were basically no words showcased throughout the presentation.  I like this better than other presentations like PowerPoint because I think a lot of people get stuck just reading the words verbatim from the slides instead of elaborating on the content.  This is where I think Capzles would be great for students to create in class.  Because you can't really put words on a slide, my students would have to present about a topic by preparing beforehand what they are going to say.  Now I believe they could still use notes/notecards for their information, but like I said, I think it's a lot better for both the presenter and audience members to not listen to a presentation that is just listed out word-for-word on the slides.  While my English content group might have made a silly Capzle related to Harry Potter (what up Potter Puppet Pals?!) I think Catherine brought up a great idea that Capzles could be used to showcase the plot arch of a story we could be reading in class.  Each slide could represent a depiction from that part of the novel.  I wonder if students could upload pictures of their drawings if there were no pictures available online?

Ultimately, I find that these presentations are also interesting to look at from the students perspective.  How can they create something from these tools?  If we're responsible for their technological literacy, shouldn't we be informing them about these awesome tools they can use too?  I'll be looking forward to the remaining presentations to see how my students can implement these in the classroom.