The Michigan Association for Media in Education held their conference at the University of Michigan School of Information this past Saturday. Presenters spoke about what video games have to teach us about learning, creating an information literacy scavenger hunt, and using cell phones in classrooms.
Barry Fishman was great, as usual, talking about how video games can inform our educational practices. A couple things that are interesting about this: when kids play video games, they are excited for new challenges, and they are OK with failing. In fact, they even attempt to fail in order to figure out the parameters of the game and see how they can better complete the task at hand. If only students could feel free to fail in school in order to connect with the material better. This way students would also probably be more excited about learning, when they are not focused on getting a good grade.
Meggan's and Jill's workshop on the information literacy scavenger hunt went well. I helped four librarians around campus, and they were pretty willing to engage in the tasks. I was also impressed how many of them had iPhones. Meggan and Jill did a very good job going through how to make the scavenger hunt online, and most of the audience was following along, making their own hunts for their schools.
The cell phone talk was the most interesting to me, because it was my first time hearing the information presented. How cool that you can create "cells" for classes online and conduct polls and other classroom activities all online. Also, to have students call in and leave messages online is a great way for students to have easy access to the teacher without the teacher giving away his personal phone number. I did talk to two teachers about this afterward, and they both said it was an interesting idea, but they would never use cell phones in the classroom - they explained that as soon as students would receive this privilege, they would find a way to abuse it.
Wow - your last sentence fascinates me and illustrates a tension of mistrust between students and teachers. I wish I had something pithy to say ...
ReplyDeleteFunny about the cell phones, though, in the video (was it at MAME or someone's presentation? The weeks are blurring together...) the students allowed to use the cell phones only in the class seemed to actually see it as a learning tool. So maybe it's not totally a lost cause.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Kristin, their general mistrust is really going to turn their students off. If your teacher doesn't like something, doesn't that you far more likely to want to use it (probably the troublemaker speaking again). And isn't that what the permission slips are for, defining what appropriate use is?
ReplyDeleteI also thought that there were so many exciting ideas from liz kolb's talk and I am sorry to hear that some participants couldn't see all the opportunities provided by cell phones.
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