Wednesday, January 28, 2009

“What Did You Do in School Yesterday, Today, and Three Years Ago?”

Mr. H Songhai discusses the potential for using cellphones, mp3 players, cameras and free web based utilities in the classroom. He has virtually discontinued using paper in his classroom, his students use digital instruments to record notes. He encourages students to use their cell phone's record function to record his lessons and to use cameras to take pictures of the notes he wrote on the board. One interesting point he makes is that newspapers are usually disposed of after 24 hours of being published even though some of the articles are timeless and should be remembered.

I think having students record their findings on an online blog that can last "forever" can greatly improve the retention of the knowledge they are learning in school. As a student I often have a mess of paper from classes and once I am finished with the class, my notes are often disregarded. A blog with my notes from class would be nice, except I wouldn't be able to doodle on the blog. I enjoy drawing...

In a related story, one of my buddies was telling me about his trip to Jamaica. He took many pictures of the beautiful island, but his camera malfunctioned while he was in the airport. All his pictures vanished. Verbal descriptions are good visualizations but as the old saying goes "A picture paints a million words".

Check out the video at:
http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=280

2 comments:

  1. I agree with with students making a blog and recording their findings. Especially with kids today being so familiar with alot of todays technology. I agree with te doodling aspect too. I went to Jamacia, and it was beautfil, and i have alot of pictures taken on a disposible camera. You may njot have all of the settings but technology cant fail you.
    Also, if you liked Pharcyde, take a listen to Jurassic 5, and I think you would like Ratatat too, they dont rap but its too guys on synth. They're pretty sweet, download seventeen years.

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  2. Agreed with Marcy... Jurassic 5 backed hard.
    As for the note taking stuff, I totally have the same problem. I get all these hands out and I always get them in a mess and my only system to keep them somewhat organized is by dating them at the top. Otherwise at the end, I recycle them. It's really such a waste.
    But ya... no doodling would be hard to go without, unless you got one of those digital pads that hook up to your computer, but than again those are like $500. A little pricey for doodling.

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