For the last week in my placement, the students have been conducting mini-research projects. They had the opportunity to use Mac laptops to search for the information and also to make a PowerPoint presentation. I got to go around and help the students and was often looked at by my mentor as a 'PowerPoint expert' - a title I'm not sure I deserve. I only got to see one finished presentation, but I thought it was really good. Although the students did good work, it took a long time for them to research their topic and also to make the PowerPoint.
I have a few observations:
1) Students are very good at working with PowerPoint, but many don't really seem to enjoy it.
2) Checking e-mail and surfing the web was prevalent, but normally stopped if something was said or if my mentor teacher or I engaged the group.
3) Many students were unclear about how to find good information online.
4) Almost all students had trouble citing their sources.
5) We talked a bit about using Wikipedia as a source and evaluating that, but not not really about evaluating other internet resources.
All in all, it was an educational experience. I think the students seemed to enjoy it, but I'm not sure if that was the case all the time. As happens with most group projects, some students lead and some students follow. I hope they learned a bit about research, and I'm glad to see my teacher utilizing technology that this particular school district is fortunate enough to have. I know it was a very standard way of using the laptops and I think students may be thirsting for more creative ways. Nonetheless, research is a perfect opportunity to take advantage of laptops in the classroom.
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4 comments:
Stephanie
I'm really glad you shared this post.
Your observations are very telling of what we are and are not doing well in K-12 technology literacy education. Immediately your findings tell me that a "tool" such as PPT does not automatically equate engaging lesson. Additionally, I think there is an assumption that since students are "Tech savvy" they already know how to effectively search the Internet and use credible resources. Your observations tell us this is not necessarily the case. I think we all need to be careful (including myself) about assuming what students know, because often they know less than we assume. There are great opportunities here to teach students about effective/advanced searching as well as how to evaluate resources.
One final thinking point is to consider whether or not it is Okay for students to "multi-task" (eg check email) during an assignment? We all do it in the "real world"? If students can produce successful final products while multi-tasking, does that mean we should still restrict it? I don't have an answer to this, just some food for thought.
Thanks for an insightful post!
It's kind of shocking to me that students wouldn't enjoy creating powerpoint presentations. What, they like writing essays better? I agree with Liz that we probably need to reexamine our assumptions about how tech-savvy the students are (last year I worked with students who didn't know how to double-space a Word document. Not kidding.)
A project like that might make me wary of using laptops for research again; I mean, it sounds like it was a loooong ordeal. I wonder if my high school teachers just shrugged and thought, "Oh well. They'll figure out how to get this done faster in college."
My class did a similar activity in that they used computers to research a topic that they ended up presenting. I ran across some similar observations/problems. Students struggle with using the computer to research. They believe everything that is on the internet and don't know how to distinguish between reliable and unreliable sources. I was wondering how you and your mentor addressed that or if you did at all. I found it hard to explain to my students.
Your posting seems to have framed issues that others are thinking about, Stephanie. Thinking about these issues can be a little easier if we stand on the shoulders of our colleagues. For instance, a media specialist from PA named Joyce Valenza put together this piece called How my life has changed that is worth a look.
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