Digital Immigrant? Say it ain't so!

When personal computers came along I got a personal computer. Never let it be said that I allowed myself to be left behind! And I used it, oh boy did I use it. I did spread sheets, I learned how to email, word process, calculate, research - way before Google, edit photos, etc. I was there, I was with it. I was connected! But was I? Not really. The influx of new tools, sites, soft ware, hard ware, social networks, and other forms of connectivity came so fast that I couldn't or did not want or need to keep up. That was another time and another career. My career in education has brought about a new focus for me, a focus on finding the tools that I need to stay connected with learning - and not just for my students, but for me. I have become a learning junkie. I want all the new stuff and I want to connect in all of the new ways. In effect, that makes me a better teacher. A digital immigrant? I guess that I am, but I am working at it.

One of the questions that I have had for the last few years at ISB, as the tech department has continued to supply us with more and more laptop carts, is this: Why don't we require each student, from middle school on, to own their own laptop computer? In Marc Prensky's "Adopt and Adapt: Shaping Tech for the Classroom 21st-century schools need 21st-century technology" he seems to agree with me. "The missing technological element is true one-to-one computing, in which each student has a device he or she can work on, keep, customize, and take home. For true technological advance to occur, the computers must be personal to each learner. When used properly and well for education, these computers become extensions of the students' personal self and brain". It is refreshing to see more and more of my students carrying and using their own computers - a sort of external hard drive for their brains!

I know enough now that I know when to guide, when to lead, and when to get out of the way. So many of my students are way ahead of me in so many ways that I use them as a resource for technology and also as tour guides or navigators or even lifeguards to save me if I get in over my head! These digital natives are my resource for terminology, navigation, investigation, interpretation, and sometimes even application of the many destinations in the ether. Certainly Prensky agrees with this, "First, consult the students. They are far ahead of their educators in terms of taking advantage of digital technology and using it to their advantage. We cannot, no matter how hard we try or how smart we are (or think we are), invent the future education of our children for them. The only way to move forward effectively is to combine what they know about technology with what we know and require about education."

The old paradigm for learning, the top down, crack open their heads and pour in what teachers accept as necessary knowledge, is a thing of the past. And it is becoming the distant past. The more we cling to that paradigm the more of a disservice we do to our students. As Prensky says, ". . . let's not just adopt technology into our schools. Let's adapt it, push it, pull it, iterate with it, experiment with it, test it, and redo it, until we reach the point where we and our kids truly feel we've done our very best. Then, let's push it and pull it some more. And let's do it quickly, so the 22nd century doesn't catch us by surprise with too much of our work undone"! I agree.

Project Based Project

In my business classes in the past I have tried to incorporate a number of activities in which students learn through doing - Project based learning! When I found that we would be doing project based learning project as the culminating assessment for our "Information Literacy and Ourselves as Learners" course I decided to try to create something that would or could become a part of a major unit that I teach, either in business or psychology. I want to keep my business classes exciting and keep students connected so I decided to focus on that. Here is what I have come up with - I will give it a good tweeking over the rest of this school year and the coming summer and put into action next school year:
Project Based Learning Project for Upper Level Secondary Business and Marketing: Marketing UnitAny marketing program is, or should be, based on research and focused on the 4 P’s of marketing (Product, Price, Place, and Promotion) and the 5 factors of the marketing environment (economic, global, social, competitive, and technological). In addition the research should culminate in a determination of a “Target Market” or which segment of a population is most likely to find the greatest use for your product or service. This is best accomplished through a segmentation of the overall marketplace. The market segments include: geographic, demographic, psychographic, benefit, and volume segments. You and your team of 3-4 students are an advertising firm (create a name for yourselves like “Global Marketing Specialists, Inc., or “Abercrombie, Fitch, and Associates” and you will embark on a marketing project in which you will be given a general description of a new product or service that has not yet reached the marketplace. Your goal is to define the product through an investigation of the 5 marketing segments and based on product development, total product offer, branding, target market, pricing strategy, location for production, marketing, and distribution, and types of promotions you will use to market your product. You will be “selling” your ideas to the company in hope that they will hire your firm to represent them.:1. Each team will create a blog page on which you will use as a tool to track your progress and to display much of your work on this project.2. Survey a representative sample of a population to determine the viability of your product and service and to gain insight as to target market and the needs and wants of potential customers. The survey will be conducted electronically using your blog page. Prepare the survey, post it to a blog page that your team has created, and via email, face book, my space, or any social network invite at least 50 people (per team) to take your survey. Be sure to vary your sample by attempting to survey people from various age groups, socioeconomic class, etc.3. After determining a target market for your product or service, create an image (brand name, package style, logo, jingle, etc). Post this image on your blog and try to get some feedback from your survey sample.4. Determine where you will produce, distribute, and sell your product. Post this to your blog page.5. Now comes the really fun part: Once you have determined the viability of your product or service, created an image through branding and packaging, determined your target market and your pricing strategy, you can now begin to design several promotions. First of all, using http://www.glogster.com/create an interactive brand association poster. As you know, this is an advertisement that associates your brand with a favorable image, a popular personality, a geographic location, or a competitor. Be sure to have at least 4 interaction opportunities on your poster. For an example of an interactive brand association poster go to: http://jgarstka109.glogster.com/brandassociation/6. The next project for you and your team is to create and video an advertisement for your product or service. This advertisement must be either 30 seconds or 1 minute in length(if it is going to be used on television it must fit into their advertising time format). Once you have successfully created your video advertisement the next step is to upload it to You Tube! This can be accomplished by going to http://www.youtube.com/and clicking on the upload tab in the top right corner. Once this has been accomplished you will need to embed the video into your blog page.7. The final piece to this project is for your team to present your program to the board of directors of the company you hope to represent (your teacher and the rest of the class will play the role of the board of directors). Using power point, glogster, you tube, and any other electronic tool, your team will make a 10 minute presentation to the board.Ps. We will use Twitter to communicate with our teams in real time. You will be instructed on how to set up your own teams Twitter to follow!