A history professor asks students to choose a specific aspect of World War II and write an informative essay over the topic. Now, consider two students (I’ll call them John and Shane) who both decide to write on the battle of Pearl Harbor. Let’s say, for sake of argument, that John had a composition teacher who stressed the importance of collaboration and introduced students to resources that would allow them to collaborate on the research portion of the essay. John introduces Shane to one of these resources. We’ll say that the students are using Diigo to share links. Now, during the research process, John and Shane create a Diigo group in which they both add links to collaborate for the paper. They both add annotations to the resources and use some of the same resources in their papers. The papers, when graded by the professor, vary in content, but contain several of the same quotes from the same sources. The professor thinks this is suspicious, so he compares the two documents and discovers these similarities:

• Three of the eight required sources on the papers are the same.
• Of these three sources, at least one quote from each source is in both papers.
• The organization of the papers is vastly different.
• None of the content is the same in either paper.

I would do a little happy dance if these two papers were from my students. Why? Because the content demonstrates that the students are not plagiarizing each other, but the sources indicate that they are in fact collaborating in their research (which means they were paying attention to what I said in class). But, it seems that some professors view this as cheating and will, in fact, give students a lower grade on the essay–if they don’t fail them–because they chose to collaborate.

Now, I would be the first to turn in a student who was copying answers from another student’s paper during a test. I would turn in a student text messaging a friend for answers to a test during the test itself. But we have to realize that with the advances in technology that our students use, we need to change our definition of cheating. Or do we just need to reconsider exactly what comprises collaboration. As I said, if I were reading these two essay I would be happy that the students had thought to collaborate on their research. I can easily tell, based on organization and content when students are collaborating too much on their technology and when they are merely collaborating on the research. Testing is another story, so I won’t address that in this discussion because I want to keep the focus to collaboration and writing.

If we can think about the load of courses that our students have to take to meet the requirements for graduation (both in high school and college), it requires a LOT of writing. English teachers require between one and five essays per student each semester. In addition, many history, psychology, and even music or art classes are requiring papers of students. This is just brushing the surface of classes I can remember taking. Now, we also have to think about the friendships that we encourage our students to make in the classroom and how we encourage these students to create study groups for tests and to contact each other if they have to to miss class. So why do we not encourage the collaboration that helps them achieve the goals we want them to achieve?

To return to the history paper, think for a second about the number of sources–books, journals, and websites–devoted to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Now, if we think that a traditional semester runs about 16 weeks and the paper is discussed on the first week of class, but not begun by students until around week four (and I’m being optimistic here) then they have fourteen weeks to complete the research and write the paper in order to turn it in during the final week. There is no way these students can get through all of that research. But, if they form study groups as they will have to do in advanced classes and careers, they can then begin to condense the amount of research that is done in the group. It doesn’t matter how they divide the research, but that they divide it. This allows two people to continue to research longer while gaining more information on the subject and, ultimately, be able to use better research. There is no need for both John and Shane to need to decide that a particular book is not useful to the research. If one can determine this and then notify the other then they cut out a portion of the research.

I doubt that this form of collaboration is new. What is new about it is the way students interact with the books. Using digital libraries and more online sources, students are able to access more sources than ever before. Because of this, I think, many professors are expecting a more diverse group of sources when they could be looking at the way that students are using their research networks to their advantage.

I’m not saying that if John and Shane each included the exact same sources, organized their paper the same way and had paragraphs that had similar wording, we should not consider this a potential cheating issue. However, if the only similarities between the two papers lies in the research of the paper, then the use of research networks should be taken into account.

But let’s say that John and Shane each have completely different sources. John, normally a “C” writer has written a “B” paper that is organized in exactly the same manner as Shane but has different content. Is it a bad idea to look back at John’s previous papers and see if he has encountered comments in the past that focus on his lack of organization? Is it too much to consider that perhaps John knows Shane is good at organization and asked for help with his own paper? Shane would likely tell him how his own paper was organized and John is likely to use this information to organize his own paper. Again, I don’t think that we should consider this cheating. We teach our students using examples. Why then, would we not allow them to use an example they had sought out on their own? It makes sense to me.

I am not saying that a teacher should completely rewrite their definition of cheating. What I am saying, instead, is that teachers need to look closely at what is going on in these situations and determine whether it is detrimental to the student to eliminate collaboration for the sake of keeping students from drawing ideas from other students. I, however, think that if students are using each other to further expand their education, we should encourage this. It could very well lead to a promotion in their future. Should we stand in the way of this?

But I’m curious. What do you consider the difference between collaboration and cheating? Am I living in a utopia where student collaboration is not cheating or am I actually being realistic about these collaborative endeavors? Do I need to explore this idea further?

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It’s true confession time. I learned about face-book from a soccer player. He couldn’t get off the site long enough to participate in class. MySpace was the same; one of my sorority girls updated her page each day before class. YouTube I attribute to one of my students showing me my first YouTube video after class one day. This is just a sample of the technologies that I’ve used and the students who have introduced me to them. So how can I turn all of these introductions into familiar technologies? Simple. I start with just a couple of steps that are easy to use in any classroom.

Listen

Just a few weeks ago, I was talking to a student about an article I had read. When I remarked that I should have bookmarked it, she replied “Did you tweet it?” My first response was “No.” (I make it a policy not to directly ask my students for these terms because if they ask me to define a term, I tell them to look it up. For me not to do the same is a bit hypocritical.)

Google It

Back in my office a few hours later, I sat down at Google and typed in the question still on my mind. “What is a tweet?” After skimming over a few suggestions, I elected to check Wikipedia. I knew from the sentence that what I was looking for was a verb. So, as I skimmed the explanations on Wikipedia, I found only one verb:

To send a message via Twitter.

I followed the link, skimmed the Twitter information on Wikipedia, and then I did the unthinkable. I signed up.

Use It

Now, it’s easy to find out what your students are talking about with these technologies, but the first step to learning the technologies is to experiment.

So, what happens if you get to the site and you still can’t figure out what’s the attraction to the site. What if you can’t figure out how to navigate the site itself? Then, you have to do take the difficult step.

Talk to Your Students

Remember, students know things that we don’t. They have their finger on the pulse of Web 2.0. If we’re learning about the existence of the technologies from students then they are obviously using these technologies? Why not give the students the chance to teach us something?

So why am I advocating eavesdropping on students to find out about technologies? It’s simple. As teacher’s we’re automatically slightly out of the loop with Web 2.0. We come home at night and we do “adult” things (cooking, grading papers, reading books). But most of our students get online after dinner and homework. Why? To tinker with their social networks and their web pages. Just as we were the pioneers of the Internet, our students are the pioneers on the Internet. If we cannot admit that our students know something that we don’t, what kind of teachers are we?

I remember being in high school and teaching my English teacher how to do something to her VCR. It was a very satisfying moment for me; I taught the teacher something. But even more gratifying was when she came back to the school the following week and thanked me. I had taught her how to do it right. The best teachers I had growing up were those who allowed there to be a give and take between their knowledge and that of their students. The worst teachers? Those who assumed they knew it all. To truly become the technology savvy teachers that we wish to become, we have to talk to our students. We have to learn what is important to them outside of the classroom. Then, we have to figure out which of the technologies they are using can be incorporated into the classroom. Not all of the technologies they play with are appropriate in the classroom. But if we don’t use the ones that are appropriate, then we lose a chance to engage students. It only takes one technology to engage one at-risk student and change their mind about staying in school.

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Why We’re Told No.

From my experiences and what I’ve read and gained from talking with other educators, we are generally told we cannot use blogs in the classroom for various reasons.

1. Blogs violate student privacy laws created in FERPA (US only, but I think many countries have similar guidelines).
2. Blogs make students vulnerable to internet predators.
3. Blog posts are disruptive to a student’s education.
4. Students are unaware that what they post online is available to anybody surfing the web.
5. Blogging is not educational.

Now, in the world of academe and politics, the solution to these problems–beyond banning blogs–is to pass rules and legislation that prevents educators from using any form of new technology in the classroom. I think, at least in the realm of academe that these rules are too often passed by administrators who do not fully understand the full capacity of these new technologies. Administrators who blog, from my experiences and the experiences of those that I have spoken to, tend to support teachers in their decision to add this media to their pedagogical practices. This is not to say that all administrators who do not blog are not willing to see how this works, but I believe the majority are too hesitant for the rules listed above. So, I want to take a second and look at each of these objections from a educator’s standpoint.

Blogs violate student privacy laws created in FERPA

(US only, but I think many countries have similar guidelines).

This is a hard one for me to wrap my mind around right now. The reason for this is that I’ve read the FERPA policy many times and I understand that, at it’s core, I cannot give out their personal information. But, I don’t see how this is a violation of FERPA rights. So, I’m working on getting this question answered. This is the reason that I was not allowed to use blogs in my class this semester. It came from one of the deans who is also a former English Professor, so I’m going to see if I cannot have a sit down with her and find out what the scoop is on this one. I’ll post more after I have the chance to chat with her about the reasons behind this.

Blogs make students vulnerable to internet predators.

I can see the motivation behind this argument. When the news headlines are talking about a young girl committing suicide because of a MySpace hoax, I can see the administrators being gun-shy about allowing teachers to require blogs as a course component. However, I still think that this is the wrong way to approach the problem. In my classes, I talk a lot about safety on the Internet. When my students were using Wordpress blogs for their blogs (I’ve now switched to the blog provided through Blackboard due to the rule changes) we talked about the username they chose, the name of their blog and the address they gave to the blog. I made sure that my students were aware of the potential dangers to setting up a “Janedoe.wordpress.com” address. We talked about the information they should and should not put into their About Me pages. But then we took the discussion a step farther.I did not limit the discussion to the class blog. I spent a week’s worth of class talking to my students about the perils of using their real name and information on the Internet. We created a game to play in class focused around who’s MySpace page was the safest.

These are the kind of things that we need to do with our students. If we make them aware of these dangers in real time learning experiences, then we have a chance at teaching them to be careful of the Internet as a whole. Banning blogs from the classroom is not the answer. We have to remember (as former students) the allure to books, movies, and other things that have been banned. But I think that Wes Fryer says it best:

Generally adults help young people learn to drive safely before giving them car keys and turning them loose on the streets of the world. Young people also need guidance and adult assistance to learn how to safely navigate the virtual environments of the 21st Century. Schools must be proactive, rather than merely defensive, in helping students acquire the skills of digital citizenship needed today and in the future. Simply banning read/write web tools on school networks is an inadequate response: Educators must strive to learn alongside students and parents how these technologies can be safely and powerfully used to communicate and collaborate (SafeDSN)

Seriously, if we expect students to know how to be safe on the Internet, can we expect this knowledge to be ingrained in them before they enter our classrooms? I don’t assume that my students have ever been taught the rules of plagiarism–even if they say they have. So why would I assume that somebody else had told them about Internet safety? Okay, off the soap box and onto the next reason.

Blog are disruptive to a student’s education.

Blogs are not educational.

Alright, I can see these arguments too and I’m going to tackle them together. Blogs can be disruptive to education. If Jane is posting her latest love poem to a crush on their blog instead of working on their Calculus homework. I’m willing to bet, though, that if the blog is for a class, we won’t see the love poem on that blog. So, I contend that we have to look at the difference in personal and educational blogs. I teach in a classroom that doubles as a computer lab during the off-periods. Students can get on these computers during class and surf their MySpace and their Facebook page. They can tweet about how boring my class is that day. Each of these means of communication is disruptive to the student’s education during my class. So, if the concern around blogs is that the tool is disruptive, why do the schools not block these other sites too? These sites are, at least in my class, more disruptive than blogs that I ask students to maintain. Why? Because when students blog on a class related blog, they are not disrupting the educational process, but rather furthering it.

Students are unaware that what they post online is available to anybody surfing the web.

So, while I think Jane’s love poem can be disruptive to her education, I must first ask if the poem Jane is blogging is on a blog for her creative writing class. If so, then the disruption to Calculus is still in the realm of education. If we cannot allow students to further their education through a means that engages them, how can we be educators?

What We Can Do

We cannot combat the problem with all of these issues on our own. But there is one thing that can be done to further facilitate the comprehension of administrators when it comes to blogs and other new medias. We cannot expect administrators to make the right decision if they are not informed on the advantages of these technologies. You know the feeling you get when you realize that your student knows more about the topic you’re teaching than you do? Do you remember how you feel about not knowing the answer to the question? Do you think that administrators may feel the same, especially in a world that automatically assumes that the higher your position of authority, the more you know? We need to sit down and talk to these administrators so that we can ascertain if the problems we’re encountering come from their lack of knowledge with blogs or from their refusal move into the digital age. If the administrator’s problem is lack of knowledge, then we, as teachers, need to take the first step to talk to the administrators about the rewards of blogs (and other medias). If you’re faced with an administrator who refuses to move into the digital age, try talking. If it doesn’t work, be patient, you never know what might happen.

If you haven’t already posted to Al Upton’s blog to support his students, do so. Together, we might change the mind of one administrator. I’m sending an email to my dean. She’s always proven rational in the past.

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Because technology has increased the intensity and complexity of literate environments, the twenty-first century demands that a literate person possess a wide range of abilities and competencies, many literacies. These literacies—from reading online newspapers to participating in virtual classrooms—are multiple, dynamic, and malleable. As in the past, they are inextricably linked with particular histories, life possibilities and social trajectories of individuals and groups. Twenty-first century readers and writers need to

• Develop proficiency with the tools of technology
• Build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and cross-culturally
• Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes
• Manage, analyze and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information
• Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multi-media texts
• Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments

(NCTE “Toward A Definition of 21st-Century Literacies)

I applaud NCTE for the bold step to include technology in the definition of literacy. This is a step that we need in order to further the literacy of our next generation. Generation X found themselves pioneers of the Internet, and I already see my students (Gen-Net maybe) as pioneers on the Internet. I learned about Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and I think even YouTube through my students. I think it is wonderful that they are aware of these popular sites. But I think that before we can see such a shift in the definition of literacy, we need to first see a shift in the education of the teachers expected to accomplish this task.

I’ve been thinking this for quite a while, but I have not ventured to put it into writing because I was not sure how to go about discussing this change. So what finally fueled the fire? Will Richardson’s recent post on Weblogged. In this post, he raises this question:

[H]ow in god’s name can we talk seriously about 21st Century skills for kids if we’re not talking 21st Century skills for educators first? (URGENT: 21st Century Skills for Educators (and Others) First )

So Will got me thinking about it. The comments on this post (there are over 100 at this writing and the dialogue is ongoing) got me contemplating the topic. The comments represent many divergent voices–those who want to see reform in education policy, those who are using technologies on their own, and those who are using technology in their classrooms as well as their personal lives. But what really got me thinking was after reading this post and the comments, I had a colleague mention to me that she was really excited about an upcoming presentation I’m doing on using blogs in First Year Composition. This was a presentation I did for the first time last year and one that I was asked to do again. Since I’ve now been blogging for over a year, blogs are kind of an “old” technology for me. But what she said resonated within my mind.

Teachers are hungry to use technology in their classrooms. But they don’t. While part of this lack of usage stems from problems with education reform that emerges from administrators and education boards not fully understanding the technologies themselves, another part of teachers not using technology in the classroom comes from the simple fact that they don’t know how to use the technologies, let alone how to incorporate these technologies into their classrooms. In some cases, the teachers don’t know about the technologies at all. I’m not kidding. You should have seen the look on my face when one of my students asked if I “tweeted.” I was dumbfounded and had no idea what she was talking about and I consider myself in the know about technologies. If we are going to be the teachers who use the technologies in our classroom, we have to become proactive in learning these technologies.

But this post is not intended to be a soapbox. If you’re reading this post, you are obviously aware of the presence of blogs in our everyday life. Take a minute and ask yourself what technologies you are well versed in. Have you posted to YouTube? Do you use PowerPoint to aid in your lectures? What other technologies do you use? Do you have a Twitter account? Make a list. When you have your list made, consider your colleagues. Do they know these technologies? Do they know how they can use them in the classroom? Is there a technology that you know one of your colleagues knows that you would like to be familiar with? Now, instead of waiting for somebody to put together a workshop on one of these technologies, consider creating your own workshop. Think about it. You’re a teacher. You know these technologies. Is there really a difference in teaching what you know about Google Earth to your colleagues and teaching it to your students? Within your own school you can create a technology club (much like a book club, except that instead of reading a book a month, you experiment with a technology each month). Get together as a group and discuss the technologies and how you could use these to aid your teachers. This is exactly what I’m doing with the colleagues I know are interested in using the technology but don’t know how. Sure, you may have to wait for education reform to allow you to use these technologies, but if you start using them, you can readily become one of the advocates who aids in getting the reforms to education that we need to teach these technologies to our students.

To give you a head start, I’ll be uploading materials from each of my workshops to this blog. I know that I can easily upload the notes and handouts here. I have permission from my group to upload a Podcast of our discussions, so I’ll provide more information on the location of these items when we begin. Be patient. Our goal is to do a workshop a month. However, remember that we are all doctoral students, so there may be couple of dry months throughout the year.

As always, feel free to comment to the blog if there is anything that you want to see covered. If it’s not a technology I’m familiar with, I’ll explore it and post as soon as I’m comfortable with teaching this information.

Happy Techno-Teaching

Katt

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