Exam Questions - Teacher and Technology --- Winter, 2012

Email your final product to rredekopp@gmail.com

Take home exam - but you may use the computer lab on March 2 to type it out.

These are longer answer type questions - the expectation is 500 - 750 words (2 - 3 pages typed double spaced or 3 - 4 pages hand written or 1 - 3 minutes in video, audio, goanimate, xtranormal, glogster, animoto or whatever). Organization including an introduction and conclusion are required -- as are paragraphs, or thought units!

Thoughtful, clear and concise is good. Long lists of facts are not.

If you are typing it, save your document as .doc   .docx   or .rtf   please.

Answer one question from each group (10 marks each) for a total of two questions:

0) You may use this as either a group A or Group B question.

Using one of the programs/web sites that we have used in class (or you found on your own) create something that shows your progress as a technology using educator. This can be personal progress or progress that shows how you would be better able to use technology in your teaching and some of the things you hope yet to learn.

Sources are important for any multimedia product.

GROUP A

1)    Play one of the educational games that involves more complex decision making and problem solving. Spend an hour or two playing the game. Comment on how this might be used as part of student learning and how it might effect the learning environment in and out of the classroom. What are the REAL outcomes? How would students express/assess their learning?

2)    Students (and many adults) are more connected and more isolated at the same time. Discuss this statement as to its relevance (bias?) and its implications for schools and classrooms. How would/will you deal with this in your classroom? This possibly has personal, social and environmental issues that you may discuss.

3)    How are digital creations (like a video, song, podcast, animation, mash-up, etc,) like an essay? How are these things different? How will you balance these aspects in your teaching?

4)    In the near future many of your students may have hand-held wireless Internet devices with them at all times (or the school may provide them). These will include dictionaries, calculators, Internet access (ie Google), science labs, maps and much, much more. What are you going to do about it? How might this affect your teaching?

5)    For your subject area give a valid classroom example of how you might infuse ICT to support inquiry based learning - showing how technology makes the learning process better. You might want to refer to the LwICT documents for support.

6)    Sir Ken Robinson maintains that schools limit student creativity. How can the various kinds of technology that we have looked at assist you as a teacher in freeing student creativity? What other considerations do you need to take into account to encourage and maintain creativity? How might the technology inhibit creativity?

GROUP B

7)   Your professor asserts that technology has a strong western, male, democratic, speed, emotionless bias, among other things. Do you agree? Can you think of other perspectives on this? Is there a way to overcome this bias?

8)  How important is it to have our students learn about the impact of technology in the larger sense? How should we give them a sense of the ecological and social implications of their tools and toys? How do we give them ways to move beyond guilt or denial to positive ways of dealing with the issues?

9)   Of the brain research developments we have talked about, which will have the most impact on education and on how you teach?

10)  How has the Internet changed how we think and how we should teach? Give some specific examples to support your argument. Are we getting dumber or just thinking differently?

11)  Explain which of your professor’s “Important Ideas” are most important for you as you approach a teaching career in the information age?

12)   In McLuhan terms discuss how the Internet has enhanced our abilities, made something(s) obsolete, retrieved something old and reversed into something unintended. Overall, is education well served by our digital technologies?