Journal # 1

"Power of the Mashup" by Suzie Boss and Jane Krauss
August 2007 issue of Learning & Leading with Technology

Jerome Burg left his teaching job last year to help other teachers at Granada High School in Livermore, CA integrate technology in the classroom. One of the innovative ideas he came up with was to use Google Earth as a way to help students connect to the works of literature they used in the classroom. For example, they would look up a place that a character visited in Voltaire's Candide on Google Earth, so that they could understand the story better. Burg created a project just for this purpose called Google Lit Trips. This interactive website has a huge success at his old school. This type of teaching tool is called a "Mashup" or "hybrid application that draws from multiple sources to create something new," report Boss and Krauss. "Mashups" help to reinforce traditional teaching goals like: ubiquity, deep learning, making things visible and discussable, expressing opinions and ideas, collaboration, research, project management, reflection and iteratioon. However, students are more engaged because they do the "research" or "travel via websurfing" by themselves instead of getting a handout and world map. The students create KMZ files as part of the assignment which allows them to custom a map in the story with different sets of markers depending on the purpose for the map. Similarly another teacher, David Fagg, has found a way to use mp3 players in the classroom to introduce students to lesson plan on the topic of history. Boss and Krauss state, "By combining historical fieldwork with podcasting, he was building new skills onto a platform that students already understood." He shared his knowledge of fieldwork, collection and assimilation into a completed project while the students added their knowledge of technology to present their research to the classroom and the world via podcasting. Although this approach didn't appeal to all learners, many students were excited about doing more with the technology knowledge they already possessed.

What are the drawbacks to using technology in the classroom?
A teacher has to be good at classroom management otherwise the students will just sit and play with the technology and not finish a project. I have watched this in my classroom observations where the teacher has to keep a close eye on every kid on the computer. In addition, podcasting may benefit aural learners, but not visual or kinesthetic learners to same degree. It's tempting to use technology to teach, but the teacher has to come up with a way to make the technology stimulate all three types of learners.

How can I build up the technology created by Burg and Fagg in my classroom?
I can see myself using both tools - the history podcasting and Google Lit trips. I would love Google Lit trips to teach my sections of World Lit where the students often don't have a clue where Mumbai (formerly Bombay) India is or where the "Oracle at Delphi" (Greece) is located? Similarly, I could integrate history lessons into my World Lit class (required by former headmaster boss at a boarding school I taught at in AZ) to help my students understand the context of the timepiece they are reading about. What is 18th century England like?