Article #5 Summary & Response

This article is about challenged-based learning and provides information for anyone to be able to “take action and make a difference.” This author, as well as the Apple in Education website, describes each of the steps in challenged-based learning. Step 1 is “The Big Idea”. This is where you come up with a broad topic that has importance to students and their community. I like that the big idea can be broad and then just fine-tuned to what needs to be done. I also like that anyone can come up with something in the community that is important to them, like homelessness or campus parking. The examples of broad big ideas that the website gave were democracy, the environment, sustainability, or food. These big ideas certainly are broad. Step 2 is “Essential Questions”.  This is where you can get more specific with your idea by asking questions reflecting your area of interest or community need. Step 3 is “The Challenge.” In this step is where we can guide more towards a real-world solution. For example, instead of the solution for homelessness being give all homeless people a house, we can find a Laundromat who will wash clothes for free for job interviews. Step 4 is “Guiding Questions and Activities”. In this step, we can find some answers, collect data, and conduct interviews. For example, we can ask local companies what the number one reason is for not hiring a homeless person is. Step 5 is “Guiding Resources”. This step must be so simple because of the ease of access in finding resources. Through the internet, we can easily find all local homeless shelters or Laundromats in the area. Then we can easily find a ton of information on homelessness and even specifically in Bellingham. Step 6, the last step, is “Solutions, Implementation, and Reflections”. This is where we develop our solution and implement it in the real world.

Like I said in the beginning, these big ideas can easily become more specific and easy through this challenged-based learning process. The example on the Apple in Education website went from a big idea of food, to coming up with a solution of creating a school garden. The process makes it so easy, and the solution can benefit your school or community in a huge way. 

Article #4 Summary & Response

It is funny to read this article after the one we read a few weeks back about how students should be taught how to better read online and should more often read print to meet standards. I suppose if that was done, this extreme usage of iPads and tablets that these author suggests, can possibly be okay. Most of the time, I side with the negative aspects of articles, just like how I agreed that students need to be reading print and used to it before they arrive to college. I never fully explore the benefits of so much technology, except that I realized how much we are required to read online PDFs and articles anyway in college these days. I like that the teacher in the article focused on still teaching print-based literacy goals, but to also enhance students' learning opportunities with the iPads and provide them with an opportunity to also learn some of the new literacy skills associated with 21st-century technologies But that was not a benefit. That was just a fact. It was nice to read a few simple benefits of students using iPads in the classroom. One of the largest benefits being that iPads do support and enhance transliteracy instruction and learning.

It seems that educators are still unsure about how to exactly use iPads and tablets in the classroom because they are still so new. The authors themselves said, "Because iPads and similar tablets have been relatively unexplored as tools for literacy learning, we hope that this work can provide a foundation for teachers and leaders making decisions about whether mobile devices such as these can be useful tools in literacy classrooms."

I loved exploring the website about reading and writing apps. I myself have an iPad that I use all the time, and one reason I bought it was because I knew I would be using it forever and I could see myself using it in my classroom or one on one with students. Because of this, I am constantly looking for awesome apps that I could download for future use. I have a little folder on my iPad titled "teaching" for all the apps I have gotten that I hope to use one day.