iPhone Apps for the Classroom

Smartphone applications are opening up an entire new world for institutions to interact with their constituents.  Stanford University has “released a free iPhone application called iStandard that allows students to register for classes, look up campus maps and be able to view the location of their friends on a map – instant messaging them if need be … Other schools have also introduced similar applications (Duke University, Georgia Tech, U Cal at San Diego, etc.) (Lavrusik, 2009).

Abilene Christian University (ACU) has taken the use of smart phones to the next level by issuing iPhones or iPod Touches to all of its full-time freshmen students in order to stay connected to their school, courses, professors, and fellow students. Freshmen can use their iPhones or iPod Touches to receive homework alerts, answer in-class surveys and quizzes, check their meal and account balances, and watch podcasts of their professor’s lectures.

Access to the iPhones and their prevalence on campus enables students to work with their professors on developing applications for the iPhone, which has become a burgeoning market in the social media sphere. Dr. Scott Perkins (2009) discovered “that pre-class podcasts and autonomous student review of information can effectively replace laboratory-based lectures with absolutely no decrease in student performance. The majority of students in specific courses where mobile devices have been routinely used rate themselves as having improved their academic performance (grades and organization) and engagement (active learning, contact with professors and teaching assistants, involvement and attention).”

Cynthia Powell, instructor of chemistry and biochemistry at ACU, concurred with Dr. Perkins in stating that, “as scientists, our students need to be learning how to collect and gather data on their own, and this is an important way that we can help our students on this path toward independence.” What we want to do with this program,” Dr. William Rankin, Associate Professor of English and Director of Educational Innovation, said, “is tap into each student’s innate abilities. We want to transform the shape of the classroom from that factory model, where everybody sits in ranks, and observes an consumes, to a model of engagement, where each student becomes a resource in the class.”

The above post is an excerpt from a paper about social media use in schools I’m writing for my Professional Report Writing class; in case you couldn’t tell.

Steeves

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Texas Board of Education Chooses to Teach Conservative Opinion of Facts

The Texas Board of Education voted March 11th on new reforms to the textbooks used in grade school classrooms which will change which organizations, people, and ideologies are highlighted as being important to the history of the U.S. The board’s new curriculum demands the inclusion of “the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract with America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority, and the National Rifle Association.” It hyperbolizes the achievements of Republican heroes while downgrading the achievement of democratic and minority leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., Thomas Jefferson, and Caesar Chavez. The board even decided to completely remove the word ‘democratic’ from textbooks, in favour of describing the American government as a ‘constitutional republic’.

This will give grade school education an obvious political spin, which should of course be left entirely out of the education of children who should be given the straight facts and allowed to form their own opinion. Unfortunately, this is like creating subliminal messaging in textbooks. Children will grow up believing they are learning their country’s true history, when in fact they are learning the opinion of their esteemed Republican-majority Board of Education. Also, as Texas is a very influential state due to its size, these conservative-leaning textbooks will most likely begin migrating to other states throughout the country.

Countries hyperbolizing their achievements in teachings to their youth is nothing new of course. North Koreans are taught that Kim Jong-Il did numerous amazing things, including inventing the light bulb and walking on the moon. The Soviet Union greatly exaggerated their part in winning World War II through their educational institutions, at times making it seem as though it was them who bailed out the Allies and single-handedly toppled the Third Reich. Even Canada is somewhat guilty of this in our telling of the ’72 Summit Series. I grew up hearing about it believing that we were the underdog to the great Soviet team, when in fact, as I learned later, they were the underdog to us, but humiliated the superstars of Team Canada with total unknowns at the time.

This type of picking and choosing in Texas though will only lead to ignorance and the breeding of more Ann Coulters. But, let’s give Texas some time for their institutions to come to their senses. I mean, they still can’t even agree on whether evolution is a valid theory.

Steeves

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