Reflection on Digital Media in the Classroom

Traveling is a luxury not everyone can enjoy, especially when it comes to traveling internationally. Few students in public education have had the opportunity to travel and learn abroad. However, the ever changing world of technology is making it possible to bring travel to the classroom environment. Students can experience and learn from the journey of hundreds of other people that share their experiences online. Educators can also share their own journeys or the journeys of their peers or other students. Large internet corporations, like Google, provide programs such as Google Earth which allows users to visit anywhere in the world at the click of a mouse button. However, the question that presents itself is, “How can we, as educators, use all of this technological information effectively in the classroom?” I began to question this myself as the date for our iStory Tour drew closer.

In my bags for the trip to Peru, I packed an array of technology geared towards producing digital media. My laptop’s hardware was recently cleaned and several new programs, such as iTunes and Audacity, were installed. My digital camera battery was fully charged, four fresh gigs of compact memory were taken out of their plastic casings, and I finally invested in a table sized tripod. I had just ordered and received an Olympus digital voice recorder specifically with a PC connection cable and audio software, but I had never used a digital voice recorder before. All I could think of when viewing all this technology was how much extra weight it was adding to my carry-on and how long it would take me to get through airport security. Would 25 pounds of electronic carry-on matter to anyone besides the TSA? Is it worth the chiropractor visits I would need when I returned? I would be in Peru for less than twenty-four hours before I would find out.

The first night in Peru I posted to my online blog an initial reaction to being in the city of Lima. On the bus ride to the hotel, I took a few photos to give readers an idea of where I had arrived. By the next morning, I already had three comments on my blog. That is all it took to get me excited about sharing my experience. On my best day, I averaged seven comments and twenty-six readers. For the most part, I had family, friends, and co-workers reading and posting comments, questions, and requests for photographs. I saw my blog and my experience as a way to educate everyone about the trip. Later, I would find out that the popularity of my blog would increase more than I expected. My friends shared it with their friends, my family shared it with their neighbors, and my co-workers shared it with our business clients. Even elementary students, fellow teachers, and school administrators were reading my entries by the time I arrived home. In all, I estimate that over one-hundred and fifty people of all ages shared my experience. It was when I made this realization that I truly understood the power of technology in education.

Initially, the asynchronous communicative ability of maintaining a blog intrigued me more than any of the other technology I had on hand. Each time I posted an entry, individuals throughout the World Wide Web had the ability to read my entry within minutes, hours, or days. Those wishing to subscribe to my blog had the ability to do so through an RSS feeder. This feature is particularly important to those individuals who may choose to incorporate the progress of a trip in the classroom environment. Currently in the United States, one hundred percent of classrooms have access to the Internet. However, Internet access can be limited to those traveling abroad. As a result, it is important that educators familiarize themselves with feeders. With an RSS feeder, an individual can be contacted through email when a blog post is made. This can be useful with such digital media as Podcasts, which also provide links to feeders for notification purposes. In an educational setting, feeders can aid educators in maintaining their time on task. Student interest can be heightened through the anticipation of receiving notification that a communicative digital media has been updated with additional information for their use in the classroom.

After visiting several locations in Peru and making great use of my digital camera, I was able to upload images to my online album. In essence, by posting the pictures online, individuals are provided with a virtual fieldtrip. While I am sure this was a wonderful experience for my friends and family, I can just imagine how fascinating it is for students. I began by photographing items that interested me which usually includes creative angles of architectural or design elements throughout the area. However, I received requests to photograph the people, their homes, the fauna, the food, and everything in-between which forced me to be more creative and develop an educational eye. I began this process by organizing my photos by city. I had a web album for Lima, Cusco, and Machu Picchu. I later added one for food, one for fauna, and one for the environmental images I took during water testing. There was the potential to add additional organizational folders, but tags can provide an easy organizational solution as well. While images can be organized into album folders, I can also tag my digital media with searchable key words. Through this, I am able to link my photos and blog entries to those of fellow student iStory travelers, world travelers, and any individual who uses a similar keyword. When using keywords in the classroom environment, educators must be careful to preview the results before using them in lessons. Those creating a tag can publish inappropriate content with tag words that may not pertain to the image. When tags are accurate, educators are presented with a unique perspective of just about anything they are wishing to present to their class. Educators can also contact other individuals through their images or link together tags to create discussion groups about the images or blog entries.

Perhaps the one piece of electronic equipment that I believed I would rarely use was the digital voice recorder. How quickly my opinion changed once I downloaded my first batch of recordings. I have a long way to go in learning how to correctly use the recorder to capture clean sounds with limited distortion. I have definitely learned an individual must be comfortable with the digital media at hand, especially if bringing it back into the classroom. In order to maintain time management and discipline, the individual must know how to troubleshoot on the spot and not stress if they are unable to persuade the digital media to work. There should always be a back-up plan behind the technology or at least good software. Olympus provided me with the basics to download and listen to my recorded sounds, but an open source software program called Audacity provided me with the ability to correct, edit, and splice my recordings together. Not only was I able to provide blog viewers with a written story and visual representation of Peru, but I was now able to provide complete multi-sensory stimulation through the sounds of Peru. I found myself recording the tour guides, the musicians, the waterfall in the lobby of our hotel that prevented me from napping, and most importantly, fellow iStory travelers. When I arrived home, it was a unique experience to listen to the voices of individuals I may never interact with again. I was able to share their voices and experience with blog readers who now became listeners. By the end of the trip, the only piece missing was the ability to share the pungent odor of the rivers or the flavor of our gourmet meals.

Upon returning home, the blogging process has not ended for me. I am still finding material to share. In my own daily interactions with digital media, I have been coming across publications which relate back to our iStory tour. With people still viewing, reading, and listening to my blog, I feel a responsibility to continue sharing information pertaining to the trip. In the classroom, this is important as well. The Internet is a rich source for research material and informational sources. It also opens up a whole new resource for student and educator collaborative work. Students can interact with other students around the world. Educators can share information and discuss techniques with fellow educators whether they are in California, New Jersey, or Peru. In addition to the asynchronous communication discussed earlier, there is also the ability for synchronous communication. Through video chats, students can interview or talk with individuals abroad. For example, consider the work Elaine Wrenn accomplished with our travel group. Using a video chat, she was able to synchronize a time to speak with a classroom of students at her school about the data she collected for them from the rivers throughout areas of Peru. Students were able to begin the project in their classroom in California with asynchronous communication through Ms. Wrenn’s blog and email. After reviewing this information, students could develop questions and present them to her while she was still onsite in Peru.

Digital media supports new, unique, and creative approaches to lessons within the classroom. However, one of the most important abilities I see within the use of digital media relates to one of my favorite educational theorists, Howard Gardner. Gardner’s theory discusses multiple intelligences. He believes in utilizing an individual’s strongest form of intelligence to develop abilities in other areas. Some students learn through visualization, others through reading, while others through listening or participating hands on. Digital media allows all aspects of intelligence to be explored and allows the student to learn through an individually-centered curriculum previously not easily obtainable in the traditional classroom setting.