Digital Blog Post #C

Electronic Note-Taking

Handwriting notes have been the status quo for thousands of years, but not so much anymore. Technology is taking the world by storm in many ways, and note-taking is just another skill technology is advancing. Why is electric note taking better? It provides ample opportunities for students to keep important information. Notecards and papers can get lost or ruined, but electronic note-taking is more permanent. There are so many note-taking applications and programs on computers and tablets. The great thing about technology is that you can save whatever notes you have to online database, so if you lose your laptop those documents are not completely gone. Another great enhancement that technology brings to note-taking is that you can easily manipulate information even after you write it. With the press of a button you can change, add, move, organize, and expedite your notes. On paper, you can either scribble it out or erase it, but there is still going to be a messy mark on your paper. 

Strategies for Preventing Plagiarism and Cheating

The best strategy for dealing with plagiarism and cheating is a proactive approach. Some students may not know all of the in's and out's of citing their work and paraphrasing correctly, and unintentionally plagiarize. Teachers cannot expect their students to come in knowing all of these technicalities. It is a teachers responsibility to provide students ample information on obtaining, using, and citing research. According to Transforming Learning with New Technologies, there are seven still relevant ways to combat plagiarism:

• Distinguish levels or types of research
• Discourage "trivial pursuits"
• Emphasize essential questions
• Require and enable students to construct answers
• Focus on information storage systems
• Stress citation ethics
• Assess students progress throughout the entire research process

These are all great recommendations, but I want to stress the importance of assessing students progress throughout the entire research process. This is a superior way to combat plagiarism because the teacher can check in on the students and provide feedback on anything the student is having issues with. 

Teaching Problem Solving with Computers

Problem Solving is a life long skill that is used daily. It is one of the most important skills you can teach a child because they not only use it in their academic life, but also in their personal life. All students in school now have never lived in a life without technology, so it is important that teachers give students these life skills in a way that they can enjoy and relate to. There is obvious help that technology can bring to the classroom when it comes to problem solving, such as learning games and intelligent tutoring programs. Using such programs can help students come up with many solutions to a problem, and help them to think outside of the box.

Check out this Prezi that talks about this process.

Resources: 

Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.