Cihanyesilmen’s Weblog

To get an impression how the use of  new media is realised at school, we are going to visit the Landschulheim Steinmühle. Hence we have to think about questions which may interest us.

1. What do the teachers theirselves think about the use of new media? Does the preparation of a lesson including new media dedicate much more time, than preparing a lesson without new media?

2. What about the financial aspect? How is equipment financed at LandschulheimSteinmühle?

Since I have to leave earlier, I hope to get the questions answered anyway.

OK, now after three weeks of holiday I come to the point of trying to answer the questions.

Where shall I begin… ok…

First of all to the first question:the teacher’s thoughts about the use of new media.

We had the chance to ask Mr. Nitzke and Mrs. Sperl who agreed to answer our questions. Both teachers appreciate the use of new media in their lessons. They see big advantages in using new media in class.  Especially in English and in Science classes it gives the chance to give interdisciplinary lessons, as in the Australia project about which the pupils will get to know everything about Australia both  in all lessons and in different ways virtually. As we heard, new media is used by a lot of teachers at this school, including Unterstufe up to the Oberstufe.  Of course the use of new media depends on the level of knowledge of the pupils, so that in the Unterstufe they start with the standardization with guided researches and in the Mittelstufe the new media is based on their computer science lessons. Only in the Oberstufe the pupils have to do unguided researches at school and also at their home. At this level then it is taken for granted that the pupils are able to give a powerpoint presentation.  So one ca say, that almost all teachers see advantages in using the new media in their classes and not just only in the Oberstufe but already in the Unterstufe. In ddition to that it is important to know that all the teachers at Landschulheim Steinmühle get well prepared to be able how to handle a beamer and other technical equipment they need.

Equipment:

Of course it is evident that every school has to provide the equipment to  use new media. Concerning the equipment at this school we got to know the computer-lab which is provided with 24 notebooks. Furthermore we found out that there are two more mobile stations which are also equipped with notebooks. In almost all rooms there are beamers installed and those rooms which are not yet provided with beamers will get one in the near future.  So one can say, that  the equipment matter can not be considered as a real excuse for not using new media.

Ok, now to the second question: the financial aspect.

This question was answered really quickly by Mr. Nitzke.  All the equipment is either financed out of the tax money or by contributions, as the notebooks in the computerlab for example which were dispensed by a company of the region Marburg.

All in all one can say, that it was really interesting to see in practice  how  new media is used at school. Especially the fact to hear  that teachers are not always afraid of using new media, but also see advantages.

a mobile laptop station

Find out about today’s use of computers in your old grammar school. Try to find information in the “Schulprogramm” or on the website, remember if and how your teachers included the New Media in the classroom. Describe your findings and your opinion about it.

Reading the blog task for this week’s session the first thing which came to my mind was ….”New Media at my old grammar school…did we even have computers???”

My own experiences:

But later on when I did some research and I visited the website of my old school I did remember some scenes in which I was sitting in front of a computer doing some research for my language subjects. As far as I remember I’ve never sat in front of a PC before 10th grade. And even then it was just in really rare cases. We had one computer lab in whichthe subject informatik was held, and one small PC-room which was only used by the older students. I can remember when I had to do some research for my Spanish class and also for French and English we sometimes visited the computer lab. In addition to that I also remember how many times after having the chance to work with the PC finally , we had to disrupt the work because our internet connection was lacking, or the PCs did not work, or our teachers where not able to cope with problems which came up etc. This also shows how uneducated our teachers were at that time. The more I think about the use of new media in my old school, the more I come to the fact that we didn’t really have teachers which included media in their lessons. Thinking back now I come to the point that it would have been much easier for me, if I had learned about PowerPoint and other medial things already at school and not only at university.

Current status of including new media at Cusanus-Gymnasium:

Unfortunately the website  does not give any information about the use of new media at school.

Here is a link: http://www.cusanusgymnasium.de/index.php?page=home

So I had to ask a friend’s sister which is now in 11th grade at this school. I was surprised that it has changed a lot indeed. The Cusanus Gymnasium offers now two computer labs and one additional which is just intended for the “Oberstufe”. What was also striking to me is, that now the use of new media in class seem to be more extended. I ascribe this to the fact that my former school now has a lot of more younger teachers than to the time when I was at this school.

All in all I can say, that there is no escape from the more and more getting “Media World” to which we have to adapt to, especially we as a future teacher who want to prepare our students better in these technical things, than our own teachers did.

Find (online or in a magazine) a report on a teaching project with the New Media that you really liked and you think was a success (not the one you had in-class) and explain it to your readers.

Searching the web I found the internet project “Monster Exchange”. The first thing which made me curious was the name of the project. But this was not the only reason why I’ve chosen this project.

I liked especially the fact that with this project they’ve manged it to involve  several teaching aspects at the same time.

I think it is very important that one gets to know the internet and its technology as soon as possible and this project is made for children in Kindergarten up to students of the 8th grade level.   

Here is the link: http://www.monsterexchange.org/index.asp

This project was created first in 1995 by  John Thompson and Brian Maguire.

The aim was to to encourage the  the development of reading and writing skills by using Internet technology in the classroom curriculum.

1.  Many different schools worldwide are paired together and the students in each classrooms have to go together in groups.
2. Each of these groups have to draw an original picture an write a description of a monster.
3. The partnered classes then exchange their descriptions via e-mail.
4. These students are then challenged to use reading comprehension skills to read the descriptions and translate them into a monster picture.
5. The challenge  is then to create a redrawn picture as close to the original picture as possible without looking at the original and using only the written description of the monster.

 
The written descriptions, the original pictures of the monsters and  the redrawn monster pictures have to be  scanned and uploaded to the Internet using the browser-based Monster Gallery Builder. The Monster Gallery Builder is entirely form-based and does not require the teacher or student to know any HTML code.

Finally these pictures are published in the Monster Gallery where you can give feedback via e-mail.

Furthermore it is useful to know that there are a lot of tips and support provided for teachers, involving with lesson plans , timelines, resources etc.

“Since then the project has grown to incorporate many state and national curriculum standards and has empowered thousands of students from schools worldwide to tap into their creativity and develop their reading, writing and comprehension skills in a fun way.”

Hope you liked it.