Blog #18

Establish E’s authority as an appropriate person to interview

State E’s positions regarding the appropriateness (or not) of phone technology in the classroom

Identify E’s reasons for the above positions

Give examples of what she sees as good use-“bad” use of phone technologies in the classroom

E was appropriate to interview because of her obvious knowledge about the subject at hand. Originally The subject had something to do with texting in the classroom and E is a college professor for both undergraduate and graduate students. She teaches at Kean and Rutgers University to both virtual and live students, all of these credentials made her an obvious fit for the interviewee. 

E seems like she is pretty set on incorporating phone technology (when appropriate) in the classroom. 

She discusses something called BYOD (bring your own device) and says how classrooms should be incorporating phone technology. 

Now a days everything is getting off the paper and right onto the computers, ipads and tablets, so why not do the same thing in the classrooms? Making students tech savy will definitely be benefiting, but finding the middle and not always allowing them to do everything on the tablets is also a big plus too! 

E states that when students are being rude and using their phone for social media or communicating with friends it is obvious that it is the wrong time to be on a cellphone, however E also states that when using an ipad, phone or computer to take notes or look something up it should be more than acceptable. Basically finding the middle/gray area and not taking advantage is the main conflict.  

A. 
G: so you would never want your students to use their phones for note taking or
E: see that’s an entirely different thing, im actually um cause I study, my big thing is uhh, my dissertation is going to be on video games and learning in the classroom and I am very much into technology and teaching teachers how to use technology effectively. Specifically um a big thing that has come out now besides like ipad apps is such is like twitter and things like that which is obviously ya know a prevalent phone usage and uh things things that you can do on the phone and you know the whole BYOD or bring your own device movement would not be happening if students didn’t have cell phones. Because they may not have internet or word or access to something in the classroom like one to one initiative  or at home but a lot of them tend to have top of the line smart phones. So, that said I am a huge advocate of using the cellphone in class when appropriate, I have not used it as much because believe it or not I have gotten some push back from my students. Um the first class that I taught um last spring with uh whats it called, cyberspace. They said to me that they hated facebook, they hated twitter and the only thing that they liked was instagram and they..

B.

G: um I don’t know im going off on a tangent and then going to do some analysis and then decide

E: yeah that’s okay that is usually how research starts I was thinking to myself on the way here im not really exactly sure what direction she is going in but I know ill give her enough to think about lots of different things

G: laughs

E: laughs yeah but I will say that as far as notetaking goes, ive done it. When I was still taking classes for um my phd like back in uh I started back in 2009 and I remembered thinking and sitting in the classroom and now I have an ipad and we haven’t had stuff like that before and um I would carry my laptop, most of the times I carry my laptop now. Now I have a mac so that’s lighter than the laptop, the ipad is lighter than all of that but I had you know my 3g iphone and I would take notes and I was always thinking to myself, the professors are going to think im texting. And I would purposely put it down so they could see the little yellow notepad because I did not want them to think I was being disrespectful. Because I know that if I was the professor, and this is before I was even teaching face to face, I would not them thinking that I was being disrespectful beasically. So if my students were taking, you know sometimes I will give them looks and they will be like no its notes see, and they will show me and im like okay I didn’t say anything but the fact that they are on top of that to me says okay I know that you are not like texting under your desk or whatever, so I am not against it because I am a tech advocate and that is not going to change I don’t think. Um I don’t know I just kind of found the fact that you were talking specifically about notetaking interesting. Im like im wondering how did that come about.

C.

E: see that’s an entirely different thing, im actually um cause I study, my big thing is uhh, my dissertation is going to be on video games and learning in the classroom and I am very much into technology and teaching teachers how to use technology effectively. Specifically um a big thing that has come out now besides like ipad apps is such is like twitter and things like that which is obviously ya know a prevalent phone usage and uh things things that you can do on the phone and you know the whole BYOD or bring your own device movement would not be happening if students didn’t have cell phones. Because they may not have internet or word or access to something in the classroom like one to one initiative  or at home but a lot of them tend to have top of the line smart phones. So, that said I am a huge advocate of using the cellphone in class when appropriate, I have not used it as much because believe it or not I have gotten some push back from my students. Um the first class that I taught um last spring with uh whats it called, cyberspace. They said to me that they hated facebook, they hated twitter and the only thing that they liked was instagram and they..

G: that is the new thing

E: yeah that is like the one thing that I don’t really get into, my sister is into it, I have friends that are really into it but that is the one thing that I just never got into. So basically the whole thing with like having um I was very surprised that my students were you know like anti social networking, using their phone, that sort of thing because they were more concerned with you know um maybe instagram or whatever else. When I tried to get them to use twitter in the classroom they were kind of like complaining to me about it and im like really like this is that horrible. Some of them understood but others were just like no. sorry I kinda went off

D.

E: laughs yeah but I will say that as far as notetaking goes, ive done it. When I was still taking classes for um my phd like back in uh I started back in 2009 and I remembered thinking and sitting in the classroom and now I have an ipad and we haven’t had stuff like that before and um I would carry my laptop, most of the times I carry my laptop now. Now I have a mac so that’s lighter than the laptop, the ipad is lighter than all of that but I had you know my 3g iphone and I would take notes and I was always thinking to myself, the professors are going to think im texting. And I would purposely put it down so they could see the little yellow notepad because I did not want them to think I was being disrespectful. Because I know that if I was the professor, and this is before I was even teaching face to face, I would not them thinking that I was being disrespectful beasically. So if my students were taking, you know sometimes I will give them looks and they will be like no its notes see, and they will show me and im like okay I didn’t say anything but the fact that they are on top of that to me says okay I know that you are not like texting under your desk or whatever, so I am not against it because I am a tech advocate and that is not going to change I don’t think. Um I don’t know I just kind of found the fact that you were talking specifically about notetaking interesting. Im like im wondering how did that come about.

E. 

G: do you think she feels the same way about texting in the classroom or like how students use their phones in the classrooms

E: mia got really into electronic literature, she actually taught e lit like I think it was a yar ago. Um about the same time we started working together, she realized what um what I taught and um how much I believe in the idea of um teachers using technology and using it in the classroom and everything else and we sort of both got into it from you know at the same exact times. She’s more of the humanities section cause she is the digital humanities because her background is English, mines education but I was a dual English education here so its part of my background and you know, English is just natural and im around it a lot. But basically so were both into it but from slightly different aspects. That being said, she did electronic literature and she is obsessed with using the phone in the classroom because she would have authors come in.. she would have them tweet conversations and you know like put it up on the board and they would all tweet about readings and then she would try and find the authors of the people that were um writing some of the articles so the students could ask questions directly to them, which I thought was really cool thing, so she is gong ho about it too.

F. 

G: is that the back splash or is that something different

E: um I don’t know how she did it, I mean like I know there is like back channeling and there is tweet chat and there are different ways of like maintaining a conversation using like a hashtag that you know so that way you don’t have to disseminate like 50 thousand conersations for you to follow but um I don’t know exactly what she used I just know that she jumped into it the second she realized like just how cool techonolgoy was and im just like hey there is someone else who likes this as much as I do, so her yes, I don’t know about other people in the department.

G.

G: laughs.. um basically, last question do you feel texting is taking over todays generation

E: um I definitely think that it is becoming like I don’t know, a lot of times people say social networking and you know where is the social part, because we are all like these isolated beings that are sitting in our houses talking to each other through texts and were meeting people online and you know were not, are we going out together, are we doing things together, I think that its definitely helping I would say people because I honestly am not one of those people, I may come off as like really outgoing and stuff like that but the whole idea of meeting people and making friendships and stuff, ill start talking to you if you know you talk to me first but I would say its much easier for me to get to know someone through like reading them almost, and I would say the more uhh high school students and the more that it is used at the earlier grades like the more it is going to sort of take over but I know there is going to be a back lash by people who just don’t understand and I think that is kind of the way everything goes in general and in history and you know people who are just against certain things, and people having rights and things like that, there is always going to be people who are old school about things and that’s going to set into motion sort of things. I think that what it is is that we really need to teach media literacy and being savvy  and knowing when it is appropriate to use these things and you know sort of setting these guidelines. Part of it is parents saying no phone usage or no whatever and part of it is teachers saying it is okay to use it here and when/ if whatever.

G: so appropriate use basically

E: yes exactly, it needs to be, and it needs to be outlined and discussed more its never really talked about and I don’t think it is. I think it is more like no phones are bad, texts are bad. Or yeah im really into the idea of it. But you know that is not going to work, it needs to be more gray

G: yes right now it is black or white.

E: yes exactly