It has been said, and probably will continue to be said, that I am a huge science nerd. It's OK I've come to embrace this nerdiness as fact and moved on. However I had not really thought of my love of science specifically high school science (I am so NOT a fan of reading scientific research articles, which is why alas I decided no on being a scientist), but this nerdiness has not before been the center of my procrastination. Like many college students I procrastinated on facebook, netflix, and most recently pinterest(because yes for every fitness page I pin I should also pin a delicious desert). But yesterday in class I was shown a whole new(but admittedly more productive) distraction, Gooru!
I will admit that I have spent more than a little amount of time since Monday on Gooru looking up cool science videos and thinking about how they could help my students see difficult scientific concepts differently. For those of you who didn't have someone in your class present on Gooru, here is the basic rundown. Gooru is a collection of educational materials that can be searched by content or specific topic, once you have searched your topic you can also narrow down whether you want to see videos, articles, quiz questions etc. about that topic. Now if that wasn't cool enough you can also take, say, a handful of videos and save them onto a class page. You can give your students this page and have them watch those videos for homework if there is not enough time for them in class. Super cool.
On a less enthusiastic note I think that through our group discussions that took place during/after our presentations I got more disillusioned about the real use of websites like Diigo and Dropbox for us as educators. Here is why, Google. It is hard to support websites that do things that frankly Google can do better, and even if Google's product isn't really better but rather equivalent, it is so much easier for us to have our students use Google for a multitude of things then have them learn a multitude of websites.
Should this concern us as consumers, let alone educators, that Google has so much of our information and habits at it's fingertips? Seriously think about it, for me if Google all of a sudden ceased to exist I would lose my emails, my calendar, many photos, documents, probably even more that I am not aware is a Google product. To some extent of course it should concern us, but really what is our other solution. Hide away? Avoid the internet? For me, I have just accepted Google's domination over SO much of my life.
Wow, Gooru sounds great! Pinterest was presented in my group last week, so this is the first I'm learning about Gooru. I wrote in my own blog post that I would consider using Pinterest exclusively for finding classroom and teaching ideas. Unfortunately, this would come with a bunch of distractions from all the other stuff that's on it, and I have no interest in dealing with that.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like Gooru could solve this problem for me! We have been talking about how important it is for educators to collaborate with each other and share what works best for them. It would be silly not to take advantage of the thoughts, ideas, and experiences of other teachers, especially if they can help keep kids interested in and excited about learning! As a math teacher, I know I'll be looking for new ways to present concepts and keep my students engaged. I'll have to check Gooru out!
In his blog last week about Gooru, Michael brought up a concern that's related to yours, Lauren. He asked if we should be comfortable with Google making the choices about what content is available through a service like Gooru without telling us how we made those choices. Even more broadly, as you point out, should we be comfortable with Google holding the keys to the kingdom in so many areas on the internet? It's a worrisome question! There's a reason monopolies are frowned upon. But are you supposed to turn your back on a useful resource just because of its source? Is that fair to your students? I would say no. I think the best we can do as teachers is to be aware of the context of the tools that we use and be careful not to be accidentally roped into a certain set of ideas. We should be always conscious of where the things we use come from, and if necessary, question those sources and seek others if they will enrich our thinking.
ReplyDeleteLauren,
ReplyDeleteI definitely understand your reliance on Google, and I feel the same way. It's hard for me to justify the use of dropbox, when we already have Google Drive. The same goes for Evernote. I know people presented the idea that these other programs can do more complex and interesting things than the Google apps, but, especially when it comes to school organization, I like things to be simple, and Google makes them simple. One of my group members did present on Gooru, though, and I did think it sounded pretty interesting. She was an English major, and found few English guides or references, but said there are a lot for math and science. I will definitely have to check it out, because it sounds like you've already found a lot of things that will be useful in the classroom! PS. I don't think we will ever break our Pinterest addiction, and even if Google somehow came up with a Pinterest-like app, I think we would still continue to use Pinterest itself :)
Morgan
Hi, Lauren,
ReplyDeleteAnother point about Google being better than everything else is that most people already have an account with Google (and if they don't, then requiring them to do so would be a huge benefit for them). Because of this, though, all of the tools that Google offers are already accessible for everyone without having to sign up for another online tool. The main idea of this project was to see how we can organize our online lives, and I can't think of a better way to be organized than to only have one online account that we can use to do just about everything. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if Google did come out with something like Pinterest, Morgan.
Ok, so I was really interested to see how a science person would like Gooru. I also researched and played around on Gooru for this assignment. However, I'm an ELA person so I had a little bit harder time figuring out how useful Gooru would be in my classroom. I had a hunch that it was geared toward STEM so I'm not surprised that you liked it. I'm wondering what it was that you liked best. Do you think that you would utilize the video aspect of the site most of all, or did you also find helpful lesson plans that you could potentially incorporate into your class? I thought that the site was great and really wish that it had more information and topics for teachers outside of the STEM subjects. Glad you had fun spending time figuring it out!
ReplyDelete