Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
represent a more homogeneous group must be culturally sensitive to the needs of
each student helping all students become successful.”
•
“Migration has lead to programs such as bilingual education and English as a
Second Language (ESL).”
•
(Me): “Increasing cultural diversity of classrooms creates additional challenges
to teachers for understanding, accepting and assisting individual students. It also
creates increasing opportunities for students from different backgrounds to learn
from and about each other as individuals.”
The first two comments suggest dialogue with the author and possibly each other.
The third comment shows connections between the case study and concepts from
our course, with a possible misconception of “homogeneous group.” The fourth
comment shows transfer from the case study to content learned in another course.
My comment emphasizes a primary objective of what students are expected to learn
in this course.
Outcomes
At the end of semester students evaluated their use of HyLighter for annotating
articles and case studies. Results showed:
1. Many students reported that using HyLighter made them more active readers
and that annotating and comparing annotations increased meaningfulness and
memorability of what they read. A few students disliked highlighting but liked
writing comments.
2. Some students thought about what they were highlighting for the first time.
3. Before this experience, some thought that all highlighting was of equal value
and there were no better or worse ways to highlight; it was just a matter of
personal style or preferences.
4. Two students did not highlight anything because they viewed everything as
equally important. They failed to realize the importance of being selective.
5. Some students were relieved that they could highlight a section of text and did
not have to comment in the dialogue box.
6. Most students liked comparing their highlights and comments with peers and
the teacher to determine whether they missed anything important or focused on
irrelevant details.
7. One student failed to use HyLighter when she heard there was a bug in the
program because she thought that meant you would get a virus by using it!
8. Several students complained that the small size of the comment box made it
hard to monitor their own writing.
9. Students generally persisted and enjoyed the HyLighter experience despite
initial difficulties using it because of browser or other problems.
10. Virtually all students were fascinated by the differences between peers' high-
lights and comments.
