Sunday, March 24, 2013
Lernstift Digital Pen
The Lernstift Digital Pen is a writing tool that offers the unique capabilities to sense when the writer makes a spelling, grammatical, or penmanship mistake dependent upon the mode that the pen is set to. In orthography mode, the pen senses what is being written- either on paper or in air- and vibrates once to denote spelling mistakes and twice to denote grammatical errors. In calligraphy mode, the pen vibrates when a letter is not formed properly. A future feature planned to be included in the pen is pressure plates within the grip. These pressure plates would sense whether or not the pen was being held in the correct way. The pen has two release dates set, one in mid-2013 and another in early-2014. The project is currently being funding by the public in order to launch production. It is estimated that the pen could cost anywhere from 50 to 80 euros which is approximately $65-$105.
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While I see the current and potential uses of this pen, I still question if this pen could ever be used perfectly because everyone writes differently. The pen would made a difficult task for a student (such as learning to read and write for the first time) much more frustrating to do. Also if I were a teacher giving a spelling test and didn't know about this pen and let the student use it, it's essentially cheating for children. It could also lead to a dependence on technology like Carr talks about.
ReplyDeleteFor the last few technologies presented in class, cheating was almost always a 'not cool' reason. Personally, I don't agree that cheating should be considered in it. Whether or not using the technology fosters 'cheating' is based on the definition of cheating itself. With the example of the Lernstift Pen, I can honestly say that the last time I needed to spell a word without the help of some type aid- dictionary, spellcheck, etc.- was my last spelling test in the beginning of high school. In real life, people no longer need to know how to spell every word because there are technologies everywhere to help with that. With WebAssign and Mathmatica technology, it was never considered cheating in my high school to use practice another version or consult a computer program that could compute the answers. It was just using another resource available to us. I understand that with most subjects a level of memorization of information is needed, as explained in teaching methods like Bloom's Taxonomy. But in the real world, there is no test to make sure that you can do an integral or spell a word correctly. It is expected that you can integrate the methods into your work that are needed, whether you do it or consult a technology that can help you. The idea that the methods used in everyday life is considered 'cheating' in school does not make sense to me. In my opinion, there should be no concept of cheating; there should only be the end question of can you find a way to do this the right way and do you understand it.
ReplyDeleteWhen I think of this pen, I think of the many obvious problems that could happen. I have used something similar to this when I was younger, and I absolutely hated it. It was incredibly bulky and it didn’t work either. It only frustrated me and I eventually stopped using it. This could only work if it worked 100%, and if not, it would become a burden to use. I feel like this is promoting dependence on technology for adults because it is constant access to spellcheck when the average person should know how to spell on their own. As far as use with young learners goes, this should not be used to teach spelling and reading. When I learned to read, it was my teachers giving me feedback on my work, and correcting my mistakes with answers and reasons. If a first grader was using this, and the pen vibrated, they would probably have no idea what they were doing wrong. I feel like Rosen would say this is promoting dependence in both cases, because both adults and kids can easily become dependent on it.
ReplyDeleteThe Digital Pen was created with great intentions, but, like Amy, I think that the Pen could cause more problems than it solves. The Pen could potentially cause a lot of confusion for children just learning to write and spell. I think Wolf would agree with the flawless version of this pen because it helps promote brain development, but the reality is that a piece of technology doesn't exist. Also, I think the Digital Pen promotes laziness for teachers. Instead of checking the spelling of certain words themselves, teachers would rely on the pen. Overall, the technology of the Digital Pen is great, but the application is unrealistic.
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