It seems to me that a resonable way to reflect on this course would be to go back and look at my expectations for the course and see if I met them. So looking back, my expectations were the following:
- to get credits for relicensure.
I'm going to assume I'll reach that goal as soon as I finish this blog and put the final touches on my project. Check!
- to gain awareness of how students are using and could be using technology academically and socially.
This course has done a good job of helping reach this goal. Between the readings, the video clips, discussions and guest appearances in class, and the surfing I have done to learn for this class, I feel like I have a much better understanding of where many of my students are at with the use of technology for their academic work and in their social lives. I realize they are somewhere on the continuum of use between messing around and geeking out (go back and check the MacArthur Foundation white page report). Check!
-to be able to search and vet websites more effectively and efficiently.
Check with flying colors! Just this past week some of my ESL students asked me a question related to our topic in science class. I didn't have a ready answer for them. So we discussed what resources they had to try and answer the question for themselves. They said, "our notes." I replied that the answer wasn't in our notes. They said "our textbook." I said go ahead and look. They started flipping through the book page by page. Hmmm.... low level searching techniques. I asked them, "how do you find a topic quickly in a book?" It took a couple minutes before they came up with looking in the index. But alas, it wasn't there. Now where could we look? They looked puzzled but only for a brief moment. "The internet?" I replied, why don't you try. So a group of 4 came to my laptop (we didn't have student computers that day). One sat down and typed a very general topic into the google search window. Not surprisingly that elicited about 7 bazillion hits. (Ok, maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but a lot of hits.)
Aha! the perfect opportunity to talk about the ability of a google search to actually answer the question you have if you search with the question. They put in the question and within the first couple hits found their answer!
- to develop and enhance skills to utilize IT better in my work.
Well, I haven't really done too much along these lines. I have learned to use this blog site better than before but I'm not sure how much I will continue to use it. More on that later. Talking with others in the class has cued my interest in learning about voice threads and their uses in classes. I will be learning about Garage Band in a couple days. Hopefully that can be something to add to my skills arsenal. Maybe this is a tentative Check!
- to engage students in work that reflects their reality.
I think I was moving towards this goal this year even before beginning the course. Since I teach science, graph making is a big part of displaying experimental data and data analysis. I have taken big steps this year in teaching students the spreadsheet skills to enhance their ability to make accurate, meaningful graphs. I have also embraced the use of spreadsheet generated treadlines,equations and statistical measures of correlation to help students find meaning in their experimental data. Even if they lack the math skills to understand how the computer calculated these values, they can use them properly to support their conclusions. This course convinced me to accept Wikipedia as a useful and acceptable research source. The students have been trying to convince me for a couple years already! Check!
- to motivate me to try new things in my classroom.
I think the course has done this. Unfortunately, there may not be much evidence to support this conclusion at this time. One thing I have become increasingly aware of is if you want to try new things related to IT, the students need to have access to computers. And our current situation makes this a time consuming and speculative activity. It is a time consuming endeavor to find laptop carts available and book them. You have to plan, I would say at least 3 weeks in advance to ensure the carts will be available during your class periods. Then you may find out that your booking gets bumped due to another course's Common Assessment or maybe because you booked them for your classtimes, unaware that your classtimes would change due to schedule on a given day changing to accomodate an assembly, guest speaker, etc. If you don't go back and reschedule the carts, you may lose them because others have booked them using the "correct times" for that particular day. So it's always good to have a back-up plan! Maybe a Check minus for this one!
In addition to all of these things, I have found I'm really not very comfortable blogging. I have become comfortable using the blog tool and can now do it more efficiently than when the course started. But I am hesitant to post blogs because I certainly don't feel like an expert. I don't feel qualified to post my views about technology out on the web for all to see. I understand that one doesn't have to be a well established expert. Everyone starts somewhere. But because these posts are on the web, I tend to take way to much time thinking about what to write, how to write it and whether it is worthwhile to write. And in the end I'm not particularly satisfied with the posts.
Because of this, and because of the timing of course 2, I'm not sure I will continue with the certificate classes. I still have a couple weeks to make up my mind!
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Saturday, March 13, 2010
My process of the project sketch
It is with trepidation that I sit to write another blog. My mid-week experiences of publishing blogs lead to this. I certainly haven't reached the stage of "geeking out" with blogs. I'm still "messing around."
I have spent a good deal of time thinking about my project sketch and how to make it as useful as possible. I wanted a project that I could use, thus it had to fit in with the curriculum I teach. A good place to start was to look ahead and see what curriculum remained to be covered this academic year. Which topics/units would lend themselves to the introduction of new media use? What would/could be done in a way that we would be doing new things in new ways? And what would be actually manageable?
Here I ran into idea block. I started to look at the Global SchoolNet and iEARN websites. WHOA! These projects were huge! Daunting! They involved dozens of schools all over the world. That set me back for a few days, knowing that I don't have the time or energy left in this school year to pull off something like that.
With time came the courage to keep searching. I looked to my RSS feeds, including one for the Flat Classroom Conference. Here I found many examples of project products that students from schools all over the world had done and presented at the Flat Classroom Conference. Viewing these videos raised my spirits because it made is seem doable to carry out a project using new media (OK, new for me!).
Then I started to think about what kind of videos would students be able to make with maybe the fewest technical glitches, hangups or hiccups? And I remembered the clip, 'The Networked Student,' shared with us during the first Saturday F2F (face to face) meeting. This style of video seems it may appeal to students because they don't have to appear on camera themselves, they don't necessarily need to be great artists and they could add the audio easily after the video is shot. I won't limit students to doing their projects in this style, but for some it may be an appealing alternative to the types of videos they may have made previously.
At this point my project sketch was coming together. I cross-referenced my idea with the list of qualities the best projects share described in chapter 4 (Strategies for Discovery) from the "Reinventing Project Based Learning" handout from the class readings to see if I would at least hit a few of these. You can see the authors' blog here. Finally I checked the NETS. It was nice to see that my idea would align with several of the NETS for students.
Now what lies ahead is to finalize the idea and see if the technology will be available for the time frame in which my students would need it for completing this project.
Yes.... moving in the right direction is satisfying! In a future blog you will find the link to my final project wiki!
I have spent a good deal of time thinking about my project sketch and how to make it as useful as possible. I wanted a project that I could use, thus it had to fit in with the curriculum I teach. A good place to start was to look ahead and see what curriculum remained to be covered this academic year. Which topics/units would lend themselves to the introduction of new media use? What would/could be done in a way that we would be doing new things in new ways? And what would be actually manageable?
Here I ran into idea block. I started to look at the Global SchoolNet and iEARN websites. WHOA! These projects were huge! Daunting! They involved dozens of schools all over the world. That set me back for a few days, knowing that I don't have the time or energy left in this school year to pull off something like that.
With time came the courage to keep searching. I looked to my RSS feeds, including one for the Flat Classroom Conference. Here I found many examples of project products that students from schools all over the world had done and presented at the Flat Classroom Conference. Viewing these videos raised my spirits because it made is seem doable to carry out a project using new media (OK, new for me!).
Then I started to think about what kind of videos would students be able to make with maybe the fewest technical glitches, hangups or hiccups? And I remembered the clip, 'The Networked Student,' shared with us during the first Saturday F2F (face to face) meeting. This style of video seems it may appeal to students because they don't have to appear on camera themselves, they don't necessarily need to be great artists and they could add the audio easily after the video is shot. I won't limit students to doing their projects in this style, but for some it may be an appealing alternative to the types of videos they may have made previously.
At this point my project sketch was coming together. I cross-referenced my idea with the list of qualities the best projects share described in chapter 4 (Strategies for Discovery) from the "Reinventing Project Based Learning" handout from the class readings to see if I would at least hit a few of these. You can see the authors' blog here. Finally I checked the NETS. It was nice to see that my idea would align with several of the NETS for students.
Now what lies ahead is to finalize the idea and see if the technology will be available for the time frame in which my students would need it for completing this project.
Yes.... moving in the right direction is satisfying! In a future blog you will find the link to my final project wiki!
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Changing technology, changing views
I have been wrestling with the reflection question for the past couple of days. What are the implications for teaching and learning? The report from the MacArthur Foundation, "Living and Learning with New Media," does a great job of summarizing the situation in many schools. Schools are generally conservative when it comes to change because teachers and parents are loathe to change. Many in our profession (and parents also) view social networking and gaming as time-consuming vices. Young people see them as part of their culture and identity. The establishment sees them as subversive to learning.
But... maybe we need to see them as motivation to learn! The report suggests that educators need to embrace exploration and experimentation with new technology. Recognize the values that teachers and parents have been teaching students are alive and well and being applied within the interactions children are having online.
The final paragraph of the report was powerful:
"Rather than thinking of public education as the burden that schools must shoulder on their own, what would it mean to think of public education as a responsibility of a more distributed network of people and institutions? And rather than assuming that education is primarily about preparing for jobs and careers, what would it mean to think of education as a process of guiding kids' participation in public life more generally, a public life that includes social, recreational and civic engagement?"
Sounds wonderful. But what does it look like? I've never considered myself to be the most imaginative. I am good at modifying and adapting others ideas to use for my own students. I started looking for ideas and came across the 'Flat Classroom Conference.'
Here a I found several videos with ideas that students had generated, then communicated in eye-catching multimedia presentations.
Suddenly, trying to embrace this new view doesn't seem so impossible. It will take a lot of help from our tech staff and probably for some tech savvy students, and the support from administration. (And maybe some understanding and trust from some parents?!) But it seems possible!
But... maybe we need to see them as motivation to learn! The report suggests that educators need to embrace exploration and experimentation with new technology. Recognize the values that teachers and parents have been teaching students are alive and well and being applied within the interactions children are having online.
The final paragraph of the report was powerful:
"Rather than thinking of public education as the burden that schools must shoulder on their own, what would it mean to think of public education as a responsibility of a more distributed network of people and institutions? And rather than assuming that education is primarily about preparing for jobs and careers, what would it mean to think of education as a process of guiding kids' participation in public life more generally, a public life that includes social, recreational and civic engagement?"
Sounds wonderful. But what does it look like? I've never considered myself to be the most imaginative. I am good at modifying and adapting others ideas to use for my own students. I started looking for ideas and came across the 'Flat Classroom Conference.'
Here a I found several videos with ideas that students had generated, then communicated in eye-catching multimedia presentations.
Suddenly, trying to embrace this new view doesn't seem so impossible. It will take a lot of help from our tech staff and probably for some tech savvy students, and the support from administration. (And maybe some understanding and trust from some parents?!) But it seems possible!
Monday, March 8, 2010
Maybe 'gaming' has value?
My view of computer gamers has changed over the course of the past week. A week ago I spent an hour or so with other staff members watching and discussing the first few segments of the PBS documentary, "Digital Nation." One segment focused on children in Korea that had to be sent from their homes to special camps to try and break their addiction to computer gaming. And, of course, I thought "how terrible." These games were so seductive as to get kids to spend all of their time playing online, at the cost of their home life and relationships with their families.
Then I read the segment "Geeking Out" from the MacArthur Foundation report "Living and Learning with New Media."
'People who geek out engage with media and technology in an intense, autonomous and interest-driven way.'
In the report it describes how kids have created networks that collaborate to create cheats, (cheating in a video game), to find ways to beat the computer. Others learn to be fansubbers or amateur writers of subtitles for videos. But what really blew me away was the description of the linkshells for Final Fantasy XI. These people have formed a sophisticated guild.
"The participants organized the linkshell in a hierarchical system, with a leader and officers who had decision-making authority, and new members needed to be approved by the officers. Often the process of joining the linkshell involved a formal application and interview, and members were expected to conform to the standards of the group and perform effectively in battle as a team. The linkshell would organize 'camps' where sometimes more than 150 people would wait for a high-level monster to appear and then attack with a well-planned battle strategy. Gaming can function as a site for organizing collective action, which can vary from the more lightweight arrangements of kids getting together to play competitively to the more formal arrangements that we see in a group such as Cody's linkshell."
These people are demonstrating many skills that the current job market demands employees to have. They can collaborate, organize, synthesize, evaluate, create and communicate within the organization. Hitting many of the levels of Bloom's digital taxonomy. Through gaming these kids (and maybe some are not so young?) have made themselves marketable by gaining real-life skills the workplace of the future values!
Now they may need to work on the balance that is so necessary to have a happy life!
Then I read the segment "Geeking Out" from the MacArthur Foundation report "Living and Learning with New Media."
'People who geek out engage with media and technology in an intense, autonomous and interest-driven way.'
In the report it describes how kids have created networks that collaborate to create cheats, (cheating in a video game), to find ways to beat the computer. Others learn to be fansubbers or amateur writers of subtitles for videos. But what really blew me away was the description of the linkshells for Final Fantasy XI. These people have formed a sophisticated guild.
"The participants organized the linkshell in a hierarchical system, with a leader and officers who had decision-making authority, and new members needed to be approved by the officers. Often the process of joining the linkshell involved a formal application and interview, and members were expected to conform to the standards of the group and perform effectively in battle as a team. The linkshell would organize 'camps' where sometimes more than 150 people would wait for a high-level monster to appear and then attack with a well-planned battle strategy. Gaming can function as a site for organizing collective action, which can vary from the more lightweight arrangements of kids getting together to play competitively to the more formal arrangements that we see in a group such as Cody's linkshell."
These people are demonstrating many skills that the current job market demands employees to have. They can collaborate, organize, synthesize, evaluate, create and communicate within the organization. Hitting many of the levels of Bloom's digital taxonomy. Through gaming these kids (and maybe some are not so young?) have made themselves marketable by gaining real-life skills the workplace of the future values!
Now they may need to work on the balance that is so necessary to have a happy life!
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Learn from the experts!
I have to admit, I'm finding this blogging stuff hard. For a person that seems to have plenty to say... I'm sort of blogless. Even looking at the prompt that was supposed to get us started didn't spur much action. I find I still feel very overwhelmed by all the tools and applications that are available. There's so much out there to learn and try and apply and ... just grow with. And it's growing exponentially!
So I turned to the "experts." I started reading more articles and blogs from my RSS reader. There is a self-deprecating principal that seems pretty logical. I'll avoid any logical principal cracks. Believe or not, I like my job. Some of these experts write pretty well.
But what really appeals are those that offer straight forward, easy to understand advice and suggestions.
Chris Betcher's blog has a link to his thoughts on Five Simple Skills that he feels every educator should possess as they work towards becoming 21st century facilitators. I won't give away all his secrets here, but I suggest you check them out in more detail at his site. In list form they are:
So I turned to the "experts." I started reading more articles and blogs from my RSS reader. There is a self-deprecating principal that seems pretty logical. I'll avoid any logical principal cracks. Believe or not, I like my job. Some of these experts write pretty well.
But what really appeals are those that offer straight forward, easy to understand advice and suggestions.
Chris Betcher's blog has a link to his thoughts on Five Simple Skills that he feels every educator should possess as they work towards becoming 21st century facilitators. I won't give away all his secrets here, but I suggest you check them out in more detail at his site. In list form they are:
- Learn to search
- Learn to resize and crop a digital photo
- Learn to edit video
- Learn to use a HTML editor
- Learn to think in hyperlinks.
After reading his suggestions, I started to feel a bit better. Maybe I can't claim a huge PLN yet. But I'm at least 75% of the way to having the basic skills that one of experts values. And, he uses Wikipedia too!
Saturday, February 20, 2010
What I hope to get out of this course....
The most shallow, but still accurate, response to this prompt is graduate credits that I can apply toward recertification the next time that process rolls around. Those credits may help shift me 1 column over on the pay scale as well, but that wasn't a primary motivation for taking this course.
I want:
- to gain awareness of how students are using, or could be using information technology in their daily lives to assist them with school, communication and socializing.
- to learn how to search and vet websites more efficiently and effectively. This is something that will help me with time saving but also is something we need to teach our students so they can save time and do better quality work as well.
- to develop and enhance skills to utilize more of what our facilities make available.
- to engage students in work that reflects their reality more closely.
- be motivated to try some new things with students in my classes. I never feel like I have stagnated. I always think I am moving forward and making changes and improvements. But, maybe not as fast some others around me. And maybe, my feelings don't reflect other's perceptions of my work.
I was intrigued by the idea of disruptive innovation presented by Clayton M. Christensen, Michael B. Horn, in their blog Disrupting Class: Student-Centric Education Is the Future
How radical innovation will change the way we teach and kids learn.
Maybe by utilizing IT in the classroom, maybe my lessons will not be as polished as what I have been doing in the past. But maybe they will appeal to some students that were not buying into what I have been doing. Maybe it is a new approach that will appeal to those that have had less success with my usual pedogogy.
Now, let's see where this goes....
I want:
- to gain awareness of how students are using, or could be using information technology in their daily lives to assist them with school, communication and socializing.
- to learn how to search and vet websites more efficiently and effectively. This is something that will help me with time saving but also is something we need to teach our students so they can save time and do better quality work as well.
- to develop and enhance skills to utilize more of what our facilities make available.
- to engage students in work that reflects their reality more closely.
- be motivated to try some new things with students in my classes. I never feel like I have stagnated. I always think I am moving forward and making changes and improvements. But, maybe not as fast some others around me. And maybe, my feelings don't reflect other's perceptions of my work.
I was intrigued by the idea of disruptive innovation presented by Clayton M. Christensen, Michael B. Horn, in their blog Disrupting Class: Student-Centric Education Is the Future
How radical innovation will change the way we teach and kids learn.
Maybe by utilizing IT in the classroom, maybe my lessons will not be as polished as what I have been doing in the past. But maybe they will appeal to some students that were not buying into what I have been doing. Maybe it is a new approach that will appeal to those that have had less success with my usual pedogogy.
Now, let's see where this goes....
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
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