Monday, December 13, 2010
Friday, December 3, 2010
Final Reflection
What have I learned?
What have I learned,
When to tech in class I turned?
With new technologies I must play,
I make time each and every day.
The first use was great, but I know there are more;
The first interaction is simply an open door.
Carry a camera, take a photo,
Maybe I’ll put it on Animoto.
Bought a headset with microphone,
Maybe record a video on Rome
And upload it to Voice Thread,
With audio, “Is that Caesar dead?”
All computer time I must nab;
Wish there were computers outside the lab.
Take all opportunities to talk about tech,
And what we could accomplish with a few dollars more
And a Smart board and projector and lap tops galore.
Keep in touch with parents through the class blog;
It’s better than writing in a student log,
For pictures and video and samples of work,
Uploaded for viewing are quite a perk.
To Universal Designs for Learning
All my units now are concerning,
Which means all students feel just great.
Sometimes frustrations bring me to tears,
Wish I could rip out the computer’s gears,
Or at least the programming that will refuse
To let me download stuff my students will use.
Always something new to explore,
Always willing to try I swore,
Who cares about mastery in Web 2.0,
As long as the ideas continue to flow,
And authentic activities my students perform,
As the standard classroom norm,
And with glowing enthusiasm burning away,
Answer the question, ‘What did you learn today?
My Last Entry
This will be my last blog entry, or at least the last one I write for this class. I’ll pause a moment to let my readers get a tissue ~ yes, both of you.
As I’ve stated often in my blog posts, this course has represented the steepest learning curve for me of any course I have ever taken. It has also been one of the most challenging and rewarding courses, as I’ve found my enthusiasm for each topic to be genuine and often contagious. So many times over the last 12 weeks I’ve accosted co-workers in the hall and dragged them into my room to see something new I’ve done. Several times co-workers have prompted me to share at a pro-d event, although I’m not sure I’m ready for that.
One of the best parts about my experience with this course has been the hands-on learning. I’m sure that most people prefer to learn in an interactive way; I know my students do. But I always secretly wondered how I’d be at performing tasks I read about or studied. It’s a long way from reading about anatomy to performing medical procedures, a long way from studying how to put out a fire to actually putting one out, a long way from carefully observing how to comfort a crying infant to holding a wailing infant in your arms and trying to soothe him. A long way from reading about tech in the classroom and actually using it. I have a lot of experience with book learning. 90% of my education has taken this form. Exploring and experimenting to create knowledge for myself is new. Not surprisingly, I’ve enjoyed it. What I’ve learned is that the more I interact and play with technologies, the more I discover functions and new uses.
Revisiting the Tools
My commitment to myself at the beginning of the course was to make sure that I tried as many of these tools as I could with students instead reviewing them for the course and forgetting about them later. Here’s what I’ve learned.
Topic: Photo Sharing
What I learned or what worked well:
For photo sharing, I chose to try out Flickr.com. Since then, I have revisited the site often. I used it with my students to annotate maps of Canada
I was surprised at how easily the students adapted to the assignment. They had some trouble using the textbook for the initial research, but the maps were a snap. Actually, I find that students are surprisingly adaptable when it comes to technology. I admit to feelings of frustration over how slowly Flickr loaded onto the computers in the lab and how long it took for students to scroll through and find the map I had uploaded and named as theirs. Students, on the other hand, were stoic.
In addition to this lesson, I have used Flickr to find images for writing assignments and to load video for inclusion on the class blog. For some reason, I can upload pictures straight from my computer onto my blog, however, I have to run video through Flickr first. Never-the-less, the video gets uploaded easily enough and Flickr’s privacy settings allow me to limit who views the video. I have also started to upload my personal pictures to Flickr, so that they can be saved in an additional place and shared easily with others.
What didn’t work or what was challenging:
I do find it challenging to find images in the public domain on Flickr that fit my needs. Also, even though the images are somewhat screened, I found a few that were inappropriate or that had inappropriate tags or notes. For that reason, I likely wouldn’t let my students have free access to search the site for pictures. I can easily work around that by creating my own groups of pictures.
Future plans:
I would still like to take advantage of Flickr’s potential for creating virtual fieldtrips. Also, I plan to explore Picassa, as most of my attention thus far has been on Flickr.
Google Earth
What I learned or what worked well:
Google Earth has huge, untapped potential for making geography come alive. I found that creating virtual tours, virtually visiting landmarks and searching for previously created tours were all quick and easy. Google Earth even has applications that allow users to explore under the ocean and in space or add their own photos to a landmark. Google Earth even leads users through the process of saving tours and sharing them using an email.
What didn’t work or what I found challenging:
The biggest stumbling block for using Google Earth with my class was that it wasn’t loaded onto the computers in the computer lab. This means that I would have to install it (out of the question) or call each child over to my own classroom computer and have them each add to our tour. While the ‘cool’ factor is present, I wasn’t sure what was to be gained, especially since I have no way of sharing the final product without gathering all students around my computer and playing it while we all squish together. I haven’t ruled the tours out completely yet, but with so much to do in the class, it has definitely been pushed to the wayside.
Future plans:
Provided I can get Google Earth onto the lab’s computers, I will use it throughout the geography unit. In addition, with the use of a projector that attaches to my class computer, I could use it anytime our studies lead us to a different part of the world. A colleague once commented that having maps available for the geography unit alone wasn’t enough – we have to have access to maps to show students where places are when it happens to come up in lessons and discussions. This is what Google Earth could potentially provide.
Working with Google Earth lead to an epiphany on my part: I need to move away from a reliance on paper maps and atlases in my class. While there is still a place for their use, total reliance is not only antiquated but counterproductive. Atlases and maps, especially political ones, become outdated quickly as place names and political boundaries change often. In addition, paper maps and atlases get damaged easily. Throughout my geography unit, students were constantly bringing me pages ripped from the middle of our atlases. I don’t believe this is due to student misuse, but rather that the atlases are soft covered and therefore less resilient. I can only blame myself- I was actually the one to order them a few years ago and I went with the soft covered ones because they were less expensive and atlases lasting 20 years would be outdated anyway. Fast forward to this year and I find that budget freezes are making me wish I had thought otherwise. Finally, with only about 60 atlases in a school of almost 400, sharing is essential. With an electronic alternative, students could have access to up-to-date maps and atlases that were damage resistant and available at the push of a button. I’m not sure that Google Earth alone is all I need, but it is a start. As with so much else, I’m walking away with an intent to think about it.
On-line Video Sharing:
What I learned and what I liked:
I love YouTube. I liked it before, but now I am a devotee. And Teachertube goes right along with it. I’ve known for some time now that most people are visual learners. Showing a video clip or picture is an effective way to teach something. Since researching video sharing sites, I have seen the wisdom in moving away from showing long videos to showing short, pointed snippets of videos and having students perform a task to help further retain what they’ve just learned. YouTube and Teachertube allow me to do this easily.
For example, below is a YouTube video about the phases of the moon.
The accompanying assignment is from Kidspiration, a program installed on all the computers in the computer lab.
By having students watch the short video then bringing up the related assignment, I have allowed them to learn independently about the moon at their own pace. If a student misses something the first time, he or she can go back and replay what they missed. If I had given a lecture on the phases of the moon, anything missed could only be accessed by asking me. If 10 students have questions, that’s a lot of waiting. Admittedly, giving a reading passage would do the same thing, however, showing the video allows for success for all children, including those who have a learning disability or who are ESL. The video could be an initial lesson, one accessible by all, with reading passages and experiments added to differentiate delivery and add complexity and challenge during subsequent lessons.
What didn’t work or what I found challenging:
Given the age of my students, I still do not feel comfortable having them search YouTube on their own. Teachertube is different, although currently I believe it is better for me to preselect videos. If I was to move to teaching an older grade, things would be different. Also, I’m still having difficulty with the copyright issue.
From a technical standpoint, many of the computers in my computer lab do not have sound and watching a video on mute only offers half the story.
Future plans:
Working through the copyright issues and including more short videos in my instruction are on my list.
Social Bookmarking
What I learned or what worked well:
I found that social bookmarking is something that I am using for my own needs as a teacher and not something I am using with students yet. Everything I bookmark now goes in Diigo. I still use the favorites tool bar, but only for items I want saved in both locations. This has been a big step in creating a seamless transfer of work from school to home and back again.
What didn’t work or what I found challenging:
I’m still unpracticed at using the screen capture and note functions. I think that mastering these will lead to paperless note taking.
Future Plans:
I would like to be able to use the screen capture and note functions on documents and then make them available to students. This could allow all students to work independently reading a document and writing about it. This is a function that some LD software allows for, yet I think it would be invaluable for students of all abilities.
I am also now a fan of Del.icio.us, although mostly for searching for items that others have bookmarked. Any future research will include looking at Del.icio.us to see what is trending or what others have found useful when researching similar topics.
Podcasting
What I learned or what worked well:
I have not yet had a chance to use podcasting with my students, but am super excited to. I have seen how easy it is to record a podcast using Audiboo.com and I have purchased a headset with microphone. Now all I need is a reason to use it.
What didn’t work or what I found challenging:
Nothing yet. I anticipate that having only one headset with microphone may present a challenge; however, we are becoming master sharers.
Future plans:
Book reviews! The school TL has already signed on for collaboration and we will be going ahead in late January. She has invited me to email her over the break and we should have a solid plan in place by the New Year. In the meantime, I’ll be checking journals and blogs for ideas. Next year, I hope to use podcasts in conjunction with the BBC’s World News for Children in my news unit. Each student will be able to create a news broadcast and upload it to the class blog weekly.
In addition, I am interested in exploring the video function of podcasting, especially from a remote location. I believe this could make our fieldtrips that much more exciting, but also, if students are able to capture events themselves, this could bridge the gap between school and home, creating a wonderful ‘third space’ for the class to share.
Wikis
What I learned or what worked well:
I used a wiki to create a web quest on constellations and it worked very well. Like using a Word document, I was able to add in URLs that students could click on and visit. However, a wiki offered additional functions that a Word document couldn’t. First and foremost, the wiki was online, which meant that it was accessible anywhere. Students could work on it in the classroom or computer lab, parents could visit it at home and colleagues could use it with their students. Second, using a wiki allowed me to embed YouTube video right on a page, which limited wait time. Finally, a wiki is set up like a group of pages. Students could click on the tab they wanted and navigate to that page. This organization made it easy to store everything, from web links to the initial assignment, right there on the wiki. With a Word document, there would have been a lot of scrolling and losing of places.
What didn’t work or what I found challenging:
The one thing that didn’t work well was the formatting of certain pages and what that meant for printing them out. I originally wanted students to be able to print out a worksheet and record their answers on it. The worksheets printed in one narrow strip and in an impossibly small font. In the future, I’d like to figure out a way of having students complete the assignment right on the computer, perhaps on a Word document that was open at the same time as the wiki. I originally thought that would add a complexity that students weren’t ready for, but my class’ adaptability to other computer applications makes me hopeful.
I also created a wiki for another space assignment, but this time with an eye to creating a class-generated web quest on the planets and other objects in the solar system. This project flopped. Initially, I thought it was a problem with the students not understanding my instructions. It turns out that the real problem was with how I had instructed them to share. I gave all the students my user name and password and instructed them to add links and describe what they contained. Unfortunately, when everyone was signed in as me, the site read the changes as a series of changes and only showed the most recent change. Obviously, I needed to set up my students with their own accounts and give them permission to edit the wiki.
Future plans:
Obviously, to figure out how to allow students to add to a wiki so that we can all add at the same time, from different computers, and the information will be amalgamated onto one page.
Multimedia Tools
What I learned or what worked well:
There’s too much to put in here. This was by far my favorite topic and I spent two very enjoyable weeks learning about these tools and wishing I had more time. Instead of listing everything I worked with, I’ll focus on the two that I loved the best: Jing and Animoto.
Jing is the ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ program that allows users to capture and annotate pictures on the web. I love being able to capture and store pictures. Actually, I became a little addicted. I’ve captured and stored my son’s online art work and anime pictures, step by step instructions on how to set a program up, pictures of Facebook pages… you name it, I’ve captured it. Today I was trying again to figure out how to disable the mouse on my laptop so that it wouldn’t click on random parts of a page and mess up my work. I found a set of instructions and found myself wishing they were accompanies by Jing pictures.
Animoto is a video creation site that allows users to create videos with their own pictures, videos and music (stored on the computer or another site) or with those already stored on the Animoto site. Their catch phrase is “Animoto: The End of Slideshows,” which is almost true. The videos Animoto produces are easy, quick to format and so much more captivating than a traditional Power Point slide show. Just like with Jing, I got a little addicted to using Animoto. Right after learning about it, my son came home with a video assignment. The text was already done, so we spent the night filming and taking pictures and uploading everything to Animoto. Here’s the result:
After that, I decided to do Animoto videos with my students on the various Health and Career Education topics we covered this term. They can be viewed on my class blog.
What didn’t work or what I found challenging:
As stated above, Animoto is almost the end of the slideshow. Almost, but not quite. Where it falls short, from an educational standpoint, is in its text limits. Animoto is only set up for short snippets of text, like titles, which makes more detailed descriptions difficult.
As for Jing, I was unable to download the program to my work computer, which has seriously hampered my ability to use it at school for instruction purposes.
Future plans:
In the future, I would like to explore using Jing to create instructional videos for my students. I think this will free up some of my time from answering process questions so that I can focus on content questions.
Also, I will absolutely use Animoto to create videos with my classes in the future. I would urge others to do so, too. As a matter of fact, it is so easy to create and share using Animoto that this has to be one of the two tools I will share with colleagues. I would, however, recommend allowing students more time to write scripts and take their own pictures or videos. I allowed students to use public domain pictures as well as pictures and video from the Animoto site, however, I don’t think I needed to do that. With the addition of a few cameras borrowed from willing parties, students could create their own raw footage.
There are a number of other multimedia tools that I would still like to explore: Glogster, Zoho, Openzine, Toondo, Mindmeister, flipbook, Bitstrips, Xtranormal… and others I have yet to learn about.
I list them here not only for my readers but so that I can look back and remind myself at a later time.
Social Networking and Twitter
What I learned or what worked well:
Using sites like Classroom 2.0 or education related Nings are a great ways of finding out about what others are doing in their classrooms and maybe figuring out what I could do. Facebook has untapped potential to create a learning atmosphere for students where they can help each other or recruit experts to help them.
Surprisingly, I discovered that there is an entire world of people out there debating the issues around Facebook and its use with students. It opened my eyes not only to the issues surrounding Facebook, but also to the autonomy teachers in my district are extended and just how lucky I am to work in a district that trusts my judgment and values my rights.
Twitter isn’t useless. Actually, I am quite excited to use Twitter as a jumping off point when looking for sources or ideas for the classroom.
What didn’t work or what I found challenging:
Using Facebook with students is out of the question for me, since my students are too young and I will not violate Facebook’s policy’s regarding the minimum age for an account.
I still can not get Twitter to accept my profile picture, something that probably cuts into my credibility on the site. I am also still struggling a bit with what to post. I feel that being a part of Twitter is like going to a staff meeting. It’s not enough to just occupy space. I need to contribute in meaningful ways to feel like I’m pulling my weight. I would like to contribute meaningful links, but I’m afraid I’ll just be reposting what others already know. I’m hopeful that eventually I get into a groove where I check Del.cio.us and my RSS feed for ideas and use Twitter to post my most relevant finds.
Future Plans:
If I was to ever teach an older grade or switch to a library position, I would consider starting a Facebook group. Specifically, I think that starting a Facebook group within a middle or high school with an eye to achieving a specific social responsibility goal has major potential. Twitter could be used to promote the group. Classes with a social responsibility bent (like my elder son’s Me to We class) could very much benefit from this.
Spending more time on teacher-specific social networking sites is a long term goal, something to be accomplished if I ever miraculously have more free time.
Blogs and RSS feed
What I learned or what worked well:
RSS feed is brilliant. I love that all updates to worthwhile sites come to my Google Reader account and feel that this will make life a lot easier when I start my literature review course down the road.
If Animoto was the first thing I would share with my colleagues, blogging is the second. I love the ease of Blogster and would recommend it to anyone. The more I used it with my class or for my own Education 501 blog, the more I learned about its features. Blogster actually has a very intuitive design, allowing users to use it with little extra research involved. It is also recognized by most other sites, making exporting, embedding or creating an RSS feed simple and efficient.
Blogging has huge potential for solving parent communication issues. If I could do nothing else with my class blog, using it to communicate with parents would be enough. I would urge co-workers to set up a blog for this reason alone. However, students motivation, providing a link to an authentic audience and providing real experience with Web 2.0 technology all make blogging worthwhile.
What didn’t work or what I found challenging:
Creating viewership was the most difficult thing, however, if all teachers on a particular staff were blogging, more parents likely would seek out their child’s class blog.
Future plans:
MORE BLOGGING! Student blogs are on the agenda for next year, as well as a class blog for more general posts and news. Promotion of the blog from the very beginning of the year will hopefully create more viewership. I think I will ask all parents for their email addresses during the first week and send them an email link.
Where to go from here?
I was going to end this post by pledging to be an advocate for increased access to technology in my classroom and in my school. Then I read the post “To be a "technology" advocate is meaningless” (Johnson, 2010) which challenged my position. Yes, I truly think that increased access to technology in the form of computers for every child and projectors and Smart Boards for every classroom is a vital step in the right direction. My imagination soars when thinking about what could be accomplished when we no longer waste time rewriting an entire story after editing or when we can actually show students what the Eiffel Tower looks like, in real time. Yet, it is easy to get carried away with wanting before a sound plan is in place for using. I am led to librarian Shannon Miller’s account of the change in educational practices at her school. She states that
We are a 1:1 laptop school at Van Meter (Iowa
(Johnson, 2010)
Is it meaningless to be a technology advocate? Perhaps it is, if my advocacy is for something not entirely thought through. Why do I want more technology in my class? In my school? Do I have a solid plan? Will increased access to technology create a truly different and more relevant type of teaching and learning, like that described by Miller, or will it just allow us to do more of the same?
Larry Cuban, education professor at Stanford and technology critic, challenges the use of technology in the classroom if its aim is simply to produce more of the same in the classroom. He states that
“Learning through projects while equipped with technology tools allows students to be intellectually challenged while providing them with a realistic snapshot of what the modern office looks like. Through projects, students acquire and refine their analysis and problem-solving skills as they work individually and in teams to find, process, and synthesize information they’ve found online.”
(Cuban, 2010)
The appeal here is to use specially crafted projects, like inquiry projects, to help students obtain the education they need to become critical thinkers and fully functioning adult members of society. These types of projects, described in such texts as Comprehension & Collaboration: Inquiry Circles in Action by S. Harvey and H. Daniels and Guided Inquiry: Learning in the 21st Century by Kuhlthau, et. al, are the future of education, if we truly want to produce thinking individuals. Teacher-centered teaching needs to give way to these more student-centered educational endeavors. So, the caution here is not to advocate for more technology use, but rather a change in educational practices, with technology as just one more tool at each child’s disposal. Johnson comments that, “educational technology can "amplify" either a teacher or student-centered approach to classroom instruction” (2010) and that it is the approach that needs to be considered in each classroom, with technology secondary to the point.
So, before I pledge myself as an advocate for technology or anything else, perhaps I need to consider what it means to have a truly relevant, student-centered approach to teaching, using all tools at my disposal to support my student in their pursuits. Then, maybe, it will be the students who pledge themselves as advocates – or leaders in Johnson’s thoughtful revolution.
References:
Cuban, L. (2010).How one science teacher integrates laptops into lessons. Retrieved
from: http://larrycuban.wordpress.com/2010/11/25/how-one-science-teacher-integrates-laptops-into-lessons/
Johnson, D. (2010). Being a “tech” advocate is meaningless. Retrieved from:
Johnson, D. (2010). When students also teach: guest post by Shannon Miller. Retrieved
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