Digital Blog Post #L

Credit: TedxTalks on Youtube.com

I wanted to open this week's blog post up with this wonderful video about technology. This video is fun and has a few laughs to offer, but more importantly, it gives a great timeline for technology and how it has been used in schools.
This all leads into my thoughts about how we need to include students in technology and change in our classrooms. According to John Dewey, students enjoy the idea that people care what they think. It is such a common sense concept, yet one that a lot of us probably fail to recognize. Students want to be involved in things that are happening in their classrooms. They want to be considered when decisions are about to be made. They want to feel as if the place where they spend six hours a day working, is a place where they get a voice and are included.
I don't think that this is unreasonable to remind ourselves of once in a while. I think that is is very important to understand that as adults, we want to be informed of changes that are happening in our workplace. Better yet, we'd like to have a say in what those changes are and how they will affect us. Students are no different. When we include a student in the technology of the classroom and the changes that are being made, we are telling them that they have that voice they desire. We are telling them that they matter. We are including them in the way they will get their education instead of just pushing it at them.
Our book tells us that students who have decisions are more likely to care about their education. It tells us that students who get decisions feel as thought they are part of a group and feel included and then "produce better results" (Maloy).  Later in our textbook, we see that "Many teachers have told us they feel isolated and powerless as agents of change in educational systems" (Maloy). So, if many students feel powerless and many teachers feel powerless as far as decision making with things like curriculum, it's definitely time for a change!!

The next big idea I wanted to discuss is called "Flipped Classrooms". I first heard about this idea in another education class, but we referred to it as "backwards teaching". In any case, I particularly loved this idea and enjoyed reading more about it in chapter 12 of the textbook.

 I can't imagine teaching any other way to be honest. I think that "flipping" the classroom really allows the teacher to have much more time to spend working with students who need extra explanation on new concepts, but also allows students who do not need the extra help to work with others or to work on other things that they do need more time with. This entire concept is a time saver and again, a common sense notion. I love the idea that a student would be able to watch a video or read a new idea at home (or anywhere really) where they are comfortable and on their own schedule, then be able to jot down notes to discuss in the next class. I feel as if several of my college classes have been done in this fashion and those were the ones that I got the maximum learning from. I was able to stretch out the at home portions for a day or two and really think about what I wanted to ask when I was sitting in the classroom. This would obviously not work with very young students (or very immature ones who won't watch a video at home at all), but I feel that it is a great idea for the age group that I am interested in teaching; middle and high school students.
I also enjoy what the textbook tells us about flipped classrooms: "No longer passive recipients of curriculum, students become active researchers, analyzers, and presenters of ideas and information" (Maloy).

The final thought that I have for this blog post goes back to a classroom that I observed as part of my required hours in my Intro to Education class. The topic in the chapter is "Strategies for single- and multi- computer classrooms".  In the classroom that I observed, every student had a laptop computer. There were desktops still in the room from before the laptops were assigned by the Google company, but they were obviously rarely (if ever) used these days in favor of the laptops. The students were given such activities as hunting down answers to the teacher's questions (which they all loved because the students turned it into a game of researching speed and skill), verifying information that they were reading in an article (finding credible sources or looking for bias), and typing up answers to prompts that were available from their teacher on their Edmodo accounts. I admit that I was fascinated with watching a large class of sixth graders actually do their work online rather than sneak in a Facebook update when the teacher wasn't looking. It was not until later that day that I began thinking about how activities must have been done when those students only had the five desktops in the classroom....
Even the way activities are done are constantly changing. It is so important for a teacher to be prepared to alter the way he or she teaches. If we get stuck in a comfortable pattern, we are in danger of being as obsolete as those desktops. We must change and think and use creativity in every class, every day. It really isn't just the idea of how we will rotate students in a room when we only have five computers, but it is a matter of how we will rotate our own thinking and routines in order to stay productive and current for the sake of our jobs and the sake of our students.

In closing, I have enjoyed writing these weekly posts and I look forward to using some of the technologies and ideas I have learned in this textbook when I am a teacher. I am, by far, less nervous than I was when I began this class. I have even made the effort over the last few weeks to learn how to use all of the features on my Smartphone. I am moving into the 21st century now - look out!


Resources:
Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2010). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

Digital Blog #K , Chapter 6

For this week's blog, I wanted to discuss Social Bookmarking. This is something that we have been doing since the first week of our class, yet up until now I did not know the technical term for it. I have always "bookmarked" sites that I thought I might use again in the future. When I was a computer novice, I used to copy and paste the web addresses I wanted to save onto a notepad on my desktop. When I became a little more computer savy, I would save my favorite sites via the little star in the corner of my Google page. Honestly, I was a bookmarking fool for a while and I would regularly go into my list and delete dozens of bookmarks that I had not used after the first visit to the page. I would find myself shocked at some of the "junk" I bookmarked and question why I ever wanted to see those pages again! Before this class, I had never heard of sites that are specifically designed to hold a vast number of bookmarks until we were asked to use Delicious. I see now on tech Tool 6.2 of our textbook that there are many Social Bookmarking sites available. I have to imagine that this way of organizing favorites is much easier than reading through a long list of jargon on a notepad! I like the Delicious account that I made specifically because I can create my own key words to identify what a bookmark means to me, or how I might search for it in the future. I also enjoy that my "search" option not only provides me with links to pages that I have saved but throws in pages that I might feel are relevant to my search so that I can broaden my horizons past my own design. I like that there are no advertisements on Delicious so I am not distracted while I am trying to work. Lastly, the best thing about a social bookmarking site is that I can share the pages I like with other educators and they can share their favorite sites with me. We can learn from each other long distance and be a network of help.

By LoveofWisdom | View this Toon at ToonDoo | Create your own Toon

To go along with our WebQuest assignment for the week, I wanted to go into some detail about my thoughts and experiences building a WebQuest. Our textbook says that "In a WebQuest, students follow an electronic map or tour, moving from Web resource to Web resource to gather information and learn about a particular topic" (Maloy). I think that this is a nice description, but I would have defined a WebQuest as more of an investment made by teachers to carefully describe an experience that they want a student to have. I really enjoyed making my first WebQuest and I found myself thinking of it as just that - an investment I was making into something that I wanted my students to experience. I wanted them to share with me a bit of literary knowledge that I had come across not too long ago. I wanted to make philosophical leaps and bounds with them, hear what their ideas and explanations for things were and see if they were similar to mine or if they would see something I had missed. I think that a WebQuest is an opportunity, if done right, for a teacher to learn something from his/her students in return for the time spent designing it. I also really enjoy how easy it was to add links and images and videos into the template that I used. I think that, like the textbook tells us, there is a ton of room for creativity and for learning valuable internet skills when working with this kind of tool. When I was creating my WebQuest, I did feel as though I was crafting a sort of research project, but I was able to give it a unique spin and allow for the students to step into a more free-thinking role rather than just read some boring pages or listen to some repetitious lecture. I think that WebQuests can certainly motivate a student to enjoy what they are learning because they have a lot more freedom than they would when just writing a research paper. I am excited to consider all of the possibilities that exist for the subject area that I want to teach. I can already think of a hundred different WebQuests that are well suited for a Language Arts class that do not involve lengthy papers or dull homework. I also really enjoy the fact that a WebQuest has a certain freedom to it as far as time constraints. Information that I feel is relevant or helpful to a student can be loaded onto the pages and I will not have to use up valuable class time going over all of the material. Instead, I will have the freedom to use my class time to answer questions and relieve concerns, or to assist students who are not yet comfortable with writing. I think that this is the biggest reward of having lessons like this available to modern teachers. We can use our time to teach!

The third and final section of chapter 6 that I want to cover this week is Real-Time and Recorded Data websites. Although this topic is only given a small section in our chapter (a paragraph really), it is a huge passion of mine. I spend a great deal of my time (when online) acting as a "remote observer". What I mean to say is that I love webcams that show nature in real time such as the links below:
Bruce's Critter-Cam
Decorah Eagle Camera
NASA Spot the Station
I was addicted to watching Ozzy the eagle in real-time, but I was surprised (and pleased) to learn that my son's 3rd grade class was watching a real-time camera of an eagle's nest. The class was anxiously awaiting the hatching of two eagle chicks! Almost every day, until the chicks hatched, my son would try to guess when they would come out of their eggs. It really peaked his interest in nature (which is hard to do for some kids!). After the chicks were born, his class continued to watch as the parent eagles nurtured their hatchlings, bringing them food and caring for them. He was very excited to tell me about the baby eagles' day - sometimes more excited about them than he was to tell me about HIS day!
I have learned that there are many real-time cameras available on the web and that when a teacher needs to excite a student on a particular subject, these sites can really do the trick.

Here is a great Real-Time Cam that I like to show my kids every few days. Enjoy!

undermicroscope on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

Resources:

Maloy, R., O'Loughlin, R., Edwards, S., & Woolf, B. (2011). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.

Blog Post #J

Opening thoughts to go along with the chapter....
In chapter 11 of our textbook, we are covering ways to engage students in learning and self-reflection. The chapter discusses things like performance-based portfolios, student participation systems and clickers, and digital assessments and quizzes (which we use at our college frequently via SurveyMonkey). I decided, before beginning this blog post, to play around with one of the digital quiz sites called FlipQuiz to see if it was user friendly and if I liked it enough to use it again in the future. Although the quiz that I created is not ready for my future students to use, it is a finished product that works on this blog. I found the site to be extremely easy to use and pleasantly simplistic. I think that this  digital tool will be something I will enjoy using in the future with my students. I could quickly design a Jeopardy-styled game, save it online, and then use it in the classroom for test reviews or for a pre-lesson assessment. This would be a much more engaging way to study with students or to help assess what they are retaining and what they are not. (quiz by Nicole Weeks on FlipQuiz.com)
Student Assessment and Student Involvement in Learning and Assessment is the first section I wanted to discuss this week. Although most students do not enjoy testing, teachers simply have to assess how students are retaining information. But tests do not all have to be pencil and paper, and they certainly do not have to be boring! Students have the ability to "show off" what they have learned in a variety of ways including digital quizzes and portfolios. In fact, students would be capable of revealing how much they know about a subject or an idea in a much more graphic and detailed way by using a portfolio versus filling in a multiple-choice bubble on a test. The Jeopardy-styled quiz that I designed on Flip Quiz would allow me to track the number of questions a student got right and assess how much they have learned from my lessons while allowing the students to feel as if they are playing a game. As I said above, this would be a great tool for extra credit, a quiz grade and participation, or simply for review purposes.
Student involvement in learning is "a powerful way to build their commitment to the school curriculum" (Maloy). I have been in classes that allow students to design questions for upcoming tests, sometimes working independently and sometimes in groups, so that the students decide what the most important points of their lessons are. I find that the diversity of interests that students have make a student-designed quiz or test to be challenging and well rounded. I also have noticed that these kinds of student-created assessments empower the students and they are careful to select their question(s) and thoughtful of the other students' abilities when doing so. Allowing students to "teach" their classmates with projects they have designed is also a great way to enhance learning. Some students do not wish to give presentations while others are thrilled to share what they have learned and created with their peers.

en.wikipedia.org

Evaluating Teachers is the next section I chose to discuss this week. It is not a secret that teachers have to undergo training as well as testing in order to be certified in the field. I admit to being nervous about the testing (particularly the math sections) that are in my near future. I feel as if we are teaching students "to the test" and also teaching teachers "to the test" instead of giving them (in both cases) more real-world applicable knowledge... I know that this opinion may not be a popular one, but as I do my mandatory observation hours inside of local schools, I am only more convinced that the students I see are being taught to pass a single exam instead of being taught valuable information. I agree that teachers should have to pass certifications in order to teach, but the question (for me) remains, why can't the tests that are given be geared more towards what that individual teacher is going to be teaching? For example, if you are a going to be a Language Arts teacher, you probably do not need to be tested on advanced Geometry. If you are going to be an Algebra teacher, you probably do not need to be tested on methods of sculpting. I am a big fan of learning as many things as you can, but I also believe that a person only needs to be an expert in their field and that anything else they choose to learn is up to them.
It is also important to mention that I believe teachers should be evaluated regularly, to be sure that their knowledge and skill set are up to date with modern students. It would make no sense to have a teacher in today's world be unable to access their email or confused by Google Docs. It simply would not do for teachers in this century to not have the skills necessary to "keep up" with their tech-savy students. For this reason, I think that the idea of keeping online portfolios is a great one (if used correctly and completely). Teachers should be able to go back and look at the lessons they've taught and see what they have learned through experience and how they can improve. One of the biggest reasons that I want to become a teacher is because I will be able to learn something new every day, see a multitude of perspectives from fresh eyes, and better myself as I better others.

image by: Postmemes.com / Flickr.com

Jumping into Preassessment Surveys, even though I touched on it a little in my opening paragraph, is the next logical place to go from here...  I have personally been in several classes where the professor asked students to take short surveys regarding the material that will be covered in classes. I specifically remember taking a survey in my Ethics course and wondering how in the world I will do in the class because I really did not know much of anything in the opening survey! As it turns out, I did very well in the class and went on to take several other philosophical classes like that one for fun. The preassessment survey opened my eyes to what would be covered in the class, what I did know, what I did not know (and needed to focus on) as well as alerted my professor to what he needed to focus on in the class overall. So much time in a classroom is wasted with handing out papers, preparing to give lectures, and calming students down that I feel preassessment surveys are a great way to not lose more valuable time; you would know right away if you could skip the skeleton of a lesson and head right into the meat of it if your students already knew the basic material. That could save a teacher days, but more importantly, it would save the teacher from having a classroom full of disinterested students - bored because they already know what's being taught! These surveys can also be a valuable asset to the classroom because if a curriculum calls for a certain ability to be learned, but not specific to one discipline, the teacher could find the discipline that students most enjoy and base his or her lesson plan around that thing while forming the assessment or test towards growing that ability to satisfy the state requirements. For example, if I was required to teach students an argumentative essay design, a survey could be used to narrow down what the essay topic would be about so that the students were writing on a topic they were interested in instead of a random prompt that I had come up with on my own. This also allows students to have a little bit of power over their learning and I think that goes a long way with keeping students engaged.
Although I had some trouble finding a video of surveys being done by students or preassessments (that were not boring to watch) I did find a video about teachers who are doing amazing things in their classes. They do visual checks during class to be sure the students are keeping up and understanding the material.  They encourage the students to feel great about themselves. These teachers are connecting with their students and according to the video, the students are learning at an amazing rate!


Video credit to Youtube.com by John Sule


Resources:

Maloy, R., O'Loughlin, R., Edwards, S., & Woolf, B. (2011). Transforming Learning with new Technolgies. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.