Week 8 - What now?

I think my biggest Aha moment was in creating my podcast with video. I had previously created audio podcasts, but had never ventured into video. I think the biggest reasons for this were:

1) I’ve never liked the way my voice sounds on recordings, and 2) I worried that it might turn out to be more demading than I was able to manage. As far as the sound of my voice, I came to realize that it doesn’t matter too much how it sounds to me, because I don’t have to listen to it, except to verify that it recorded properly. And, the fact of the difficulty of creating this podcast was that the most difficult part of it was being able to get any peace and quiet long enough to be able to make the recording. After all, with a very rambunctious five year old boy in the house, there is no such thing as peace and quiet, sometimes even when he’s sleeping.

In my philosophy, I mentioned that I believe we should do our best to make use of any technology that we possibly can, so that we know more about our students’ world and also so that we can help guide those students in their own use of technology. And, in the spirit of that statement, I have made choices of technologies and projects such that I would be able to explore not only the technology/website/etc required for the course, but also some other technologies and sites that I have heard students talking about. For

example, I had heard some students talking about something called Meez last semester and wondered what they were talking about, but didn’t get a chance to ask them about it. Then, when it came up in the early part of this class, I decided to go check it out and see what it was about and how complicated it is. As it turned out, it was a really simple site to use. And, when it was time to create a technology lesson plan, I got over-enthusiastic and created an entire online lesson on how to create an animated avatar with Meez before I realized that all we needed to create was just a basic plan of what the lesson would be,and that it should explore some of the Google tools that are available.

In the future, I will be much more active about researching technologies and ways to use them in teaching and professional development. Technology is the way of the future of industry. Therefore, it is imperative that technology also be the way of the future of education. And, in the spirit of my technology philosophy, I intend to work to make this transformation happen as thoroughly as I possibly can.

Week 7 - Reflection #7 - Start Picniking

This week you had a chance to think about delivering instruction through a technological lens. Why did you develop the learning objective you developed and what was your rationale for selecting the technologies you selected for integration?

When I saw this week's technology project, I knew what I wanted to do, or I thought I did. First, I went and created a full-blown lesson on how-to create an animated avatar to use on blogs, Facebook, etc.

Then, when I realized that we were only supposed to create a basic plan, and preferably on one of the Google tools, I thought of Picasa, but realized that I didn't know of anyone who really has a use for Picasa who does not already know how to use it. Suddenly, I remembered all the physical and digital photos that my mother-in-law has but does not know what to do with (especially the digital ones), and realized that what was needed for people like her and my mother is a simple, point-and-click photo editing software that almost anyone can use. That was about the time that I discovered Picnik. After playing around with Picnik for a while, I realized that it was exactly what I was looking for. Once I decided on this objective, I realized that many of the teachers at my school are at about the same level of technology use as my mother and mother-in-law, so I decided to put the lesson in my "Communication in Education" wiki so that it would become part of my professional development tools.


What are your expectations for the learning outcome?

Short-term, I plan to teach my mother-in-law and mother to use Picnik so that they can start using some of the pictures that they have laying around. Long-term, I want to use this program with my teachers in professional development sessions so that they can start making more creative use of the materials that are available to us and also so that they can start teaching it to the students, especially the students in art and technology classes.

How are you viewing your instruction differently now?

I am finding more and more tools that I can use to deliver basic and/or repetitive information and instructions, freeing myself to focus more on the deeper levels of learning. I now perceive many more efficient ways of teaching many of the basic items that I have previously spent inordinate amounts of time on.

Can You Hear Me, Now? - Podcasts in Education

I chose to set up my podcast with the view of providing students with an easier, more accessible, visual way to learn to do more with the tools that are available to them. I have heard so many students complain that they don’t have access to animation software, or to high-powered presentation tools that they see visiting lecturers use to create powerful presentations that hold people’s attention. I am trying to teach them that most of those presentations that wow them so thoroughly were created with the same tools that we have access to, PowerPoint, Publisher, web-based animation tools, etc. If I can present these little tutorials that show them that they can, in fact, do the things they want to do with the tools that they already have, I believe it will help to alleviate not only the discontent with the status quo, but also help to alleviate some of the gadget-envy that goes among teenagers in our school. 

Here is the first of the videos for that podcast: 

I also have a MyPodcast.com account that I have started using for my Spanish classes where I will be posting sound clips of the vocabulary being pronounced and translated. If I can work out an efficient way to do it, I will eventually migrate that over here and have the students be able to see and hear the vocabulary and translations at the same time. Currently, however, the only efficient way I have worked out for that is to use Jing and simply type the vocabulary as I say them. I know this would not really hold the attention of the students any more than the even simpler, more efficient audio recordings. So, if anyone knows how to manage the type of video that RSAnimate used in the video about students reaching a disaster point, please let me know. I believe that something like that would truly hold more attention than anything that I can currently do with these tools.

One thing that I have always believed about my teaching is that there has to be a way for students to get the little things that we spend so much time on without losing out so much on the bigger and deeper objectives that we so often neglect or fail to give sufficient time for exploration. I believe that ultimately the podcast or some form thereof will be useful for providing those basic instructions and information so that we can spend more time personally working on the deeper understanding and the transference skills that we all complain that students don’t have.

There is also another goal that I hope to work on in the future (maybe this summer), in which I will create a podcast system for school announcements. Then, we would be able to have our announcements done as usual (whatever the usual system is for the particular school in question) and also have them recorded and available for students to listen to later in the day or even from home if they missed the announcements or if they want to check out exactly was said in a particular announcement.

I believe the primary hindrances to the achievement of the goals that we set for ourselves in education are a lack of vision and understanding of what is possible and truly necessary. Too many teachers, administrators, parents, and even students are convinced that these new technologies and new knowledges are not only unnecessary, but also distract students from what is most important – a fundamental, basic education.

If I could wave a magic wand, I would have those people understand that there is no such thing as perfect, but that we must change with the times in order to continue to survive and thrive as a profession. If students continue to be more connected than the schools that are supposed to be serving them, it will soon reach a point where more students are getting their education from questionable sources online and through podcasts than are learning anything in school. Already, I have students bringing me “lessons” that they find online that contradict everything that we teach in English classes. If we can get into this electronic medium, we can put more valid and useful information into the hands of the students who are already out there looking for that information.

1) After completing the MAPping information activity, what are your reactions to your findings? What will you do differently while searching on the Internet for information now? How confident are you with the information you've used in the past (as part of your college career and/or in your profession)?

I answered 8 of the 10 questions in this quiz correctly without resorting to any of the resources on the page. I would have answered all 10 correctly except for 2 things. 1) I did not recognize every single domain abbreviation, and 2) I blanked out on how to find out who is linked to your own website.

I feel fairly confident about the information that I have used in the past, but will definitely work to ensure that my information is more reliable and accurate in the future. I have frequently clicked on sites that were not at all what their descriptions suggested that they were. Had I taken a few seconds to look over their URLs before clicking on them, I would have saved some time and not helped those sites to rise in the search ranks. In the future, I will take more time to review URLs before clicking on them and also to review the source of information a bit more carefully before making use of it.

2) What are some implications for the future of our students if we fail to teach them these skills in school? After all, the schools may block access to sites, but students still have access at home.

Anyone who is not cognizant of these search/research skills will likely just accept any site on their topic as being authoritative simply because it is “published” and not simply word of mouth. Our students need to be taught these skills in order to help them find and use valid information and to help them to avoid perpetuating mis-information/dis-information.

3) Do you see any advantages for organizing your information via Delicious? What else did you find when exploring the other bookmarking applications? What are some ways you think you could use tools like these in the future?

There are multiple advantages to organizing information using Delicious or other such social bookmarking sites. Among them are having information available at all times and places where you have access to the web (virtually everywhere these days), not worrying about losing your information and bookmarks if your computer crashes before you have had a chance to save your bookmarks to an outside storage device, having the ability to achieve collaborative research on multiple topics as an ongoing project without even having to formally setup that collaboration.

a)      I have seen people attempt to take their bookmarks with them by saving them to a flashdrive, or  having their home computer accessible remotely, etc. But, when they get to where they need to use those bookmarks, they find that the computer they need to access them on does not have usable USB ports, or that the network that computer is on does not allow remote computer access, or their home computer has been shutdown during a power failure, etc. I have even gone through some of these and other scenarios myself. That is why I started using Delicious to store most of my bookmarks over two years ago. This way, as long as I have access to the internet, I have access to the bookmarks that I might want to use anywhere other than on my home computer. Another thing this allows me to do, is to have access to those bookmarks via multiple devices without having to save those links to all the devices where I might want to access them.

b)      I had a collection of about 500 bookmarks on a previous desktop computer. Those were bookmarks that I would not likely have wanted to use anywhere else, but I did not appreciate losing them when my hard drive completely fried. If I had put those bookmarks on a social bookmarking site, I would still have access to them today.

c)      Some of my bookmarks are designated as accessible to my network so that others can use them and add to the collection of resources under those categories. This way, I don’t even have to ask them to collaborate on research for projects in those categories. Rather, the fact that they are topics those people are already interested in creates an open invitation to collaborate.

4) In reviewing and dissecting the URL http://www.bigredhair.com/robots/index.html I found that this is likely a personal website because of the domain “bigredhair.com” and the avatar/picture at the bottom of the page. The extension “.com” is another clue that this is likely not either an educational or other academic site. This extension is typically used for commercial enterprises and the majority of services that allow individuals to set up their own sites with little or no limit on the content they can post there. The information past the first slash gives little information other than that the site is about robots, which is also in the title of the website. Also, in examining the history of the site, I found that the site has been around since about 2002 and has changed very little in the intervening years. In fact, after about May 2008, there have been no changes reported on the site. It seems likely that any site that valid and useful would involve more changes and updates than what is seen on this site.

Week 4 - Assessment & E-Portfolios

In going through this week’s reading and activities, I thought about the different types of assessment that I have seen and/or been subjected to throughout my years in education, as both student and teacher. I find more and more that the assessments that I am accustomed to seem to be extremely artificial and shallow. Portfolios, on the other hand, can be so much more than simple assessment of learning. These great tools can be assessment of learning, assessment for learning, displays of abilities, discussions and demonstrations of interests, and a quick and relatively comprehensive way to get to know a person more thoroughly than anything that can be accomplished with traditional testing.

In the article Electronic Portfolios as Digital Stories of Deep Learning, I found the tenet of “AFL develops learners’ capacity for self-assessment so that they can become reflective and self-managing” to be most thought-provoking and resonant with me. In modern education, we have to cover so much in-class that there is little or no time to get into the deeper aspects of most topics. With portfolios, we could develop that deeper learning and some higher-level thinking skills to the point which is what our students truly need in order to be best prepared for a world that we cannot yet imagine, but in which they will be required to live, work, and function on multiple levels. All this will require adaptability which is best developed through reflective thinking and self-awareness coupled with deeper understanding of their knowledge and how they learn. The developing of my own portfolio will help me to develop my own reflectivity and adaptability for the future, as well as provide me with skills that can be adapted for purposes far beyond this class.

Wiki Week Reflection

When I thought about creating a wiki for this class, I considered and discarded several ideas: a blog type wiki to share different educational software – websites – resources, a collaborative wiki to develop SPED practices, a collaborative wiki to increase awareness and use of Customer Care Practices, etc.

Ultimately, I decided that I wanted to establish a collaborative wiki that I can use for professional development when I start working as an administrator. With this site, I hope to start a new trend (a la Alan November) to refocus our efforts in education onto the dissemination of information and the increase of professional communication. I have noticed a troubling trend in education toward frequent changes in how we do what we do without allowing time for the new thing to be successful. I believe that this unfortunate trend is due to focus being too much on how we do things instead of being on what we do.

I have not begun implementing yet, because I am not an administrator at this time and have not had a chance to discuss this with my current administrators to see if they would be willing to make us of my ideas and efforts.

In using wikis, we should be able to make the information/training/resources available to more and more people over time. But, at the same time, if it is made a collaborative wiki (like Wikipedia) there is the risk that some contributors/editors may add information that is incorrect. To avoid this problem would be a time-consuming effort because it would require the main administrator and other contributors/editors to check and verify all information that is added to the wiki.

Wikis have some potential for engaging digital natives if they are properly used. Digital natives tend to prefer colorful and varied presentations that also have hotlinks and multimedia components that allow them to interact directly with the information that is presented to them. But, if the wiki is used as simply a static page that the natives are supposed to just read or view, then it will be not much more useful than a textbook.

What is Educational Technology?

After reading through our article for the week and considering how to define Education Technology, I came up with the following:

Instructional Design and Technology is the practice of creating lessons and choosing the best tools to make the lesson as productive as it possibly can be with a given set of students. Those tools we choose from should include: computers, input tools, media of various types, methods of presentation, and other materials that are available for our use.

The only problem I found with the above image is that "tools" appears to be most important, but I believe that students should be the central focus of what we do and the tools should be just that, tools for achieving the best results for our students that we can.