The lighter side of technology

I was at a loss for what to do as a podcast! I normally am not at a loss for things to talk about so I went with one of my favorite pass times which is basically reading jokes made about computer users, computers, and the technology in an around a computer. I did not wan this to turn into a Mac vs. PC debacle so I chose humorous computer terminology definitions. Hope you enjoy them.

Excel Chart #1 using Jing

This is the type of demonstration I would normally do using Apple Remote Desktop. This method is so much better because the students can view it and replay it side-by-side with their own work which should make the process for creating their first Excel chart much easier!

My YouTube Classroom Procedures Video

A brief overview of basic procedures to augment the beginning of each quarter when I receive a new batch of students for each technology class.

Photosharing in the Middle School

How would I use this opportunity in the classroom? Most students today seem to carry around much more technology than I would have though possible even 5 years ago. I am even out there on Facebook because a great student of mine took a picture of me, and then she posted it on her Face-book site. No longer is it possible to corral the creative juices of individuals into the form of slides, 3x5 prints, and glossy or mat? The web 2.0 experiences will make it possible for students to share what they did over the summer using something other than a Power Point presentation. Now with a few simple clicks and a good firewall-free internet connection, students can put themselves out there into cyberland for the whole class to enjoy. Students could use a photo-sharing site to demonstrate a skill. Imagine demonstrating how to shoe a horse at your stable, or the basics of barrel racing. Then maybe you could move on to sharing a week in the life of you. Maybe taking one meaningful picture at a different hour everyday until you had 24 pictures. Could you tell a story without ever talking? You could also create an assignment where you pick a subject or topic then have the students create a photo montage or slideshow demonstrating their take on the subject or topic. This would be a great way to see what they hear when you discuss or talk about something in class. The possibilities are endless and more than likely some students have already expressed themselves using this medium. I would however (ever the internet safety advocate) discuss methods for ensuring as much personal safety as possible. This would also be a great time to discuss the general concepts of fair use and collaborative/comment potential when using some sites. In addition students could demonstrate different methods for solving problems, mathematical or otherwise using pictures with or without sound. Students could also demonstrate their understanding of the chronology of an event by expressing it in modern symbols relating the story or event to the rest of the class. Plus you could offer students who choose to the opportunity to express some of their own poetry in a short picture montage. I attended the 2008 digital storytelling camp as well, and was fortunate enough to meet Ali (a soon to be sixth grader) in the class. What a great way to augment her own poetry!

As for allowing students free reign on the internet at most photo sharing sites? I shudder to think how many phone calls I would receive on that day. I would use the sites but I would create limits and expectations for the students. This would probably also include a letter home to parents explaining both the purpose and possible issues. I would run this by the administration first as well!

Things I've Learned About Social Nework Creation

In his piece Some Things I’ve Learned About Social Networks Steve Hargadon made several great points about social network creation and uses. I particularly appreciated this comment (point #2) "Our job is not as much to define what is talked about, but to help conversation to take place." because it is so true of most students today that they have a great desire to be heard regarding even one facet of their life. Even if I don't have a passion for playing the guitar I do enjoy listening to guitar music. So giving voice to someone, allowing him or her to interact and feel connected is much more important than the subject he or she or I choose to discuss. I am not sure if I would necessarily encourage this type of open discourse in a technology class per say. Obviously I have the equipment I the room to allow this to happen but I think this might be better in a Language Arts class. On the proverbial other hand, I would enjoy creating an open forum setting where students who might not otherwise speak out will be comfortable enough to express themselves. The concern might be what do I tell the Language Arts teacher who has been trying to get this student to respond to writing prompts to no avail, that they are creating writing on their own within the framework of my class. I understand that teachers should be happy with any writing that a student does regardless of the room location. But, the reality is that right now the students do not get to pick the writing prompt on the AIMS/Terra Nova. So allowing free and open discourse is wonderful if it somehow translated into the student being able to perform on the writing portion of the AIMS. I agree that that is an unfortunate reality but, I am paid by the state to abide by their guidelines and state mandated testing.

My second point, I would like to comment on is the notion that a network needs to fulfill a compelling need. The students who are interacting with the site need to feel that what they are contributing is not just “monkey work” that is work without a point work that is merely filling in time for the teacher and student. I believe that students will respond to items that they find important. As the author pointed out so eloquently you never know what that you create will take off. So when I create a social network site in my room I will be doing it with massive input from the students. I am pretty sure I am not going to do a great job sometimes, but there is the potential for getting it right eventually which will allow me to open up another part of the web 2.0 experience for my students.

My Space a Social Network Site

The phenomenon of the Social Network Sites (SNS) on the web has created a multitude of fits and starts with many sites emerging just long enough to create a spin-off site which then moved on to create yet another site. Many of the SNS are still around others are merely a footnote in the relatively short history of the Internet. The SNS that I have chosen to report on is My Space. It seems lately all I hear about this site is how bad it is and how little the site seems to care about the safety of the minors who are using their site. I wanted to know more about this site mainly because I tend to field more questions about this site that any other site in my technology class. Students invariably want to know why they cannot check on/work on their My Space page. However the authors (Boyd, Ellison, 2007) of the report on SNS seem to indicate that the unsafe nature of sites such as My Space seems to be somewhat over blown/reported. So I did a google search using the keywords My Space Issues. I received back 70,2000,000 hits the top most hit coming from the New York Times in a piece they reported on in 2007. So, I wonder has the furor over the predator issue been over blown or over reported? I am not sure but I do know that this particular site is number one on the hit list amongst parents I have talked to about Social Network Sites!

My Space was started hundreds of miles away from Silicon Valley in Santa Monica California just as another site Friendster was considering making some major changes that would eventually alienate it from some of its most ardent supporters. My Space apparently saw the handwriting on the wall and decided to attract the indie band segment of the Internet by embracing all bands and allowing them to use their site to promote themselves. This then attracted their fan base, which then attracted some teenagers to the site. Once this happened the site took off. My Space also enamored themselves with their users by allowing them to modify the look of their site with HTML code. The site also started to grow due to word of mouth and the ease of use their site promoted amongst the copy and paste generation that was looking for a site to express themselves on while keeping in touch with friends and musical groups.

My Space was eventually purchased for 580 million dollars in 2005. In the You Tube video “Shift Happens” the authors create a chart indicating how long it took various forms of communication media to reach a target audience of 50 million. Radio took approximately 38 years to reach this mark; television took 13 years the computer a mere 4 years to reach this target audience. The video goes on to point out that as of when the video was made there have been over 60,000,000 visitors to My Space since 2005, that 230,000 people signed up during the course of a day, and that if My Space were a country it would be the eighth largest in the world.

Yes, there are many opportunities for the internet to lead you astray, but the upside of the internet so outweighs the down side that ignoring the potential would be akin to standing in the ocean and trying to kick back the waves of the incoming tide. You will eventually expend all of your energy and the ocean will have swirled in around you and engulfed you.

I personally do not have a My Space/Facebook type of site mainly because I never considered the up side to getting myself out their in the web 2.0 experience. I will probably hold off a little longer mainly because I now have a blog site, a ning site, and a wiki. This has created a much more open side to me than I had even 3 weeks ago. I will stick with these for now and see where they take me.

Why A Wiki?!

Why I would include a wiki as one of the many tools I utilize in my classroom?
The main point that would encourage me to utilize a wiki in my class would be the opportunity for the students to directly impact my class. When I place a link to my wiki on my class intranet (within my classroom) site I will definitely encourage students who might not otherwise contribute in class the chance to add some information on their own. This will also allow the students the opportunity to influence the products being produced in the classroom in lieu of or along with whatever I am already teaching. I will also be empowering the students with an opportunity to inform other students about the “inner” workings of the computer lab from their own viewpoint. My content, as of now, will include the following: Home page-explaining the purpose of the wiki, Eighth grade assignments suggestions, Important dates, Keyboard shortcuts-information about keyboard shortcuts keys for both platforms, Procedures-for interacting with the computer lab, Seventh grade assignment suggestions, and finally, Sixth grade assignment suggestions.

While I am wholeheartedly behind the concept of a wiki, I am also a realist and I understand I will have to monitor the content of the wiki pages to guarantee the veracity of the content placed on it by the students. This will be an interesting experiment for sixth through eighth grade students to work on. Ultimately I would like to turn the maintenance as well as the development of the wiki over to the students. I may start out allowing select eighth grade students access to the pages, which would allow me to monitor their progress without 113 students deluging the wiki on a daily basis. Then I could roll out access (content input and editing) to the pages to the seventh grade students and finally the sixth grade students. This will be an interesting year! Students for the most part do a great job of monitoring themselves in other situations in the lab but, this potentially, will be the first time they will have an opportunity to delete, modify, or create content of their own while also potentially removing another students work. So, instead of going overboard on rules and guidelines the first time I will explain the concept of a wiki while also showing some of the You Tube videos that were suggested regarding the use and nature of a wiki.
Wikis in the Classroom



Wikis in the Classroom at Green Bay UW

A New Pedagogy?!

A few thoughts on the future of education locally and worldwide.
Or, how do I hope my three-year old daughter will be “learning” when she starts attending school?
In my district I am part of a group of people who are also wrestling with some of the same concerns that have plagued education ever since the computer made its way into classrooms. What, I am sure some teachers wondered, am I supposed to do with that? Especially if I don’t have enough for all of the students, or I don’t get how they work either? Now in the 21st century on the cusp of WEB2.0 the questions have become more like those posed in the blog for this assignment. The questions are no longer about having enough computers but instead what are we going to do to keep up with the explosion of the web, social learning, and online learning. I, for one, love online learning. I enjoy going to classes and meeting new people as well but I tend to gravitate towards online learning because it fits my time schedule and needs. But, I have had to struggle with a different kind of learning curve due to the new learning style. I was not always a self-directed student, so asking me to change my stripes or spots to adjust to the new learning method was not an easy process. I fear the same would be true for the students of today unless they are exposed to the benefits and pitfalls of no one nagging them to get their work done except themselves. There is talk right now in my district about the seniors of 2010 being required to take an online class to graduate from high school. I would suggest that we should be starting this learning process in a different year such as the sophomore year. I believe that showing students the potential future is important but asking them to figure it out and pass a class the first time they are exposed to the new learning style may be too much to ask for this next year.

One of the other discussions that is in the front of my mind lately mirrors a question asked by the author of our book/blog. “Reporter: What have you stopped doing that you used to spend time on before you began blogging, tweeting, etc.?” I have two blogs now and this one already has three posts on it as of this post. I have time to do this now because it is the summer and I have more free time. I plan on continuing my blogs as well as inviting students to post comments etc., but I have to wonder if I am going to ever have the time to create as many different socially interactive portals as the author has produced. I will probably never tweet (although I am jokingly trying to get my wife going on it), nor am I likely to get a Face-book page or a My Space page. I am part of the generation of people who love the inter-connectedness of the Internet but I have also seen what can happen if the Internet is not used in a positive manner. So I tend to shy away from the concept of transparency. Even in the face of evidence that it could all be for the greater good I tend to be wary. I also have to wonder if my workload will already be increasing from the effort of maintaining one or more blogs that is open to my students to comment upon. But, as the author points out maybe I would finally be spending my time where it should be spent instead of on those other things that fill up my school day.

“In this article we argue that, after millennia of considering education (learning and teaching) chiefly in one way, we may well have reached a set of tipping points: Going forward, learning may be far more individualized, far more in the hands (and the minds) of the learner, and far more interactive than ever before. This constitutes a paradox: As the digital era progresses, learning may be at once more individual (contoured to a person’s own style, proclivities, and interests) yet more social (involving networking, group work, the wisdom of crowds, etc.). How these seemingly contradictory directions are addressed impacts the future complexion of learning.” This goes without saying that we are on the brink of a change in some fashion. Right now I think it may be some years away as the pendulum of change in education is a slow swing at best. I hope that the environment my daughter finds herself in a few years will not be the environment that I am currently teaching in. I don’t know if I am ready to turn over everything to the social network, “pods of learning” concept just yet, but I can see where a lot of good would come from moving towards that as an eventual goal. Change comes hard sometimes with the loss of some great things in the anticipation of some greater new things. So I will continue to look to the future while I work teach, and learn in the now. Maybe someday I will look back at this post and wonder why I was ever wary of the tipping point. I would add though that I am more afraid of tipping back into the way it has always been done rather than tipping forward into the social network web 2.0 future.

Instructional Design Models

Instructional design similarities:
Both the Instructional Systems Design model as well as the (ADDIE) Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation and Evaluation model have many key features in common. First, both of them encourage the user to evaluate the student or customer prior to completely designing the points that you will need to teach. The ISD and ADDIE model both require you to take into account the conditions under which the model will be utilized as well as what constraints may be in place under those conditions. Second, both of the models suggest putting in place criteria beforehand so the student/customer will know what the final outcome should look like. Third, both models encourage the use of test or evaluative instruments of some kind to evaluate the student/customer. Finally, both of the models encourage the use of self-evaluation of the delivery method to determine if what you were trying to teach was what was actually learned.

Instructional design differences:
There are also slight variations between the two instructional design models. First, the ISD model assumes that you are aware of how to get through the process of developing the materials, tests, curriculum structure, and reinforcement activities with the somewhat nebulous instructions that they are to be valid, reliable, and consistent. As a new teacher I would look at this shorter version of an IDM and ponder where I was supposed to find all of this material. I would feel compelled to develop it but I would be at lost trying to figure out where to start. Second, the ISD model implies total control over the curriculum as well as the method for evaluating the end product. Lastly, the ADDIE model spends significantly more time developing the awareness of the student and customers, as well as going step by step through the development phase. I particularly enjoy the concept of storyboarding (as tedious as that can be at times) so that you can then visualize the process as you intend it to be to check for major oversights or “squeeze points.”

The ADDIE model, as mentioned above, spends more time in the planning phase. I probably tend to move faster than I should sometimes believing that it is necessary to cover all of the items I need to cover in the period of time I have been allotted. Since I have taken the SEI training I have learned the error of my ways and I have slowed down considerably. The emphasis now is on discovering where my students are “technologically” then trying to adjust my curriculum to incorporate most of the learning levels in my room. Then the concept/product is evaluated for its relevance to the student in the world of today then, I get around to deciding how I will be teaching the concept/product. Second, the ADDIE model sets up a specific time that the model should be evaluated for its’ effectiveness and when to concentrate the feedback to the student/customer for maximum results. Lastly, the ADDIE model encourages evaluation from the student/customer. This last item is the most important in my mind because it removes the sense that you are done merely because you have “taught the concept” indeed you have to prepare to find out that your well-laid plans may actually be in need of a major overhaul! Education is a process not an end point and this model strengthens that mentality.

Designing my own lesson (in this case the Class Animal Pie Chart) now begins with the understanding that some of my students have not had an opportunity to create a chart on a computer in the past five years of their schooling. Many of the other students are completely capable of creating a chart so I chose to develop a sense of commonality based upon the subject matter not the process at this point in the quarter. This activity is done with the sixth grade classes to introduce the creation of charts to graphically demonstrate compiled data. The motivation for the students is the ease with which they can create a chart that will display data in an easy to read and comprehend method. Lastly, I take into account the general audience and the vast variation of socio-economic and educational expectations that I have in the classroom. There are students in my room for whom school is merely a free daycare; clear across to the other end of the spectrum, students who will earn every point you throw at them. Then they will ask for more! My school is also in a relatively itinerant area with a majority of the students receiving free or reduced lunches. So I tend to identify concepts/products that will give them as much of a leg up in the real word as I can possibly manage.

Rob's Teaching Philosophy

When I was interviewing for a teaching position after graduating way back in 1992, I had this answer down pat. I had been "schooled" in the correct things to say, based upon the philosophy of each different district. I used to have all of the "correct" answers but now that I have been teaching for 15 years I am less likely to say what the people want to hear and more likely to say what I believe in my gut.

I just received credit in an online class (EPD 224 Teaching in the Middle School) that stresses the importance of placing the student into the educational process by placing them at the location before trying to teach them anything. This would allow you to spark previous learning in the students, which would then allow the students to immerse themselves in the learning. The theory went on to describe tying learning to the 17 senses that allow a student to cement in their learning of each concept prior to moving to the next concept. I totally agree with the concept of teaching fewer "factoids" and more real world (right now, and how can I use this now) concepts. But, the reality is that without a foundation of some important concepts and ideas the rest of the house of education will tumble down.

There is something to be said for the way things have been done, but embracing the new also allows for new ideas and studies that have been done on brain research and how students learn. Refusing to accept the new, dooms students to the "if it was good enough for me it is good enough for you" mentality. But chasing after the newest and latest "flavor of the month" educational method is also counterproductive. My philosophy is "stay in the now" accept that the way you were taught is not going to cut with today's student but, changing the instructional methods every time the wind shifts is an unnecessary burden on the teacher and the students.

It is very likely that educational shifts will continue to develop as we learn more and more about how the brain works and learns most effectively. I will be endeavoring to incorporate some of the newer ideas into how I teach as I continue in my educational pursuits. This will include taking classes that explore different methods of teaching as well as trying to stay current in my subject matter. It is unfortunate that they appear to be disparate subjects at times. There is the knowledge of how to teach and the subject that you teach and frequently (if you are not a core area teacher) teaching using the method and trying to apply that to the subject is not very effective. The classes that I took to obtain my SEI (Structure English Immersion) endorsement were primarily established for the core area classes. Modifying the method to fit the content took some finagling.

This is what is necessary though if I am to continue as a “teacher”. I tried the sitting back and resting on my laurels method after I received my Masters. This promptly turned into taking several classes to get caught up to the rest of the educational world. My favorite classes have always been the classes that taught me how to do something that I could immediately apply to my personal or professional life. That must be why I naturally gravitated towards the computer because it is the epitome of WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get), which melds perfectly with my linear mindset.

I believe that Albert Einstein said it best when he said, “Example isn’t another way to teach, it is the only way to teach.” I love teaching a subject area that demands immediate interaction with the device you are learning about!