Technology Summery

Sorry this blog is a little late. I forgot to post last night!
Through out this short 8 weeks I have really come to realize that even though I consider myself "tech savvy" I was really only breaking the surface on what technology can do for me and my students. They way you have student blog assignments is something I plan on using in some of my more advanced classes. Other aspects of technology that we learned in this class like podcasting and wiki's and I am trying to implement more in my personal and professional life. And even more simple then that, the unit on searching and finding information was completely eye-opening for me.
I think I will continue to use my blog. As a new(ish) teacher and with so far to go I think it might be a good tool for me to measure my successes (and failures) and to potential have other people learn from my mistakes. Plus I looked forward to blogging every week so I don't want to just stop.
Thank you professor, for a wonderful course and for giving me more tools in my tool belt. I took this course on a last minute whim and I am so glad that I did!

Google - Tools for Education

I love Google. I mean I really love google. I use Gmail, Google Maps, iGoogle, Google Docs, Google Scholar, Google Reader, Chrome, Picasa, Google Shopper, Google+, Google Talk, and Google Sites. And I use all of those on a pretty regular basis. But I use all of these in my personal life, not really my professional life. Through the  past couple of weeks I have really thought about how to translate this resources into the classroom. If I use them, my students probably do, or at least would find them interesting. So I have been trying to think of more ways to include these types of things in my classroom. One really interesting resource I recently found was Google Sketch-Up. This is a free (or cheap if you get pro) resource that you can use to CAD (computer aided design). As an engineering and robotics teacher in a district that doesn't have many resources this was a great find. My lesson plan outlined showed how I could use this resource to have my kids think of ideas, plan them out in a software and then maybe even be able to build them. This is exactly the process real engineers go through to solve problems, so I want to give my kids the same experience. The most important part of using this software, is to first learn how to use it yourself. But even that is pretty easy because they have GREAT tutorials. I think I will be using this software for a long time to come.

Another task I completed this week was watching the following videos:

These videos really remind me of why I got into this career. I want to help students with technology and giving them life skills, not just "school" skills. In one of the videos there was a students who wrote "Teach me how to think." That is my goal in my classroom every day. I want to teach my students the methods to problem solving, not just the knowledge on how to solve a problem. Students have to learn how to think through things, before we can expect them to apply knowledge to anything. And what better way to do this then by using technology they are already using for a significant amount of time out of school. It's a way for us to tie it all together, and we need to be taking advantage of that. 

Podcasts

This week I experimented with podcasting for the first time. I have been taking online classes for almost 2 years and have always wondered how professors capture these. I never realized just how easy it was. I chose to create a podcast to walk people through the website www.thinkfinity.org. I use this website all the time as a teacher. It searches various sites for lesson plans, interactives, and activities for students and teachers. I showed the various ways you can search on the site and what kinds of resources you can get. I have found that podcasts help me a lot when taking online classes just so I can have am example of what I should be doing. So I have to imagine that it would be helpful with my classes. I could se myself doing quick lectures or examples of problems so that my students could access them at home and have this resource to help with homework or to study.
I used Jing to create my podcast. It was super simple. I downloaded the free software, set up an account very quickly and was ready to go. I walked through the instructions and created my podcast in less then 10 minutes. The only difficultly I found was that I messed up towards the end of my video and wanted to just record over it, but I couldn't figure out how to do that and ended up just re-recording the whole thing. I could definitely see myself using podcasts again for many of the reasons I stated above. Also this could be useful in training teachers in the building, so we could get trainings or information on our schedule and not have to have a meeting as a set time. I could also see my district using these to walk through grade book technology. Every time I post grades I always forget the sequence, or leave a step out. If we have the steps somewhere in a podcast I could just refer to it when I needed it.

MAPing and Social Bookmarking

After taking this Information Literacy Quiz I was shocked at the results. I consider myself a fairly tech savvy person. Although I don't have any formal training in computers, or web languages I think I can navigate the internet fairly well and get any information I need. So as you can imagine I felt pretty humbled when I got a solid 3, maybe going on a 4. How could I know so little about basic information navigation? Well that thought scared me, because if I consider myself pretty good at this kind of thing and score so low on this quiz, how must other person with less experience then me feel? I think going forward I will search for information a little different. I definitely learned that by searching with quotation marks can really weed out a lot of the information that pops up, but is not useful to me. I also am going to be more careful is figuring out exactly who posted the information and where it came from. I really take things at face value on the internet and never really thought I needed to take a closer look, but now I think it is a necessity. My confidence in information I have used in the past has definitely been rattled a little, and I don't want to fall into that trap again.
Teaching students how to find information, let alone quality information is a task that we must address quickly and seriously. I have had reports handed to me with www.google.com listed as a reference. And yes I am 100% serious. Students need to understand the implications of what taking false information can potentially do to their research. Most of these skills are not hard to acquire, but they must be emphasized so that in becomes the norm to use them. I was easily able to read through these tips and tricks in a few hours and have already began to implement them. Not only that but I have also begun to look at information with a more critical eye.

This week I also explored the idea of social bookmarking. I started by creating an account in Delicious. I see many advantages to organizing information in Delicious. Not only do you have access to all your bookmarks and websites, but you can also organize them in a much more visual manner then in your bookmarks menu in your browser. The fact that I can search for tags, or click on a label and find more resources about the same topic is awesome. It is better then a search in Google or Yahoo because you know people have already read it and and defined it as useful. The only problem I have with the site is that I didn't find it very user friendly. I would think of something that I would want to do and I would have to look at the articles or directions that were posted to figure out what to do. I could see myself using this site with my fellow teachers has a way to keep all of our resources in one place, and all be able to see sites and ideas we are using from the web.
I use social bookmarking sites Google Reader and Pintrest almost on a daily basis and I find these sites to be a little more user friendly. However these sites are a little different than Delicious, they allow you to see a snap shot of a page and usually that is all you need. Delicious offers you the ability to just have the direct links set up and organized for easy access. Overall I was glad to explore Delicious, but am not sure that I will use it in my daily life, however I think I will use it in my professional life.

Electronic Portfolios

The article, ElectronicPortfolios as Digital Stories of Deep Learning, really made me see assessments and portfolios in a new light. The tenent that I identified with the most was: Assessment for learning should be sensitive and constructive because any assessment has an emotional impact. I think that as teachers we sometimes forget how much every single thing that we do as an emotional impact on the students, especially assessments of any kinds. Being told you did well will make a student have a good reaction, where as doing bad will have the opposite effect. Many times when a student sees they didn’t do well on an assessment they see it as a reason to give up because they don’t feel like they can do anything. If we as teachers used assessments FOR learning more often then to measure what they should have learned we not only help ourselves and our students, but we also help the overall feel of the classroom. Instead of feeling like they are failing the teacher can use assessment to see gaps and build up their students from there instead of bring them down because they are not where they should be.

Some of the classes I teach are math classes, and many students in these types of classes come in day after day, takes notes, do problems, do homework and take a test. From my observations, students never really take ownership of the information they are given and what/how they are learning it. Because of this retention of the information is low, and this creates all sorts of problems down the road. I think with electronic portfolios, or even just hard copy portfolios students could really take ownership of this information, what is it, how they are recording it, and have a great product to look back on to remember it or study it from. I see a lot of potential for using portfolios in math class. I feel like it could break up the monotony of traditional notes and give the students something that they want to keep up with and use on a daily basis. By creating these students will take the information, put it into their own style and wording, and that way they take it in, have a better chance of remembering it, and have all information they have learned in one place to go back to later. I think the idea of this in very intriguing and I am working on ways to develop it in my classroom to create a better learning environment. 

To get a better idea of what impact this could have on education I am creating my own electronic portfolio located here: Adrienne Emerson's E-Portfolio
I also researched other E-Portfolio projects to see how other people are making this work in their classes/workplaces/studies. I found a lot of interesting examples but this one was my favorite.

Wiki Week

The wiki I created is for the robotics team that I coach at school the Robowranglers. The reason I decided a wiki would be perfect for our team is because we have a lot of info, dates, and competitions to keep track of. I send out emails to the team, yet all the time I get emails or questions about information that we’ve talked about months ago and it takes me so much time to dig up old emails. I thought this wiki would be a great idea, because not only can I update information, but my students and parents can update information as well. Typically I take care of all travel arrangements, parents organize fundraisers, and students run the meetings. By using a wiki be can all update information and have it in the same place. This is better then using our website because it would look cluttered with all this information. I have started my wiki here: http://greenvillerobotics.pbworks.com and while I have not had time to introduce it to the whole team yet, I plan on doing that in the upcoming weeks.

I can see a lot of advantages in using a wiki for my purpose. With so many people doing so many different things on our team, this is a great central place to locate information no matter what project you are working on. By giving everyone the right to update information , the responsibility does not fall on ton one or two people, which is important when everyone on the team is already so busy.

The disadvantage that I can see to using wikis is that it is hard to control what information is being posted, if 50+ people are able to update a page. Although I don’t think that is would create a lot of problems I can definitely see someone accidently deleting something, or posting pictures that should be posted or something of that nature.

For our students that we consider “digital natives” wiki’s have the potential to keep them engaged in technology for everyday assignments and projects. Instead of just simple email or discussion a wiki provides a simple way to increase the use of technology without a major commitment by the teacher.

After exploring the eLearning Tool Wiki I was very intrigued by Mashups. It is something I have never heard of before and as I began looking at the examples I could see a lot of uses for this technology.  Part of my educational technology philosophy was that technology should be interactive and fun. Mashups looks like they could be both.

ETEC 524 Assignment 2: Educational Technology Definition

The first educational technology organization I found was the IEEE Technical Committee on Learning Technology. (http://lttf.ieee.org/) IEEE is a larger organization, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. This part of the organization is part of the Computer Society in IEEE, and was founded to assist teachers and professionals in finding emerging technologies that can assist with learning. I selected this organization because they believe that technology can largely assist with learning and they are dedicated to finding out how best to do this. Through this class so far I have really started to look around at what technology we have just to have, and what technology is actually helping students. This organization provides introduction to different technologies, trainings, workshops, forums, and the ability for teachers to collaborate so that everyone has a better understanding of technology. Once we have a better understanding of different technologies, we can decide which would best help our students achieve the educational goals we have for them and they have for themselves.

The second organization I researched was EDC (Educational Development Center), and specifically the part of their group called ewit (http://www2.edc.org/ewit/) or Educator’s website for Information Technology. I really loved this part of the organization because it brings together professionals of all kinds such as Information Technology, K-12 teachers, and various other organizations to discuss and work with technology together. One of the biggest goals I want to achieve in my classroom is to have problems model the real world. With professionals and educators working together on technology we will be able to really see if the technology we are integrating not only meets our educational goals, but will be useful when students go into the workforce. This organization will help with technology integration, training and curriculum development, which is really the whole package when it comes to putting technology into the classroom.

My definition of Educational Technology

Educational Technology is about merging education and technology where it is beneficial to the students. Technology can take on many forms: computers, the web, iPads, video games, computer programming, Smartboards, etc. But integrating the technology is not good enough, we must make sure that the technology is helping education. It should be interactive, hands-on, fun, exciting, and give the students a different perspective then what they already have.  In other words it should improve learning, not be a replacement of the teacher. Below is a Concept Map that shows my ideas in a more visual representation.

I think this definition aligns with my philosophy very well. In my philosophy I stated that I wanted to use hands-on, interactive methods to help students learn better and educational technology is a great way to accomplish that goal. Also in my philosophy I say that I feel the teacher should be a facilitator, which I feel also fits into my educational technology definition. The teacher is not being replaced by technology, but can better step into the role of facilitator with the help of technology.

ETEC 524 Assignment 1: Educational Technology Philosophy

My Educational Technology Philosophy

            I choose teaching as a career because I wanted to make a difference. But the real question is: A difference in what? When I think back on all the teachers in my life, the ones I remember most as the ones that instilled confidence in me, and helped me figure out how I learn best. The content in most cases was irrelevant. This has instilled in me the ability to learn and the curiosity to want to learn. I truly believe that this is the most critical part of education. I want to help my students develop the skills that will help them in all aspects of life, not just in one particular subject. In other words I want to teach them how to think, not just teach them what to know.

            After researching educational philosophies I believe that my own philosophy is best described as a combination of Constructivism and Pragmatism. I believe that education should be focused on using real life examples and situations to help students learn the material that we are required to teach. This puts concepts into practice that in turn helps students learn and remember them better. But even more importantly this approach helps them learn how to think critically and solve problems on their own. To me, the process of thinking and learning is more important the material itself in most cases. As I look back I see these skills as the ones that have helped me the most in my life, and I want my students to have those skills.

            In a classroom that is fulfilling my philosophy, I see teacher and student roles being very different then the traditional classroom. I believe that the teacher should be a facilitator, instead of the leader. If the teacher assumes this role then the students are searching for, finding, and internalizing information instead of just being given information on the board. In this kind of classroom the student’s role should be to take control of their learning and have a thirst for knowledge. When they leave my classroom I want them to have critical thinking skills, curiosity about things they don’t know, and the skills to be able to find out more about those things.

            As an engineering and robotics teacher I plan to accomplish these goals in many ways. First I want my assignments and projects to model real world problems and present a challenge to the students. I plan to use scaffolding questioning to help them achieve things that they may not have thought they were capable off. Second I want to offer them the opportunity in these projects to be creative and let their unique point of view shine. Lastly I want to create an environment where they feel safe, they can be themselves, and where they can have fun. Not only do these three methods go along with my overall philosophy, they also help the students develop confidence in themselves.

            Technology can help me with these goals in multiple ways. First having computers in my classroom would allow students to do research on their own and find information that they want/need to know. Also as a technology teacher one of the subjects I teach in computer programming, which you need computers and various types of software for. Programming offers the ability to meet a lot of my educational goals. It is one of the best ways to develop critical thinking and problem solving skills because you must learn to “think like the program.”

            In conclusion, my educational philosophy is very student centered. I want the students to develop these skills and qualities with little interaction from the teacher. I believe that by doing this I will leave a longer lasting impression on my students and they will be more prepared for life after school. There are many aspects of technology that I believe will help me achieve this. Not only the ones that I have already listed, but ones that I don’t know about yet, that I am hoping to find out about soon.

Review of Educational Blogging Article

At this point in time I see blogging in education very similarly as Stephen Downes. I think that it’s best uses are for the purposes of communication between students, parents, and teachers. Using a blog to post assignments, link to web articles or resources, reminders on homework, etc. I think you can really have an impact on how students perform and learn. I also think using a blog as a homework “helpline” would also be useful. A central pace where students could ask questions. Of course it would need to be monitored by the teacher to do this effectively.

I think that we have not yet reached the potential that Downes outlined in 2004 for educational blogging. I also think the level reached differs by grade level, district, town, and state. I think college level classes are the farthest along in working towards this potential. There are tons of online aspects in college now, blogs, chat rooms, 100% online classes. This whole class/assignment is living proof that the potential is being reached in some places. I feel like high school and lower are lagging behind. I think this is because of many things. First as a whole colleges have more ability to purchase and use the right technology in the right way. Second I think overall in elementary and secondary education there is somewhat of a “this is the way we’ve always done it, so this is the way we will continue to do it” attitude. Just by working in a high school I have experienced this attitude time and time again. It may be different in other places, but I don’t really know. I think we have a long way to go to reach the full potential of using blogs as an educational tool.

Review of Alan November’s Article

The article Creating a Culture for Teaching and Learning,  by Alan November, outlined six different areas about technology and education that deserve attention. The area that stood out to me the most was his discussion about Automating vs. Informating. Since first reading about this concept I have thought a lot about it, and it has even crept into my conversations about various topics. In summery November points out that we shouldn’t be throwing technology at things just for the sake of saying we have technology. What we really should be focusing on is creating educational goals and plans and then figuring out which technology can help us achieve those goals. After a quick search I found this video that outlines this concept. 

 I have meditated on this fact and gone back and forth about what I consider automating and what I consider informating. For example, November says in this article “if we automate report cards the result is we have prettier report cards, but we don’t improve learning.” My problem with this statement is that I would add to the end of it “we don’t improve learning directly.” But I would argue that automating report cards on the surface doesn’t improve learning, but ultimately it does. If we automate report cards it is faster for the teachers and the administration to enter grades and generate reports. Guess what I spend that extra time doing? Improving my lessons! And that DOES improve learning. So what I consider automating and/or informating may differ from this article a bit.

None the less, I think the concept as a whole has a lot of validity in education as a whole. It made me consider if I was choosing an online curriculum for my engineering class because it was better for the students, or just because it was using technology? Well the answer to that was hard to figure out for me, and in fact I am still weighing it out in my head and researching it more to find the answer.

What this article really helped me with was to apply this concept to other areas of education. Our administration preaches to us “Use at least two hands-on activities per class period.” Well that’s all well and good, but are we putting hands on activities in the class because they are the new buzz word and everyone wants them or are they actually helping student learning? In just a week of using this philosophy I’ve been able to cut out a lot of things I was doing in the classroom “just because” and have really started to focus on thinking about the goal of my lesson and what I can best use to achieve it.

Expectations

Lastly, I want to discuss my expectations from this course. In a recent conversation with someone I learned a couple of very useful web site building tips that I had never known before. I said to the person that taught them to me “You know, sometimes I think I’m tech savy, but it’s moments like these I realize I am really not.” I’m hoping that this course will not only teach me some new and interesting things about technology, but also how I can utilize them in the classroom to help my students learn better.