Sally Phillips on Technology Integration in the Classroom
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Tuesday June 20, 2006
Blog #6 Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts - Publishing to the Web
Until about a week ago, I only had a vague idea of what any of these things were, and I certainly had very little idea of how they could be used in the classroom. What interested me about the strategy of students actually contributing to the Web is that is will help promote reading and writing skills. As teachers, we are all charged with helping to build these skills in students regardless of what we teach.
Description
From an article titled, ?The Educator?s Guide to the Read/Write Web,? by Will Richardson, (Educational Leadership, December 2005, pp 24-27) I learned that there are currently 3 tools for publishing to the Web ? blogs, wikis, and Podcasts.
A blog?short for Web log?is a written commentary, or observation, or reflection from an individual that is published on a personal or group Web site. It is as simple as typing. Graphics and audio can be added; other people can read your blog; and others can publish comments. It allows for a free exchange of ideas.
A wiki is a Web site that allow people to freely enter information, and for other people to freely edit it! The result is a group of people, sometimes students, collaborating to build a bank of correct information about a particular subject.
Podcasts are small audio/visual presentations that are available for download to computers and Mp3 players through a tool called an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) aggregator. Many of these Podcasts are produced commercially, delivering the news, weather, sports, stock reports, celebrity news?whatever. Individuals can subscribe to receive the Podcasts whenever new information is available. Podcasts can be created by anyone?even students. These Podcasts can be saved, like a bookmark?and the bookmarks themselves can be published! This is social bookmaking; allowing you to make use of the collections of others on particular subjects.
I am confusing myself!
Findings
Aside from describing the particulars about each of these tools, the Richardson article focuses on the benefits of student participation in this more public arena. It has been proven over and over that when students know that their work, in whatever form, is going to be viewed by ?real people,? (Teachers are not real people.) they take more care to produce work that is well thought out, organized and factual. Traditionally, reading and writing has been confined to the classroom. Maybe a student?s work gets published in a school publication, but that?s all. With these new tools, student writing can move to a higher level. A student?s writing can solicit response from anonymous others who may challenge or support the work. Richardson suggests that the tide is turning, and that educators need to consider structuring curriculum to help students develop skills with which to manage the exchange the wealth of ideas and information on the Internet.
Reflections
I am more inclined to consider blogs and wikis for my class, as they would not require any additional equipment. We have plenty of computers. I can see my Apparel Development students blogging weekly about their work on their projects. I already have them do this on paper everyday, but very abbreviated. I think it would be good for them to know that someone out in the world could read what they wrote, and possibly comment. It might be a good idea to work with other teachers in the county who are teaching the same course and let the students read the blogs of students in the same course. If nothing else, it would give them a chance to publish their work, anticipating someone else would see it. I like the idea of a wiki as a tool for my students to build the information that they need for the course. I feel like I am repeating myself, because the concept map accomplishes sort of the same thing, and I blogged on that already. The wiki would require students to actually be able to contribute and correct incorrect information. They could build wikis for each of the curriculum sections?their own wikipedia. Perhaps we could collaborate with other schools. It would be available for them to use at home. We could pull it up and discuss it in class. I am assuming that the writing and editing is anonymous. That would be best.
Since I am about at the limit of what I know about these tools, I had best stop blogging.
It excites me to have some new ideas that might help with these critical skills of reading and writing. It excites me to have some new ideas about which the students will be excited. That is half the battle!
Posted at 09:43PM Jun 20, 2006 by PHILLIPS, SALLY in General | Comments[0]
Monday June 19, 2006
Blog #5 "You've Got Mail!" In the Classroom
I had barely read the first column of an article titled, "The Write Motivation," by Dennis Rowen, when I realized that this might be a way for my students to accomplish many goals of our course in a way that would be exciting, and easily accessible to them.
Description
Dr. Rowen suggests a strategy for improving writing skill across the curriculum. His idea is that students be given opportunities to communicate with various people outside the classroom who can contribute to what the students are learning. This communication can take the form of
e-mail, instant messaging, and conferencing. According to Dr. Rowen, there are many sites already in place where students can communicate with authors and characters, as well as publish their own stories. Another suggestion is to contact experts in the fields you are studying and invite them to participate in this exchange of ideas with students. ePALS is a website that teachers can use to connect students in other states and countries. The search tool allows teachers to put in keywords to search for students with similar interests of her students.
Findings
Dr. Rowen begins with two facts that all teachers probably know. 1. Students usually will take great care in producing any work that they think will be seem by others (beside the teacher!). 2. Students love using the Internet. I am not sure how far down in grades this goes, but high school teachers know how much students like to communicate electronically. The suggestion was to combine these known facts with the curriculum that you are teaching. Dr. Rowen describes a variety of successful projects that he had done, or was aware of. The exercises provided students with opportunities to enhance their writing and editing skills, as well as opportunities to publish their work. The ePALS program allowed students to ask questions of students in other countries and compare cultures. One of the most interesting conclusions was that it seemed that these students were far more willing to accept peer editing than students who were not involved in a similar project. The enthusiasm for this project spilled over into other classroom activities. Students continued to work cooperatively evaluating the work of each other.
Reflection
It took me forever to write this entry because I kept stopping to look up things on the Internet that might work for me in my classes. One of the things I was thinking about doing with my Housing & Interior Design class is simply to send out a blanket letter to people in all related fields requesting their participation with my students. It would give students the opportunity to ask questions of people in the field. One of the course objectives is to learn about different careers in Housing and Interior Design. What I can envision is that my students may establish a bond with these volunteers, which could possibly lead to some on-the-job training. At the very least, I would hope that my students might get to shadow them for a day.
In my Apparel Development class my students are younger and not very focused on a career. I have looked at the ePAL sight and decided it would simply be a good experience for my students to communicate with someone in another county. They could exchange information about school, dating, recreation, families?and maybe even talk about clothing. The benefit would be that they would be working on their writing skills. There were not groups specifically in my area, but I think just a general open discussion about teenage stuff would be rewarding. Of course, I would have to set up some guidelines and have a few quicky lessons and exercises on writing in complete sentences. I was delighted to read this article. I just hope that it will be possible for students to use their WCPSS email addresses. We?ll see?Posted at 12:54AM Jun 19, 2006 by PHILLIPS, SALLY in General | Comments[0]
Friday June 16, 2006
Blog #4 The WebQuest: A Great Way to Manage Data and Focus Student Inquiry
I first became aware of WebQuests about 6 years ago?went to a workshop at my school?thought it was a great idea, but have never taken the time to create one. But after reading some articles on helping students navigate the web in a meaningful way, I have had my attention draw to this tool once again.
A WebQuest is a student-centered investigation activity that is built around a collection of specific web sites, on a specific subject. The subject can be very specific, or quite broad. A teacher skillfully brings this collection together. Several essential questions may be posed. Students are to develop answers / positions on the topic by using the pre-selected sites. Students do not have to spend their time looking for the site; that has been done for them.
In an article by Dr. Bernie Dodge, ?Focus ? 5 Rules for Writing a Great WebQuest? he provides the startling fact that there are over 550 billion Web pages!!! Only 1 million of them show up on any of the standard search engines. When students are doing their research it is entirely possible that they are missing may great sites and great information. In ?Online Digital Archives,? Mark Hofer discusses the vast numbers of Web sites that are grouped together by topic in digital archives. This will help the teacher get into the ?deep Web,?what is beyond the sites that turn up in Google or Alta Vista, etc. These archives are often the project of a public or private organization interested in a particular topic. When creating a WebQuest, a teacher could use these digital archives as a resource on the specific topic. By not having to spend their time searching, students can focus on the assignment.
While it may seem that the ideal situation be that every child be on a computer, there is much to be learned from students working in groups, bringing information together. A WebQuest is a good tool to use with cooperative learning. Students develop small group social skills, as well as learn to be accountable to a group. A successful WebQuest depends on a well-organized site, and questions / tasks that challenge the students.
I teach Clothing and Housing & Interior Design. Both of these are hugely visual subjects. In my opinion, no textbook can adequately bring this material to students. We really need to be on a field trip once a week! I can already see that I could do a WebQuest of changing fashions of clothes and of the home. For me, Housing & Interior Design best lends itself to the WebQuest. I think it would be an interesting challenge to propose that a family was going to have to move to another part of the country. From the WebQuest, they could look at various locales, study taxes, available housing, schools, employment outlooks, life-style, recreation, and entertainment. Once they decide where to move, they can begin to look for places to live?Buy? Rent? Build? Available services? Civic groups of local interest? The task is not to find a right answer, but to use the information to make some decisions. This would be a very real-life inquiry. Families are making these decisions everyday?and chances are, that these students will have to do this sometime in their lives.
Posted at 12:45PM Jun 16, 2006 by PHILLIPS, SALLY in General | Comments[0]
Sunday June 11, 2006
Blog #3 Concept Maps Lead to Understanding
If you are like me you are a visual learner. Most of the students to whom I have given a learning inventory have been visual learners too. So, why should I be so surprised when they can?t SEE the big picture of the course curriculum when I haven?t shown it to them? They can see the little pictures, but cannot see how they fit together?and have a hard time carrying one piece of information from one task to a related or similar task. It is frustrating for me when I know that for them to be successful in the course they need to be able to make these connections.
So?a strategy emerges?concept maps. I knew about them, but did not see how they could fit into my curriculum until now. A concept map?or semantic networking, if you prefer?is made up of a selection of text boxes, whose text relates to one another in some way. Some ideas relate to more than one other text box. Some relate to only one. By extending arrows from one text box to another, the viewer can automatically see the relationships of the ideas. Along the arrow another text box contains the phrase that links the two ideas. This is called the ?proposition statement.? As you begin to connect the ideas, a visual map is formed. In this case, a picture is worth a thousand words. With one glance anyone can see how the specific ideas are interrelated. There are several software programs that are used in schools that give students the opportunity to create concept maps. They include Inspiration, Cmap Tools (Internet based), Mind Mapper, SemNet, Learning Tool, and others.
What I have been enlightened by is the idea of making a visual representation of the relationships of the information that is presented in any unit of study. In my setting, especially in Apparel Development, my students are just interested in what they need to know to sew. They are not interested in understanding how one skill or piece of information relates to any other. Typical of the age? The frustrating end to all of this is that when the course is nearly over, some students cannot recall or connect previous learning to what they are doing at that moment. ?Huh?? is what I get from many of them. For students who cannot make these connections without some help, I think the concept map is a great tool. It would be nice to be able to do these on the computer, but I can think of interesting ways to do this the old fashion way?with paper, pencil, and maybe colored paper, scissors and glue. Most of my students love to work with these materials, so while they are having fun, they might accidentally be able to create the ?big picture.? I can see this as a tool for review by giving some basic concepts from precious weeks. If I were to have them map each unit, at some point I could have them draw the relationships from one unit to the other. Because this map would be growing and growing, it might be interesting to put it on a bulletin board, and let it grow as the class progresses. For some students this would be a very helpful tool, and a constant remind that facts don?t exist in all by themselves?they are related to other pieces of information to form a whole.
Posted at 10:26PM Jun 11, 2006 by PHILLIPS, SALLY in General | Comments[1]
Blog #2 A Laptop in Every Lap
Laptops! If money were not an object, in my current teaching situation, a laptop for every student would be the ideal situation. I am sure it is not necessary to describe a laptop or its obvious advantages over a behemoth desktop. But in this posting I would like to make the case for a 1:1 ratio of laptops to students as opposed to a few desktops, or trying to guess what day every student will be ready to go to the computer lab.
Just as a brief overview?let me tell you that my in addition to my 18 students, my classroom must accommodate desk space for 27 pieces of machinery. This does not include computers. I teach Apparel Development and Interior Design. In both courses we need as much table surface as we can get to spread out our materials. I have begun to rely on the Internet for resources for both classes in terms of accessing course materials, grades, reviewing for tests, and for research. My use of computers for my students has been restricted by the number available, or the ineffectiveness of having to move down to the computer lab. Currently I have 3 laptops for student use?that I just recently received. It has made it possible to for students to access Internet information to incorporate into their classwork as easily as getting a book off the shelf.
There has been much debate over the issue of providing a 1:1 ratio of student to equipment. Two reports that I will use to support my thoughts are ?Research? What It Says About 1 to 1 Learning? sponsored by Apple Computers and ?Lessons Learned About Providing Laptops for All Students? by Alejandra Bonifaz & Andrew Zucker. The Apple Computer study reported that when all students had access to computers their teachers believed that they could carry out more complicated assignments. They believed that the assignments would be done more in-depth. Laptops would allow technology to be used throughout the course, not just a few times. Since many students are so accomplished at using the computers, it would allow them to produce more complex work. The article also concludes that when every student has access to a laptop, that in addition to working on the curriculum that the students are increasing their technology skills at a faster pace than those in a 2:1 or 4:1 ratio classroom. Both articles stress the importance of deciding upon an academic objective rather than having the technology use as the objective.
Already, with the addition of the 3 new laptops, it has opened up the possibilities of what students can do in my classroom. When finished with an assignment, students can go to some web sites for review activities. They can create embroidery designs to be carried out later. They can use Blackboard to catch-up on missed work, or visit web sites for interactive opportunities with some of the course competencies. My Interior Design class depends a great deal on outside information. It is not possible to bring all of the information into the classroom. On some website students can ?paint? rooms or houses. On others they can draw floor plans. No muss?no fuss?Quickly and easily they are practicing the activities that go along with the curriculum. Even if I have to get them just one at a time, I will continue to request laptops to make my courses and technology seamless.
Posted at 06:25PM Jun 11, 2006 by PHILLIPS, SALLY in General | Comments[0]
Blog #1 Beaming Info to the Teacher!! Computer Response Systems
Up until taking some ECI graduate courses, I would guess, "Ignorance was Bliss." As a result of my recent enlightenment, I have begun to realize that I am not as good a teacher as I thought I was. In ECI 705, I was made aware of my own questioning skills?or lack of them. The students that are the most challenging are those who are timid, afraid to speak in front of others, or do not want to participate at any level. Without badgering them, it becomes difficult to access their understanding during a class discussion and direct instruction.
I was delighted to read about the Computerized Response Systems (CRS) in our Session 6 readings. [The readings are: "Increasing Interactivity in Lectures Using an Electronic Voting Machine" by S.W. Draper & M.I. Brown (2004) and "Learning from Past and Present: Electronic Response Systems in College Lecture Halls," by Eugene Judson and Daiyo Sawada.]
Basically, a CRS allows students in a lecture type setting to anonymously respond to questions by the instructor using a small remote control-like device. An infrared signal sends the response to the computer of the instructor, where the instructor can immediately tell who has responded and the quality of their response. When the student is "beaming" the answer, a small screen on the remote device informs the student whether their answer is right or wrong. The system can be set up in a variety of ways, allowing the instructor to customize the information that he/she wants from the students. Students can use specific buttons to "beam-in" when they understand, or don?t understand a concept. The responses produce a running graph that lets the instructor know the general level of understanding of the class at any given moment. (Judson) Using this information the instructor customize his presentation on the spot.
Both articles report benefits and shortcomings of the CRS. Both emphasize that any the technology was able to support the pedagogy?not that the technology made the difference. The Draper & Brown article reported a previous study that showed that when the technology is used as part of a peer-interactive teaching strategy that there were significant improvements on the standardized test scores. Other research reported improvement in exams scores, especially of those who went into the exams with low grades. Instructors reported value in being able to get responses from an entire class in a very short period of time. Having the whole picture helped the instructor meet the needs of the class, rather than the needs of just those willing to respond.
The Judson article pointed out that CRS has been around in one form or another since 1960. My opinion is that times have finally caught up with the technology. In our technology dominate times it does not seem so impersonal to be gathering information from students in this way. Judson points out?over and over?that the technology is not the instruction. The instruction comes only when students dialogue with one another about the questions and possible responses. That is the instruction. Critical to the success of the technology are the questions themselves. Questions can be presented before the lecture and a warm-up exercise. Students can chat about them before they are called upon to respond. The peer interaction fosters deeper understanding of the material.
I have struggled with the whole issue of questioning, and eliciting enough information from students to determine their level of understanding. This seems like a way for me to get the information I need. The Judson article reported that the students liked using the CRS and had some positive feelings about the class based on its use. Much of the class, my students work on machinery that they enjoy using as they create their projects. Interior Design is a lot of hands on work with designing. When we have to have "seat time" they hate it. It is like calling them in from playing. They kind of "pout." They"ll show me!they won't answer! (These are usually all girls, ages 14-17.) Is the CRS the only thing that will solve this problem? NO! but it seems more interesting. And what it will do is get information from students who are very reluctant to respond. I think it would be great for test review. My Apparel students are on such a high when they are sewing, to ask them to quit just shuts them down. The CRS might keep up the level of enthusiasm for them, and me.Posted at 04:42PM Jun 11, 2006 by PHILLIPS, SALLY in General | Comments[0]
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