EDLD+5364

Week Five--Update
=== I had an 'a-ha moment' of sorts while watching the James Paul Gee video when he said that video games don’t separate learning and assessment in a way in which you are given information that you will be tested over at some point in the future, which is how traditional educators taught. When playing a video game, either you learn how to advance and move forward, or you fail and start again. Video games and related technologies are just a type of problem solving, in that you are constantly being fed information about how to advance and get better at the game. When students play games they are "working collaboratively to solve problems. Students are assessing situations and making judgments based on those assessments." (Gee, 2009) That may sound very simplistic, but I guess I had never thought of games in this way. And while I still haven't seen much progress in making learning more like games for secondary students, the rationale behind the idea is making more and more sense to me. Having been educated myself in the traditional manner of memorization and regurgitation, then having a son who would play video games for hours if I allowed it, I could easily be one of those people who think that he is wasting time by playing first-person games when he should be reading a textbook. But I have noticed that, when he gets a new game, he never opens the manual--he just pops the game in and starts playing. And when he messes up and has to start over, he uses what he just learned and the feedback he received from the game to get better and better until he masters it. The vast majority of the educational games I have seen have been somewhat cheesy, and not something I would be interested in playing myself. But students today don't think the same way that learners of even the previous generation think, and they may not think they are cheesy at all. It would really be great to see if more educational content could be turned into video games, where students could learn real-world problem solving skills using a media that is so widespread. And "If we get it right, students won't even know they are learning something. Teachers become mentors of the classroom and students become empowered." (Vision for Technology in K-12 Education, 2009) ===

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Big Thinkers: James Paul Gee on Grading With Games, Edutopia.org (nd). Big thinkers: James Paul Gee on grading with games. Retrieved on Oct. 5, 2009 from [] ======

﻿Week Four--Update
=== One of the videos this week that really caught my attention was __Team Teaching: Two Teachers, Three Subjects, One Project,__ about two teachers at High Tech High School who have created an atmosphere of extensive collaboration between their classes. Students create one overarching project made up of interlocking pieces from these two different teachers—in this case, students were working on a technology project about blood, but the work in class didn’t end when the bell rang—students just continued the work in their next class across the hall. The time and planning that goes into the creation of a team-teaching environment is astounding, because the two teachers involved in this project meet every single morning to make sure that their plans mesh with the other. The teachers feel as if this type of interaction between the classes will better prepare their students for the types of projects their first employers will expect them to produce. === === In the fifth chapter of Solomon and Schrum’s text, //Web 2.0 Tools: New Tools, New Schools// (2007), effective implementation of technology professional development is discussed. Most schools hold tech training sessions after school when teachers would rather be home with their families, and then to make matters worse, they don’t provide the necessary support afterward that will allow teachers to begin to incorporate the technology into their everyday routine by asking questions as they arise. (Solomon & Schrum, 2007, pp. 100-101) Communities of Practice is another means of providing support for teachers who are learning to use technology. A learning community is where “there is a culture of learning in which everyone is involved in a collective effort of understanding” (Solomon & Schrum, 2007, p. 104). Communities of Practice provide the necessary support, and also gives teachers a means to contact others in the same situation as they are if they have questions, and it also gives them a means of sharing what they have learned. Four qualities of a learning community should be diversity, shared objectives, emphasis on learning how to learn, and mechanisms for sharing. (Solomon & Schrum, 2007, p. 104). === = Solomon, G., & Schrum, L. (2007). Web 2.0: new tools, new schools. Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology in Education. = = Week Three--Update = === This week in our Teaching with Technology class, I have to admit that I have spent most of the time in a cloud of confusion. We were directed to create a lesson on our own using LessonBuilder, while simultaneously creating a lesson with the other members in our group, and it was extremely difficult to keep everything straight. I find myself reading and rereading the assignment to try to figure out what, exactly, needed to be done, and often the rubric and the directions seemed to point me in different directions. When I voiced this to my team members during a conference call set up by Julia, I discovered that we all felt the same way. It was as if mass confusion reigned this week. I felt better knowing that it wasn’t just me who felt as if I were wandering in the dark, and the conference call really helped all of us in an attempt to get on track. One particular thing that I am having difficulty with is the constant use of quotes we have to insert in our writing. I don’t see the need for requiring quotes in the discussion board. All other discussion boards I’ve ever used were there for the exchange of ideas, not notating the source of those ideas. As a person with a full-time job and four children, I have limited time to work on assignments and have to carve out little chunks of time during the week to do what I can so that I have the weekend to do the majority of the work. I find myself spending way too much time on the discussion board, to the detriment of my other === === assignments. And last week, I only got a 70 on my discussion board assignment, but am locked out of seeing the details that might have explained what I did wrong. The frustration of that, and being required to use quotes in everything, on top of having to flip back and forth between the assignment directions and the rubric to ensure that I don’t miss anything, is a real source of frustration, and it makes me wonder if it’s all worth it. === === This week, we created lessons using UDL, which means that the lessons are designed to reach every learner in a diverse classroom that may have students with a wide range of abilities. I created an assignment that gave students the option to present their new-found knowledge in flexible ways: digitally, orally, or in print. === === Another of our first assignments had us using [|Book Builder] to create an online book that allows students to see pictures hear or read text and have fun little animated characters orally present the information on the page. I definitely see the need for a site such as this, but wish the site was more user-friendly. Also, the books that are created often require use of the scroll bar to see the entire page, which defeats the purpose of using the site to create books for students that might not be able to use a keyboard. ===

Week 3 UDL lesson
== === UDL Reflection: For the UDL lesson, I consulted with the science teachers on my campus to see which topics were coming up soon, so that I could create a lesson that they could actually use. 6th grade is about to get into studying Energy--renewable and nonrenewable, conservation, etc--and the teachers told me they wanted some sort of fun activity for the kids to use that would catch their interest. I know that students today are all about social media, so I did a little research and ran across an idea to create fake Facebook pages for famous people. I found a couple of different ways to do this, including a PowerPoint, but the one I chose is a website called My Fake Wall at [|www.myfakewall.com] in which students could use the knowledge they gain about a famous scientist to create a 'fakebook' entry for that scientist, or any other famous person, really. The website has sample entries for other famous people to see what types of info should be entered so that it reads as if the famous person were making the entries themselves. To see how the site works, I created a fakebook entry for Elvis Presley, my all-time favorite performer, and while I didn't care for the fact that there are ads on the page, I really liked it the site overall because the realistic factor is pretty high. It has a lot of the same characteristics of a real Facebook page, so the kids will probably like it better than the PowerPoint option. Plus, the hyperlinks on the first page can take you to other pages, like friends of the famous person, etc. I figured the fakebook entry could be the culminating activity, so that entries can encompass a lot of what the students learned during the two-week unit, and that student interest would be high. ===

BookBuilder book, Party Cats
=== I can see how the Book Builder can be used with diverse students in a classroom, especially if you have more time to play with it than I did this week. I just threw something together to fulfill the assignment, but know that with more time, I could do a much better job. For some of the pictures, I just used pictures of my cats that I took with my cell phone and emailed to myself, and others I Googled "free cat pictures" to find. Before I added it to our page, I took the time to sort through old pictures of my cats to find some that would fit the pages of the book so that I didn't have to worry about copyright issues with using someone else's pictures. I think students at the junior high level might really get into using BookBuilder to create books for younger students, and that they would have a great time playing around with the voices of the coaches. ===

= Week Two-Update = ===﻿ This week's discussion focused on exploring the impact of technology on student achievement and the impact on low socioeconomic students. Technology is a means of leveling the playing field, so to speak, in that each student has access to the same materials, no matter their family's level of income. We also read about the concept of Universal Design for Learning or UDL. UDL is a “research-based set of principles that forms a practical framework for using technology to maximize learning opportunities for every student.” (Rose, D., & Meyer, A., 2002) The importance of setting learning objectives in the classroom was also a major point of discussion in this week's reading, and the fact that teachers and students alike need to do so. There are a wide variety of tools available today, such as the World Wide Web, online surveys ( SurveyMonkey), brainstorming and organizational tools (Kidspiration), and data collection tools, all of which are excellent ways to set goals and learning objectives for both teachers and students because they can adjust to differences between learners. === === UDL is interesting to be in that it focuses on teaching students how to become lifelong learners, understanding not only the //what// of a lesson but also the __how__ and the __why__—in other words, it’s more about mastering the learning process instead of mastering knowledge only long enough to pass the test. According to //Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age: Universal Design for Learning//, tech use can be crucial to this process: “Because of their inherent flexibility, digital technologies can adjust to learner differences, enabling teachers to (1) differentiate problems a student may have using particular kinds of learning media from more general learning problems and (2) draw upon a student's other strengths and interests that may be blocked by the exclusive use of printed text.” (Rose, D., &Meyer, A., 2002, p4) === Rose, D., & Meyer, A. (2002).Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age: Universal design for learning. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Available online at the Center for Applied Special Technology Web site. Chapter 1. Retrieved on October 5, 2009, from [] =** Week One-Update **=

This week's reading and video material covered three theories of teaching, only one of which I felt familiar with.
=== __Constructivism__ is a theory I remember from college education classes, and have been exposed to again several times since I became a teacher. "In a constructivist classroom, students are more actively involved than in a traditional classroom. They are sharing ideas, asking questions, discussing concepts, and revising their ideas and misconseptions." (Sprauge, D. & Dede, C.,1999) In college, they taught us that constructivism is based on our 'schema', or background knowledge, in which we have a basic framework of knowledge that we hang all new information on. I found it kind of ironic that I was hanging this new information about constructivism on my background knowledge from college! === === __Connectivism__ is the theory that knowledge is created when we make connections between different sources of information, and is based more on knowing where to find new external information than what goes on in the mind of an individual. === === __Cyborg theory__ is based on how humans and machines interact--a meshing of the two into an enhanced being, if you will. It involves humans having chips implanted in their bodies that will allow them to experience more of their surroundings than we do naturally, such as infrared, sonar, etc to enhance human capabilities. === === If I had to pick one theory to go with, I think I am more of a constructivist than anything else. When I think about how I learn, I can trace the process back to the point where I attached new information to something I already knew. I also think that connectivism is just an extension of constructivism, in that humans use external sources to make connections to what they already know. "Combining connectivism with constructivist methods in the classroom offers an opportunity to gain 21st century skills." (Solomon, G. & Schrum, L., 2007) The Cyborg theory video, to be perfectly honest, scares me witless. (I kept wanting to ask if he had ever watched any of the 'Terminator' movies!) This is one theory that I truly hope never moves beyond the experimental stage, because the idea of humans becoming a subspecies is terrifying. === ==== Solomon, G. & Schrum, L. (2009) Web 2.0: New tools, New schools, Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology in Education, 40. Sprague, D. & Dede, C., (1999). If i teach this way, am I doing my job: Constructivism in the Classroom. Leading and Learning, 27(1). Retrieved Oct 4, 2009 from the International Society for Technology in Education at [] ====