Aha Moments

What were your "Aha!" moments this semester?

I think one of my aha moments this semester was the use of podcasting or vodcasting for teaching purposes.  Specifically for online, on-demand professional development opportunities.  This is a great way to give teachers help right when they need it as well as allow them to review the material as many times as they need.  Setting up a wiki or a chat to encourage the teachers to collaborate and discuss after having viewed the podcast is another great way to stimulate creativity as well as provide a sort of assessment/ accountability for putting the training into practice.

Try to tie together what you've learned and where you will go from here.

I am very much looking forward to putting to use several of the technologies we discussed this semester in the teacher training sessions I am responsible for developing.  One of the big complaints I have heard after professional development, (whether I was one of the teachers participating or the trainer leading the session) was that it was boring, lacking opportunities to interact.  I am going to try to eliminate that complaint from my future PD sessions!

Also, think back to the philosophy you developed at the start of the semester. In what ways has it guided you in the development of your projects? How will it continue to do so and how has it changed or remained the same?

My philosophy has changed somewhat from the beginning of the semester.  Mainly in the fact that as educators, not only do we have to be life-long learners in our field of expertise but also in technology.  In the world of the digital native, we have to maintain our fluency.  This means we MUST stay abreast of any new technology that is presented to our culture and immediately begin brainstorming about how it will affect our students as well as our teaching.

Week 7… Really?!

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? What are your expectations for the learning outcome?

I used this opportunity to create an assessment lesson for our trainers to use out in the field with school faculty and staff.  They often think they are doing a great job communicating with their audience only to have dozens of questions waiting for them in their inbox and voicemail when they get back to the office.  Our goal is for the administrators and teachers to be able to access their data, analyze and understand it, and then select appropriate interventions for their students.  By having the participants do this assessment lesson during their training while the trainers are still there to help them if needed, they will be able to master the skill and repeat it later on.

How are you viewing your instruction differently now?

I love love love that there are so many more ways to present information instead of the status quo lecture.  By watching a podcast of the instructions instead of just reading the instructions, the participants are able to see it, hear it, and then follow it.  

With the help of new and exciting ideas, we can all be and train Einsteins!  (and I'm not talking about the bagels.)  

Is this thing on?

This week we explored tools for creating podcasts and discussed ways to build learning communities to facilitate interaction and critical thinking. With all these tools available, what are the implications for changing the way we work, teach and learn?  What is preventing us from such changes? If you could wave a magic wand, what would you change and why?



I really enjoyed this week's exploration of podcasts. I create how to videos quite frequently for teachers and administrators. I never actually thought of those as podcasts or vodcasts. As I looked through the tools on the elearning wiki I learned that you can post podcasts on RSS feeds. What a genius idea! This would be a great place to put refreshers or tutorials for ongoing professional development needs. If I had a magic wand… I would have a pod/vodcast on each piece of information teachers see. Teaching tips, classroom management examples… you name it! What a great on-demand resource for teachers. I'd love to stay and write more but I want to go do a search on itunes for teaching podcasts. Bye!

Below is an example of a how to vodcast I created for some of the teachers using our program.


Printing a Lesson


 

Critical Analysis of Info

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 thought this activity was eye-opening. You can't just look at the URL and assume if it is www.yoursubject.com that the information will be accurate. I also thought that learning how each of the search engines list hits was very interesting. Some of them just listed the sites with the closest title to what I was searching for. Others actually gave more intuitive links. I will be sure to analyze the sites that are listed in the searches I conduct from now on! I am fairly confident in the information I have used for professional and academic purposes simply because I typically am looking at well-established sites with verifiable information. In my personal use however, I'm not so certain.

 

 

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.

We must must must teach our students critical thinking skills. Not only for what they view on the internet but what they read in magazines, hear on the radio and see on tv. The students of today are inundated with information 24/7. If they aren't able to think critically about all of this information they will be vulnerable to misinformation their entire lives.

 

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?

 

I love delicious! I had seen that icon on websites before but never knew what it was. I think being able to tag your sites in order to group them is GENIUS! I am in the process of building my bookmarks in categories for work, home and school. I am excited to be linked with the other students in this class. Now if I can only get the rest of my office using this so I can access the sites they have found to be helpful!

e-Portfolios and Assessment for Learning

Which tenent did you most relate to and why?

I most related to the tenant, AFL develops learners' capacity for self-assessment so that they can become reflective and self-managing. I think this tenant really resonated with me because with portfolios students have a greater opportunity to think about what they are learning and how it applies to them. This process, I believe, deepens their understanding of the concepts being taught. Many students, myself included, when presented with a quiz or test, will memorize the information, regurgitate it for the test and then lose it almost entirely. With portfolios and assessments for learning, students use the knowledge gained in an ongoing capacity throughout the school year.

 

What potential if, if any, do you see for portfolio assessment?

I see great potential for portfolio assessment. As stated above I think portfolio assessments give amazing opportunities for students to reach a higher level of thinking and understanding of skills they are mastering. It also gives them the opportunity to discover and then show how these skills apply to them. Portfolio assessment also trains our students in how to be lifelong learners. These are skills that will be used in the workplace as well.

 

What do you think the creation and development of your portfolio will do for your learning?

I think the creation and development of my portfolio will help me maintain the skills I am learning as well as serve as an example of what I am capable of creating. It will also serve as a confidence booster for me later on when I may be less than enthusiastic about diving into a new skill.

Wiki/ digital natives

The purpose I had in mind when creating my wiki was the amount of questions, confusion and misinformation that my department deals with on a daily basis.  It is our responsibility to train the sales and training teams on what our curriculum is, what it does, and how teachers and administrators can use it to ensure the success of their students.  One issue that we have been experiencing lately is that we will receive the same questions from various people.  In the past, we have solved this problem by sending out a mass email to both teams with the answer.  This is great for the first few days until that email response has rolled off the bottom of their screen and for all intents and purposes has disappeared from their minds forever.  By creating a wiki, we are able to post the questions and the answers to be viewed by both teams as many times as they need.  We can also have a thread for new questions that might start a discussion.  How great would it be for our teams to be sharing ideas of what worked in the field when x question came up or how they utilized y in a new situation. 

The only disadvantage I see is the possibility of misinformation being posted.  I think that this problem can be avoided by only allowing registered users to edit the pages.

I think wikis have great potential for engaging the digital native.  Not only because the wiki is interactive but also because a wiki is constantly changing.  You want to go back and look at it again and again to see what is new there.  In a world of text alerts for things such as news reports or Angry Birds updates… (I can’t put it down.)  digital natives are only going to be engaged by non-static sites.

Are we on the right track?

The statistics in these two videos were staggering.  I was amazed and overwhelmed at the numbers presented and most of them were 5 years old!  The PK-12 students of today are strictly digital learners.  If we as educators do not change our teaching styles and methods we are going to lose these students very quickly.  I loved the quote from one of the videos about having to "power down" when at school.  For the digital generation that must be so true!  

I was involved in a discussion just today about how cursive handwriting has been taken out of the required skills for elementary students.  They are no longer taught this skill in most states.  And why should it be?  Most written documents are now created, edited and delivered digitally.  This is one example of a change in the right direction.  We still have a long way to go but educators are making strides!