Course Reflection on Integrating Learning and Technology in Classroom Instruction

Although on the whole I still agree with my philosophy of teaching as expressed in the first week of this course, I have learned some very interesting ideas that have been essential to its modification. During the past few weeks, I have gained insight into some concepts that I previously instinctively agreed with and had some theoretical basis for supporting. Now, however, I have more solid grounds than ever to back up some of the things that I have learned, through my teaching practice, are effective.

For example, Paivio's theory of dual coding helps to explain why the addition of visual images is such a powerful tool for learning (Laureate, 2009). Although I felt that virtual field trips are fun and visually exciting, experiential learning theory has made very clear for me just how new learning is incorporated into prior knowledge through active student participation (Orey, 2001). After reading articles on mind-mapping, I can appreciate its value as a cognitive tool; even though my methods of planning are far more random and chaotic, I know that many of my students require a much higher degree of structured organization as well as clearly-delineated presentation, in terms of creating visual and aural connections (Hartley, cited in Smith, 1999).

In addition, I have found myself opening up to social networking as an everyday tool, since I have found the Delicious site to be indispensable in the past two months. Although I have experimented with using blogging as a learning tool in the past year, I feel that there are ways I can make improvements that will encourage further and more in-depth participation on the part of students. (Pitler, 2007).

For example, up until now I have been the primary question generator on blogs that respond to literature. Although my questions seem perfectly clear and reasonable to me, my students in their particular stage of development may draw a blank. I noticed that when I asked students to generate their own questions, there was more dialogue and reciprocal discussion, rather than students attempting to answer a question and worrying about whether they had the “right” answer. When the discussion is student initiated, they feel more empowered to correct each other's perspective if anyone is completely lost. This year I am also planning on creating a wiki, and students need to feel as though they will have some control over content; there are also some students who need to feel confident enough to take part, and having the responsibility of creating a discussion topic during a given week may be a confidence booster.
Just this week I attended a summer seminar on Promethean boards. My colleagues from school who also attended had the same reaction as I did: we have barely scratched the surface in using or equipment. Since this system is available to me already in my classroom, and with my new knowledge on dal coding, I am going to spend a good part of the summer developing lessons that will be truly interactive and engaging to students. I plan to make far more use of the interactive remote “voting” devices that are part of the equipment(ActivExpression): for formative assessment, for surveys, and for eliciting student response in an anonymous form so that even students who never speak or raise their hands in class will be actively engaged. With Promethean, responses can be converted into Excel files, so that later I can review individual student responses, for evaluation and for planning differentiated instruction. I occasionally did that this past year, but I was still using a software version that was sometimes difficult in that students all had to answer in the same time frame, whereas with the new software, responses can be self-paced. I also want to train students to use the board in various ways so that they can create their own reviews and assessments.

One major long-term goal I have is to develop continuous distance relationships with classrooms in other parts of the country and the world. My students too often know little to nothing about their own state, let alone the rest of the world. In order to prepare them for contact with students in another country, I would introduce different cultural perspectives through literature, conduct surveys using ActivExpression about their knowledge of their own culture, and they would design surveys to give to their families. The results of these surveys would be compared and contrasted through discussion and the use of spreadsheets, so they could get a good view of a cultural cross-section of the school. The school family counselor has mentioned that she would like to collaborate by helping students with interviewing techniques. I have asked the principal, who enjoys making discoveries about technology, to review the Voice Thread website; with her support I would like to lobby to have it removed from the district restrictions list, since this site would be wonderful for students to learn about each other and their cultures. Since our laptop computers are nearing the end of their battery lives, I am actively involved in writing technology grants, so sooner or later I will hopefully “strike gold.”

Once the getting-to-know-you phase has been established among my students and between them and their distance correspondents, I would like to develop projects that deal with how to greatly reduce negative social interactions (bullying, negative peer pressure, fighting) among middle school students. This is still an issue of paramount concern in our school, as I imagine it is in many other places; I feel that by collaborating with many other students, mine would learn not only how to interact in the most positive ways, they would also be in a position to supply advice and information to others. By sharing their views and findings, they will create their own knowledge base (Rogoff, cited in Kim, 2001). My feeling is that students can be a great support to administrators who struggle to deal with these same problems, and eventually can be part of the problem-solving team, becoming key players in the school-wide improvement plan. By creating a wiki in which parents can also take part, and reaching out to parents whose first language is not English by publishing articles in Spanish and Haitian-Creole on the wiki, there is a greater possibility of one hundred percent student and community buy-in.

As can be seen, my goals for integrating technology into my classroom practice hinge upon creating lessons and opportunities that will engage students in experiential as well as reflective learning; they also involve expanding the classroom walls to develop wider partnerships with classrooms and organizations outside the school. By accomplishing these goals, I will be preparing students for work in a world that is increasingly based on social interconnectivity through technology and collective problem-solving.

References:

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2008). Cognitive learning theories. Bridging Learning Theory, Instruction, and Technology Baltimore: Pearson

Orey, M.(Ed.). (2001). Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and technology. Retrieved from http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Smith, M. K. (1999) 'The cognitive orientation to learning', the encyclopedia of informal education, www.infed.org/biblio/learning-cognitive, Last update: September 03, 2009.

Voice Thread

Check out my Voice Thread:

http://voicethread.com/?#u534086.b1197333.i6460588

Social Learning

One of the most interesting concepts I read about this week in terms of social constructivism is intersubjectivity. "Intersubjectivity is a shared understanding among individuals whose interaction is based on common interests and assumptions that form the ground for their communication" (Rogoff, cited in Kim, 2001). Shared knowledge evolves through articulated thought processes in dialogue. Recently when my students were reading a novel, I had them blog about it together online, and I enjoyed reading their comments as they reasoned their way through some of the more complex questions that I posted for them to answer. I find that I usually have to make adjustments to my own perspective after reading or listening to student ideas, as they adjust theirs.

Recently they finished cooperative podcast projects, based on research. My students are on many different levels, intellectually and socially, but as we were watching the results of their efforts, I was impressed by the amount of information they had been able to assemble and synthesize in a relatively short period of time. For most students, this was their first podcast, so they also had to learn how to write a script from their research, assemble the audio and the pictures, and add a bibliography. Students who were able to build on each other's ideas and to integrate their tasks, assisting each other where necessary, were more successful than students who saw their individual tasks as being a separate part of the project, rather than a piece of the "flow".

Pitler mentions online calendars and next time I assign a project, I want to try one of those, since students can sometimes find time management very challenging.

De.icio.us is a wonderful site, and I have found it indispensable for sharing information and bookmarks. It is very flexible, in that I can keep whatever bookmarks I want private while sharing others. I have recently found out that I can circumvent the Youtube block my district has set up by sharing videos on a blog that I keep just for that purpose. I realize that not everything on YouTube is worthwhile, but there is a lot of valuable content as well.

Kim, B. (2001). Social Constructivism.. In M. Orey (Ed.), Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and technology. Retrieved from http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Constructivism in Practice

This week I learned about Learning By Design and Project-Based Learning. These correlate to the principles of constructivist/constructionist learning theories because they require the creation of a learner-centered, inquiry-based environment in which the instructor becomes a facilitator rather than the figure who imparts knowledge. In both cases, tasks are authentic: they stem from real interests on the part of the learner and are designed to be presented to a real world audience of peers or otherwise, not just the teacher/facilitator. Whereas Learning By Design can be a short-term project, Project-Based learning more often is extended over a period of weeks, so there is more emphasis for the learner on time management. In the end, I really did not see a great difference between the two; perhaps since I am more familiar with the term and practice of project-based learning, Learning By Design seems very similar. Both are built on a certain amount of prior knowledge, which needs to be activated through open-ended questioning, and on collaboration among learners and with the facilitator; both these aspects correlate to constructivist/constructionist theory. According to Orey, project-based learning does not necessarily involve the building of an artifact as does learning By Design, where the learner designs an artifact to present to a specific audience, but should be integrated with the curriculum and "be based on standards, to have clearly articulated goals, and to support and demonstrate content learning both in process and product" (Orey, 2001). Also in  Learning By Design, the rich and varied feedback, as well as the reflection that is a part of the strategy allows learners to revise their own thinking and learning, which is an essential part of the process, and one of the principles of constructionist theory.

The videos I saw on the PBL website also involved careful planning on the part of the instructors, which is a major part of the teacher's role in constructionist theory. They were also based on authentic instruction, as they built on the interests and the prior knowledge of the students. In an area such as Language Arts, where much of the assessment is subjective, especially if it is literature based, rubrics which clearly define the expectations and the goals of the project are an essential part of the piece.

Constructionist learning can result in students being  "inspired to pursue a career or engage in activism that relates to the project they developed" because students are motivated by their own interests to engage in inquiry and exploration in the first place,  rather than being simply confined to narrow subject matter in the text or according to the interests of the teacher (George Lucas Educational Foundation, 2008). Thus the real-world application can continue long after students have left the classroom and moved on to adulthood. This thought is reiterated in one of the PBL videos, in which a teacher reflected on the long-range effects of a project that explored gender roles in a middle school.

George Lucas Educational Foundation. (2008) Why teach with project learning?: Providing students with a well-rounded classroom. Edutopia: What Works in Education. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/project-learning-introduction

Orey, M.(Ed.). (2001). Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and technology. Retrieved from http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/

PBL Online Video Library. retrieved from http://pbl-online.org/video/video.htm

Cognitive Learning Theory and Instructional Strategies

As Dr. Orey explains in the video the connections between language, the senses, and the role of the elaboration process in the development of memories, it becomes very clear to me the reason that advance organizers are such powerful tools for student learning. When I have used video, images, songs, and other media to prepare students for reading a new text, not only are they more open to exploring the text, they are making connections between earlier memories and experiences and the text.

Virtual Field Trips take this concept many steps further by offering students the possibility of experiencing  learning holistically and through making a rich tapestry of connections between experience and subject matter, rather than through merely listening or reading. This accords with the situated learning principles of Lave and Wegner, that "Knowledge needs to be presented in an authentic context" and that "Learning requires social interaction and collaboration." Wikis also follow these principles, since their are many contributors to the learning, who are creating experiences and new knowledge together.

Concept mapping can be used either individually or collaboratively; the technology in programs like C-maps, Inspiration or its online version, Webspiration that permits links, images, sound files and video to become a part of the map, also corresponds to Paivio's dual coding hypothesis explained by Orey as  information being stored as  images and text.

I never knew about the tracked changes and auto-summarizing tools in Microsoft Word, however I am definitely going to provide my students with the opportunity of learning how to summarize information through this tool. I wish I had known about it this year, because it would have helped me to avoid a couple of instances of plagiarization during research projects.

In my student blogs, I have been the one to set up the questions primarily, but I think the idea of students summarizing information and then prompting the discussion with questions would be highly successful, because according to Piaget, students think differently from adults and so the questions they pose would be more relevant to how they are processing the information; although my questions do strike a chord fairly often, I would like to experiment with the response rate that student questions would stimulate.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Bridging learning theory, instruction, and technology. Baltimore: Author.


Lever-Duffy, J. & McDonald, J. (2008). Theoretical Foundations (Laureate Education, Inc., custom ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Situated learning Overview. Retrieved from http://tip.psychology.org/lave.html on May 19, 2010.

Behaviorist Principles, Students, and Technology

Effort is sometimes a very difficult concept to explain with students, even in the wide range of types of students I teach, because they believe that either that are smart enough to get by with very little effort, or that they are not smart enough, and so effort is useless, because they will not "get it." I found the effort rubric therefore to be very interesting as a positive reinforcer, especially when used with the accompanying graph comparing their effort to their grades, because students who use it are required to face the fact that unless they apply enough effort, they cannot move forward.

One thing that surprised me about the resources shared in the text was the capabilities of Microsoft Word. I found out that along with providing instant feedback on spelling and grammar, a tool that I use frequently and encourage the use of in my classroom, this application actually assigns a grade level to the quality of writing. This capability sets achievement goals for students, and reinforces concepts taught as part of the writing process.  Particularly useful for language arts activities is a site called Mr. Nussbaum: there is a game called Sentence Surgery that is wonderful and engaging for reinforcing proofreading skills that students at the middle school level are still learning. The Flashcard Exchange is an excellent school for reinforcing vocabulary; students can design their own, and thus learning could be reinforced according to different needs. All of these resources are reflective of reinforcement, because they focus in on areas in which students need the most practice; Pitler, et al. remind us that "Mastering a skill or process requires a fair amount of focused practice" (p. 188), and suggest that educational computer games facilitate the extension of learning outside the classroom, and are an attractive way for students to hone their skills. Smith (1999) references Hartley as emphasizing that "Activity is important. Learning is better when the learner is active rather than passive." When students are actively engaged in a pleasurable activity that is reinforcing a skill, they are therefore definitely working towards mastery.

In terms of the behavorist principle of modeling, Google Docs is an excellent resource for peer editing. Posts can be tracked, so there is a record of the assistance students can give to each other in terms of proofreading and editing.  Blogging about specific topics also sets up models for students, as they can read their peers' responses and learn from them.

Orey, M.(Ed.). (2001). Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and technology. Retrieved from http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Smith, M. K. (1999) 'The behaviourist orientation to learning', the encyclopedia of informal education, www.infed.org/biblio/learning-behavourist.htm, Last update: September 03, 2009.

Developing Skills and Long-Term Classroom Goals

Through the materials presented, the discussions, and the blogs I have visited throughout this course, Understanding the Impact of Technology on Education, Work, and Society,  I have first of all been able to gain a much clearer view of the importance of learning, and then teaching, 21st Century  skills. Whereas previously I thought that technology was fun (but perhaps not entirely essential)  my viewpoint has broadened (Laureate Education 2008). I can now relate to the fact that when my students race for the laptops, it is not only because it is entertaining to them, but technology is an authentic part of the way they learn. Due to much of the reading made available to me through this course, and in particular the Partnership for 21st Century Skills website, I can appreciate how important it is for educators, and therefore for me in my classroom, to channel the technology skills students have, and their desire to learn more about technology, into constructive research and problem-solving, and into the creation of media products that enhance their learning and that of others. According to Levy and Murnarne (2006) the loss of blue-collar jobs and the rise in the numbers of jobs that require critical thinking skills means that students will need to develop these skills more than ever in order to compete. Not least of the considerations I have about technology is that it is fun, as Thornberg and Davidson pointed out, and since for me a principal motivation for work is the extent to which it engages me and to which I enjoy  it, integrating technology into the classroom means that I will be in this profession for quite a while to come.

Therefore my own skills have undergone a radicalization. I appreciate the importance of blogging when I feel the need to sound out other people, and so now blogging has become a part of my life. Finally, I now know how to publish a podcast online, whereas last year I only knew enough to make the podcast. I can now appreciate the concept of a website as a living entity, or wiki, that many people can create, as opposed to a source of information posted on and controlled entirely by one person. I can direct students who love to create art to enhance their projects to websites where they can create images online. The conservation of paper and trees, one of our vital resources, has long been a major concern of mine; now much of my students' work is accomplished online, through blogging and other posts, and the printer in my classroom sees much less use.

Some things that I still need to learn more about are wiki sties that do not require students to have an email address, but which do require identification such as a login so that I can monitor their posts and contributions, since many of my students are under age 13. Some sites I need to explore more are Knowledge Forum (Kirschner, 2006), and ePals (Trask, 2010).  I would also like to understand more about embedding HTML code so that podcasts and music can be played directly from a site as opposed to being linked to somewhere else.

I believe where I have arrived until now with technology integration and my future goals follow what Cramer describes as the "Three Phases of Technology Use": Print Automation, Expansion of Learning Opportunities, and Data-Driven Virtual learning (Cramer, 2007). In regards to the second phase, one of my future goals is to make research on the Internet easier for my students. Although many of them enjoy technology and use it every day, some have a fear that using technology in school will be boring and the joy of it will be sucked out because they will have to perform "work". Others have a lack of confidence, and their biggest fear is that they will not be adept at tasks that require using technological tools. I have already allayed some of these fears by demonstrating how to make a podcast, and how easy it actually is to do on Garageband; my next step is to show them sites like Clusty, where their topics can be narrowed down and tailored to their needs. So I want ot start off the school year by showing them these tools right away, so that they will gradually become used to them.

Another long term goal is to engage students in creating class wikis as a regular part of the curriculum, beginning from the start of school. Students always have so many questions, and although digression is frowned upon by some district administrators as an inappropriate use of classroom time, I find the opposite is true: the more questions students have that are adequately answered for them, the more they are learning. What better way to have those questions answered than to create a wiki, where students can contribute information, pictures, podcasts, video and so on? One way for me to integrate this in the classroom as a language arts teacher is to create wikis around literature that we are reading. For example, students interested in short stories could create a wiki around both literature under study and around their own stories; the same could be done for poetry, for novels, and for mythology. Since there are many sites that have already been created for the literature we read, students could borrow from those and add their own. This is another area I need to explore further: there is a site named Trackstar where links for research can be stored by teachers, and although I would not necessarily want to limit students to sites I have chosen for them, I think it is important for the younger and less experienced ones to have a basis to start from.  In any case, they will be reading and writing. Along with creating wikis, I would like to use ePals, a link provided by our instructor, Judy Trask, to communicate and share with students in other parts of the world. Beyond that, I believe that student wikis should be a forum where students can engage in discussing and problem-solving for issues that concern them, and since some of the questions asked by my students concern these very issues, I would start with their questions. 

While I am excited about these goals, I also know they will require careful planning and well-structured class management. Providing students with tools for self-management is one solution that I have found useful for many of them. A log of their activities and a checklist of goals and deadlines to meet them helps them to focus on their tasks, and to accomplish what they need to do within a reasonable time framework. Also, since there are students who are ready to start on project-based learning without any further encouragement, I plan to have these students model for the others how fun and exciting it can be, and what wonderful results it can have for them and for their learning. In this way, my class will become even less teacher-centered, and more focused on what the students can accomplish with just steady guidance, a little advice, some directed risk-taking, and a lot of passion for breaking into new territory.

References:

Cramer, S. (2007). Update your classroom with learning objects and twenty-first century skills. Clearing House, 80(3), 126–132.

Kirschner, P., & Erkens, G. (2006). Cognitive tools and mindtools for collaborative learning. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 35(2), 199–209.

Levy, F., & Murnane, R. (2006). Why the changing American economy calls for twenty-first century learning: Answers to educators' questions. New Directions for Youth Development, 2006(110), 53–62.

Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (n.d.). A report and mile guide for 21st century skills. Washington DC: Author. Retrieved from http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/downloads/P21_Report.pdf 

Laureate Education, Inc. (2008). Program number 2. Transforming the classroom with technology,  Part 1. [Motion Picture]. The emergence of educational technology. Baltimore.

Laureate Education, Inc. (2008). Program number 23. Bringing the fun into teaching with technology. [Motion Picture]. The emergence of educational technology. Baltimore.

Recently I conducted a survey with all the students in my classes about their use of technology and whether they would prefer using it more at school. Listen to my podcast listing the results, and excerpts from interviews with three of the students.



Tech Survey

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills

This site contains all the information, and more, that would have been useful to me for the past two years, when I participated in my district's rollout of G.L.I.D.E.S (Global Learning Initiative for Digital Education for Students). While the workshops I took at that time were definitely eye-openers for me, I really did not have the total concept of how important digital education and the accompanying 21st Century skills are in today's workplace, or how essential they are to global (and local) problem-solving. Of course I thought that digital tools were cool and exciting, and certainly learning to collaborate is an important skill for middle school students to learn, somehow all the pieces never really came together for me, and mentally I was still looking for students to come up with the answer based on research, as opposed to sharing points of view.

As I browsed through the list of partners on the website, I began to understand that with the diverse array of companies, this initiative is really important. I also was surprised to find that funding for 21st century skills was signed into law as the 21st Century Skill Incentive Fund Act. I want to find out if the funding for the Promethean boards in our school comes from that funding; I also want to get more involved in advocating for the incorporation of 21st Century skills into the district curriculum.

Right now, I'm not sure that I disagree with anything on the website escept for the fact that this technology has not reached as many children in as many classrooms as it ought to have reached. Why is the concept of 21st Century skills not being disseminated to all educators? Why is this funding not trickling down to all the students who need it most?

Living as I do in Florida, I also have some serious concerns for implications in the near future. We are supposedly readying ourselves to welcome an influx of Haitian students, many orphans, into our district quite soon; how can we offer them the best possible education without being technologically prepared, that is, without having all the resources available to them so that they can best learn how to survive in a modern society?  We do not have these resources for all the students we have now, and even if they are available, teachers do not have the training necessary to use these resources. I find myself asking what I can do to speed up the process of getting teachers trained. Most teachers claim that they have no time, because they are too busy preparing their students for standardized testing. The key is to convince these teachers, along with administrators and district policy-makers, that change must occur through our initiative: if testing will not change, then we must change testing. I need to find other teachers who  are thinking along these lines, and investigate further on how to become a state partner with this movement. I want Florida to be one of the 25 states that will be a partner with this intiative by 2014, as predicted by Ken Kay, the President of  Partnership for 21st Century skills. Ironically, 2014 is the year in which all schools are supposed to reach 100% AYP.


 I was interested to find videos on this site that showed how teachers incorporate skill-building in technology into their curricula, links to project-based learning resources, and to international learning sites. This is definitely a site I will return to in the near future.

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills

Book Talks

Blogging would be an excellent way for my Language Arts students, who are all in middle school, from Grade 6 through Grade 8, to talk about books they are reading. Although these book talks are conducted verbally in class, not everyone participates because some students simply do not feel comfortable with talking in front of their peers. Many do not feel confident enough about their own opinions to speak them aloud.  If they can write in a blog, however, I feel they would be much more inclined to express their opinions and their enthusiasm. So initially the blog would be for discussing content.

To extend this activity, we will also be blogging about books we are reading as part of the curriculum; I will post questions for discussion and then have students engage in dialogue to discover answers to the questions. the lessons will be enhanced because everyone will take part, and students will feel more free to talk to each other; another important point is that natural discussion leaders will emerge from the blogs, and so the students will be more autonomous and less constricted by me always leading them where my mind tends to go, and I can facilitate from the sidelines rather than be the constant dominant presence.

Eventually I want engage students in reviewing each other's writing prior to publication, and then showcasing it online. There is an NCTE site where teachers can create a gallery for their students' best work. I believe the blogging process in a private context however would be great for students to peer review their work.

Taking Small Steps in Blogging

Most of my students have never actually blogged before, although of course a majority are adept at texting and instant messaging. They are surprised when I tell them that texting language is not to be used with blogging, but generally they accept this rule because, after all, this is a language arts class! For this reason, I'm finding it necessary to first conduct a lesson on the proper use of blogging: that is, it's designed for use as a classroom tool in this case, and should not contain references to their plans outside of school or other strictly personal data. Most students also do not keep diaries, so I find myself needing to introduce them to the concept of journaling. So far I have only asked them to comment on the current literature we are reading, by either asking a question, drawing a conclusion, or relating a personal story. Since I already have a website where I post homework that they are familiar with, I have bypassed the first step recommended by Richardson (p. 45). The next step, however, of getting them to read blogs, I am going to try when we get back to school next Wednesday after this short break. It is also the start of a new semester, so I believe that may be a good place to begin.

Richardson, W. (2006). Blogs, wiks, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Learning About Technology in the Classroom

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