What I Think of Today's Tech Tools

Phylogenies and Photosharing: A Multimedia Lesson Plan

Introduction

Overall, the multimedia lesson plan assignment was a challenging but fruitful assignment. It matched with several NETS*T standards including standard 2 to design and create digital-age learning experiences and assessments. It developed my skills as a technology proficient educator but it was difficult because of the knowledge I lacked at the outset of the assignment.

The multimedia lesson plan assignment fulfilled several different NETS*T standards. One standard the multimedia lesson plan assignment met is standard number 2 which calls for teachers to come up with technological experiences that maximize both content learning as well as the skills and attitudes outlined in the NETS student standards (ISTE 2007). The skills include creativity and innovation as well as research and information fluency. In creating the multimedia lesson plan, I require students to create their own portfolio as well as creatively and scientifically document and photograph their plant collections. In sharing their portfolio online they learn to use a widespread online photo sharing tool, Flickr.

In this lesson plan, I also provide students with a rubric that they can view to assess the final product of their online portfolio including the phylogenies they create. The phylogenies the students have to construct require them to critically analyze their plants and construct relationships between them to see how they are related thus fulfilling the NETS*T standards.

Benefits

There were multiple benefits to this assignment for me as a teacher. First, it helped me to learn how to use the Google sites tool. Learning to use this tool was not easy and it took much searching and helps forums to get it to work the way I wanted it to. However, learning to use this tool just adds to my skills as a technologically proficient educator. I learned how to create the website, edit the information, upload attachments and embed apps such as calendars. I even was able to link my digital tutorial to the website.

In addition to experience working with technology, I also gained experience in writing lesson plans. As a beginning teacher, I don’t have much experience in this and honing the skills of constructing lesson plans especially multimedia lesson plans can only add to my assortment of skills as an educator. I learned of a new method for writing lesson plans, the ASSURE method. While it contains much of what I knew about lesson plans already, it prompted me to consider other aspects of the lesson such considering exactly what the students already know and are capable of as well as their different learning styles and how I will engage all of them and ensure they all participate.

Lastly, this lesson plan assignment taught me to consider what accommodations I would make for students with disabilities. In this case, I considered how to teach the class with a hearing disabled student. I adapted by putting more text on my PowerPoint slides and including more images to keep the student engaged.

Problems

There were, however some drawbacks to this assignment. There was a steep learning curve when it came to figuring out the Google sites program and although I searched for some time, I couldn’t get the calendar to work properly on the site. I was able to select and display the Google calendar I had created for the class, but events I created in the class calendar did not appear on the website calendar. I searched several forums and helps to no avail.

Also, I would have liked more resources made available to us pertaining to working with students with disabilities. I have had no formal education or training as to how to accommodate students with special needs in all my student education classes. I understand that there are many resources online, but it would have been helpful to have some base of knowledge on students with disabilities to begin with when carrying out this assignment.

In summation

                The multimedia lesson plan assignment was an appropriate one. It coincided with several NETS*T and NETS*S standards. It also had the advantages of teaching me a new technology, Google sites, and new lesson plan method, ASSURE. However, I had trouble with the steep learning curve of Google sites and would have liked to have had more background information in dealing with students with disabilities.

International Society for Technology in Education (n.d.) NETS student standards 2007. Retrieved from 

        http://www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-students/nets-student-standards-2007.aspx

International Society for Technology in Education (n.d.) NETS teacher standards 2008. 

            Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-teachers/nets-for-teachers-2008.aspx

Are you the educator who will Enable Dreams?

The following is a review of a video entitled enabling dreams hosted by edutopia:


Introduction

The enabling dreams video made me aware of several things pertaining to students with disabilities. It made me understand the difficulties they and the technologies that are available to them.

Difficulties             
           Although I have had personal interactions with disabled students and seen many presentations and videos about them during my teacher education, I find I am always still a little naïve when it comes to how much these individuals have to overcome. In the video, there was a student who lacked the use of all four of his limbs. He was able to do some minor things with his arms and legs but they were practically useless. Then in the section discussing the DO-IT program and redwood heights elementary, there were students who could only move their eyebrows or a small part of their face.

Not only do these students have to overcome their own physical disabilities but they also face the difficulty of an ignorant administration. Susannah, a student in college at the time of filming, told viewers of her difficulty in getting access to assistive technology I her high school. She says it was only because of her mother’s persistence that she was able to get the laptop she needed to complete her assignments.  To me, this seems an insurmountable challenge, but these students and their families and teachers work out new and ingenious ways to help them jump these functional and educational hurdles.

                New Methods
           One such program described in the video is the Redwood Heights School T.A.C.L.E. (Technology & Augmentative Communication for Learning Enhancement) which helps students with difficult communicative and physical disabilities. TACLE does this by:

• “Developing appropriate augmentative and alternate communication systems for each student.”
• “Developing the appropriate assistive technologies to access the academic curriculum.”
• “Providing academic instruction in the District-adopted kindergarten through 5th grade curriculum, the Unique Learning Systems special education system and the Early Literacy Skills Builder special education curriculum.” (Redwood Heights School 2011)

As was seen in the video, students with severe disabilities were provided with creative methods of communicating. In doing this, they gave the students a voice, a way to communicate as one teacher put it. In addition to the TACLE program, the school offers links to special education resources as well as an on-site Resource Specialist Program available for teachers of disabled students as well as disabled students themselves.

                Another program in the video that I was previously unaware of is the DO-IT program. A part of Washington University, the DO-IT program is one that helps students with disabilities to succeed in challenging careers such as science, math and engineering, promote universal design in physical spaces, instruction, technology, and services. They also produce informative and motivational videos that can be found on the DO-IT website, YouTube, and are available for download (DO-IT 1998).

                Overall, this video was very informative. I learned of the many difficulties both physical and social that students with disabilities face. I also learned that there are many tools and programs out there available for students with disabilities as well as their teachers. I intend to make use of these resources when given the opportunity to educate a learning disabled student.

Redwood Heights School. (2011) Special Education. Retrieved from Redwood Heights School website: http://redwoodheightsschool.com/?page_id=86

Burgstahler, S. (1998) DO-IT programs and resources. Retrieved from DO-IT website http://www.washington.edu/doit/Brochures/overview.html

TheDOITCenter.  (Aug 18, 2008) Part of me, not all of me. [Video File] Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sk-EtXk5iEg

Online Safety: A Whole Lot You Didin't Know

           The digital safety assignment was a good one. It covered a wide variety of topics and encouraged students to take charge of their own learning by researching and presenting the topics to their peers. To improve it, I would add a netiquette section and rearrange the topics so to make it clear that they are all very relevant to digital safety.

I feel for the most part, the 5 digital safety topics, cyber bullying, sexting and textual harassment, phishing and farming, copyright, and digital safety and privacy, fit well into a cohesive unit on digital safety. However, there are some things I would rearrange or remove. Firstly, I would make sure that all the topics address digital safety. I don’t think FUP and copyright law really apply to digital safety, at least not for users and not in the way it was presented. For it to apply to digital/online safety, I think it should be more about what rights we as educators/artists have and how to keep our work that we post online safe. One could say a great deal about what rights we do or do not have over pictures, documents, and video that we often haphazardly post online. I feel this would be more relevant to digital safety than copyright from the angle of whether or not the way we use the internet breaks copyright. However, that is an important issue.

I would add a section about netiquette into the cyber bullying topic, because it seems a lot of the cyber bullying could be avoided if we educate students on the proper way to treat other individuals online. This would coincide with NET*S standard 4 calling for teachers to model digital citizenship and responsibility (International Soceity for Technology in Education 2008)  I would also consider including textual harassment and sexting as a subsection of cyber bullying instead of as its own topic because much of the information overlaps. The whole section together could be called “online social interactions” or something like that.

If I were to teach this to my class, I would design the lesson in a similar fashion to how we did it in class. I would definitely have students research and present their findings. However, I would work closely with them to ensure they covered the right information and to the extent that I want them to. I would start off the lesson with some kind of anticipatory set such as an article about the consequences of cyber bullying or phishing. I would make them aware of how much of their life is now online and the risks associated with that.

With all this said, there are a couple changes I would make to the assignment. Firstly, I would spend time with the class at the beginning of the lesson to briefly define and discuss each topic so that everyone is on the same page as to what phishing or cyber bullying really is. I would cite some reputable sources such as legislation and government agencies in charge of digital safety. The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy is one such reputable source(The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy 2011). Their site provided good insight into technology and sex from different perspectives as well as interesting statistics on sexting and related material

In summation, I felt this was a good assignment that covered very important material and I would definitely want to present this material to my students in some fashion.

International Society for Technology in Education (n.d.) NETS teacher standards 2008.
            Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-teachers/nets-for-teachers-2008.aspx

The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy (2011). Retrieved from  http://www.thenationalcampaign.org/sextech/

Mr. Rob's Digital Tutorials: Phylogenetics

I have created a digital tutorial outlining a strategy for creating cladograms from character matrices. To create the tutorial I narrated over a powerpoint using jing. Here is the link to the media sharing site hosting the video. The file is a shockwave flash that can be played in most browsers.

Playing with Drake Genetics: An Online Science Game

The online educational game assignment was an informative one. On the whole, it revealed to me the sheer mass of educational resources available to teachers for free. However, it did come with its challenges such as working with a group and using new technologies. Additionally, this game can be put to good use in a classroom situation.

Difficulties Faced 

While there were several challenging tasks associated with this educational game project, the creation of the rubric itself was not all that difficult. One of the initial difficulties we did encounter with creating the rubric was understanding how to go about making one. Although as a student, I have seen several rubrics, I have never created one myself and thinking of criteria with which to assess the game was challenging at first. Regarding my understanding of the project, it seemed to me counterintuitive to first pick a game to assess and then develop an assessment tool for it. It seems more logical to develop the tool then use it to pick a game to assess. Perhaps a good way to go about the assignment would be to together assess several games then develop a rubric based on our game assessing experience. Additionally, developing degrees (defining the strongly disagree, agree, strongly agree) within each criteria took some thought. However, in the end we were shown a student example with yes or no questions listed beneath larger categories such as visual and audio and decided that would be the better format than a traditional Likert scale rubric.

          Another challenge with this assignment were the many logistical difficulties that almost always come along with group work: meeting, working together, communication. With the many familial obligations, other classes, and occupations all students have, it is very difficult to find a time to meet face to face with all your partners. In our technology applications, we were shown several tools that could be used to facilitate communication. However, being shown the tools and being able to use them effectively are two vastly different things. I tried to incorporate a shared Google document the day we were separated into our groups to quickly open up communication. I initiated the document asking for contact info, available times to meet, and to use the space for questions/suggestions for the game and rubric. Only one of my three partners, however, actually used the document to communicate these things. The rest of them simply responded via email. In addition, these regular constraints on times available to meet, one of our members was ill and so could not make our one meeting to prepare or the actual presentation of the game. So, things we had discussed at the meeting needed to be reiterated with her and we had to be creative as to how to include her in the presentation which I will discuss in detail when I address difficulties with technology. Division of labor is another difficulty we faced when creating the rubric. From the beginning, it was difficult to elicit input from the other group members. Whether it’s due to a lack of understanding of the assignment or a more cultural issue of not wanting to speak up and share ones own opinions/ideas, input was not readily given.

          Aside from developing the rubric, the technology used in presenting the game was a hurdle to be overcome. First, I have had very little experience in video editing and I did not realize how time consuming and difficult it could be. In order to involve one of our infirmed group members, I decided to film her assessing the game and play that during our presentation. The recording alone took a couple hours for just a few minutes of actual video. Then, I had to find a video conversion program to convert the video file from the format my camera uses to one compatible with windows movie maker. Lastly, I had to edit the video which also took a couple hours. Then, playing the video in class didn’t work so well because the sound was not very loud.

Classroom Use

          I think the Genetic Interactive Fiction game can be used to test the students’ understanding of simple genetic inheritance patterns and their use of Punnett squares and scientific method and inquiry. Specifically, I would use the game after having introduced the fundamentals of genetics and inheritance. Then, I would have them play through the game in class. I would be there to help with any questions they might have in downloading and running the game as well as with questions on how to play the game. However, as for the playing the game, I will be very scrupulous with the help I give. Most of the questions they might have can be answered by exploring the game and reading the directions and descriptions carefully. That is another skill that this game develops, attention to detail. Students have to carefully read every line of text at least once in order to progress through the game. If students haven’t done that before coming to me with a question, I will refer them back to the game. Once students have completed the first objective within the game, breed a dragon with red eyes, we will discuss their hypotheses and they will provide support for their answers. Doing this will fulfill NET*S standard 4c which requires students to analyze data to come up with solutions (International Society for Technology in Education 2007). The data they analyze will be the eye color phenotypic ratios of the drakes they breed and their solution will be some kind of mode of inheritance. I will then reveal the mode of inheritance that best fits the phenotypic ratio for eye color. To end, we will discuss in class how this game and inheritance modes have real life application in the human trait of blood type which has the same mode of inheritance as eye color in the game.
          Incorporating an educational game to teach and reinforce this aspect of genetics fulfills two of the NETS teacher standards. First, it incorporates digital tools to promote learning and creativity. It does this by challenging students to use what they've learned about inheritance to develop their own hypotheses as to the mode of inheritance for drake eye color (NETS Teachers standard 2A). Also, it uses digital tools way that addresses diverse learning styles (NETS Teachers standard 2C) because this game presents the information in a different way than a normal textbook would. It requires that students read carefully and sometimes reread the information in order to proceed in the game which is how some students learn. It also is useful for teaching students who are easily distracted. Because of its simplicity and modest graphics, it allows the student to focus on the task at hand (International Society for Technology in Education 2008).

          In summary, the online educational game rubric was a useful tool. It was difficult to meet with other students and to work with new technologies in presenting the online game. Even with the difficulty of using the game, it can be of great use to a teacher. It can be helpful in testing students and encouraging them to develop cognitive skills.  

International Society for Technology in Education (n.d.) NETS student standards 2007. Retrieved from 

        http://www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-students/nets-student-standards-2007.aspx

International Society for Technology in Education (n.d.) NETS teacher standards 2008. 

            Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-teachers/nets-for-teachers-2008.aspx

ED-271 Motivation

More PowerPoint presentations from Robert Ady