New and Emerging Technologies

Throughout this course, we examined many types of technology that can be used in the classroom. Some are very practical and can be implemented immediately, and some are beneficial, but need more development or a change in administrative thinking before implementation.

The learning activity that I developed was an online learning module. Through the course, I learned ways to effectively implement the module, and structure it so that it meets the needs of each student, even if the students' needs vary greatly. As assessment proved to be most difficult for me to implement, an approach that requires mastery before advancement works well.

In order to continue to discover emerging technologies, I have become much closer with fellow faculty members that stay on the cutting edge in our school for new technologies. They are able to suggest not only new technologies for me to investigate, but also recommend sources for information about other technologies. They read current journals and websites and blogs, and will prove to be invaluable for helping me continue to find ground-breaking technology for my classroom.

Online Learning in K-12 Schools Presentation

This week, my classmates and I have learned about online learning, and the uses of learning modules. We were instructed to create presentations for our colleagues explaining the benefits of, and implementation of, online learning modules:

https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B8tC_Dcx7ITnZWRkODlmMWMtNzI0Yy00YmM5LTg3YWYtNzBhOTM0ZWU2Yzg5&hl=en

Educ 6714 Reflection

As this course draws to a close, my cohorts and I are to reflect back upon what we have learned and how we will implement these things into our teaching. There were a few different aspects of the course that worked together to make it a very beneficial learning experience: the typical applications and discussions, as well as a differentiation station that involved social networking.

I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed the social networking activity that we have done for this course. It was an invaluable collaboration resource, and I learned about several useful resources for differentiating instruction through our social network. I have also formed some valuable friendships through the social network, escpecially after conducting the online collaborative "meeting", through which we got to really know one another, and interact and learn from each other in a whole new way. We continue to discuss not only the assigned topics for this course, but other aspects of teaching, and even personal issues, and I'm sure we will continue to remain in contact through the technology that we originally used for this course.

Unfortunately, there is no way for me to implement the social networking aspect of this course into my teaching, as my district has a blanket "no social networking sites" policy. It is unfortunate that I cannot share this excellent means of obtaining real-time clarification of assignments, discussion of methods of completing assignments, and support of one another during the learning process. My cohorts and I enjoyed it very much, and our learning was greatly enriched because of it.

In my social network, several resources were listed for implementation of Universal Design for Learning. The two that I believe that I will use most will be tech4di.wikispaces.com and internet4classrooms.com/di.htm They listed several activities that can bring differentiation into my teaching, and even had databases through which one can put in the type of activity and find ways to differentiate it.

As far as making immediate adjustments to my teaching, I have already incorporated the use of Voicethreads for vocabulary learning, to differentiate the learning experience for the students. We have been using this for the past three vocabulary lists, and I have seen a drastic increase in not only student participation, but also the percentage of simple retention, and a huge increase in the students' ability to internalize the words and use them with greater fluency. The visual representations, and the ability to include audio and review as needed at home, has given a much greater impact to the learning, and has allowed students that had a difficult time with the more traditional methods of memorizing better ways to remember the material.

This course has been a very beneficial learning experience for me, and I will be using a great deal of what I have learned to continue to differentiate instruction and assessment for my varied learners.

Reflections on Educ 6712

In this course, my classmates and I learned about literacies -- not the standard literacies that one might ordinarily think of, but literacies for the 21st century.

The most striking revelation that I had during this course was how to teach my students the process for evaluating the merit of web resources. I was never taught this in school, and gradually learned this skill through years of trial and error. I was pleased to learn a method for teaching my students how to evaluate sources effectively.

There were other skills that I learned in this course that will benefit my teaching, such as teaching students how to ask essential questions, and synthesize resources. The knowledge gained from this course will be valuable in teaching skills to my students that I needed them to have, but had difficulty explaining before.

One goal that I would like to meet as a result of this course is to share some of what I have learned with my colleagues to improve the literacy of not only my students, but my school's student body as a whole. I would like to speak at one of our inservices and explain some of the methods that I have learned during the course, especially how to help students evaluate resources.

Reflection on Bridging Learning Theory, Instruction, and Technology

This week, my cohorts and I are in a process of reflection. We are looking at everything that we have learned in our Educ 5711 class, and how we will integrate technology into our instruction.

In the beginning of the course, my "Personal Theory of Learning" was a combination of constructivist and cognitivist theory, as I believed that students needed to create their own meanings for things to truly acquire knowledge. This has not completely changed, but I would say that I definitely have come to believe that social construcionist theory has become part of my personal theory. There is overwhelming evidence to support use of cooperative learning in combination with constructionist techniques to support learning.

We have learned a great deal about different tools of technology that we can use with our students that will impact their learning, and while I would love to be able to integrate them all, I am limited by having only one computer in my classroom, and restrictions that our district has on use of sites like youtube.com, or facebook.com. Two technologies that I can easily integrate into my teaching, and I have begun the approval process for, are Webspiration and VoiceThread. Webspiration will be used for in-class mind mapping and creation of concept maps. This will help students better understand how things relate ot one another, and organize their notes, as well. VoiceThread will be used for video-blogging assignments. We will complete several assignments in Spanish, to give students practice responding to spoken Spanish, and allow them to access these outside of class, to take their language learning into their homes and share with their parents what we are learning in class.

Two long-term changes that I would like to make to my instructional practice are that I would like to implement the ongoing creation of a class wiki, and I would like for students to post video podcasts of their projects and presentations for parents to view. To implement the class wiki, I will have to decide exactly what I want the students to put into it, and develop an assignment sheet for that. I would need to schedule time periodically in the computer lab for them to complete these assignments. We would need to spend at least one day every two weeks in the computer lab, which would take a great deal of time away from our in-class language instruction, so I would have to make sure that the assignments continued to strongly reinforce their language acquisition. For the video podcasting, I would need parent permission, which I am in the process of obtaining, and a webcam, which I have purchased and am waiting for installation by the district. I will need to be sure to record the project presentations, and upload them to our site, or have students upload them.

This class has definitely increased my awareness of available technology tools, and my teaching has already transformed. I can't just present information on the SMARTboard anymore without feeling as if I am doing a disservice to my students. In just the first week, they are up, illustrating vocabulary on it, and are asking everyday when the video blog project will begin! They want to do a project! I'm so excited about it!

Link to my VoiceThread post

Here is the link to my VoiceThread: I need some input on motivating students!

http://voicethread.com/share/574572/

Connectivism and Social Learning

My cohorts and I continue on our journey to understand ways to blend technology with instructional and learning theories. This week, our focus is on Social learning theory, which is the foundation for cooperative learning. There are still strong elements of constructionism at play here, as students are actively engaged in creating something, that is their means of acquiring information.

The difference with social learning is that you add the element of socialization. It seems obvious, but I understand it to be constructionism + interaction with other learners. We looked at several ways to use technology to accomplish this. The most promising look to be voicethread.com, webquest, and various website creation sites/programs, such as Publisher or coolpage.com. Secondlife and Facebook could probably be the most engaging for students, but I don't know that the environment can be controlled well enough for them to be feasible to use in classrooms.

Taking the example of voicethread, students could post images related to their assigned topic, then have other group members surround the images with comments, both audio and text, thus all working together, interacting and learning from one another, and constructing an artifact to share with others (the rest of the class, school, world, whatever is appropriate). Webquest could be used in combination with software to create an artifact, and a similar finished project could be created and shared.

This approach is, in my opinion, the best of all worlds with learning theories. Appropriate behaviors are simple when students are engaged, there is cognitive learning happening, and construction of artifacts is taking place. Add to all of that, the students are interacting and learning from one another, as well as their available resources, and the addition of technology tools brings it all together for a seamless execution!