Current Issues and New Directions

New Directions

In my current job I do not get to use much technology, unless it is something that my students can do from their phone in class.  It doesn't mean that I did not try.  However, with most of the funding for software and devices going to English because it is the weakest subject at my school when it comes to STAAR.  I believe that it is important that students develop some sort of skill in school or have some sort of aid to help them study for classes.  I believe this week’s reading has really helped define what I can do in the classroom.

Distributed or E-Learning Environments

When I first started out teaching a few years ago I wanted to really set up an E-Learning Environment.  I first began to use Edmodo as a way to develop and e-learning classroom, but I found that no students signed up for it and even when I offered it as extra credit I still had students that would not sign up for it.  Then I switched to Moodle, which was developed to be more of a e-learning environment than Edmodo.  I still had students not sign up, I even created activities for them to do at home for which no one participated or if they did very few of them did.  So I put it by the wayside and have never used it again.  However, I am currently a graduate assistant for the university and part of my job is student tutor students who are trying to take their EC-6 test.  I have begun to develop online learning environments for them to learn and study the materials for social studies.  These students go to the weebly page that I have set up for them and there are lessons and activities that they can do themselves, with me there to guide them.

The learning objectives for E-Learning would be to develop the knowledge and skills for the students who come to be to be successful on their test. The goal would be to learn how to analyze primary source data quickly and efficiently on a computer screen. I attainment of the learning goal would be about the same because either way depending on how you design a primary source activity, either in person or online, it all depends on how the student reads the document.

Networks or WEB 2.0 Technologies

I have yet had a chance to use Web 2.0 technologies in my classroom.  However, I have had certain colleagues tell me what they have done with WEB 2.0 tools in the classroom.  The biggest tool that my colleagues have used was Twitter.  If I were to use Twitter in my classroom, this is how I would use.  As many of you know I teach History, particularly US History, there are several Twitter accounts such as History in Pictures (@EpicHistoryPics), that my students could use.  One lesson that I have thought about doing involves using the pictures that they have on the twitter account mentioned above and have my students retweet one.  Then the other students would have to analyze their partners picture that they retweeted.  A second lesson that I have developed involves tweeting student’s reactions of political debates.  I might use this one this year since we are having our Presidential election this year, it would be interesting to see their live tweets as they watch the candidates’ debate.

The learning goal of using something like Twitter in the classroom would be about getting students to explore the academic side of Twitter, instead of retweeting something that their friends did.  I think it would also be to teach them about the importance of what they tweet, because so of our students don’t realize that what they tweet is there for the world to see.  On an educational historical goal, in relation to the second lesson, it would get them to feel more invested in a political debate when many of them have not reached voting age yet.  I think the online formats of a web 2.0 technologies are good and goals can be achieved better online than in person because of the fact that most students who don’t speak in class because they do not want to feel like an outcast, they somehow are able to find their voice on land which means they learn more in this type of setting than in class.

Digital Games or Simulations

I have used this in class before and it is probably my go to assignment for when I want to review with my students, I turn to digital games.  There are two programs that I turn to when dealing with games, Kahoot or USA Test Prep, the second one deals with getting students prepared to take the EOC for US History.  For the USA Test Prep program, I can have my students do it individual or compete with other students.  I have found that games are usually the best way to review students and catch them up on things they need to know.

The learning goal for anything is to have the students review for things that we have done in class to make sure they have a firm grasp on the material.  I do think that this works better than having them complete a study guide in class because here they are competing with other students, and no matter what most students that are in class are very competitive students.  I am find that out while I am teaching Summer Acceleration because I am using games to stimulate learning.

Issues Related to Instructional Design

I think that for E-Learning the ethical issues would be using people videos and not crediting them for the work that they put into the video.  I know for Web 2.0 tools the biggest ethical issue would cyber bullying, if a teacher doesn't check the hashtag on a regular basis cyber bullying may occur.  This is a big issue in today's world and a teacher must be ever vigilant if they are to prevent that especially if they want to incorporate technology in the classroom. For the last one the ethical issue is how competitive, I know that in my class sometimes the competitive nature of the game goes too far and people get really mad and could start a fight in the classroom.  At home, the question could turn into what will happen the next day at school?

The only program that I do know that helps with a person with a specific learning disability is USA Test Prep.  In almost all the games and activities that you can do online, it allows for the program to read you the question, directions, and answer choices.  Granted the program itself does not allow for the best voice because it is a more computer generated voice.  However, it does allow for greater accessibility than the other things that I have mentioned. 

In almost all the programs that I have mentioned you can design instruction around them.  For USA Test Prep, everything is pre-made for you and you do not have to make anything yourself.  However, you can choose what order to put the activities and lessons in, to make it more beneficial to students.  For the other programs that I have picked for Web 2.0 Tools its more monitoring kids in how they discuss online, but you have already created a lesson to get them to discuss using twitter.  For E-Learning, such as blackboard or Moodle, you make everything so the instructional design is however you wish to make it.

In all the programs that I have picked, the teacher only has to give the students the instructions and then watch them go.  I think that the only guidance that would be necessary would be to ensure that students were following the instructions and that no one was doing something inappropriate.

Trends and Issues in IDT

Part A:

This week we learned about the many different trends and issues in IDT.  Many of them in my opinion are very big issues that are discussed on a regular basis, especially on social media.  Social media being the best way to keep in touch with the issues and trends in IDT.  I know for me personal that is how I keep up with day to day issues, because its almost real time information as it happens. 

The three trends and issues that I picked for this assignment are P-12 Education, post-secondary education, and business and industry.  Let’s start by talking about how each three are different and then talk about how they are same.

Business and Industry

·         Has different roles for which a person can play in instructional design, example a person can do it alone or do it in a team format

·         As a person you can be in the role of client, where you hire someone to create something for your team to learn from

·         The subject matter for most instructional design would focus on the day to day operations of the business

·         The tools used for instructional design do not often get prove to be test or correct, its more here is a theory you can use in your business and then the business tests it

·         The whole goal of instructional design is to ensure that the business makes more money but runs more efficiently

P-12 Education

·         This issues focus on three types of development the system, the product, but ultimately how will it affect the classroom

·         This issue also deals about how to integrate technology into the classroom to facilitate the learning of the student

·         All methods are backed up with research and when the teacher gets hold of the different methods he or she evaluates how it affects their students

·         Teachers think of technology as a tool to help facilitate learning and when they do it changes the classroom behavior

·         Unlike in some areas there is still a huge gap between the technology in the classroom, example while businesses may keep up to date in some districts they cannot afford this so technology in the classroom is less to be desired

Post-Secondary Education

·         This issues deals with the working environment and analyzing the different job roles

·         It also focuses on how to become a better researcher, I know that when I was doing my graduate level work and even currently with my doctoral studies.  They focused on this because they were describing how it would help me when I published academic research in scholarly journals

·         This issue could also deals with how one is also learning and teaching, I equal this to apply what you learned

·         While other issues and jobs are straight forward and most people know what they do on a day to day basis in common terms

·         While others just borrow research from others on ways they do integrate technology into the classroom, in the post-secondary level they curve out time to do research on their own

In many ways these three issues are very similar to my job teaching social studies in high school.  For the most part just like in the business world where it focuses on efficiency, I find that in my classroom that I want my lesson to run as efficiently and smoothly as possible to ensure that my time but ultimately my students time is used wisely. In the P-12 education community I know that technology can change the behavior in the classroom, because it engages students.  I will play kahoot games with my students as a way to review them and I can see that most students are engaged and there are less behavior problems in the classroom.  In post-secondary I think the biggest difference is the fact that I do not do my own research for my classroom, I rely on other people’s research.

Part B:

As the world keeps growing as educators we need to prepare our students to enter a ever changing world.  In relation to the growing number of people and the lack of resources, I think one way we can prepare our youth is teaching them about conservation.  I know in US History, we talk about this subject when we talk about Teddy Roosevelt setting up national parks.  However, if we could teach them about it on a global scale and what it truly means to conserve resources, this could have a lasting effect on the planet. Unfortunately, I do not think our current educational system helps them problem solve.  Depending on what grade level they are in depends on what is taught and if they are in a STAAR test subject for the most part most educators teach toward a test.  I know that when I try to get my students to do this they cannot and it’s hard to teach them the higher level problem solving when they don’t have basic problem solving.  Lastly, I know that in some classroom around the world they have small classrooms but they have more teachers in the school, and still have money to fund other programs.  I think that a smaller classroom size would benefit students in the United States because they would get that one on one instruction.

Evaluating Programs & Human Performance

Evaluation Methods

As I started to write this blog it kind of amazed me how many evaluation models were out there to evaluate my teaching style.  I knew of a few that my colleagues had discussed with me but nothing in too much detail.

The first method that I chose was the Marzano Evaluation Model I have used Marzano teaching methods for vocabulary in my classroom and have found it to be very beneficial to my students.  So if he can create a good method for students, he must have a way to creating something for the teachers to be more successful in the classroom. There are four parts to this method of evaluation, the first step is to identify classroom strategies and behaviors that you want to see happen during your lesson. The second step is how well did you plan or prep for the lesson.  The third step reflecting on teaching, which gets you think that if you lesson was not successful in class then what type of professional development will you do to grow as an educator, it also includes setting goals for yourself as a teaching to accomplish your professional growth in your area of need. The forth step requires you to find a mentor or ask a colleague to come watch your lesson to get a second pair of eyes to evaluate what they saw during your lesson.  I can see me using this method in the classroom because it is really easy to follow.  It also brings out my need to have others see me teach, I am very self-critical about my teaching tend to be harder on myself than other people when they come and observe my lesson.  So this method could have me reevaluate perhaps my level of engagement with the students, because it does bring in that outside view.

The second method that I chose wasn’t as good as the Marzano method but it still provided an interesting approach to evaluating your teaching.  The method was called The Framework of Teaching, and like the Marzano method it also had four steps to evaluating your progress. There process starts with you planning and prepping a lesson that you will be teaching, and evaluating how you prepped for that lesson. Second step is to evaluate the classroom environment that you have placed for your students. The third step is to given instruction and evaluate how you gave the instruction to your students. Then lastly you are to evaluate areas of growth so that you can attend professional growth. This would be good for me when I am giving instruction to my students when it comes to independent practice.  I can give instructions and then evaluate how well I gave the instruction to my students on who to complete their assignment.

Reflection on Evaluation

As I was researching the different evaluation methods and reading this week’s chapters I really did enjoy this week’s reading.  My school this year adopted an evaluation method for students, but I did not really think about this in relationship to teachers.  However, when looking at the different method I think that one thing that needs to be address in any of the education models, and that is engagement of student in the classroom.  I know that some might think that this is implied in the learning outcome but to me I do not think that it is implied, and that needs to be address.  A good lesson might teach the students something but if there is no higher level engagement occurring then the lesson will not be retained very well.  Now to answer the question:  Should return on investment and management of resources also be considered in evaluations of instructional programs?  I think that classroom management should be included because if you have a class with a lot of misbehavior then this can harm the learning.  I had a class that I would teach in different ways to and because of a few students no learning would be achieved.  I can always remember who was in that class, but I tried everything but still no results.  I had a teacher come observe my lesson to see if it was the lesson, ultimately the teacher evaluated classroom management.  We discussed this and I changed some things up but still the class was just the wrong people together. But I would have kept changing my lesson over and over again, if she did not evaluate the management as well.  So this is important when evaluating and reflecting upon yourself.

 Human Performance

I never thought about non instructional solutions to human performance.  One performance problem that I know that I have at work is the amount of emails that people send on a regular basis.  Most of these do not pertain to education or the business and even if they did most of the teachers are going to hit reply all.  If you are going to reply to the person then all you have to do is hit reply, not everyone on campus needs to see the congratulations.  I think a solution to do this is a policy change that states that you need to keep emails professional.  I think that on standard I delete half of my emails because they do not pertain to the business of education.

Theories and Models of Learning & Instruction

Introduction

This weeks reading selections were really interesting especially when it talked about the different theories and models that go into learning.  I always knew that different theories made up instructional design but I did not think that there were so many.  I think these chapters really helped me as a professional, especially going for my doctorate in curriculum and instruction.  It will allow me to better perform my duties in the future, especially future course work dealing with curriculum and instruction.

 

Epistemology vs. Theories & Models of Learning

I believe that Epistemology is very different from instructional methods and theories.  Theories are something that one comes up with that they think might work in the classroom based on research that they might have done for a paper or book.  Theories are what people put into practice that sometimes might not work for them because in the previous research they did this with a class that were maybe AP/GT students, or had very few SPED or LEP students in the populations.  I know in my personal teaching career I have utilized a lot of theories that I have found did not work well in an actual classroom setting.   So unlike epistemology which is what you know will work every time, theories are what you think might work.  Methods are not what you know these are in my opinion the tools that you utilize on a regular basis, you may know the tools work but its not knowledge.  Models are just that, it models a lesson for you as it works out.  This is again not knowledge.  For me epistemology is utilizing all of three things of theories, methods, and models and studying it to find out how a theory came to be or method came to be used.  It can be a study on how educational models where created to help teachers in the classroom.  I equate epistemology to be like the study of history.  When we study history we are looking at the past to come up with our future.  Epistemology can be the same, we look at the past of education to figure out how we come to teach the way we do today.

Positivists, Relativists, and Contextualist

As I was reading these chapters these really got me thinking about my own personal stance on education.  When I first started to read the chapters especially when it talked about theories and methods I thought that I fell into multiple theories of knowledge.  However, as I really thought about it I thought that I based my thought more constructively because of how I want to make sense of the word around us, but that wasn’t the case.  I base my thought process on a more positivist’s view, where the only knowledge is objective truth.  I base my knowledge on this because of my study in history where personal feelings and bias just need to stay out of the study of history.  Then I thought about it more closely and realized that I also apply this to education, that feelings about a certain method of teaching or even bias just needs to stay out of education.  This really hasn’t come into conflict with an instructor because I like learning about new thought process but still hold tight to my belief system.  However, this has had me come into conflict with people who run my school and of course plan the curriculum for the district.  One particular moment comes to mind when I was first starting out in my district.  The curriculum coordinator for my district at the time asked me to sit on the curriculum planning committee because he wanted to get someone who was new to take a look at it.  During the whole meeting they were talking about how we needed to get the students to learn in different ways, and that they needed all these hands on activities and games.  I looked at these ideas and did not say anything at the time, because I was new and did not want to rock the boat.  When the next school year came around I did not follow their curriculum and neither did the people on my team they liked my method better. However, when I got observed one day by the curriculum coordinator he saw what we were doing at my school and he did not like what he saw.  We were doing more lecture and discussion based lessons than games and station activities.  Now don’t get me wrong I do believe they have a place but I put knowledge and objective truth above those ideas.  He called me in for meeting and told me I had to change the way I taught in to fit the district and he was going to inform my Principal.  I did not change, then comes time for the district assessment and my school scored higher than those who followed the district curriculum.  I proved that my method was working and did not hear another word from the curriculum coordinator.  I do believe that this fight resulted from an epistemic difference, while he believed that truth was subjective to someone perception of the content,  mine was more this is how you learn history the truth is one way and only one way.  To this day I haven’t had any other problems because of the results that my team and I show.

 
Behaviorist vs. Constructivist

Problem solving seems to be the big push in education recently that is all I hear about when I am in staff developments.  This I have to believe is due to the fact that many states are pushing their state assessment like STAAR.  Now given what we have learned in these chapters this week, I think that there can be a big conflict between behaviorists and constructivist perspectives, especially when it comes to learning and instruction.  The difference between the two are pretty straight forward, however based on how I read these chapters a behaviorist wants the objective truth, so they will approach a problem with there is only one answer and that is the correct answer.  While a constructivist could say there is multiple ways to come at an answer or problem, it all depends on the person’s perspective.  I think this has played a big part in learning motivation because students are learning multiple methods and are having problems deciding for themselves.  It can get very confusing to students and I think just about everyone.  I had to really take each chapter this week slowly because it was information overload.  In schools today students are met with both methods of problem solving and I think this plays a big part into some students not being motivated to learn, again my opinion. 

Defining the IDT Field

Introduction

These three chapters discussed the history of Instructional Design and Technology.  After reading these chapters I have learned a lot.  It also caused me to reevaluate my classroom and ultimately my district and how it designs the use instructional technology.  In the past I have not be overly impressed and have chosen not to use this in the classroom.  However, these chapters have inspired me to reconsider how I can use technology in the classroom.

Definition of IDT

When I first started out as a teacher five years ago, I thought that instructional technology meant that you were using the document camera or showing some sort of instructional media.  As I begin to continue learning about how I needed to use technology and that idea began to change as my school would show the staff different technologies, most of the designed for one specific subject however, so it did not change that much. My definition of what instructional technology was developed over years of me watching my teachers in high school and of course my undergraduate studies.  When I was a student in high school most of the time I saw my teachers using instructional media and for a while there I thought that was what teacher used as technology.  The only classes that I actually used technology was the computer business classes or English writing papers.  When I was doing my undergraduate studies through the history department they wanted to focus on content and not technology.  So when I first started out as a teacher all I had to base it on was what I saw in my history classes in high school. After reading the definitions in the first chapter of the book my perspective was that I was not too far off in realizing that I was using a form of technology.  I was using instructional media, which according to what I read does not lead to a lot of student engagement.  The impression that I got was that technology should foster be based on student centered learning.

Six Characteristics of Instructional Design

The six characteristics of instructional design seems to be the basis for which curriculum coordinators use to create curriculum.  Now in my own lessons, I tend to do what is best for my students.  Now in most of the lessons that I can think of that I could present here, none of them actually fit into the six characteristics of instructional design.  I contribute a lot of this to the fact that in my district particularly US History, where it is STAAR tested we tend to focus on the content over anything else.  Here is the lesson, where I would teach the subject and then have the students do a primary source analysis or guided reading to reinforce their knowledge of the content.  Now this is how I would change this lesson to ensure that it would better adhere to the six characteristics of instructional design. I would still start out with me teaching the content, because in US History and in nay history class the content is very important, and I have done my own research and showed that many of my students remember their history after I teach them because of how I teach it and I teach in as if it was a story.  The student centered portion of the lesson will still be the primary source analysis, but instead of giving them a worksheet, I would turn it into a gallery walk to where they would have to find the next primary document based on the clue that they are given.  This lesson can be measured by how well the student would perform on the class test and of course district set tests. Unfortunately, I would still not have time to change in of the lesson and correct the problems until in my curriculum there is a day where I can, which are built into the lessons.  This is how I would change the lesson to ensure that it adhered to the six characteristics of instructional design.

 Instructional media vs. Instructional Design

The reason that I think that Reiser needs to distinguish instructional media from instructional deign is because instructional media is usually like a historical documentary.  It does not really lead to a student centered learning.  I use them in class because it backs up what you are teaching and presents the information in another format.  However, it does not fit very well into the six characteristics of instructional design. I would not consider chalkboards or textbooks as instructional media because it really does not give good information.  Teachers at least will design a lecture in a way to make it more instructionally beneficial to the students.  Like in my class where we learn the history by telling the story of how our country was created to the present day.  However, the other does not lead to very good critical thinking skills and that is the whole goal of teaching to develop the skills students need to be successful.  However, I do believe that part of instructional design is to incorporate media into instruction because it does at least present instructional information in a different light.

Conclusion

In conclusion I think that there is still a lot for me into learn about technology and instructional design and look forward to learning new things. 

Final Blog reflection ETEC 527

In this class I learned alot of new technologies I could use in the classroom.  I think that Web 2.0 tools was always and important aspect of education, especially in the modern classroom.  I know when I went to school there wasn't that much technology or technology incorporation in the classroom.  In the modern classroom you see that teachers really must incorporate them into the lesson because now that is all students are use to.  So the strengths of Web 2.0 tools is that it allows students to be creative, organized, and to ultimately have student center learning especially if you do online discussions through programs like Twitter.  Unfortunately, teachers have to watch out when dealing with Web 2.0 tools the fact that some tools might actually have to get you pay if you want more of the services that they provide. Grant most teachers can try to get the funding for programs through Site Based or some other avenue of funding. 

After taking this course, I have found out what I need to look for when it comes to Web 2.0 tools, so that it benefits not only my curriculum but my students.  The first thing that I will be looking for in the future when I look for Web 2.0 tools is how user friendly will the program be, so when I show my students how to use the program will they be able to pick up how to use it quickly.  The last thing that I will look for is will the tool develop critical thinking for my students.  In the tool that I researched for the final project, the tool was great and user friendly but unless the teacher came up with the critical thinking aspect of the assignment then it really did not help much in that aspect.

Ultimately, Web 2.0 tools are great for the classroom but I think the biggest pitfall that I see for this subject is the fact that we are seeing more low social economic students enter into school.  So because of that we have many children that do not have a device or have never experienced what it is like to use a device.  It would be difficult to use Web 2.0 tools especially in a flip classroom setting when many our students do not have the capability to use it.  Some barely come with the supplies they need to be successful in those classrooms that do not have technology based learning in their classroom.  I know that when I play Kahoot games with my students, when I review a topic, there are several students that have to pair up because they do not have data plans or they don't have a phone period.  This is the problem I see when it comes to these types of tools, its not whether there are tools out there to use or how user friendly it is but ultimately it is coming down to does the kid have a device to use the tool.

Lastly, I think the things I will avoid when it comes to Web 2.0 tools is the tools that require any type of subscription to better the product.  I think that if it is a tool that it is used for educational purposes then it should totally be free, all aspects of the program.  Unfortunately, like my paragraph above many of our students do not have the money or resources to buy subscriptions to products so it will ultimately need to be free.  I am glad that I work in a district that tries to find these products for us, but some of them are good for specific subjects.  So in the future, when I look at tools I will try to find the good programs that are free, that develop critical thinking skills, but ultimately is user friendly for both teacher and students.

Final Vanity Search

When I did the first vanity search I was amazed at the fact that I couldn't find myself.  I have done this before to see if people could find me on facebook or twitter easily, especially when I first started working because I wanted to make sure my students couldn't easily find me.  So it did surprise me during that first vanity search that I could not find myself.  The amount of programs that we have signed up for in this class alone should have made my presence in cyberspace more prenounced.  Unfortunately, again I tried typeing in my name couldn't find me because there are alot of Brian Brown's out there, go figure, then I tried typeing in my middle name.  The same result happened.  I finally typed in the city that I live in and still could not find me.  This to me just shows that my name protects me from having any type of huge presence out on the internet.  It also reassured me that my information & my personal life is not going to be out there for everyone to see.  Unfortuantely, in the realm of education it would make it very hard to share information with people unless they had my direct address to facebook, YouTube, or Twitter.

Week 6 Blog Post: Continous Growth

Introduction

After taking this class, I am beginning to realize how important is to stay up to date with technology.  When I was an undergrad student, and even a graduate student I did not have a full time job and did not have to worry about my students passing their state test.  So I had more time to research new technology tools.  However, after taking this class I know now that I need to make sure that I am up to date on the latest technology.  Even though I had a twitter and you tube account before this class, I realized I did not use either of them to further my student's educational background.  So below I have devised plan to keep my up to date with educational technology.

My Plan

To state up to date with educational technology, specifically Web 2.0 tools.  I will use what I have learned with protopages and create a page dedicated to twitter feeds for educational technology, but specifically Web 2.0 tools.  This way I can collaborate with other teachers and specialist around the world to find what is working in the their classroom, and see if there is anything that I want to try in mind. I can also use my districts staff development program, they are always offering educational technology courses.  Unfortunately, many of the tools they show are tools that I already know how to use.  However, I will keep my eye out because sometimes they do have tools that I have never heard of or have never used in the classroom before. Then I also do have former teacher friends of mine who use to teach technology courses, and I have in the past picked their brains about where to find good technology tools.  The last place that I will go will be Region 10, they have staff development opportunities through their programs.  I will look to see what they are offering and see what I can do to keep up to date.

Conclusion

I think that with all the resources that I have available to me, there should be no excuse as to why I can not stay up to date with educational technology tools.  I know in the past I have thought, well I do not have time, and that is true during the regular school year I do not have the time to use tools on a regular basis.  However, after the standardize testing would be a perfect time for me to utilize what I have learned to the betterment of my students.

Adventure in Social Bookmarkings

Introduction

Before taking ETEC 527 I did not what social booking marking was, but this weeks adventure has really brought some ideas about the educational community.  The whole goal now in education is figure out how to share ideas and information with people over the web.  Most people use either dropbox or google to achieve this idea.  However, social book marking as expanded our ability to share information.

Diigo

Like I mentioned about I had no idea what social booking marking was, and when I first began to explore this new technology I still had no idea.  Now I have book marked websites onto my web browser so I had an idea what this could be based on the fact that this is a technology course.  So I set up my account getting ready to explore what I could possibly use in my classroom.  I watched the video on how to get started and I was kind of floored.  As I was watching the part about annotations I was thinking why did they not have this when I was in college with my bachelors and masters, and if they did why didn't they tell us about this tool.  It would have saved me alot of paper and ink when I had to print off articles for my history classes.  I could simply make the annotations and then come back to them later.  This would have made my life so much easier.  As I was working on it this week I really thought that it was easy to use.  I like the fact that I could download the Chrome app and be able to click it and book mark what site I was one very easily and it go on to my site.  So from that standpoint it would be easy for both teachers and students to learn.

However, on an educational standpoint I began to think about the group that we had to become a part of and I thought this would be a good way to share information.  I mean we have things like google drive, which my district uses on a regular basis, and things like dropbox.  To me Diigo seems like a tool that could create the PLC (Personal Learning Communities) of your campus that would make it easier for ideas to be shared.  Especially, when you can annotate or make a comment of what you post giving your colleagues and idea of what you can share.  So as a PLC this would be a good tool to use. On the standpoint of one's classroom, Diigo would be a good way of sharing ideas with your students.  Especially when it comes to the students completeing a project you can share with them places where they can find research materials.  However, if you are asking them to use Web 2.0 tools this could be a good place to share with them tools they could use to complete their project.  So in the classroom and in the professional community.

Conclusion

In the end, I have come to see the true benifits of this piece of technology.  It was very easy to use and it can be used for many different aspects.  If you have an article that you want your students to learn you can use the program to annotate the article.  Then as we are in an age where we need to create PLC's in our schools and districts, this program is easy way to share the infromation together.  To me this was the easiest technology that we had to learn about and explore in this course.

Adventures in Aggregating Pages

Introduction

Before I started this adventure in this new Web 2.0 technology, when I saw the word aggregating page I had no idea what this technology was.  Even the examples I was still kind of trying to figure out the educational benefits of it.  However, as my adventure continued this week figuring out how to use this in the classroom was pretty easy.

http://www.protopage.com/historyteacher25#Home

My Adventure

During this weeks adventure we were asked to create an aggregating page, like I mentioned above when I first was asked to do this I thought it was a very strange adventure.  However, after I began to play around with the protopage I thought I love this organizational tool.  See for me I am a very organized person and one of the problems that I have with pages like Twitter, is that it is hard to organizer your thoughts.  I like to be able to find what I am searching for with easy.  Protopage allows that because you can create different widgets to fit your page.  Like if I wanted to set this page as my home page and see my twitter feed or instagram feeds, this would make it easy to divide up the different feeds by topic.  Such as on my page the ETEC 527 twitter feed is on there.  Then you could make a page just for twitter feeds for news, education, whatever you need.  It is a very useful organizational tool.

As I was playing around with my page, I realized that as a portfolio tool for your students work this would be great.  If you had been having your students upload videos to a class youtube channel or twitter page.  It would be a great way for you to track what your students were doing.  But deep down your students could use a protopage as a portfolio for a project.  They could create a page for each topic that you want them to cover and put the class twitter hashtag as one feed.  But ultimately each page could be a different aspect of the project.  It would be there, you wouldn't have to have paper copies of everything and your students wouldn't have to worry about loosing things.

However, professionally as an educator this would be a great tool to network.  Use your protopage as a way to show other educators what you are doing in the classroom or to just simple work together on a project.  It would be a great way to show different aspects of your teaching style and what you are doing as a professional.  Its a great advertising tool for teachers.

Conclusion

All in all, I could see me using this more than anything that we have learned about so far.  I know that I do want to keep playing around and see what other things I can place on the page.

ETEC 527 Week 3: You Tube Adventure/Twitter Adventure

Introduction

This week were were asked to play around with You Tube and Twitter.  You Tube is something that I am very familiar with especially in the classroom.  In a social studies classroom, the most important aspect of the classroom is the content and so if a student misses my class, I need to make sure they get the content.  So I will post my lesson on you tube, so I know alot about posting videos and play lists.  However, I did learn alot of information about twitter, wikispaces, web 2.0 tools, and technology in social studies classrooms.  Below you will find my play lists and what I learned from my adventure this week.

You Tube Adventure

Twitter 

As I was going through You Tube to find the videos that would help me better understand Twitter better, these were the videos that I found.  I am not a big twitter user, as I started in my blog for last week.  I have never really been a big fan on sharing my personal experiences, so the most that I would do on twitter was retweet a news store or something that made my school look awesome.  However, after watching these videos I learned alot about what it really means to our students but as me as a professional.  In one of the videos, it mentioned that twitter can be used to build your professional learning network.  As teachers we are needing to be constantly learning new methods in our craft and Twitter seems like the way of the future when it comes to that.  Because you can use hashtags to create a PLN and it make it easier for people to find your learning community.  However, but in a political science/government class twitter can be an extremely important tool as it allows for students to see political news easy.  Especially, right now when it comes to an election year they are always posting news feeds.  Then as a teacher you could set up a hashtag and have a political debate on a news story or even have your students watch one of the many debates going on and tweet live with your students as they watch.  Twitter at least for social studies is good in that instances.

Twitter Adventure Continued:  Since we are on the subject of twitter, I did take a moment to go and look up some of the hashtags that were suggested in some of the videos. @Teaching With Soul  which when I went to go find the tag it was not there anymore so since the videos creation the tag has been taken down and @Edutopia.  I found the Edutopia to be very informational about ways to improve the classroom.  This allowed me to think that this is where I need to increase my PLN, because it seems like everyone is tweeting now a days on ways to improve the classroom.

You Tube Adventure (Part 2)

Wikispaces

Till I took ETEC 527 I had never even new that there was a think called Wikispaces, and too me still have watching the videos I believe that in a K-12 setting this application would be confusing to students.  These videos that I found even though they explained how wikispaces work and what an educator could do with wikispaces.  I just never seemed to get on board with the application.  To me wikispaces would be good in a college classroom setting where as a class or small group you could collaborate.  However, with most colleges today they have some sort of online blackboard setting that allows for a learning community to develop and to me Google Drive allows for collaboration in an easier format.  I think that to truely before I get on board with this application, I need to create my own personal wikispace and play around with it.  I learned alot from watching these videos but for me to truly get on board with technology I need to play with it to determine how I think it could apply in my classroom or future classrooms.

Web 2.0 Tools

As I was watching these videos about Web 2.0 tools I kept getting reminded of the fact that schools today really do not give us the training we need for this but keep saying you need to incorporate them into classroom.  I learned more from watching these videos about the importance of Web 2.0 tools.  Many of the videos that I watched were an explanation of Web 2.0 tools so that I could get a better understanding and change my definition of what a Web 2.0 tool was.  I now know that a Web 2.0 tool is something that not only teaches the student but it engages the student in learning, it could also be a tool that fosters critical thinking or fosters collaboration in the classroom.  Then I decided to find videos about those who taught others about Web 2.0 tools and some of the tools out their for teachers.  I learned some I had already been using like screen cast o matic, where I can record what is on my desktop and record audio with it.  I know that I will be exploring more applications with this topic.

Social Studies Technology

The last part of my You Tube adventure came when I did some video research on my subject social studies.  I found many videos that look very out of date like it was something they had created in the late 90s or early 2000s.  Now some of the videos did look like they were created recently which I did find very informative especially when they discussed primary and secondary sources.  However, when I typed in Web 2.0 tools, I found very little to help me.  It seems that for social studies most people have yet to do research into this topic.  I know for myself in particular I find that content out weighs what students do on a regular basis in the classroom.  I know that I need to present the content in a story because the story is more important.  Yes, I know what your thinking but they aren't learning that way or not all students learn that way.  To answer your statement yes I know that, but in a social studies classroom you have to do the old way and but incorporate the new way.  These videos just show me that there are not alot of technologies out there to help in a social studies classroom.  Granted as I continue my you tube adventure I need to maybe narrow my search, so that is something else that I learned in my adventure.  Another thing that I learned is that most people in a social studies classroom setting are posting their lectures online or offering some quick review method on you tube to help their students and by helping their students they are helping others.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, you tube is a great place to collaborate as a PLN (Professional Learning Network), as I mentioned in the Social Studies section teachers are posting videos and but posting on you tube people from around the world can benefit from their expertise.  Because I know from my co-teach classroom that my students benefit from multiple teaching styles.  I learned that you tube is also a good place to find informational videos to help me improve my craft or improve upon a technology that I might be having trouble grasp.  In the end, as I play more with you tube I might find other helpful tools that I can take back to the classroom.

Twitter Adventure #2

Introduction

There are many types of apps out in the realm of cyber space, that connect to Twitter.  Personally, Twitter is something that I use to strictly keep up with what is happening in the world.  On my twitter feed you will mostly find my school's twitter page, and most news outlets.  I have some friends that are on Twitter but they do not post on a regular basis.  However, since Twitters inceptions alot of apps and websites have connected to Twitter to allow people to share and connect with one another around the world.

Apps that connect to Twitter

On my phone I have seven apps that all connect to Twitter, I have never used them to see if their worked but on the app they have a link that shows how many people have shared.  Most of the apps are not educational apps, they are the apps that most people just have on their phone for fun.

1. Smule (Karaoke app)
2. Timehop (this app tracks your Internet fingerprint)
3. Instagram
4. Triva Crack
5. Looney Tunes Dash
6. Pandora
7. Amazon Music

All of these apps on my phone are not used, like I said before for educational purposes.  When I looked at the device that I have for school, while all the apps on the device are educational programs none of them connect to twitter.  It could be that I am not looking in the right spot to find how to post from those apps to Twitter, but like was mentioned I don't use twitter accept to keep up with the day to day of the news.

Websites & Twitter

Now for websites, I do visit alot of websites that I have seen connects to Twitter.  However, the only one that I frequent regularly is YouTube, as part of my second job is to post educational videos on YouTube.  I have seen where you hit the button share, that you can share videos on YouTube on Twitter.  Before I got my full time job teaching social studies, I was a regular on the Internet and visited alot of gaming websites that allowed you to share your thoughts or what you had done.  Many of the games that I use to play on the Internet allowed you to share your progress.  During my visit to my history I noticed that I usually am visiting websites to help with my students progress on STAAR but ultimately very few have a Twitter base to share.

Conclusions

During my Twitter adventure this week, I have noticed that for me personally I do not have a digital footprint like most of my colleagues or people my age.  I developed a Twitter during my graduate work because my professor asked me too, and I only recently started to check my Twitter feed because I liked keeping up to date with current events.  However, as an educator I know that my students are very active on Twitter, mainly because I over hear them talking about tweets or see them on Twitter in class.  So in education the benefits of Twitter is boundless, it can be a way to share with our students an educational video they can watch.  In my graduate level class we engaged in Twitter discussions.  For our students today it is important to engage them in something that they can take and use and make them more willing to retain the information.  I know that in Social Studies some of my students do not want to talk in class, because they fear what other students might think.  But when they get online they will discuss numerous topics without fear of what others will think, its like they think that the Internet gives them some antimony that classrooms do not.  It would be interesting to see what Twitter could be used to encourage students to explore, and have their own adventure in cyber space.

Tech Play 3: Creativity Tools

Introduction

Creativity tools in the classroom can be very usefull, especially when it comes to active engagement.  Which seems like this is what most school districts seem they are wanting from their teachers, to increase the leavel of rigor because once again this is what the state of Texas is requireing through their standardized test STAAR.  So finding new ways to engage students and keep the rigor inscreased is the challege that alot of teachers are facing in the classroom.  I know this from personal experience as I have this challege in my classroom, how to integrate technology to make learning more enjoyable for students.  I also have a problem as to finding the right tools to use, to ensure that the rigor of the classroom is still high.

Creativity Tools

I have picked two creativity tools that I can see to be very useful in the classrooms, especially those that teach history.

Animoto

This is one my favorite creativity tools to use in the classroom, in both the teacher & student sense.  For the student you can give them a topic to research and create a small short video that describes the mainpoints.  However, the one dislike that I have about this alot of the designs and music you can use ot make your video, you have to upgrade your account from the free to the professsional or the business.

In history, the course I teach, the goals or objective would be to create a short 30 second video that describes the mainpoints of a specific topic like urbanization.  This way you can see if the student has comprehended what they learned during the class discussion/lecture, or you might given them a topic of they learned about during the six weeks and see what they learned.  However, there are numberous approaches for which you can come about this, this could be a good first day of class assignment to which you have the students introduce themselves to you.  The affordances that this piece of technology all depends upon the assignment that the teacher gives to the student, that uses this creative tool.  Like the one that I would give to my students requires them to make connections and critically think about what they learned in class.  But from technology standpoint, I think that the affordance would be to have a structured way of creating a video that is designed to test their knowledge. 

Twitter

Some of you who are reading this might be asking yourself, how can twitter be a creativity tool.  Well, I'm not a real big twitter person, I don't utlize it as much as I do facebook.  However, I got this idea from one of my graduate professors, she had us do our class discussion through twitter.  I haven't had a chance to utlize it yet, because my own fear about using this idea is that what if a student does not have access to a device.  So I have yet to use it but have this idea in my head, and it keeps forming different branches of how useful this  can be to my students.  One thing that I like about it most all students know how to use twitter because they tweet on a daily basis.  So having a class discussion online to further the learning, after they leave the classroom this would be easy to do.  The one dislike I have about useing twitter is that they don't give you enough characters to make your point, and this can be a problem in a history classroom discussion.

The use of twitter in the classroom, can be very risky especially since you can not really regulate what the students type yourself.  However, if you see any inapporiate content you can figure out a consquence that is apporiate.  Now in the goals of using twitter as a method of class discussion, gets students to interact with each other.  What you would do is state that students have to make one orginal post based on a reading you assigned or something that you might have required them to watch. Then they are to reply, without using single word answers, complete sentences, a reaction to something another student posted.  Hopefully, this would encourage discourse and dialogue especially with contorversial topics.  I have found that most students have the ability to talk when students don't see them and they have some sort of anonimity.  The afforandance would it would get students to discuss the topics you find hard for them to grasp in the classroom, and to get them to talk and learn from one another as their own learning communities.

Conclusion

It is important to use creative tools like the ones mentioned above because it gives students an opprotunity to learn in a different format besides just straight lecture.  It also is a good way to engage them in the learning and test to see if they learned everything that you as the teacher want them to know.  However, I think that the most important thing that creative tools allows for students to do is have fun while they are learning.  I have found that when students have fun while they are learning, they learn more, in most cases.

Tech Play 2: EPortfolio Tools

What is an Eportfolio....

I think that it is important to start off by explaining what an Eportfolio is before getting into the tools that could help one create one of these useful tools.  An Eportfolio is a collection of work that a person, particularly a student, creates to assess in an alternative format what they have learned throughout a particular course.  This in a way is better than a typical asssessment because you can gage more a students learning, because you can see if they understood specific concepts that you might have discussed in class based on the final product they created.  The ultimate use for an Eportfolio is that he develops an "ownership" of the students learning, because they are creating something that is meaningful to them.

Eportfolio Tools

Wikis are one of the tools that you can use to develop an Eporfolio because a wiki page is a single page of information.  This would be a good project for your students to create, especially in a history classroom at the end of the year.  However, the problem with a wiki pages is that anybody can edit them, even though you have some control over the information you put into it.  Another problem with this is that you can not upload any documents if you want to download the document to handgrand an assignment, if that is more preferable for you.  The affordance for this is that it can allow for some peer review, where students could review someone's website and then edit what they created.  However, this would not be the best recomendation for an eporfolio because there is not much creativity that can go into creating an eportfolio through a wikis page.

Then there is my personal favorite and that is the website, in the course of my educational career I have created several websites using google & weebly.  I have found this is the easiest way to creating a source of information, next to a blog, that could be used as assessment. When I mean they are easier, it just allows you to navigate through them at an easier speed, and the creation of it is a little more straightfoward than other sites that I have seen.  So from a time standpoint, it would be the best way to create an eportfolio.

The affordances that the website gives you, is a more organized way of presenting your eportfolio.  You can put the seperate assignment on a seperate page.  It also allows for more autonomy on what you can put, and how you can create it.  They also give you good visual backgrounds that give your site a more visual appeal.  The last affordance that these sites allow you, is that you can also only give access to those you want to edit your website and not just some random person coming in and changing your information.

My Eportfolio:

I have chosen to do use the Google Site for my Eportfolio, mainly becuase I have more comfortable in using the website format.  In my educational career, as both a teacher and student, I have used this numerous times.  So to ensure that my Eportfolio is of the best quality my eportfolio link is: https://sites.google.com/site/bbrowneportfolio25/

This google site is still a work in progress but by the end it should contain all the information that I need to adequately assess what I learn in the course work, as I prersue my doctorate in curriculum and instruction.

Tech Play 1: Blogging

Definition of a Blog

A blog is a place where people can go to express their thoughts and opinions to the different masses of people out in the world.  It also is a place where we can share our different ideas, and get feed back from people from all walks of life.  In an educational stand point, a blog is where students can have meaningful discussions about a specific topic based on the content of a class. I arrived at this definition because I have blogged before in a different capacity than an educational standpoint.  During that time period in my life, I had some intense discussions with people from all walks of life, they came from different educational backgrounds and different parts of the world. The different affordances that are associated with a blog are the sharing of different ideas and the ability to create something that can be shared with people all across the globe.  Some of the site that I had some experience with before this assignment, was weebly.  I found it hard to navigate weebly in the terms of blogging, while in this one all I had to do was simply click a button and begin writing.  

Blogging in the Classroom

In the terms of a history class, 11th grade US History to be more specific, a blog can be a very useful tool to use in class.  A lesson that I would probably design would be something where, they have to read an article, specifically over a topic that we are learning and most likely a specific TEK, the specific content would be the Vietnam War.  Reason for this is because we only spend about a day talking about the war in the general idea of the 1960s, according to the curriculum. 

The desired learning objective would be for them to create a final project of a blog, identify key important topics, and summarize what they learned.  A final piece to this would be to support or disagree with other students final works, by having them comment on two to three people's blogs and defend their stance.  

I have based this piece of learning based on what I saw a teacher at the school I work with do.  He would have them get on his weebly site, and he would post a question that they were to discuss  and answer.  It was not higher order, but it did give them the starting ground for what I wanted this project to turn into. 

The affordances that I identified is the main one that the blog is all about, the interaction with other people.  If there is a space to make a comment on the blog, then interacting with other people and developing an argument develops higher order thinking that all school districts and teachers strife to achieve. 

Blogging in the Learning Environment

In a learning environment the blog can be used, just like I mentioned above or it can be used for other ways.  In a way the students could use the blog to post their reaction to a lesson that the teacher taught.  For the subject of history, there are different ways that students and teachers can interact besides the classroom setting.  In US History, we have to do alot of primary source analysis, so in a way the teacher could give the students a primary source to analysis and take home.  Then the students are required to create a blog with the primary source embedded into the page, and analysis the document and explain its significance in history.  However, the main goal of any learning environment is to create a community of professional learners.

Problems with using the Blog

One of the main problems could face about using this technology is how well students are able to hold meaningful discussions online.  I know in the classroom it is very hard for students to hold meaningful discussions, when I first started out teaching I held one online discussion.  It did not go so well for me, I used a site that could develop a blog and the students just posted one world answers to their fellow students.  However, in terms of technology some students do not have access to a device of any kind and thus assigning this type of project could mean the student not doing it.  I know at my school we got rid of most of the computers and went with Chromebooks, however we don't have that many and one computer lab, so alot of students can't get access to the materials that they need.