Technology and Growth

Only a few teachers in our school district search out ways to use technology in the classroom. Perhaps this is because technology has been unintentionally discouraged; most blogs and wikis are blocked, along with most file sharing applications, like Google Docs, and many other potentially useful sites. Although this is done for logical reasons—to reduce the chances of infecting the network with viruses and worms and to reduce the chances of students accessing objectionable content—the result is that there is little motivation for teachers to learn more about the opportunities that the internet offers today.

Nevertheless, my enthusiasm for educational technology received a real boost this summer as a result of a Walden University master’s class I have been taking. EDUC 6710, Understanding the Impact of Technology on Education, Work, and Society, has been a real motivator. As a result of this class, I have helped to create a wiki for the first time, set up my own blog and followed the blogs of classmates (as well as the blogs of several educational technology leaders), created a podcast for the first time, set up my own RSS feed, and even inserted a YouTube video (see below) into my blog. Even more important, I have gained ideas for using these Web 2.0 tools in the classroom as a way to engage today’s students—the new generation sometimes called digital natives (Prensky, 2001). Since these students are likely to learn and process information differently because of their early and ongoing exposure to technology, as Dede explains (Laureate Education, 2008b), interactive applications available on the internet may be the best way to reach today’s learners.

For example, the U.S. Department of Education (2009) has concluded that “blended” instruction, which includes elements of both face-to-face and online instruction, leads to greater achievement than either method by itself. Completely online instruction has been more effective than completely face-to-face instruction. As a result, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan states, “Effective teachers need to incorporate digital content into everyday classes and consider open-source learning management systems, which have proven cost effective in school districts and colleges nationwide.”

In addition to updating our tools, teachers need to update our approach to education. Dede points out that it is not enough to do the same things in different ways; we need to do different things in the classroom to engage our students (Laureate Education, 2008a). By innovating with today’s technology, he says, teachers can change both content and pedagogy, leading to greater student involvement and greater learning. The skills students will need in the 21st Century workplace—especially critical thinking, problem-solving, information fluency, communication, and collaboration—mesh well with student-centered learning situations. Lessons that include collaborative web applications like wikis and blogs are ideal places for students to learn and apply these skills. As Nussbaum-Beach (2008) notes, “Classrooms in the 21st century need to be collaborative spaces where student-centered knowledge development and risk taking are accepted as the norm and where an ecology of learning develops and thrives.”

Because I am studying in Walden’s Adolescent Literacy and Technology program, I will have the opportunity to take several additional technology classes in the near future. Beyond that, however, I could find myself, like many of my colleagues, wondering how to keep up with the changes in technology unless I actively seek out additional professional growth in this area. Since so many teachers need to learn more about technology, I will encourage our administration to offer in-service training in technology. Our district has invested considerable funds in our computer system, and it would be beneficial to students and staff alike to take advantage of more of the possibilities.

In my own classroom, I want to use more lessons that call for collaboration and direction from students. After receiving general guidelines from me, I would like my students to do more projects in which they determine how to meet the learning standards. Collaboration on this type of work can be significantly facilitated by a wiki, so I will first request that my students be allowed to access certain sites. I believe that the administration, tech department, and I can reach a compromise that will permit access to some sites that will allow collaboration. In addition, our district already has an application called Moodle that allows us to create an internal blog. I believe we could also create a wiki using Moodle, so I should be able to meet this goal soon.

In addition, I will promote the use of digital images, both video and still, by my students. In today’s media-rich culture, pictures are still worth a thousand words. They gain attention, clarify, and emphasize. I would like for my students to also be able to access instructive video created by others and to post their own work for others to see; this will probably require a process much like that for gaining access to a wiki. We might be able to arrange for student access to safe sites like TeacherTube.

For this transition to be truly effective, though, I believe I will need to work with my department colleagues to plan ways to incorporate technology into many teachers’ lessons. Adding technology will be more effective if we somewhat agree on how students can meet the standards in new ways.

References:

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2008a). “Evolution of Technology and Pedagogy.” [Motion picture]. Understanding the impact of technology on education, work, and society. Baltimore: Author.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2008b). “Today’s students.” [Motion picture]. Understanding the impact of technology on education, work, and society. Baltimore: Author.

Nussbaum-Beach, S. (2008). No limits. Technology & Learning, 28(7), 14–18. Retrieved from http://www.techlearning.com/article/8466

Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5).

U.S. Department of Education. (2009, June 26). U.S. Department of Education Study Finds that Good Teaching can be Enhanced with New Technology. ED.gov. Retrieved Aug. 21, 2009, from http://www.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/2009/06/06262009.html.

Lesson Plan Using Technology

Here's a lesson plan from my Walden class on integrating technology into the classroom. In the process of putting this lesson together, I learned how to embed the YouTube video into a blog. It's a fun video; you might want to watch it. (After you watch it, you might want to visit Kenya!) I refer to it in the lesson plan, where I've also included a link and the URL to make it easy to find.

This lesson is designed for a high school course in oral/interpersonal communications, but it could probably be easily adapted for a class that studies world cultures. (I have omitted the behavioral objectives from the standards for purposes of saving space. I also omitted the reflection questions at the end for space reasons.)

Title of Lesson: Public Speaking - Exploring and Explaining Culture

Subject Area and Grade Level: Communications, 11^th and 12^th Grades

Wisconsin 12th Grade English/Language Arts Standards

C.12.1 Prepare and deliver formal oral presentations appropriate to specific purposes and audiences

E.12.1 Use computers to acquire, organize, analyze, and communicate information.

E.12.3 Create media products appropriate to audience and purpose.

F.12.1 Conduct research and inquiry on self-selected or assigned topics, issues, or problems and use an appropriate form to communicate their findings.

Materials and Resources:

Computer lab with access to internet, class blog and wiki, and PowerPoint

IMC resources

Handouts with directions for students

Procedures:

1. Anticipatory Set:

Show video Welcome to Magical Kenya available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdY4Bfa5Lak. Discuss what students notice about Kenya from this promotional video. Ask what else they might want to know about Kenya if they were going to be spending several months in that country. List ideas.

2. Instructional Input

Directions to students:

You will be working in small groups to create a presentation about a country from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Central America or South America. This presentation is to focus on the country as it is today, rather than its history.

First, choose a country and create a “before” podcast; discuss some of your group’s impressions of the country before your investigation and some things you would need to learn if you expected to work there for several weeks or months. This podcast should be approximately two minutes long.

Second, investigate the country in depth. As you learn, create a wiki to report in detail about the country. Areas to investigate include: population, official language, other important languages, majority and minority ethnic groups or races, major religions, literacy rate, educational system, capital and other important cities, type of government, major political parties, major industries, major crops, leading imports and exports, monetary unit, gross domestic product per capita and for the entire country (as compared to U.S. figures), transportation systems, physical geography, climate, important holidays, and interesting features of daily life. You may add others if appropriate. Divide these into several major categories and give each its own wiki section; for example: 1. people and culture; 2. economy, agriculture and trade; 3. geography and natural resources; 4. government and education. Your group may divide the information in some other logical way if you prefer. Create a unified bibliography of your group’s sources in MLA format and include it at the end of your wiki. See easybib.com or citationmachine.net for help.

Third, create a PowerPoint to present the most interesting aspects of the country. This is a good place for photos, maps, and charts. (Be sure to give credit for any graphics created by others.) Do not attempt to put every detail into the PowerPoint; choose what will be the most interesting to your audience. Include an attention-grabbing introduction and a memorable conclusion. Rehearse your presentation several times within your group. Each member of your group should speak for at least two minutes. Your public speaking techniques are important in this portion of the assignment.

Fourth, create an “after” podcast; discuss some particularly interesting findings, especially noting important similarities and differences compared to the U.S. Discuss how your impressions of the country have changed as a result of your research. This podcast should be about three minutes long.

Finally, add links to your wiki and to both podcasts to the class blog. You will be listening to the podcasts of several other groups and also visiting their wikis as part of this unit.

3. Modeling

Play “before” podcast, present PowerPoint, and play “after” podcast for Kenya. Give students location for sample wiki page.

4. Check for understanding

Listen to students’ “before” podcasts prior to uploading to podcast site. Periodically check progress on wiki.

5. Guided practice/activity

Meet with each group as they proceed through the activity. Observe each group’s rehearsal of PowerPoint presentation.

6. Independent practice/closure

Before hearing presentations, jigsaw groups to listen to “before” podcasts of other groups. While listening to another group’s podcast, each student should note three things the reporting group thinks they already know and three things they should learn. Students then return to their own original groups and share their notes from the podcasts.

All groups present their PowerPoints. Audience checks whether presentations address notes from podcast. If any questions are not answered, check the group’s wiki and “after” podcast.

Assessment Plan/Evaluation:

Students will receive several grades for this activity.

1. Podcasts – Entire group is graded on this activity. Exemplary podcasts will: discuss all topics listed in the directions; be the specified length (within 20 seconds either way); be clear enough for easy understanding; be completed before the deadline and linked from the class blog.

2. PowerPoint presentations – Students are graded individually on this activity according to the public speaking rubric, which they have already received for their previous speeches.

3. Wiki – Entire group is graded on this activity, and a rubric will be provided. Exemplary wikis will: be logically divided into multiple pages; include detailed information on the topics listed in the directions; cite multiple sources in correct MLA format; be attractive and uncluttered with consistent formatting; be completed before the deadline and linked from the class blog.

4. Participation – Students are graded individually on this element. Students with exemplary participation will be consistently on task, will collaborate with others in their group to complete all steps of the activity on schedule, will attempt to resolve difficulties within their group, and will notify the teacher promptly if their group cannot resolve difficulties.

5. Note sheet – Students are graded individually on this element. Note sheets should respond to the six items chosen from the “before” podcasts. Exemplary note sheets will be completed for three cultures other than the one the student’s own group researched.

Modifications for special populations:

Special needs will be accommodated partly by assigning students in mixed ability groups. Roles can be assigned within groups based on interest and ability; the only parts every student must do are the note sheet (which can be done in pairs or small groups) and a portion of the PowerPoint presentation.

To further accommodate special needs, PowerPoint presentations can be shorter with fewer and simpler visual aids and greater use of notes allowed.

Advanced students who complete their portion of the project early can be directed to research another element of their group’s country, such as fine arts, sports, or technology, or they may locate or create visual aids for the group to use in their PowerPoint.

Adventures in Podcasting

Here's my latest adventure in Web 2.0 applications: a podcast. It features a discussion of my summer school students' access to and use of technology, both at home and at school.

Partnership Promotes Changes

Ambitious, challenging, aggressive, daunting: depending on your point of view, any of those words could describe the mission of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. The organization’s framework suggests core subjects, “21st Century content,” learning and thinking skills, ITC literacy, life skills, and “21st Century assessments,” all of which it says are necessary to be an effective citizen, worker or leader.

The partnership’s mission, according to its website, is to put its 21st Century Skills at the center of K-12 education because “there is a profound gap between the knowledge and skills most students learn in school and the knowledge and skills they need in typical 21st century communities and workplaces.” (That statement does make one wonder how anyone who graduated in the late 1960’s or early 1970’s, back in the days of the slide rule, could still hold a job today. But they do.)

The partnership’s goal of aligning K-12 education more closely to what is actually needed in the workplace seems admirable. It does raise a question, though: is the main purpose of education to create individuals who are well-suited to the job market? The many corporations represented in the partnership certainly know what skills they want to see in their employees, and they would benefit from a well-trained workforce. However, the skills that the partnership is promoting are valuable to almost anyone, both in the workplace and in life: adaptability, productivity, people skills, leadership, ethics, and the like.

The partnership’s website is worth a visit for at least two reasons. First, they have collected a variety of resources, especially at their “Route 21” database. You may have already read some of their publications. More important, the organization is, and will continue to be, influential in shaping American education. As noted earlier, the partnership has an ambitious mission to significantly change American education. In their vision, teachers and students will both be responsible for additional standards, content, and performance, so educators and parents should know what the organization is saying.

References:

Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (2009). Retrieved July 22, 2009 from http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/.

Using Blogs in the Classroom

My summer school class starts tomorrow, and I’m looking forward to using a blog in class for the first time. For the first day, it’s set up with attachments of the Word documents for the class syllabus and vocabulary words, and I will be adding other documents as the students need them.

This is the first time our school has had a blog. It is completely internal—accessible only to computers on the district’s server. This means, of course, that the students cannot write for an outside audience, but they can still write for each other. One thing I am going to try is having an online discussion of our novel, with students leading the discussion by creating thought questions. Each day a different student will be the discussion leader. It will be his or her responsibility to post a brief summary of the previous day’s reading, along with two questions to promote higher-order thinking from Bloom's Taxonomy. I have already posted an example for the first day’s reading. Since the novel we are reading, Montana 1948, is not extensively used in classes, there is probably not a complete student guide, so I will compile the students’ work into a brief guide, as Richardson’s students did (2009), although ours will need to be a print rather than online format for the present. (However, there is an online guide of questions related to the story, so I will provide a link to that. It may give them ideas for the questions they post.)

Since this is all new, our tech department and I don’t know for sure yet if we can create individual blogs for each student. If we can, I will also have the students create portfolios from their blogs. I plan to have them write a reflection on their learning as their post, and then include the document as an attachment. Richardson (2009) agrees with this approach. We can even include artwork because a scanner is available, and the blog software does allow us to upload pictures.

I’m really excited to get started. Ideas and suggestions are more than welcome.

References:

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

Who Serves Whom?

Today’s communication technology opens new doors for education, but it also poses new questions. Which technologies will serve us best? Should students have access to blogs and wikis? Should we invest in interactive whiteboards and projectors?

One educational technology leader posed a completely different but very intriguing question on his blogs this week: Should technology support education, or should education support technology? On his blog from July 6, Will Richardson quotes Ira Socol, who asked, “So, it is not a question of whether these technologies add value somehow to education, but the reverse, can education add value to the communications and information technologies of our present day world, and its future?” (2009). (By the way, Richardson was referring to responses to Dean Shareski's blog--also good reading.)

The real point of education has long been to create citizens who can contribute to society—citizens who are informed, thoughtful, concerned, adaptable. Education does not exist for its own sake, but for the sake of the society it serves. However, the same is true of technology. And because of technology, today that “society” is the whole world. As Dr. Thornburg notes in the video “Technology and Society,” communication technology is shrinking the globe, allowing access to global peer groups, any time, anywhere (Laureate Education, 2008).

Since both education and technology exist to serve humanity, neither can claim top priority. So, should technology support education, or should education support technology? Yes.

References:

Richardson, W. (2009, July 3) “Digital Inclusion.” Message posted to Weblogg-ed, archived at http://weblogg-ed.com/.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2008). Program 2, “Technology and Society.” Understanding the impact of technology on education, work, and society. Baltimore: Author.

Getting Started

Hello, and welcome to my blog. If you are reading this, you're probably associated with EDUC 6710 or CHS summer school. Either way, this is new territory to me, so feel free to offer suggestions!

Summer school students - By Friday, July 10:

• Complete the first reading in Montana 1948
• Read the first half of "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance"
• Know the first two vocabulary roots

Education 6710 participants: Thank you for looking at my blog. I admire what a lot of you have done with yours already.