My MACUL Journey

Today I had the pleasure of attending the MACUL conference at COBO Hall in Detroit.  Though it was an early start to the day, it was an important experience that I feel every teacher should have the opportunity to attend.  Despite the fact that I have previously attended a technology conference at Michigan State University and the MSTA conference in Grand Rapids, the MACUL conference was a very different experience.  MACUL was incredibly large, with well over 5,000 people in attendance.  With a plethora of sessions to choose from, it was difficult to decide which ones to attend!  In the end, I was able to attend Mark Dohn's session Failure Is an Option, Gary Abud's Evaluating Teaching with Google Apps, and the Lightening Talks.

 

The first session Failure Is an Option was about how mistakes and failure should be treated as opportunities, rather than shameful occurrences.  In today's society, educators are expected to teach students the content and the students are expected to get all the problems correct or write a perfect essay...somehow.  Rather than encouraging mistakes and using fix-ups, it seems that teachers mark students down for making mistakes, which often discourages them.  Dohn asked us if we could remember a specific paper or project that we got a perfect score on in high school.  The general consensus was that sure we could remember doing well, but there was no particular instance that stood out in our minds.  Then, he asked us if we could remember bombing something.  What do you know?  The answers were very different in that most people could remember doing poorly or failing at something in school.  He asked these questions to illustrate to us that we do not learn from success, rather we learn from failure.  If we learn from failure, then why do we punish students for making mistakes and failing at something?  Therefore, one of Dohn's goals is to figure out how to create a learning environment where students can learn and be productive.  Approaching failure in a positive light is one way.  Additionally, he brought up ideas of the students using self-reflection, so they can do better on their second attempt, and modeling failure.  In order to illustrate his point, he used a video of a girl doing gymnastics on a shower rod making a mistake and an Olympian falling when attempting the vault.  One is a child and one is an expert at his craft, but both are capable of making mistakes.  It is what they do with their mistakes that is important. 

 

To me, Dohn's talk means that failure and mistakes should be honored in a sense.  This isn't to say that mistakes and failure should be encouraged, but rather that they should be used as a chance to explore a topic further.  Failure is not the objective, but getting students to take risks and reflect upon them is the objective.  Just as the Olympian had to approach the vault, which is his obstacle, some students will have to approach the academic vault in the same way.  These students must be encouraged and given guidance, rather than an F and a stern look. Dohn's session was inspiring because it illustrated to me that there are educators out there who care more about the process, rather than getting it exactly right the first time.  One of his suggestions was that students engage in reflection about where they made mistakes and why they think they occurred.  Metacognition is pertinent in a student's academic journey and one way they can accomplish this by using technology is to film themselves talking about their mistakes.  Additionally, Dohn brought up the idea that when a teacher implements a new technology in the class with good intentions it does not always go according to plan.  I think this is one way that a teacher can model failure to his or her class and to encourage students to persist and work through the difficulties.  In this sense, both the teacher and the students can learn something.  These are both ideas that I could use in my classroom right now.

 

The second session, Evaluating Teaching with Google Apps, was very informative, but not directly applicable to my life currently.  Abud talked about how his school district was having trouble with their teacher evaluations, not only because of the multitude of forms and disorganization, but also because they were measuring a teacher's effectiveness, rather than including professional growth in the mix.  Additionally, a problem with teacher evaluations is that many people take these evaluations personally and get defensive because they do not think they are ineffective.  Abud challenges teachers and administrators to stop thinking of them as measuring the person and instead think of them as measuring the instructional approaches that the person is using.  He had everyone in the room get up and stand in an area of the room that corresponded to how their school districts use teacher evaluations and the results were almost split down the middle, with about half of the attendees claiming that their school districts use evaluations for measurement only and half claiming that their school districts use them for measurement and professional growth. Hint: the goal is for measurement AND professional growth!  In order to alleviate the anxiety that so many teachers feel about teacher evaluations and to implement a tool that provides a consistent definition and distinction between "effective" and "highly effective," Abud's district has made use of Google Apps to host their evaluations.  Rather than spending time shuffling through emails and papers to find something, teachers and administrators can all log online to collaborate and make the process of evaluations run much more smoothly.  This makes sense because we are always trying to push for collaboration between our students and make everything simple enough to use, so why wouldn't we do this for ourselves as well?

 

Abud's session does not directly apply to my life right now, but it will very soon.  Though I will only be a first year teacher, I think I could carry these ideas around with me if the time ever comes that my school district needs ideas about how to implement a better evaluation system.  From what I can see, Google Apps are very useful and have so many different functions that they would be a great idea to try out.  With the push for a paperless classroom, it seems logical to me that teacher evaluations would also become paperless or near paperless.  In addition, during his talk, Abud made use of MySoapBox, which is a platform for voicing opinions.  He had several questions that he had the attendees answer and provided them with a way to write down their questions for him that he would try to answer at the end of the session.  In my classroom, this would be a really cool way to have students answer questions.  I think it is similar to Socrative in that a teacher can prompt the class with a quick question.  However, the additional feature of being able to ask questions and put them in a "parking lot" can help students feel less embarrassed about having a question as well as demonstrate to the teacher what the students need help with. This is similar to Google Groups and Piazza to me. I think this is something that could work fairly well in my classroom if we were to use the laptops all the time or if we let them have their phones out.  The students could have these at their desks and type in a question whenever the need arises and other students could "up-vote them" if they have the same question, which would show the teacher and other students that some topic or concept is confusing.

 

Finally, the Lightening Talks were informative in that I was able to catch a glimpse into the minds of 8 different teachers, both at the elementary and secondary levels.  They presented some examples of projects they have used in their classrooms, like the "Global Cardboard Challenge" or the "1,865 Hours of Code."   For me, the main take away's from this session were that it is important for students to get a chance to discover their passions, every teacher can incorporate technology in the classroom in some way, and we must work to keep from labeling our students.  There is more to a student than a test score and we must work hard to find out about those pieces so we can cultivate their interests and help them to see their worth.  The Lightening Talks session did not necessarily give me any new ideas of things I could use in my classroom besides a few links, but it did provide me with some motivation and things to keep in mind when I am interacting with students.

 

I was a bit surprised at the type of sessions that the MACUL conference had.  Before arriving I was anticipating sessions in which the speaker would introduce some piece of technology (i.e. PhET, Kahoot, Edmodo, etc) and describe how we could use it in our classrooms.  Maybe I just attended sessions that were a bit different and these other types of sessions were hiding in other rooms across the hall. Either way, it was a good experience overall because I learned some new ideas and was inspired by some of the stories that I heard. 

It's only a Socrative quiz!

I spent a lot of time thinking about which technology tool I would like to incorporate into my Technology Teach-In assignment.  At first, I considered Twitter since so many students are already familiar with it as a form of social media.  I thought it would be a fun way to integrate something they already like into a lesson that is purely educational.  However, I wanted to be mindful of those students who do not have accounts and the fact that students might need to create different accounts if they did not want to share their personal accounts with their classmates or myself.  I know I would not want to share my Twitter account with my students, so I can only imagine that they might feel the same way!  After considering a few more options, such as Padlet and Flip Quiz, I finally settled on Socrative.

The students are already very familiar with Kahoot, which is a game based tool that we use for formative assessment to review material before a quiz or a test.  Since Socrative is another way to quiz students and obtain an Excel spreadsheet with their answers, I think it would be really interesting to compare how the students perform and to see which interface they prefer.  As of right now, I do not have a specific lesson pinpointed in which I will incorporate this tool, but it will probably be about natural selection/evolution or different systems of the body, depending on when I am able to teach a lesson.  I know that Socrative has a variety of different activities, such as the Space Race, a general quiz, and an exit ticket.  For my lesson, I would like to make the most of this tool, so I intend on using the Space Race function.  From previous lessons that I have created for my students, I have noticed that they enjoy competing against each other, whether it is individually or in groups.  I will therefore assign students to groups and provide them with questions to answer, while projecting my screen on the board to show them which teams are in in the lead with answering the most questions correctly.  In a way, this is similar to Kahoot, which tells you which students are in the lead after each question.  However, I think the Space Race will demonstrate this in a more fluid manner.  I hope to also be able to use the exit ticket function during the same lesson, at the very end of class.  By using the three simple questions (i.e. have you learned something, what have you learned, and another specific question that I pose), I think I will be able to get a sense of where each individual student is at, as well as make them think about what they have learned.  I also think it could be useful to ask what they still have questions about, at this point.

I really would like to use this tool because I do not want the students to get bored of using Kahoot all the time and because it allows them to ask questions or explain their confusion without having to say it in front of the entire class.  My goal for the students is to be able to work together to correctly answer questions about the day's lesson.

One question that I do have about Socrative is whether or not the students can view their answers and the correct answers (either on their screens or me showing them on my screen).  Since I have not yet created an account or created a quiz, this will be something that I need to investigate before I implement it in the class.  If this is an option, I think it would be a good opportunity to discuss the correct answers with the students, in which groups that got a question right can explain why they chose that answer.

I think I also need to figure out how Socrative is pronounced...soh-crah-tiv...sah-crah-tiv...soh-crah-tee-vay...?

Edubloggers

When I started looking for edubloggers to read their blogs and post comments, I struggled at first with finding something that actually felt like a blog to me.  I found a lot of blogs that only had about 5 sentences of writing, which I did not think was substantive enough for me to provide a well thought out comment.  Using the recommended blogs document, I found several blogs/bloggers that I was interested in responding to.

The first blog that I read, was called "Practical Theory," in which Chris Lehmann posted "The Kids Are As Smart As You," on October 4th.  After reading this I constructed a response that I was quite happy with, but then found that I could not post the comment!  His latest posting from November 11th seems to be the only posting that can actively be commented on.  I wondered if the response function is deactivated for a particular post after a certain amount of time.  After spending half an hour trying to figure out why I could not comment I decided to abandon this and just find other blogs to comment on.  Since I spent the time constructing a response, I will paste it along with a link to the blog I would have responded to, at the end of this posting.

The second blog post I found interesting was called "When the batteries die, break out the crayons," which was posted by Chris Ludwig on his blog Science Education on the Edge.  In his post, he talked about how technology can be a great asset to a classroom, but it is dangerous to rely on it for lessons. At one point during his teaching career he had a classroom set of iPad 2's to read electronically on, instead of using very old textbooks.  His idea worked for a while, but when the media specialist left his school there was nobody to help fix technology when it malfunctioned or broke.  Since this event, he has had to decrease the amount of technology he uses and go back to good old fashioned paper and pencil.  This post resonated with me because while I definitely like trying to use technology in the classroom, I think there needs to be a limit.  I would not want to rely on it, incase something happened like it did in his example.  I know when I use technology I get distracted, so I can imagine that students would as well.  This might cause them to take away less than they would from using paper.  I must add that it really does depend on what technology is being used though!

As I thought about what I wanted to say in response, I was instantly reminded of experiences I am currently having in my student teaching.  The high school I am placed at uses an online book on a "glitchy" website and I recently experienced Internet connection issues when I was teaching a lesson.  This inspired me to write about these examples to illustrate that just like him, I too think going back to paper does have its benefits. While it might decrease the engagement factor in some instances, it can increase the critical thinking skills that students use.  Here I was thinking about how sometimes when reading from a screen we are more interested in scrolling past things and reading more on a superficial level.  This obviously occurs for textbooks as well, but with iPads there are a ton of applications students can distract themselves with.  Finally, I decided to ask him how he feels about the BYOD initiative.  He mentioned that he had to go back to paper because he no longer has enough enough iPad's to go around, but he did not mention having the students bring in they own technology.  He has not yet responded, but I would be very interested in hearing what he has to say about BYOD.

Here is a link to the blog post: http://see.ludwig.lajuntaschools.org/?p=1104

*EDIT: Chris Ludwig has since responded alerting me that he will be posting his thoughts on BYOD soon!


The third blog I read was Edutopia, where Stacey Goodman posted "Does Your Classroom Tell a Story?"  This one sparked my interest because he wrote about bringing in items like toys, objects related to the content, popular culture objects, and nostalgic items to spark curiosity and discussion in the classroom.  I immediately thought about fostering a teacher-student connection, which has been a hot topic in the MAC program.  Anything that can get students to begin questioning things around them is a step towards them questioning what they learn in school.  As teachers, we will want to shift the cognitive load to the students and have them engage in metacognition, so I think Goodman's ideas can definitely help with this goal.  When students see an object, whether or not it is related to the subject in that classroom, they might become curious and ask other students or the teacher about it.  Even if it doesn't lead into a discussion about the content, discussing the object can be beneficial just to help the students learn how to have a discussion.

His post got me thinking about what I can bring to my own classroom, so I generated a couple of ideas to include in my response, such as bringing in my anatomy project from high school, in which I dissected a cat and then boiled its bones to rebuild the skeleton.  As a future biology teacher, I think this is something students might marvel at.  Additionally, I started thinking about one of the teachers at Huron High School that I observe.  She has so many objects in her room (it is extremely cluttered) that students have something to look at no matter which way they are facing.  The objects range from biology related to personal objects, but students seem very fascinated with both types.  I think this has helped her foster a student-teacher relationship, so I wanted to include it in my post to illustrate that there are other teachers who seem to be on the same page as him.  In my methods course we are constantly thinking about bringing in objects or materials to engage our students with scientific phenomena, so I think Goodman's post can possibly help me think of new items to bring in.  I don't necessarily have to bring in an item that is clearly related to biology if I can find something unrelated that I will be able to connect the content to.  I did want to express my concern with distractions though, so I decided to include that in my response.  I have not received a response yet and he has not responded to any other comments, so I am not really expecting a response, though it would be wonderful to receive one.

Here is the link to the blog post: http://www.edutopia.org/blog/does-your-classroom-tell-story-stacey-goodman#comment-157446



Though I have never read an edublog before, the several that I did read for this assignment showed me that there are teachers out there who have wonderful ideas that I can adapt for my own practice.

As promised, here is the initial blog I intended on posting a response to but found myself unable to do so because of a disabled comments section:

http://practicaltheory.org/blog/2014/10/04/the-kids-are-as-smart-as-you/

My response:

As a teaching intern, this post immediately struck me as something I would like to bookmark and refer back to.  As a student I always held the view that the teacher held all of the knowledge and it was his or her job to basically fill my head with that knowledge.  As an aspiring teacher, I realize that this was a transmissionist viewpoint and I should be thinking of teaching from a constructivist viewpoint.  

Rather than acting as a superior, I think it is important to demonstrate to students that they all have their own legitimate viewpoints and ideas which should be valued in school.  Even if a student is struggling to understand intro physics, he or she is still smart and might have knowledge about a topic that I don’t have. This is where I think connecting the personal funds of knowledge a student brings to the table with academic funds funds of knowledge is crucial.  Bridging the gap not only benefits the students, but it benefits the teachers by helping them develop a better teacher-student relationship.  If I have learned anything from my education courses, it is that teachers must use a student focused lens if they want to truly understand their students as people.  Doing so can provide insight and hopefully allow the teacher to illustrate to the students how smart, creative, and influential they really are.

It is interesting that you bring up the idea of “say more…” because this is a technique that I have come to rely on.  The Talk Science Primer by Michaels and O’Connor (2012) provides a variety of talk moves similar to this one.  Putting the cognitive load on the students to use metacognition and think critically is such a key practice that I hope all teachers, whether future or veteran, consider each and every day.

Our goal as teacher’s shouldn’t solely be to fill our students’ heads with content, rather it should incorporate the idea of shaping them into capable citizens.

Guest Speaker: From VHS to Vine- Tom Ward

One of the guest speakers that came to talk to our 504 class was Tom Ward (10/16/14).  He gave us information on how video can be used in the classroom and used math examples as a way to demonstrate this to us.

The overarching idea came from the SAMR model, in which technology can redefine, modify, augment, and substitute other materials in a classroom.  Through this model, teachers can still teach the necessary concepts, but they can change it up by incorporating technology.  I personally think it would be fun to learn a core idea in a new way.  I think technology can provide new ways to learn a concept and provide new activities that students can use to help them address their misconceptions and start using higher order thinking.

I knew that video clips from YouTube could be beneficial to a high school class, but I learned that there are so many other video platforms and technology tools that one could use to incorporate video media in the classroom.  Ward showed us an example of stopping live action in a video to show the trajectory of a basketball so students could calculate whether or not the ball would go through the hoop by examining the parabola the ball was following.  After viewing this I realized a science teacher could probably use something like this to show his or her class the motions of stars in the sky or follow the growth of a seed through a time lapse video.

The use of Twitter was also brought up.  The extent of my thinking about Twitter in the classroom had previously been that I could use the application to send reminders to my students about homework or tests.  However, I learned that Twitter could be used to force students to write concisely since there is a 140 character limit.  While this idea is great, I wonder if 140 characters is enough to accurately capture an idea.  I can barely work within this limit to tweet about irrelevant things in my life, so I am unsure of whether or not I would use Twitter with my students in this way.

Ward also presented us with some new ideas of how to use Vine or Instagram.  Students can create short videos to present an idea, rather than writing everything out.  For example, I think Vine or Instagram could be useful if students needed to list a variety of materials for a lab in Biology.  Rather than just writing out the materials list and procedure, students could film a few short clips of materials and how they are executing the procedure.  Though it might take some time, I think this would be engaging and I would like to try this out in my future classroom.  However, I still do not know if cell phones in the classroom is a good idea, so I would have to think about this a lot more to decide whether or not this is beneficial to students' learning.

For me, the modification aspect of the SAMR model stands out because it would allow me to keep some of the general teach practices, while incorporating new innovative practices.

Tech Tools In Use: Socrative

Last week, Kim, Melissa, Rachel K, John, and Holly gave an awesome presentation on Socrative, which I learned is a tool that can create formative assessments.  I assumed this tool would have something to do with questioning, as it is named after Socrates.  Rather than a tool that just allows one to create questions in a quiz format, Socrative gives teachers the opportunity to create engaging quizzes, polls, and exit tickets to use with their students.

This group presented the information clearly and in a logical order.  By immediately giving us a "do now" assignment to answer several questions about the University of Michigan, they engaged us. I was very proud of myself that I managed to get all four questions right (go me!).  Next, they walked us through what Socrative was and how it could be used.  I found that providing us with the opportunity to create our own questions was useful to me because it gave me firsthand experience so I will be able to do this quickly if I decide to use it in my own classroom.  I think allowing high school students to get used to the tool by creating their own quiz questions would be helpful as well because it gives them the opportunity to make mistakes and ask questions before using the tool to actually answer a graded quiz.  

One feature of this tool that I think students will especially enjoy is the Space Race function, which allows teams to compete to see who gets the most questions right and also provides information on which team finishes the quickest.  If this tool wasn't already engaging, I think this function will motivate students to do well and work efficiently.  However, one issue that I could see arising in a high school classroom is students just randomly guessing to finish first and "win."  One way this could be combated is deeming the winning team the team that gets the most questions correct, rather than the team who finishes first.  Alternatively, the teacher doesn't have to show the class the team standings in real time.

I really liked how visual this tool was, what with the colors and the animations (like the rockets).  Socrative can also be accessed on smartphones, so if a teacher allowed students to use phones for school work during class, this could be one way to use the tool.  Since many schools are allowing cell phones for work related purposes, I think this would be feasible.

Since Socrative allows one to create multiple choice, true/false, and open-ended questions, I think this tool could be immensely useful to a high school teacher trying to get a sense of where the class is at so he or she can modify future lessons, as well as to assess students on material that was just presented.  I would absolutely TRY to use this tool for these reasons in my future classroom!  However, I am still grappling with the idea of allowing students to use cell phones in the classroom, so if I were to use this tool I would probably want them to use school provided laptops.  

For now, I might just stick with Google Forms because it seems a little simpler to use.

Does Detroit School of Arts use technology?

The first major assignment for Educ 504 this fall was to interview the media specialist at my school.  At Detroit School of Arts (DSA), this would be Ms. Lemmons.  The assignment was easy enough and pretty straightforward: go in, talk to Ms. Lemmons, get out.  Unfortunately I found it very difficult to locate Ms. Lemmons on the day I intended to talk to her.  After visiting the media center (all the way up on the sixth floor!) twice and calling her extension throughout the day, I was ready to give up and try again the next time I came to school.  Instead, I decided to search for answers for my school study for Educ 402.  As I entered the office, who did I find hanging out in there?  Well, none other than Ms. Lemmons, of course.  Luckily I brought the "tech in my placement" assignment with me!

We went through the tech survey in sequential order and Ms. Lemmons described some of the technology to me as well as which pieces of technology she only dreams that DSA could obtain.  One important detail that I obtained was that rather than pay for a lot of cool software, such a Microsoft Publisher, DSA opts for the free versions of similar software.  Many of the items on my list I was not surprised that the school had access to, such as a computer lab, video editing software (it's an arts school after all), and electronic grading, among other items.  However, I was surprised to find out that the school did have some smart boards.  Coming from a high school that never had smart boards (maybe they do now?) and never having a college class that used one, I had never even heard of the term "smart board" until a few months ago.

Though I think some other interns might be surprised to find out what software is available to their students, I was not.  Glancing at the survey, I fully expected DSA to have access to lots of software simply because it is an arts school where students to a lot of video/sound/image editing.

According to the acceptable use policy, students are allowed to email, blog, and use wiki, but they cannot instant message, use cell phones, or download files to the hard drives.  Makes sense.  Ms. Lemmon's also confirmed my suspicions that the filtered internet would block social media websites.  When I hopped on a computer to test out this out though, I found the complete opposite.  I miraculously was able to access websites such as Facebook and Twitter...  I informed Ms. Lemmons of this and she seemed just as surprised as I was.  I guess I just have the magic touch to break into blocked websites?



--> not for me!










I didn't really understand the importance of asking the media specialist what types of technology DSA has access to at first.  Just another assignment to do, right?  After completing the assignment though, I realize how beneficial it really was.  Now I know exactly what pieces of technology I can sign out for my students and I can figure out creative ways to incorporate them into my lessons.  In my future teaching I think I will definitely make my way around to visiting the school's media specialist so that I can use the school's technology to benefit my students.

*Note#1: Another important detail that I learned was that Ms. Lemmons is always running around the school. Instead of going up to the media center to look for her, calling her cell phone with a technology question would be much easier for me.

*Note#2: Even if I can access social media websites, it would be unprofessional to do so while on school property, so I would not do this.

Connections Across Disciplines: The Sam, Jeremy, & Derek Edition

Towards the end of the summer semester, groups of three students created lesson plans for their content area that included the use of technology, for our Teaching With Technology class.  My group consisted of two math majors and one biology major (me!), so we decided to devise a math lesson that would help students learn how to find the slope of a line.  Though I wish we could have integrated Biology somehow, it is not something that managed to do. 

Upon reading some of my classmates’ lesson plans, one in particular that I really enjoyed reading compared the BYOD policy to the “separate but equal” laws of the past, specifically Plessy vs. Ferguson.  This group, consisting of Sam, Jeremy, and Derek, had a fantastic idea to relate the past to the present.  Though I don’t think I myself would have initially thought about the similarities between these two ideas like they say they immediately did, I appreciated how much thought they put into this assignment to come up with a lesson that really showcased an important aspect of history.  I realized that it is not enough to consider different policies and rulings on an individual case-to-case basis, but it is also important to compare and contrast them to demonstrate how the past influences the present, and how two ideas that may be in stark contrast on the surface are actually similar.  Their lesson also surprised me because they managed to integrate history and English into one lesson.  This illustrated to me that they put in the effort to make a lesson like this work and it reflects the title of the assignment (Connections Across Disciplines) perfectly.  The lesson this group outlined was for a 50 minute class period, and the sequence they have provided seems to be reasonable.  They incorporated individual work as well as discussion, which is a strong combination for a lesson such as this.  The lesson flowed well and the method of assessment they provided (exit ticket) was one that all students should be able to succeed at, providing that they were engaged during the lesson.  Overall, this group’s lesson reflects the type of lessons we have been learning about over the summer, in which students are given several different activities and opportunities to interact with their peers, rather than being lectured at for an hour.  I think students would definitely benefit from this lesson!

This lesson plan reminded me of the thoughts I have had all summer about the fairness of a BYOD policy.  While it seems like a feasible and interesting idea on the surface, it could actually be detrimental to some students.  What happens to those students who do not have the means to secure a device to bring?  I am not sure this question will be answered any time soon.  It also brings up questions of how much technology should play a role in the classroom.  Should technology be fully integrated or should it be used sparingly?  The inequalities that could result from a policy such as this must be considered in depth before a school implements a BYOD policy.  Considering Plessy vs. Ferguson in detail might actually be very beneficial for policymakers when creating a BYOD policy.  

Organizing Your Online Life: Google Drive Edition

          As I went about creating my presentation on how to use Google Drive and how this website can benefit teachers and students, I tried to think about what logically made sense to me.  Many MAC students are very familiar with Google Drive already, but I never really used it much before starting this program.  I understood the basics of how to create a document and that multiple people could collaborate at once, but I had never shared an item with someone or uploaded my own documents into the drive.  In order to effectively present this website, I wanted to be knowledgeable about as much as I could, so I spent some time just exploring the site and seeing what I could do with it.  I also watched some YouTube videos that were very informative.

          Once I figured out the logistics of Google Drive, I began to think about what I wanted to tell the two MAC students in my group.  I decided to first go over what Google Drive is and why it is helpful, and what the heck this mystical "cloud" thing is.  Then I would describe in detail how to create documents, presentations, etc.  After this I wanted to describe how to share items with others and how the permissions worked.  Next, I wanted to describe how to upload documents from one's computer or other device.  Finally, I wanted to talk about how this website could help teachers and students in school.  This helped me get a good sense of how I wanted to organize my handout as well.  I thought it would be good to put everything on the handout in the same order that I was going to talk about it.  However, formatting issues prevented me from doing this (I think the images messed things up), so I was forced to change the order up a bit.  I don't think this really detracted from the presentation though because the information was still the same.  Also, when creating my handout I tried to make it as aesthetically pleasing as possible because I know that I am more likely to look at a handout that is colorful and fun.

          I actually practiced going over everything I wanted to say in my presentation once the night before and it ended up being about 25-30 minutes, which was perfect.  I think going over this definitely helped me remember what I wanted to talk about and be cautious of how much time I should allot to each section.  During my actual presentation I stuck to the order that I had set up for myself and I think it went pretty well.  When I was demonstrating the sharing function my email was taking forever to load, so that was a minor set back.  While we waited I just described what would happen once I received the email, but thinking about it now, allowing the other two students to ask questions might have been a better use of time.  As I talked about the benefits of Google Drive in the classroom, I realized that I was just speaking and wasn't really illustrating my points.  Maybe if I had created a form beforehand to show how teachers could create surveys for students or created a spreadsheet to show how teachers could track grades, the other students would have been able to visualize the benefits better.  For some reason I didn't expect to receive any questions (what was I thinking?), but when I did I tried to answer them to the best of my ability.  Usually these questions were just to clarify on steps that I had demonstrated, so I did not have any problem answering them.

          I also enjoyed the other students' presentations about Blendspace and Endnote.  I thought they did a wonderful job explaining how to use these websites and how they related to the classroom.  I really liked Blendspace and it is something that I would definitely like to incorporate into my own classroom in the future.

Below is my handout:

Go play a video game!

          When we were first told in Educ 504 that we would be exploring video games that could be used to support learning, I must admit I was skeptical.  My initial reaction was that video games are for fun and I couldn't figure out how one could use these in a classroom setting.  Grand Theft Auto (GTA), which is definitely one of my favorite games, involves theft, weapons, murder, and general rule breaking, among various other things.  There is no way that this game would be appropriate for the classroom!

          Despite my skepticism, I remained open-minded as I began to read "Good Video Games and Good Learning," by Gee.  I realized that one doesn't have to necessarily bring the video game directly into class for it to support learning.  (Would any school actually be okay with students playing GTA in their building?)  A few ways that video games can influence learning are as follows:

• Players learn problem solving skills
• Games give feedback and new problems
• Lowers the consequences of failure
• Forces thinking about relationships between actions and skills
• Performance before competence

There are a variety of other ways that video games can influence learning, but I think one of the most important take home messages is that video games can help students gain problem solving skills.  The games can challenge players because they might encounter problems that they have not experienced before and might never experience in their lifetimes.  Players must figure out what the problem is, what skills they need to solve the problem, and the procedural knowledge of how to execute the solution.  Though the problems one experiences in a video game might be drastically different form the problems one must solve in school, the underlying thinking skills are the same. Gee helped me realize that video games are therefore an awesome way to influence learning by helping students solve problems.  If they can transfer these skills to the problems they face in their assignments, I think playing video games could be a fun way to supplement the objectives that are taught in school.

         Transitioning back to the video game I explored, GTA is an open world action-adventure game in which players take on the role of a character of their choosing and must navigate around the city to complete missions in order to gain points.  The successful completion of a mission allows players to challenge themselves with more difficult missions.  These missions require that players solve problems, take risks, and think about consequences.  GTA can also be converted into a multiplayer game in which one can play with friends or other players over the Internet.  This game also helps players increase their decision making skills because they must decide which weapons to use, which cars to steal (I like the fast ones), how to steal cars (beat people up!), and which direction to go in order to avoid the police.  Though is is unlikely that students will need to make these decisions in a school setting, the skills necessary to make decisions can be transferred to the types of problems students encounter in school.

          I don't think incorporating GTA into the curriculum or allowing students to play this video game during class time is a feasible, but I do think that it is a good way for students to learn many strategies that they can use in school.

Paper vs. Digital

          Thinking back to when I was in in primary and secondary education, I can remember several times when my school administered standardized tests, such as the MEAP and ACT, to the students in certain grade levels.  The students would come in and receive a test booklet and answer sheet to fill out with #2 pencils.  The mental image that I get when thinking of these wonderful test days (We got out of school early, what more could you want? Let's take a test every day! Sarcasm sarcasm sarcasm.) looks a bit like this:

However, a shift in testing format is occurring, in which paper-based tests are becoming less common and digital-based tests are becoming more common.  Rather than filling out answer bubbles by hand, students simply click on the answer they want, and voilà the bubble is filled in perfectly!  Now, the image I get of standardized testing looks like this:

          Just by looking at the second picture, it seems to me that taking these fate-determining tests on the computer would be a welcome change because there is more privacy, depending on the testing site of course.  When I took the GRE on the computer, I was at a testing site that looked very similar to the  one in the picture above.  I thought this was awesome because I had my own little cubby with dividing walls, so I couldn't see anyone else and they couldn't see me.  I was even provided with silencing headphones.  Sitting down to take this test, I was optimistic that this was going to be easy to take since I wouldn't have to flip between pages and make sure my answers were bubbled in dark enough.  Halfway through the test though, my eyes were watering and I had a headache (why did I choose to wear my contacts for a five hour test that consisted of starting at a computer screen?).  My experience with digital-based testing illustrates to me that maybe we need to rethink making the switch from paper to computer.

          In Educ 504, I attempted (and failed) to answer some questions from the 12th grade math portion of the Smarter Balance assessment.  On the first question, the calculator tool froze on top of the question and I couldn't get it to go away, so I tried to just move on to the next question.  This seemed like a logical idea, especially since students are often told to skip something if it's too difficult and then come back to it at the end.  Unfortunately, this assessment forces students to put some answer before moving on to the next.  I do not think that this is a good tactic because students might try to spend more time writing something in the answer space, which is very time inefficient.  Not all digital-based tests force this upon students, but there are other cons to taking a test on the computer:

• Navigating the pages might be difficult
• Students might not be familiar with the icons
• Split screens make things very busy
• Students can't really "talk to the text" unless they write on the screen (I think this is discouraged?)
• Inefficient scrolling techniques cause a loss of valuable test time
• The mouse might be hiding 
• Students might not be skilled typers
• There might not be any scratch paper
• Puts extra stress on students (especially their eyes...)

You get the idea, right?  On the other hand, there are some pros to switching to taking a test on the computer:

• The test is cheaper to produce
• Scores are received much quicker, if not instantaneously (it can feel like 7.5 months before you get the paper scores back...)
• There is no hassle of labeling the tests and sorting through them
• Students can tag specific questions to easily find at the end to review

         Even though switching to digital-based testing might seem like a really good idea at first, I don't think it is necessarily better than paper-based testing.  "Reading linear texts on paper versus computer screen: Effects on reading comprehension" was a Norwegian study that discovered that students who read texts in print scored significantly better on a reading comprehension test.  This research demonstrates that students do better on paper-based tests, so it is very confusing to me as to why so many people are advocating for digital-based tests.  Have these people never taken a test on the computer before?  Do they care more about costs than student growth and learning?  If money is the driving force behind this decision, then we need to elect new people to make these decisions.

          I believe that the most important aspect of standardized testing should be to try to assess what level students' are at in their learning in order to evaluate teachers and help these said teachers to revise their lessons to better equip their students for future courses and life in general.  The cons of digital-based testing outweighs the pros for me, so I think that it is important that we do not let paper-based testing become obsolete.  At the very least, we should give students a choice of how they want to take the test, such as how the MTTC test gives students a choice between paper and computer.

          Do you advocate for paper-based or digital-based testing?  Both?  What factor weighs the most in your decision?

Teach in this moment

          John Dewey.  What could this man possibly have to say about education that could be of any use to society today?  "My Pedagogic Creed" was published by Dewey in 1897, which is well over a hundred years ago!  Nothing he has to say about education and technology could be relevant today, right? WRONG.  Dewey made significant impacts on education, and without him, education and school as we know it today would probably be drastically different.  The question of whether Dewey's contributions should be revered or scorned is left to the reader's interpretation.  I, however, found Dewey's insights and beliefs to be influential and essential to the development of education.  Several of Dewey's points resonated with me and I can't believe that it has taken me until now to understand what seems like common sense to him.

          "I believe that education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living," is a quote taken directly from Dewey's creed.  As a twenty-three year old graduate student, I have spent the majority of my life in school.  From ages 5 through 18 (and even after), I was taught that I had to get an education to make something of myself.  Of course, I didn't mind this because school was my absolute favorite place to be, and I told everyone that I would stay in school forever if I could.  The notion that I would fail miserably at life if I didn't go to college was ingrained in my brain and I always kept this in the back of my mind.  After all, I didn't want to be that person who worked at a fast-food chain for the rest of my life.  With this mindset, I never questioned why every year my teachers said things like "you need to know this to advance to the next grade," and "you have to learn {insert confusing topic here} otherwise you won't be prepared for college," because that's just how things were.  

          "My Pedagogic Creed" opened my eyes about education as a means to an end.  After considering Dewey's perspective that school should represent present life, I realized that my entire education has been preparing me for "what's coming next."  I think that Dewey is correct and that we have to learn how to function in the present before we can think about the future.  He says that education is a social process and I took this to mean that education instills values and helps students learn how to develop and apply solutions to everyday problems.  These points made me think that maybe many students aren't engaged in school because they simply aren't thinking about the future that education is supposed to provide them with.  It is therefore important that teachers make changes and teach for the present.  At my undergraduate graduation ceremony, Dick Costolo (Twitter CEO) said something that has become one of my favorite quotes: "Be in this moment."  If we can apply this to our everyday lives, can't we also apply it to education? Teach in this moment?

          When considering what present life is like today, one of the first things I tend to envision is social media and technology.  If I throw school into the mix, it becomes clear to me that technology can be a very useful tool in the classroom.  Rather than spending agonizing lengths of time rifling through encyclopedias and dusty books, technology allows students to access greater amounts of information online in a shorter time span.  It also allows students to collaborate with their peers on projects (Google Docs anyone?), communicate with experts, and create things like brochures, among other things.  Some schools are already teaching students how to use Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, so I definitely think technology is a good thing to include in the classroom. 

          There are so many benefits to using technology in the classroom, so to some people, it seems like taking things a step further and implementing a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy is a spectacular idea.   The downside to using technology in the classroom, however, is the fact that the Internet can be incredibly distracting.  We've all seen what happens in our college courses, haven't we?  Students get bored and start browsing Facebook and before they know it, they're buying shoes and watching YouTube videos of grumpy cats.  I think if there were a way to prevent students from using their devices in an inappropriate way, more teachers would be on board for using technology.  It really comes down to a pros and cons list of whether or not to include technology in the classroom.  A major criticism I have of the BYOD idea is that it stirs up equity issues.  Not every study is going to be able to afford to purchase a device to use in class, so what happens to those students?  Do the students with a lower SES just suffer and sit on the sidelines?  If a BYOD policy is something that is going to be considered in the future, then teachers and school administrators need to consider how this will affect all students.  Despite the glaring problems with incorporating technology, I think it is a fantastic way to teach in the present.

Hey there!

     Welcome to my blog!  This space is going to be used for my thoughts about technology in the classroom and related education topics.  Though this blog was created for a specific class, I hope to continue writing in the future to document my experiences.  Happy reading!