- DimDim & iLinc are nice because they allow you to ask questions and get feedback immediately, but the fact that you'd have to meet at a certain time takes away the freedom and flexibility that most online students love.
- DimDim, iLinc and Second Life all suffer from a common disadvantage - they require a quality internet connection and a decent computer in order to allow you to get online and in the "room" to participate in class. Most students are worried about those things preventing you from joining the class on time.
- There are a plethora of great technologies that can be used in any of these situations, except for SecondLife, which seems to be in a class of its own. Elluminate and others can be used in place of iLinc and DimDim, while Camtasia and Screenium can replace Jing.
Friday, July 9, 2010
Teaching Online Courses Participation Journal
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
T&L – Journal #5 – Professional Development of Teachers
Revisiting Technology Integration in Schools: Implications for Professional Development by Emily Hixon and Janet Buckenmeyer
In order to promote effective technology integration, we must find ways to address
all of the barriers teachers are facing, including both first-order (external to teacher)
and second-order (internal to teacher) obstacles. Professional development can
address many of these concerns, but the current “one-size-fits-all” technology
training, focusing primarily on first-order barriers, has proved to be inadequate in
light of the developmental growth of teachers’ technology use.
Revamping Professional Development for Technology Integration and Fluency
by Sandra Kay Plair
Sandra Kay Plair's article about professional development & technology integration is not completely different from the previous article, but has a different focus. She believes that the main cause for the slow integration of technology into the core curriculum classrooms of our schools is the veteran teachers. She considers veteran teachers to be those with over 15 years of experience and considers them to be unwilling or unable or afraid to implement technological integration into their curriculum. I am not sure that I disagree with this completely, but do feel that it is a bit stereotypical. After all, many of my ITEC professors have more than 15 years under their belts and my mother, who will retire in the next few years, teaches technology courses at her elementary school.
Those technology (or computer) courses do bring up another of Plair's points. She feels that part of the veteran teachers' difficulty is the notion that the technology that for so many years was "quarantined" to the "computer teacher's" classroom is to be spread into the rest of the classrooms. She stereotypes them as seeing the technology skills to be just that - individual skills that should be taught separately from other skills by specific qualified individuals. I guess this is where here points relate back to Hixon and Buckenmeyer's--she sees these teachers low on the change scale; they do see technology as relevant, but don't see it as a learning tool, they see it as a skill to learn. I agree with this assessment (for some veteran teachers) and agree that this presents a barrier to successful integration.
Plair feels that, aside from attitudes toward technology & its integration, one of the main needs for successful integration is technological fluency. She states "Knowing when and how to use these technology tools to enhance learning is how I define technology fluency." Her method of improving technology fluency is through the implementation of knowledge brokers in the schools. These teachers that are further along in the integration of technology are to act both as role models and facilitators for the teachers that are not as far along in their integration of technology. These people act as the "middle man" between the person that trains the staff in using a skill and the teachers that may still not know how to implement this new skill. She feels--and I agree--that after professional development through staff trainings take place, the teachers need support to actually put these things into practice, as many of them returned to their classrooms annoyed or confused by the training or unsure how to use their new skill educationally. I see this often from the teachers that I work with. She continues in explaining what key functions a knowledge broker could serve for these teachers learning to integrate specific technologies. I agree with the idea of the broker and all of the aspects and ways that they can be of help. My only problem is in how this knowledge broker will find time to do this. It is wise for the broker to be a teacher, as then they can speak not just to how to use the technology, but how to use it educationally, which is a skill that can often only be held by teachers. It appears to me that the best thing that a school system could do is to give these knowledge brokers extra planning time in which they were committed to working with their colleagues. If these brokers have time to support the integration within their school--and can avoid being stressed by the extra burden, which the extra planning time could alleviate--this could be a very successful model for technological change.
Comparing, Contrasting and Relating the 2 Articles
In the first article, the authors spoke primarily about why technological change was so difficult and why it has been largely unsuccessful when compared to its potential. The second article had similar feelings about why this was the case, but primarily discussed a way to resolve this problem--quality trainings and the use of knowledge brokers. While the first article blamed first-order barriers (availability of time, equipment, support and training) and second-order barriers (those inside the teacher) for the slow integration of technology into the classroom, the second article blamed the readiness and attitudes of "veteran teachers." Inherently though, the two articles theories about the causes overlap and, aside from in language, had a lot in common. Both agreed that the theories of successful change need to be applied in the situation of technological integration. The first article directly stated this and, while they didn't directly state it, the second article mentioned a lot of things that are part of the change theories.
After reading this article, I feel motivated to participate in technological integration into the education of today's youth. I feel that the ideas that I have gained from the articles give focus to my ideas of integration. The only question yet to answer for myself is: 'Will I be a knowledge broker or the catalyst of this change?
Works Cited
HIXON, E., & BUCKENMEYER, J. (2009). Revisiting Technology Integration in Schools:
Implications for Professional Development. Computers in the Schools, 26(2), 130-146.
doi:10.1080/07380560902906070
Plair, S. (2008). Revamping Professional Development for Technology Integration and
Fluency. Clearing House, 82(2), 70-74. Retrieved from Education Research Complete
database.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
T&L – Journal #4 – Assessment
http://educate.intel.com/en/assessingprojects/
Initially, I was surprised to find that Intel offered this assessment library at all. After going through the site, I became surprised to find how much quality stuff was here. I find this site to have much potential for benefit for two primary reasons.
First, with so much to do and such limited time to do it, it is unnecessary for teacher’s to “reinvent the wheel.” This site prevents that. Need a quick way to have students self-assess how well they did on a video for class? There’s an assessment here for it. Need an assessment that can help students assure that they are collaborating effectively within a group activity? It’s here. Oftentimes, I find that resources on the internet don’t exactly fit my needs for my classroom. With Intel’s Assessment Library, you can copy and edit the assessments so that they do fit your needs.
Second, rubrics and self-assessments can be difficult to make, from both a technological and process standpoint. Intel’s Assessment tool makes it easier for teachers to create these assessments. And, as stated before, you could start with a similar assessment that’s already been made and modify it to fit your needs.
In my current role as an 8th grade math teacher, the assessments that I may find myself using in the future are the Collaboration Checklist, the Teamwork Rubric and the Learning Log Rubric. In the future, I hope to get a job as an Educational Technology teacher. In that setting, I would use quite a bit more of the assessments, including the aforementioned ones and foremost among the ones I’d add would be the Products assessments, especially the ones for wikis and videos.
I also enjoyed reading through the Assessment Strategies portion of the site, I was glad to see such attention to different things to assess and different ways to assess it. There are so many facets to teaching, learning and understanding and Intel clearly understands this and the fact that there must therefore be many facets to our assessments. I found that the sections of strategies on the site represented some of the major skills that a teacher must possess and implement into good instruction and planning:
· Gauging Student Needs
· Encouraging Self-Direction and Collaboration
· Monitoring Progress
· Checking for Understanding & Encouraging Metacognition
· Demonstrating Understanding and Skill
I hope to spend more time with this site over the summer and, through that time
perusing the site, will find ways to implement some of these things into my teaching.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
T&L Journal #3 - Digital Libraries
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
T&L Journal #2 - Assistive Technologies
- Creepster Crawler - a device that safely suspends youngsters in a crawling position in order to help them exercise, get therapy or possibly learn to crawl.
- Chewlry Chewable Jewelry - a sensory solution for children with chewing tendencies.
- Classroom Light Filters - fluorescent light filters that can reduce the harshness of the bright lights for sensitive eyes.
- MeToo Trikes - adaptive tricycles
- Classroom Support Chair - this chair has a harness to help keep the child sitting upright
- and most relevant to this topic - Keyboards/Mouse/Trackballs/Touchscreens - This page contains information on Achievement Products tools that seek to enable children of special needs to better utilize the most common form of technology - the computer. Especially interesting to me of these options was the Big Track Ball, which seems like it'd be a great tool with technology users with weak fine motor skills.
- Large-print books - I've heard my wife, who works as a school psychologist in one of our district's elementary schools, mention the use of these.
- Computer screen, text and video magnifiers - A student at my middle school has such poor sight that he has to have a cart with him in each classroom that has a special magnifying system--which is much like a fixed video camera (like an ELMO projector) hooked up to a computer that uses software to magnify whatever is put under the camera--for him to use for any classwork.
- Audio-voice amplification systems--A student I had years ago had hearing damage, so myself and her other teachers wore wireless microphones that sent our voice to individual amplification systems that were in a headband that she wore.
- Braille printer
- Voice language translators
- Portable word processors - After just reading about the AlphaSmart in Chapter 2, this caught my attention.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
T&L Journal #1 - Online Technology Resources for Teachers
TECHNOLOGY AND LEARNING Journal Blog
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Instructional Applications of the Internet - August 5
- Figuring out how to get a .swf "video" file created using Jing onto my website, which was created in iWeb. I finally figured out--by searching for it on the internet--how to edit a standard html code and paste it into iWeb to make it work. I am glad that I figured this out because it is a beneficial part of the page, making visiting the web site almost like sitting in a class--on your own time--rather than just reading words off of the page.
- Continued inconveniences with Hot Potatoes. While Hot Potatoes has been easy to use, I continued to have to spend a lot of time today typing in the quizzes, uploading pictures to my KSU FTP, then put them in the quiz, then preview the quiz, then copy the html code, then paste it into iWeb, then resize it to fit the page. It also was inconvenient that there were such limits to the sizes of the quizzes.
Overall, I am very very pleased with my web page. I intend to use it this school year with my students and to share it with the other 8th grade math teachers at my school to use if they'd like.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Instructional Applications of the Internet - August 4
Hot Potatoes has some impressive abilities, but can be very inconvenient to use. I don't like that I am only able to have 3 questions in a JQuiz and only 5 matching elements in a JMatch. Because of this, I had to make one Quiz in 3 separate parts, because I had 9 questions to put into it. It's also a little inconvenient to use all around.
I had quite a bit of difficulty figuring out how to include pictures on my quizzes, but finally figured out that if I posted the pictures on my KSU FTP space, then added them to the quiz using the web links, it worked.
I figured out how to post the quizzes to my website by opening the htm files in Word to access the html code, then copying the code and pasting it in to an "HTML Snippet Widget" in iWeb. This is working out well, but could be much more convenient.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to spend very much time on actual informational content for the page today. Hot Potatoes took up most of my time.
Monday, August 3, 2009
Instructional Applications of the Internet - August 3
Since interactive elements are required in the website, I spent a while today learning how to add quizzes to my site. After seeing it discussed a lot on our Vista discussion board I decided to use Hot Potatoes to create my quizzes. After downloading and installing the software, I spent quite a while watching tutorials about the programs and practicing how to use them. I am excited about the possibilities that it presents.
I ended the Hot Potatoes experience by attempting to add images to my first quiz that I planned to make, but couldn't figure out how to get them up there. I would add the images from off of my computer and it would say that it worked well. When you finish the pages, it saves them then gives you the "View in Your Browser" option, which is actually just viewing the file on your hard drive not on the internet. For some reason even in this instance the images do not show up. I figured that they would because the images are on the same harddrive. Unfortunately, it didn't work as htm files on the harddrive or when they were posted to the internet.
Tomorrow I will try to figure out how to get the images to work--I will try posting them to my KSU space and then using links--and will figure out how to get them included in my web site--hopefully I can include them in a manner other than just as links.