Sorry to See It Go.

Stressed. Weary. Frustrated. Tired. Excited. Anxious. Euphoric. Stressed. Dreaming of sleep. What do they say? Anything worth having takes hard work? This was a tough semester, but as we discussed at our last meeting, it was a tremendously worthwhile semester. I think we were all surprised how much we have learned. And I, like many of my classmates, am very thankful for all of the support and comraderie that has been a part of our General Methods class. Dr. S, thank you for your enthusiasm for education, and your support of us. 5921 classmates, you are the epitome of people working together to help someone else.

No egos, it's about the kids.

There Was More.

Understanding the importance of integrating technology significantly into our curriculum was absolutely one of the primary understandings that I got out of my General Methods class. But, there was more. Though I had been introduced to, and had some understanding of the Information Processing Model and the Social Interaction Model, the class has truly deepened my understanding of them and the structure of a lesson within each of these models. As we jump quickly into the "Information Age",

these are the models that focus on the development of the higher level thinking skills that are needed by employers in this new age. Though Direct Instruction is absolutely still important for the transfer of base knowledge, as the world shifts, we need to shift. We need to change our view of teachers from "large and in charge", to facilitators of learning, the "guides on the side".

Really?? Only Six Months?

I cannot believe that it has only been six months since I met Dr. Smirnova. Amazing how my thinking has changed. When I first sat down at our first and only classroom meeting for Literacy and Technology in June, I knew that I was in for a real challenge. Being such a "digital immigrant", I knew that I would have to work my brain to its fullest to keep my head above water. However, as I believe I have mentioned before, through much outstanding teaching at the Mount, as well as keeping my nose to the grindstone, I have come to strongly believe in my own ability to learn. (I hope that confidence in their own ability to learn is something that I will be able to help my own students develop.)

I thought technology was cool, it was interesting, it was fun. Now, after two classes with Dr. Smirnova, I have come to understand that technology needs to be an essential component of our classrooms. Through the resources made available to us in Literacy and Technology, as well as in General Methods, Dr. Smirnova has made it clear that the world of education cannot isolate itself from a method of communication that now is a pervasive part of our world economy. The ability to access quality information, share ideas and products, and communicate responsibly with people all over the world, is innovating our world of business. This world has changed drastically and quickly in the last few years and will continue to evolve. We, as educators, cannot respond slowly, or we will be doing our next generation a tremendous disservice.

It is an exciting time to be an educator, figuring out what we need to do to help our students be prepared to work and contribute to this new economy, as we shift from an industrial economy to an information economy. As educators, we need to advocate strongly for the technological tools our students need to access information, tools they need to be familiar with, and help them to learn to discern quality information and sources. We need to help them discover ways to use technology to help themselves learn.

What is really cool is that just as we are realizing the importance of constructive learning, we have available to us a tool that makes constructive learning and inquiry learning much more feasible option for the vast majority of students in our nation's schools. No matter where you live, or how much money you have, you can find out what any animal looks like, you can talk to NASA scientists, or listen to a tutorial on how to play drums.

We live in an amazing age. It is time to connect the world we live in and the world we are preparing our students for. As we learn in methods, you have to start with your goal. If our goal is to help our students be successful in the world that they will live in, we can't keep teaching for a world that no longer exists. We need to figure out what they will need for this one. Then, talk the talk, and walk the walk.

I Want to Play!

After viewing "A Day in the Life at LICM" (Long Island Children Museum)'

I wanted to play right alongside the children we see there.

What makes this experience look like so much fun? It was certainly "educational". Educational, but not boring.

The children were exposed to a huge variety of new experiences and new learning. My feeling is that the day spent at the museum is a day that will stand out in their memories while most classroom lessons will be forgotten.

Why? It was engaging. The students were actively involved most of the time, climbing, investigating, experimenting. They had the opportunity to touch so many things. When there was instruction, it was small group, question and answer, "wondering' questions, "What do you think?" questions.

It was social. They experienced new discoveries with their peers. They talked, discussed. The end of the video brought to mind Bandura, with his Social Behavioral Theory. It seemed most of the experiences at that point were being shared with people who had a close relationship with the child.

It was developmentally appropriate. It was bugs, and icky things. It was construction, make-believe, puzzles and technology.

This was a great example of discovery learning. The Long Island Children's Museum put the students right in the middle of a learning rich environment. I am ready to go!

Testing, Testing, Testing

Their first District Math Benchmark test. "Not a big deal", says the teacher to the class. "We just want to see what you have learned the last few months, and what we still need to work on. Just work carefully and try your best. Raise your hand if you have any questions."

The teacher had let me know that the benchmark assessment was on the agenda for our math time today. Results would be tabulated and used by the teachers and the district to assess the students' understanding of what they had been taught the first two months of school, as well as foundational knowledge for those skills.

From classes and from experience, I know that there are many factors outside of a student's knowledge and their ability to apply that knowledge that effect how students do on a test. It does however, always strike me anew each time I see students in a formal test setting how much their language ability impacts their test scores.

In this classroom, on this day, there were several students who were allowed the test modification of having their test read to them. I was rewarding to see that, for these students, their ability in the math content in the benchmark was what would actually be assessed, not their language ability. There were other students who apparently did not qualify for a modification, but nethertheless struggled with decoding and reading comprehension during the test. A few of the students asked the teacher what a word was, or what a question meant (something that they would not be able to do during the actual New York State Test). Others did not ask, but when questioned by the teacher concerning an empty response, replied that they didn't know what the question was, or would read the question incorrectly to the teacher.

Language acquisition is one of the many factors that can skew the results, so that the resulting data does not reflect understanding. Though this seems generally understood, this discrepancy seems more forgotten the further away from the classroom the data flows.

In the classroom, the teacher sees the student struggling with decoding, struggling with language comprehension. At the building adminstration level, there could be some understanding of these other factors, as the principal views the data. He has been working to make his ESL program more effective, to get 504's where they are needed. He has heard his teachers discuss poorly worded questions. He talks with these young students with difficult home lives, those with serious test anxiety. At the district level, do they see these kids, or just the numbers? I hope, both.

Image courtesy of Google Images.

It is an Exciting Place to Be

About a month ago, I began doing observation hours for my General Methods of Instruction class. This month is observing, next month-teaching! I am going into a third grade general education classroom during their math time.

As with most general education classroom, the first thing that strikes me is the diversity of learners within the room. There are no inclusion students within the room. And there are no Expand (Gifted and Talented) students. Even without those two ends of the spectrum, there are eight ESL (English as a second language)learners, ten remedial math students, average learners and fast learners. There is a student who just moved here from Russia and who speaks almost no English. This classroom, like many others, is a testiment to our need to address a multitude of needs in order to teach effectively.

This teacher has developed a method of teaching that she is finding more effective in meeting her students' needs. Her math instruction begins with a direct instruction lesson, such a subtraction with borrowing. She utilizes her Smartboard for interest and visualization of the skill. After about 15 minutes, the class breaks into groups for three different activities. Each activity is explained or demonstrated. Teacher asks for questions, and checks for understanding. At this point, there is a math specialist in the room. One of the teachers will provide strong support for the activity (guided practice) at the back table with approximatelly eight students. The other teacher will give as needed support to the small group doing the second activity. The third group does a math game that reinforces a prior skill. After 15 minutes, the groups switch activities, until each group does each of the three tasks.

These groups allow movement, variety, reinforcement. They allow the teachers to have individual time with each student, and address the needs of each student more closelly. The groups are homogenous, so that the teachers can differentiate each of the small group activities. For example, in the lesson where the objective of the lesson was to subtract three digit numbers with trading, for the slower learners, the teacher used guided practice during most of the activity time, giving students a model to follow for their homework, before letting them try a few on their own. For the fast learners, she did one problem with them and had four digit problems available for students who finished quickly.

From what I have observed, and speaking to the teacher, this method is one worth trying. It is however, enhanced and made more effective by having the resource of a second teacher in the classroom during that period.

(image courtesy of Google images)

The Sum is Greater than the Pieces.

Kellie, Emily, and I had a wonderful, crazy week putting together our first group presentation on Methods for Closure and Evaluation. Our groups for this assignment were put together just as we were about to go out the door during our last class. Kellie, Emily and I quickly traded email information and acknowledged that we all were booked up for a few days. We left class, somewhat apprehensive about how we were going to pull this together. Amazingly, putting together the 20 minute presentation on Closure and Evaluation using Direct Instruction worked better than I expected.

It was obvious during the short days that we worked together that my two partners were completely invested in putting some strong effort into creating a presentation that was informative and engaging. Flexibility, peer support and dialog strengthened our end product, as well as our entire experience. This was definitely an example of how the three of us working together were able to create a better product than if each of us had worked separately and later put it together.

This is again a lesson I would like to bring to my classroom, not only the ability to work together, but to do it so that the end product benefits from a collaborative environment. This would involve learning to listen and to speak up, to look for and use the strengths of each of your teammates, and to support and constructively critique each other.

There is always more...

to learn. This is my second time through a Methods class. As part of my initial pursuit of a Secondary Education degree, I had taken a Methods class a few years ago. Due to that class, I became fairly comfortable writing objectives. But there is always more to learn. I did forget that "the student will be able to" is not part of a viable objective because of its lack of measurability. I found that, because of their specificity, the list by Heinich, Molenda, Russell, and Smaldino (2001) of 100 suggested verbs for use in writing objectives clarified the task of writing objectives.

The third week of class brought many more learning points. What exactly is a model, a strategy, a method? My professional vocabulary was not where it should be.

After much reading, and direct instruction in class, I am beginning to learn the differences and the types. I am hoping that through this class, I will gain a thorough enough understanding of how to utilize the various types of models, strategies and methods within a lesson in order to plan the most effective lessons for my students.

Why are we doing this??

Because time is generally a rare commodity these days, I tend to evaluate everything I do in terms of time worthiness. I know that Dr. S. puts alot thought into everything she asks us to do, but when I saw the tee-shirt project, I thought, "Well, this looks like fun, but will I get enough out of it, given the time it will take me to complete it?".

I figured that a goal of the project might be to give us more exposure to and experience with technology. It would also give us a lesson component that we could modify and transfer to our classroom. The presentation of our tee-shirt project would allow us to practice our classroom presentation skills and build community early on in our semester. However, it also forced us to think about who we are as educators and face up to our anxieties concerning this profession.

As with most education projects (but not all), I did get much more out of it than I expected. Of course there was the pride of trying a new task and having a finished product that I was fairly happy with. Not that it was a beautiful tee shirt. But it does represent my attempt at something new, not giving up when I encountered bumps, and it represents some new thinking on my part. I am hoping that I can encourage these goals in my own classroom. I hope I remember that the act of actively learning is to be applauded, at least as much as content knowledge.

Lesson Planning + Change = ???

One of our first readings this fall for General Methods was the video Learning to Change and Changing to Learn:

Though I had seen the video previously, it is always thought-provoking and worth another view, as new learning and experiences inform my point of view.

This video really speaks to how much our world has changed in the last 10 years or so in regard to technology and in relation to the United States's position in an economy that is becoming more and more global. It addresses more directly the issue of the disconnect between the new technological world our students live in and how we are trying to teach as if that world barely exists, as if the world we grew up in still exists.

Never before has technology advanced so quickly and completely changed our world as in the last decade or so. This makes keeping up difficult. Technology is expensive, moreso in a depressed economy. But the other reality is just as important.

Technology is the job producer of the future. The more we can invest in technology in our schools, providing our students with the opportunity to fully utilize it to expand their learning, the more we give them the ability to compete in this more global economy. Our lesson plans need to be mindful of helping this generation develop technology skills and helping them to develop as thinkers using technology to that end. We need to make available to them the plethara of resources, experiences and opportunities for creation that technology opens up.

Sharing

Though not able to read nearly enough of my classmates' posts, I did get a chance to read some and comment on a few. The ones I was able to post comments on were:

Doug Maxwell- Internet Safety, Copyright, and Fair Use

Pat Adreance- A Wealth of Information in a Tiny Space

Tara Scott: Authentic Teaching: Clear as Day

A favorite part of class for me is the sharing of ideas and perspectives. Though it is obvious from the posts I have seen that there is so much everyone has to offer, I have not had as much time as I would like to read everyone's posts. I have "followed" some of my classmates, so hopefully I will have a chance to catch up in the next few weeks.

What's the Big Idea?

Or "What are the Big Ideas"?

As we close out our Literacy and Technology class, I find that my thoughts have swirled among three big ideas throughout the course.

The first is that there is a dizzying wealth of tools and presentation devices available to anyone throughout the world who has a computer and an internet connection. And it only stands to reason that the variety and solidness of these tools and resources will continue to grow as more and more creation takes place.

Though frustrating when it didn't work, or wasn't intuitive enough, most tools were relatively easy and fun to use, even for a digital immigrant. I have learned to be brave and adventuresome as I try to figure these tools out. (They do reward curiousity, persistence and problem solving). In a step toward becoming a digital native, I have started to look at a page as a 3D object with layers, instead of the 2D page I grew up with. I have also learned that there is a tutorial for just about anything on Youtube!

The second big idea that I came out of this class with was that technology is cool, but its value in the classroom is its twofold role in helping our students learn. It allows our students to be exposed to local, national, and worldwide experiences in a way that is hugely different than any other generation. to experience happenings around the world in real time, to share ideas with others from peer to experts easily is enriching beyond anything we could have thought of a few decades ago.

However, as was discussed in our readings one week, one thing we will have to be very intentional about is teaching our students early about validity of sources. As they gain access to the web earlier and earlier in their lives via not only computers but now smartphones, it will be an important skill for them to have.

In addition, as we focus on that which we subconsiously knew all along, that we develop deep knowledge and understanding by constructing and connecting to our learning, technology gives us a vehicle for building that constructive learning. It addresses multiple learning styles: kinesthetic, visual, and audio, allowing for greater overall development of student potential and understanding.

The last "big idea" floating around in my head this last month is perhaps one that I hold to be a basic tenet of life, and so pricks at me whenever there is a new buzz phrase like "technology in the classroom" that catches hold and becomes larger than life. I believe life is about balance and I was pleased to see that within our class, there were several readings/videos that spoke to that balance.

To me, teaching with technology is not about what some people think it is. It is not about replacing teachers with technology. It is not about teaching curriculum only through technology. It is not about using technology to switch to a 100% constructivist curriculum supported by technology. It is about using the resources that technology gives us the improve our curriculum's focus toward constructivist lessons wherever they make sense.

To different degrees, depending on the discipline, basic foundational skills still need to be developed. If we can develop them in constructivist, authentic environment the stronger the learning will be. To have technological tools available for either instruction, Loti level 2 or Loti level 3, tremendously enhances our students' growth as a learner.

There has been a major shift in our world. And it is called technology. Its potential for learning and sharing of ideas is awesome. Let's embrace it and teach our students how to use it well.

This Youtube video best summarizes my perspective as we close:

Where I Want to Go

In other words... My Philosophy of Teaching with Technology. As I go back to my original thought at the beginning of this class, as written on my first Wiki page, I was at that time wondering how this new digital language would inform my teaching and help prepare my students for the 21st century.

Now, at the end of this course, I expect my digital learning to continue and my philosophy of how and when to use it in the classroom to change. However, I believe that some aspects will not change. I see technology as an exciting and necessary second language. Exciting, because it is a language that can be a lot of fun to use. And necessary, not only because of the importance of using tools for constructivist expression and learning, but also for its universals connections. As a manifestation of the universal exposure given by technology, the globalization of ideas is happening faster than globalization of economies.

I want to be part of helping my students to take part in this new world by:

• Teaching my students to use technology for expression of deep understanding.
• Teaching my students to discern valid information.
• Advocating for administrative support for the tools necessary to make this a reality for my students.

WoW!

As discussed in the last post, our class presented its WoW (Wonders of the Web) projects the other night in our final online class. My project topic was "Podcasting in the Classroom". I chose this topic because it was something I have started to see in the elementary school in which I work and so I wanted to learn more about it. Podcasting is an excellent venue for the elementary age because the student's expression of their learning does not rely heavily on writing skills that are just developing at that age.

I learned quite a bit about podcasting in the classroom. There was an absolute general consensus on all the sites I visited that learning how to create a podcast is easy. I would suggest visiting my reference sites as well as videos on Youtube before starting out. And there were quite a few deep resource sites, as indicated on the presentation. I was somewhat surprised that I could not find more. This is perhaps because of the newness of the idea of podcasting in the classroom or lack of technology in a classroom. Once you look at some of the podcasts presented in some of the resources, it is easy to become hooked as you see the value in excitement, engagement, learning and sharing that it adds to the learning experience.

I used a really interesting presentation tool called a Prezi, that our group had used for a project during the course. Because it is a unique form of presentation and involves manually controlled movement, it is very engaging. It is fun! There are some drawbacks. It is not as developed yet as other presentation tools. It cannot link to alternate sites and can only upload video from Youtube. However, it is a tool that I would definitely recommend to other teachers and my students as an avenue of presentation.

The other interesting tool is learned to use as a result of doing this presentation, was Jing/Screencast. Because we ran out of presentation time during our last class, we were asked to submit our presentations with a voice overlay to the class via our class forum, so that everyone could reap the full benefit of each student's presentation at a later date. This program allowed narration of the presentation via a screenshot with an audio overlay. It was very easy to download and use. I could see many various uses of this program, to help us develop tutorials for our students and their parents on how to use our websites, wikis, blogs, as well as academic tutorials.

If I Could Live Until 100.

Last night in our Literacy and Technology class, we had our final whole class group meeting and shared presentations online of our WoW (Wonders of the WeB) projects. Everyone did such a phonemonal job researching and sharing information on Web 2.0 tools and the related pedogogy that understanding was made easy and motivation to get our feet wet using these tools was extremely high. The presentations were clear, concise and exciting.

I had two thoughts as we closed out the class. One was that our young people are in good hands if my classmates can be their educators. Not only because of their obvious understanding of what makes good teaching, but in their ability to teach, evidenced in their delivery of the presentations. Right from the first presentation, there was thoughtful, deliberate engagement of us "students".

My second thought is: how am I going to have enough time left in my life to try out all of these cool tools. I will have to pick and choose, but it will be difficult!

Can I Copy This?

While working in the schools the last few years, there has been a powerful beam of light focusing on the use of copyrighted material in the classroom. There are old workbooks floating around and curriculum books from the dollar store. Teachers are always looking for that perfect piece that will compliment their lesson. But is it copyrighted?

As a student, as I become more tech savvy and try to enhance assignments with information, pictures and video, I am aware that most of the material I use is copyrighted. Can I use it? What are my obligations if I do? Answers tend to be vague and uncertain or so complicated they are difficult to discern, no less follow.

In the college setting, the APA and MLA guides give a framework for giving credit for written work. Though still somewhat nebulus, it does provide for a decent understanding of how to avoid plaguarism. However, when it comes to photos/images and videos, I was anxious concerning how to avoid copyright infringement, spending hours trying to read copyright information on various sharing sites such as Google Images.

Several articles we read last week, An Educator's Guide to Copyrighting and Fair Use and Finally~Copyright Clarity has Arrived. have both been bookmarked as a basic tool in my electronic toolbox. They provide the most clear, concise information in regard to the use of copyrighted material that I have seen to date.

Image courtesy of Google Images.

Caught in a maelstrom?

Reading the articles about authentic assessment reminds me of what feels right about teaching. It emphasizes the importance of preparing our students for life, by not only focusing on passing on basic skills, but the importance of developing our students' confidence in themselves as learners. Just like out in the real world, true accomplishment feeds confidence and motivation. Authentic assessment, reflecting authentic instruction allows our students to take basic skills and use them as tools to build deep understanding of math, science, our social world and literacy.

However, as the state focuses on piecemeal knowledge and basic skills, it is easy to allow our lessons to also focus on knowledge at this level. We must be intentional about balancing our classroom by focusing on authentic instruction, followed by authentic assessment that uses and teaches basic knowledge within the context of real life experiences that students can connect with and carry with them.

Wow, that was quick!

What a engaging feature to have on a class website, wiki or blog. After seeing how quick and easy it was to create a survey on Survey Monkey, I believe surveys have great potential. Surveys would be a fun to engage your audience, check for understanding, extend a lesson or determine interests. It would be important to post the results or feedback, completing the circle, and providing the potential for further discussion.

For example, while doing a lesson on immigration, you could ask students what would make them leave the United States. You could ask what one thing they would miss the most. There could be a question about what they feel would be the hardest part of moving to a new country. It would be interesting to have the students take ownership of the survey question each day and generate their own ideas about what the survey question of the day should be (related to the classroom in some respect).

Do They Match?

During this week's readings, I was struck with how the topic of authentic assessment dovetails with constructivism. We know that assessment should follow our lessons in form and content. Authentic assessment is a truly viable way to reflect constructive lessons.

Constructive lessons focus on students building connections between what they know and what they don't know. They rely on critical thinking skills and student problem solving more than the traditional method of teacher modeling or teacher indoctrination of knowledge. Though basic skills and tenets still need to be taught, they are taught as a toolbox that will be called upon for problem solving. Instead of a fourth grade student being taught to multiply a numerator and denominator by the same number to get an equivalent fraction, they use manipulatives to discover the relationship of objects that are the same size, but are divided into different numbers of pieces. The same exercise at the fifth grade level could lead to discovery of how we use the multiplicative identity property of the number 1 to create equivalent fractions.

In order to make these connections, our students have to analyze the problem and think about what they know that might help them solve it. They can gather clues from prior learning, from the current problem, even from how the question is being asked. This also encourages the development of their metacognitive thinking.

Authentic assessment mirrors constructive lessons in that they also rely more heavily on the student using their toolbox of skills to solve real-life problems. These assessments again rely more heavily on higher order thinking skills to analyze, apply and evaluate. In the fraction exercise above, in order to do an informal authentic assessment, you could have the fourth grade students play a game of "Pizza to Go". The object of the game is to be the first to make exactly two full pizzas. Using pizza pieces sized 1/2 to 1/12, and a spinner that indicates which size piece they can take from the pile, the students soon realize that they can take two pieces of 1/8 when the spinner says 1/4. Asking them to justify their turn, they may say something like "I can put two 1/8's together and it's the same size as a 1/4 piece, or they may say "1 times 2 is 2 for the numerator and 4 times 2 is 8 for the denominator".

Both a constructive lesson and authentic assessment provide student engagement and connection to the real world and previous knowledge. Both provide a depth of understanding beyond rote knowledge. That deep understanding of what we are being taught is the kernel that allows our future learning to explode.

Engrade goes beyond the grade.

Engrade, the free software available online for grading, has much to offer. It was surprisingly easy to use, and was made even more so by the short tutorial offered on the opening page.

My first impression was that it was geared more toward the secondary grade levels, as the grades given were traditional letter (A-F) grades or percentages. This would need to be adapted in many elementary schools where students are rated on a 1-4 scale, or an alternate scale such as B for beginning , D for developing and M for mastery. The other initial difficulty I saw was that there did not seem to have an outlet for taking student behaviors into consideration. Things like effort, reasoning, and application of understanding are all considerations that can appear on an elementary report card. A last difficulty I saw in the actual setup of the grading system was that within a category, all items are weighted equally. You could not give more weight to one assessment than another.

However, I was able to overcome some of my objections by including general effort in a unit as one of the graded categories, as well as informal assessments. The other considerations could be part of the comment section, which is my favorite part of this system. Engrade makes giving students regular feedback an easy, intentional part of their learning. If the comment section is filled with instructive, positive and regular feedback, it can help students and parents see exactly where the student is improving and doing well, and what needs attention.

In addition, Engrade is a strong communication tool between classroom and home in that it not only provides quick information about the ongoing progress of the student, but also information concerning upcoming classroom due dates and attendance history. The privacy of individual information is also, of course, an important feature of the site.

Engrade gets an A- for communication. If used on a regular basis, as grades are given in class, it provides a more continuous, timely feedback of information to the learner and parents. It is another tool that can help us communicate with these other two parts of the learning equation. To complete the communication circle, the only thing I would add to the site is a quick link to the teacher's email.