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.