Friday, June 24, 2011
WICKED PROBLEM PROJECT
PROBLEM
I teach Integrated Geometry Strategies, which is a 10th grade math support class that students take in addition to their regular math class if they historically have had trouble with math. I have tried several differentiated instruction ideas; however, I have not been able to fully engage my students to learn the curriculum, which in turn produces behavior issues.
SOLUTION
I wanted to find a way to assess my students’ learning but also keep them engaged in an activity. From doing research and having discussions with colleagues, I decided to utilize student response devices with this group of students in order to engage them in learning the Geometry curriculum. I hoped to be able to see directly if their engagement affects their learning based on their results from the response devices. I will use the data to shape my practice as well as get students more involved.
To evaluate the success of this solution, I will focus on several areas including my students’ learning and my effectiveness as a teacher due to the student response devices. I will be able to tell if students are engaged if they actively participate, seek to understand why they got a problem incorrect, and get excited to use the technology. By using this system, I will be able to monitor my students’ individual responses, track their progress, and students will get immediate feedback. I will also be able to tell when a majority of students have a misconception about a question and can address it on the spot, which I hadn’t been able to before.
TPACK
When determining the educational need for my students, I immediately thought of this support math class because many of my students lack the motivation to learn, which affects their behavior in class. Their current need is engagement in their lessons, which should increase their motivation. I chose to use the CPS Student Response Devices as a way to engage my students in their lesson, to allow them to receive immediate feedback, which should in turn motivate them to improve their scores the next time around. This would be where technology meets with pedagogy. With the availability of immediate feedback, I will be able to address the educational needs of my students and/or alter my lessons and examples if necessary.
Standardized testing is a major component to the Integrated Geometry curriculum. Something that should help my students achieve success on these assessments is the practice of answering multiple-choice questions along with the ability to quickly see their results. Because the Student Response Devices that students will use allows for only multiple-choice answering, this should help them to better comprehend test-taking strategies for these types of questions. Alternately, I may have the students do the work on paper and explain the steps they had to take before they can select the correct answer. Then they can turn the work in at the end of the review session. Also, the CPS results will help direct me in the type of classroom instruction I will give my students in the days leading up to their final exam. This is where technology and content overlaps. By reviewing lessons that cover the content that students have misconceptions about, it will improve overall understanding of the curriculum. Another thought would be to have students monitor their progress using the CPS data and then review their most-missed problems each night.
The teaching approaches that I will use during this review lesson that specifically address the Integrated Geometry Strategies course will focus on students’ prior knowledge from previous lessons or courses. Another pedagogical approach I will use will be addressing misconceptions about the content. Since my students’ needs fall under engagement and motivation, having various representations of questions, answers, and feedback will help cover a wide range of the learners in my class. Keeping the lesson moving with minimal distractions will also keep my students focused and engaged with the content. Finally, students will be receiving grades for participation and possibly for accuracy, which can be altered depending on their behavior. These approaches demonstrate the connection between pedagogy and content knowledge.
Link to Entire Wicked Problem Project
Link to Part A
Link to Part B
Link to Part C
Link to Part D
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
CEP 811 Final Reflection
1. What are some things that you have learned about effective teaching strategies when integrating technology?
This course made me think about the ways in which I could effectively integrate technology into my lessons. In the first session, the scholarship of teaching was introduced as a way to get teachers to focus on engaging students in the lesson designing process and collaborating with others. I also learned that instead of simply deciding on a technology and finding a place for it in a lesson, I should develop a lesson based on Instructional Design and UDL (universal design for learning) principles. These principles suggest that curriculum should be designed to “address the diverse needs, strengths, background, and interests of students in today’s classrooms.” Then, I will be able to use an appropriate technology tool in my lesson to promote student engagement and achievement.
2. How did integrating web-based technologies help you think about and evaluate uses of technology?
When I learned about the different web-based technologies that are available for education, I felt both excitement and relief. There are several new technology tools for education available with the creation of web 2.0, in which many are free. By having access to educational internet tools, such as WebQuests, students are able to learn and review content easily and perhaps in a more engaging way than before. Something else that I had not thought much of before is the idea that these technologies can help enrich a lesson so that it is accessible to many different types of learners. Whether it is for captions, translators, audio, visual, etc., adding educational technology to a lesson, or classroom in general, can produce a positive outcome for the learning of all students.
3. How have you met your own personal goals for learning about technology integration?
By taking 4 online courses in educational technology during the past year, many of my goals have been met, the largest one being to take at least one new tool from each class and successfully use it in my classroom this year. However, I have also acquired several new goals because of all of the many opportunities I was given to learn about these tools for the classroom. I had no idea how much was out there in terms of physical technology tools (cell phones, e-readers, iPods, clickers, tablets, etc.), web-based tools (wiki, glogster, wordle, screencast, prezi, weebly, merlot, etc.), and even software tools that promote learning (StAIR,audacity, moviemaker, etc.). I want to integrate all of the tools that I have not had time yet to use with my students and continue to explore the ones I have introduced.
4. Do you have any new goals? What are your plans for reaching your new goals and your long-term goals after this course is over?
As stated above, many new goals formed frequently with the amount of tools that I was exposed to over the course of the year. After I complete my Master’s degree, I plan to incorporate at least one new tool in every math unit I teach. Between now and next summer I plan to further my professional learning for my own good and the good of my students, even after I explore the all of the tools that I learned about during these courses. I have also volunteered to lead a local school staff development on integrating technology into the classroom for the teachers at my high school in the fall. As users of technology know, the tools available keep updating, changing, and are constantly being created, so I must keep that in mind. I will continue to be active on and seek support from the many forums and professional networks I am a part of including MACUL space, Merlot, Classroom 2.0, and various blogs and websites I have bookmarked on the topic of educational technology.
This course made me think about the ways in which I could effectively integrate technology into my lessons. In the first session, the scholarship of teaching was introduced as a way to get teachers to focus on engaging students in the lesson designing process and collaborating with others. I also learned that instead of simply deciding on a technology and finding a place for it in a lesson, I should develop a lesson based on Instructional Design and UDL (universal design for learning) principles. These principles suggest that curriculum should be designed to “address the diverse needs, strengths, background, and interests of students in today’s classrooms.” Then, I will be able to use an appropriate technology tool in my lesson to promote student engagement and achievement.
2. How did integrating web-based technologies help you think about and evaluate uses of technology?
When I learned about the different web-based technologies that are available for education, I felt both excitement and relief. There are several new technology tools for education available with the creation of web 2.0, in which many are free. By having access to educational internet tools, such as WebQuests, students are able to learn and review content easily and perhaps in a more engaging way than before. Something else that I had not thought much of before is the idea that these technologies can help enrich a lesson so that it is accessible to many different types of learners. Whether it is for captions, translators, audio, visual, etc., adding educational technology to a lesson, or classroom in general, can produce a positive outcome for the learning of all students.
3. How have you met your own personal goals for learning about technology integration?
By taking 4 online courses in educational technology during the past year, many of my goals have been met, the largest one being to take at least one new tool from each class and successfully use it in my classroom this year. However, I have also acquired several new goals because of all of the many opportunities I was given to learn about these tools for the classroom. I had no idea how much was out there in terms of physical technology tools (cell phones, e-readers, iPods, clickers, tablets, etc.), web-based tools (wiki, glogster, wordle, screencast, prezi, weebly, merlot, etc.), and even software tools that promote learning (StAIR,audacity, moviemaker, etc.). I want to integrate all of the tools that I have not had time yet to use with my students and continue to explore the ones I have introduced.
4. Do you have any new goals? What are your plans for reaching your new goals and your long-term goals after this course is over?
As stated above, many new goals formed frequently with the amount of tools that I was exposed to over the course of the year. After I complete my Master’s degree, I plan to incorporate at least one new tool in every math unit I teach. Between now and next summer I plan to further my professional learning for my own good and the good of my students, even after I explore the all of the tools that I learned about during these courses. I have also volunteered to lead a local school staff development on integrating technology into the classroom for the teachers at my high school in the fall. As users of technology know, the tools available keep updating, changing, and are constantly being created, so I must keep that in mind. I will continue to be active on and seek support from the many forums and professional networks I am a part of including MACUL space, Merlot, Classroom 2.0, and various blogs and websites I have bookmarked on the topic of educational technology.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Group Leadership Project
1. What tool did your group use to deliver the PD tutorial? Why?
Our group chose to create a Screencast-o-matic tutorial on Google Docs as well as its many features including Google Presentation, Spreadsheet, Form, and Drawing. The reasoning behind this decision was because Screencast-o-matic was recommended by my CEP instructor and you did not need to create and account or log in to create a screencast. It allowed you to save in multiple file formats, upload directly to YouTube, and embed your video. We chose to feature Google Docs as the tutorial topic because we felt that so many people do not know about the features and convenience of this cloud computing program, especially in the education world. I, for one, had not heard of this application until taking CEP 810 and now use it on a regular basis, for both professional and personal reasons. I feel as though other teachers could benefit from having access to and knowledge of Google Docs for enhancing their lessons as well as making interaction with colleagues and students easier.
2. What did you learn during the development process of the final product?
Making our professional development tutorial as a group proved to be quite the learning experience. We started our Group Leadership Project by brainstorming what type of tutorial we wanted to create by holding web conference using the application Vyew, which was new to all of us. The actual web conference went fairly smooth and we decided on Google Docs for our tutorial. However, figuring out how to record, save, and upload a screen cast of this conference was challenging. I volunteered to be in charge of this aspect of the project and eventually (a week later!) pieced together our Brainstorm video using the hosting feature of screencast.com. Next, we created a storyboard for our tutorial video using none other than Google Documents, which Megan kindly set up for us. We decided upon a logical arrangement of splitting up the work since we wanted to include 4 features of Google Docs: Megan was going to create the portion for Documents, Kevin went with Presentations, Laura with Spreadsheets and Forms, and I took on Drawings. We met 4 times during the course of this project via Vyew and sent countless e-mails and Angel discussion posts back and forth to discuss our progress and what we needed to work on next. During this time, we worked well as a team and completed our assignments for part A and B on time. When working on putting together our final product, Laura graciously agreed to glue together all 4 of our tutorials into one video. This presented a few difficulties because the final video’s time length was much longer than was required and because of that it could only be uploaded if we separated it into two separate videos. With time dwindling down, we had to make some decisions to cut down on part of our intended parts to the tutorial. Because our main focus was on Google Documents, we had Laura drop the additional features of Presentations, Spreadsheets, Forms, and Drawings out of our final tutorial. However, because my part was one that was left off, I included the link to our original two videos for further learning (See
Original Tutorial Part 2 below for Google Drawing).
3. What would you do differently if you had to develop a similar product again?
When all was said and done, the arrangement for our tutorial could have been made in a more effect way. Instead of each of us creating our own videos, it would have been nice for one person to be the narrator and facilitator of the screen cast. That way, we would not have to scramble at the end to make cuts from each others’ videos and essentially change our initial focus for the tutorial. It also would sound more polished and professional if our video had one voice as opposed to 4 voices.
Final Tutorial Version
Original Tutorial Part 1
Original Tutorial Part 2
Link to Part A: Brainstorm
Link to Part B: Storyboard
Our group chose to create a Screencast-o-matic tutorial on Google Docs as well as its many features including Google Presentation, Spreadsheet, Form, and Drawing. The reasoning behind this decision was because Screencast-o-matic was recommended by my CEP instructor and you did not need to create and account or log in to create a screencast. It allowed you to save in multiple file formats, upload directly to YouTube, and embed your video. We chose to feature Google Docs as the tutorial topic because we felt that so many people do not know about the features and convenience of this cloud computing program, especially in the education world. I, for one, had not heard of this application until taking CEP 810 and now use it on a regular basis, for both professional and personal reasons. I feel as though other teachers could benefit from having access to and knowledge of Google Docs for enhancing their lessons as well as making interaction with colleagues and students easier.
2. What did you learn during the development process of the final product?
Making our professional development tutorial as a group proved to be quite the learning experience. We started our Group Leadership Project by brainstorming what type of tutorial we wanted to create by holding web conference using the application Vyew, which was new to all of us. The actual web conference went fairly smooth and we decided on Google Docs for our tutorial. However, figuring out how to record, save, and upload a screen cast of this conference was challenging. I volunteered to be in charge of this aspect of the project and eventually (a week later!) pieced together our Brainstorm video using the hosting feature of screencast.com. Next, we created a storyboard for our tutorial video using none other than Google Documents, which Megan kindly set up for us. We decided upon a logical arrangement of splitting up the work since we wanted to include 4 features of Google Docs: Megan was going to create the portion for Documents, Kevin went with Presentations, Laura with Spreadsheets and Forms, and I took on Drawings. We met 4 times during the course of this project via Vyew and sent countless e-mails and Angel discussion posts back and forth to discuss our progress and what we needed to work on next. During this time, we worked well as a team and completed our assignments for part A and B on time. When working on putting together our final product, Laura graciously agreed to glue together all 4 of our tutorials into one video. This presented a few difficulties because the final video’s time length was much longer than was required and because of that it could only be uploaded if we separated it into two separate videos. With time dwindling down, we had to make some decisions to cut down on part of our intended parts to the tutorial. Because our main focus was on Google Documents, we had Laura drop the additional features of Presentations, Spreadsheets, Forms, and Drawings out of our final tutorial. However, because my part was one that was left off, I included the link to our original two videos for further learning (See
Original Tutorial Part 2 below for Google Drawing).
3. What would you do differently if you had to develop a similar product again?
When all was said and done, the arrangement for our tutorial could have been made in a more effect way. Instead of each of us creating our own videos, it would have been nice for one person to be the narrator and facilitator of the screen cast. That way, we would not have to scramble at the end to make cuts from each others’ videos and essentially change our initial focus for the tutorial. It also would sound more polished and professional if our video had one voice as opposed to 4 voices.
Final Tutorial Version
Original Tutorial Part 1
Original Tutorial Part 2
Link to Part A: Brainstorm
Link to Part B: Storyboard
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Monday, June 13, 2011
WICKED PROBLEM PROJECT - PART D - FINDINGS AND IMPLICATIONS
For my Wicked Problem Project, my plan was implemented fairly close to the way I planned for it. As I mentioned in my podcast for part C of this project, I started a day earlier than I anticipated, but still within an appropriate timeframe to yield results. I did not, however, use the student response devices with my students every single school day during this time as originally planned. Nevertheless, I did review misconceptions from the previous day on the in-between days. Logistically, there were a few dilemmas, such as altering the time limit that the students had to answer the question and then losing my data after the fact. This did not prevent the desired results of increased student engagement and behavior.
The evidence of success came from a data stand point as well as from a teacher standpoint. First, even though I lost my original data after I shut down the CPS program on my computer, I did record the type of problems that a majority of students got wrong. I added more of these types of problems to the next review lesson with the clickers and then compared the change in percent correct. In almost all of these questions, the percentage correct increased. In more than half of the questions, the percentage correct was 90% or higher. Second, in order to conclude that students were more engaged and better behaved, I observed and listened to my students during this time period. Most of them participated more than they had in the past, many of them spoke of their enjoyment and, more importantly to me, I rarely had to redirect students because of their behavior.
I really would like to try this project again but by using a different type of technology to enhance engagement and behavior. I received a Interwrite Mobi Tablet this past school year that I have yet to try out. I think by having the ability to do what is typically done on the board anywhere in the classroom would be to my advantage as well as my students’. I would be able to be closer to students in order to discourage disruptions and mischief which would promote more focus.
This project has produced many benefits in terms of student engagement and learning, as explained above. The biggest benefit I have gained from doing this project is seeing how technology can change an area of my teaching and classroom management. If a teacher is looking for something new to add to his or her practice to get instant student engagement, student response devices are one way to go. Although the clickers do have some “manual labor” involved in setting up a set of questions for the students and analyzing the data, the benefits outweigh the losses.
If given the chance to repeat this project again, I would change a few aspects to my plan. I would like to test my plan over at least a month to be sure the novelty of the technology does not ware off causing the behavior and disengagement to return. I also would like to supply students with surveys (via online, texting, or simply clickers) to ask their thoughts on the response devices and the effect it has on their learning. Overall, I can take away a valuable learning experience through this Wicked Problem Project.
The evidence of success came from a data stand point as well as from a teacher standpoint. First, even though I lost my original data after I shut down the CPS program on my computer, I did record the type of problems that a majority of students got wrong. I added more of these types of problems to the next review lesson with the clickers and then compared the change in percent correct. In almost all of these questions, the percentage correct increased. In more than half of the questions, the percentage correct was 90% or higher. Second, in order to conclude that students were more engaged and better behaved, I observed and listened to my students during this time period. Most of them participated more than they had in the past, many of them spoke of their enjoyment and, more importantly to me, I rarely had to redirect students because of their behavior.
I really would like to try this project again but by using a different type of technology to enhance engagement and behavior. I received a Interwrite Mobi Tablet this past school year that I have yet to try out. I think by having the ability to do what is typically done on the board anywhere in the classroom would be to my advantage as well as my students’. I would be able to be closer to students in order to discourage disruptions and mischief which would promote more focus.
This project has produced many benefits in terms of student engagement and learning, as explained above. The biggest benefit I have gained from doing this project is seeing how technology can change an area of my teaching and classroom management. If a teacher is looking for something new to add to his or her practice to get instant student engagement, student response devices are one way to go. Although the clickers do have some “manual labor” involved in setting up a set of questions for the students and analyzing the data, the benefits outweigh the losses.
If given the chance to repeat this project again, I would change a few aspects to my plan. I would like to test my plan over at least a month to be sure the novelty of the technology does not ware off causing the behavior and disengagement to return. I also would like to supply students with surveys (via online, texting, or simply clickers) to ask their thoughts on the response devices and the effect it has on their learning. Overall, I can take away a valuable learning experience through this Wicked Problem Project.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Group Leadership Project - Part B - Storyboard
For our storyboard, each group member was responsible for a part of our tutorial. There are 4 parts total for the Google Docs tutorial that include Google Docs, Google Presentation, Google Spreadsheets and Forms, and Google Drawing. Megan chose to discuss Google Documents, Kevin chose Presentation, Laura chose Spreadsheets and Forms together, and I chose Drawing. We also chose a storyboard template from the link that our instructor displayed in Angel’s communication links. We uploaded this document to, none other than, Google Docs and collaborated on it throughout the past few weeks. Together as a group, we spent time editing and met once to chat in the discussion feature of Google Docs. All of our chats for this project are located in our group’s Angel discussion forum under “Group Documents”.
In order to create my portion of the storyboard, I played around with Google Drawing to be sure I fully understood the basic functions it allowed. I then came up with an order for the objects and features I wanted to highlight in the tutorial. I screen-captured all of these items and highlighted the object that was being discussed or that needed to be clicked. After I saved all of the screen shots, I uploaded them into the “visual description or sketch goes here” portions of storyboard and proceeded to create a script for each slide. Since Google Drawing will be our last portion of our tutorial, I took it upon my self to add a small conclusion slide with script. I had thought of just using Photo Story to upload my screen shots and record the narration, but then decided I wanted to make it look more like a tutorial video. Therefore, I will use Screecast-o-Matic. By using this program, the viewer will be able to see the motions of my cursor and more detail than if they were just seeing screen shots. All group members decided to use this program for their part, and then we will put all 4 video together for our final tutorial using Windows Movie Maker.
Link to Storyboard and Script
In order to create my portion of the storyboard, I played around with Google Drawing to be sure I fully understood the basic functions it allowed. I then came up with an order for the objects and features I wanted to highlight in the tutorial. I screen-captured all of these items and highlighted the object that was being discussed or that needed to be clicked. After I saved all of the screen shots, I uploaded them into the “visual description or sketch goes here” portions of storyboard and proceeded to create a script for each slide. Since Google Drawing will be our last portion of our tutorial, I took it upon my self to add a small conclusion slide with script. I had thought of just using Photo Story to upload my screen shots and record the narration, but then decided I wanted to make it look more like a tutorial video. Therefore, I will use Screecast-o-Matic. By using this program, the viewer will be able to see the motions of my cursor and more detail than if they were just seeing screen shots. All group members decided to use this program for their part, and then we will put all 4 video together for our final tutorial using Windows Movie Maker.
Link to Storyboard and Script
Online Teaching Experiences
The Online Learning Experience Guidelines that the Michigan Department of Education created is a very helpful document for all teachers, not just in Michigan. Even though some of the resources were specific to Michigan, as a teacher in Georgia, I took away many interesting ideas for developing online experiences for my math students. Some of these resources include:
Discovery Education – This site includes math worksheets and math vocabulary worksheets as well as step-by-step webMATH tutorial videos.
Best Webquests – I came across this site during our webquest session and it included a few useful webquests for high school math students on real-world topics.
Wikispaces – This site allows for collaboration, projects, discussions, and questions and can be used for many different content areas. I didn’t find Front Page Wiki to be as user friendly as Wikispaces, but it did give some advice as to creating a wiki.
Educational Podcast Network – This site hosts many different types of video podcasts, such as math tutorials.
Moodle – This learning management site could be used more so with online classes, but I could use this as the online portion to my math class.
Noodle Tools – This site helps educators with online learning, collaboration, and ethics for research. It related more to literacy, reading, and writing courses, but could be useful in other content areas.
Electronic Portfolios – I saw this as a neat tool for elementary teachers to use to collect/gather all work from the year to show parents. I think it would be beneficial for high school students to do this as well to make a compilation of their work and accomplishments.
Adobe Breeze – I’ve had some experience with this during my online classes, but thought it would be convenient to use web conferencing for office hours with my high school students.
Discovery Education – This site includes math worksheets and math vocabulary worksheets as well as step-by-step webMATH tutorial videos.
Best Webquests – I came across this site during our webquest session and it included a few useful webquests for high school math students on real-world topics.
Wikispaces – This site allows for collaboration, projects, discussions, and questions and can be used for many different content areas. I didn’t find Front Page Wiki to be as user friendly as Wikispaces, but it did give some advice as to creating a wiki.
Educational Podcast Network – This site hosts many different types of video podcasts, such as math tutorials.
Moodle – This learning management site could be used more so with online classes, but I could use this as the online portion to my math class.
Noodle Tools – This site helps educators with online learning, collaboration, and ethics for research. It related more to literacy, reading, and writing courses, but could be useful in other content areas.
Electronic Portfolios – I saw this as a neat tool for elementary teachers to use to collect/gather all work from the year to show parents. I think it would be beneficial for high school students to do this as well to make a compilation of their work and accomplishments.
Adobe Breeze – I’ve had some experience with this during my online classes, but thought it would be convenient to use web conferencing for office hours with my high school students.
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