integration and synthesis

Final Reflection: "Did the use of technology lead to deeper learning?"

2010-04-13T03:46:00.001-07:00

"Did the use of technology lead to deeper learning?" In asking myself this question, I wanted to answer 'yes' but also wanted to discuss the question and my perceptions with others. Unfortunately it's 11 pm at night and bar waking someone from bed I was alone. I turned to Google to search and find other's answers to this question online. My online search for discussion and reflection on the question led me to the following sites and articles.

Deep Learning with Technology in 14- to 19-year old learners - Final Report from the University of Bristol (July 2009)

It was helpful to find a definition here of 'deep learning':

"The term ‘deep learning’ was first conceptualised by Marton and Säljö (1979). ... They found two different conceptions of learning, namely a reproductive conception – which gives rise to a surface approach where the learner is intent on simply understanding the content and coping with the task – and a deeper level of processing where learners are engaged in meaning-making and identifying the significance of what they are studying." (pg 3)

"Simms (2006) describes a deep learner as an articulate, autonomous but collaborative learner, with high meta-cognitive control and the generic skills of learning, which suggests that deep learners have developed a certain kind of learner identity." (pg 14)

There were three key themes that emerged from their study:

Subject culture is one of the main drivers for how students use technology. There is some evidence for features of deep learning in different subject cultures.
The issue of emerging adult identity is very much connected to how young people select and use different technologies.
The ways in which technology bridges the formal and informal learning contexts – and their implications for deep learning – are complex and require further study. (pg 5)

There were a range of factors and conditions the University of Bristol found in their study that support deep learning with ICT for the 14-19 age group:

engagement and participation in the subject discourse and practices
sufficient time to engage in the task and in the subject discourse
a high level of control over task, time, and ways of working
appropriate level of maturation for the requirements of the task
relationship and engagement with peers and others, including tutors
relationship between personal identity and the subject discourse and practices
easily navigable communication and tasks which bridge the formal and informal, including bridging the school/college setting and the home setting. (pg 26)

Considering my initial raw answer to the question posed at the start of this blog as well as what I read online and reflected upon, I would still say "Yes, the the use of technology lead to deeper learning in my classrooms." In their language and science studies with embedded technology standards students went way beyond mere recitation. Students were indeed engaged in meaning-making in and indentifying the significance of what they were learning by the end of each unit. I feel this success was met to a certain degree by unknowingly establishing the factors and conditions set forth in the Bristol study as conducive of deep learning with ICT in my science and ESL classrooms. As with much of educational pedagogy, the conditions and factors conducive of effective learning cross disciplinary boundaries. As an experienced teacher I am well aware of the benefits and need to establish these conditions in my classrooms. Best practice for literacy, whether scientific literacy, linguistic literacy, or technology and information literacy, transcends disciplines at its core and where met supports deep learning.

See Mind Over Matter: Transforming Course Management Systems into Effective Learning Environments (November/December 2002) for an interesting read on course management systems such as PantherNET and deep learning.

Crossing the finish line

2010-04-13T03:45:00.001-07:00

My blogs (and feelings) tend to be cautious and perhaps skewed towards a discussion of the hurdles rather than victories resultant from my growing use of technology in my high school ESL and science classes. I decided at the end of this, our last of five COETAIL courses for the ISB Certificate of Educational Technology and Information Literacy Program, to share some of the victories along the way in my 15-month journey. My goal and the goal of the program is to enable students with the skills, knowledge, understandings, and habits of mind they need to become more effective learners, communicators and creators, and global collaborators in today's digital world.

Reflecting on these three goals, I would say the embedded use of technology in my class units and lessons has allowed my students to first and foremost become better global collaborators and creators, followed by better communicators, and then learners. I feel this ranking shows a key benefit to students of embedding TAIL standards in our high school curricula. It fills in gaps and provides a necessary balance of skills, knowledge, understandings, and habits of mind needed by today's digital natives. While I feel our ESL (and science curricula) is already strong in its ability to create effective communicators and learners, drawing upon and embedding TAIL standards into these curricula provide greater opportunities for students to develop into effective global collaborators and creators.

Effective global collaborators and creators...

The other day in class, students were working in groups of two to three on revising a drama they had jointly created. Not being a digital native as are my students, I had asked for printed copies of their scripts and had provided feedback in written pen on the printed page. (It's still easier on my eyes than the computer when there are many papers to mark.) Given 40 minutes at the start of class to revise their five-minute scripts, students in one group, then the next and the next said "Google Docs! Let's use Google Docs and we can get it done twice as fast. You work on page ... and I'll work on page ..." and they were off. Having introduced Google Docs to the students early in the year, it had now become part of their personal tool set—they knew what it was, its benefits, how to use it, and the appropriate time to use it. As the drama developed and the writing process utilized, students used Google Docs to collaboratively share, work on, and save the dramas they created both in and outside of class.

Effective global collaborators and creators...

Another class. Another day. Setting up a shared online glossary of high frequency words with my beginning ESL students I wanted each student to link their Word Maps to the glossary entry they created for each word in order to share with each other additional information they had learned about each word while working on, revising and finalizing their Word Maps. I came to class prepared to show the students how to use Google Docs. To my surprise, students had already used Google Docs in another class and with a quick review of the basics and new instructions on how to share and link documents uploaded to Google Docs, students were quickly posting and sharing their Word Maps as a Google Doc link through our online glossaries.

Effective communicators and learners...

Online every day. Emails from students arrive nightly. Seeking clarification on assignments and content material. Asking for feedback on their labs and classwork. Turning in work and sharing information. Students know how to "find and use information to construct meaning and solve problems". Students must "communicate effectively and responsibly"

Effective communicators and learners (and creators)...

PantherNET. Student resources. Assignments. Forums. Glossaries. Wikis. Latest News. We have tried them all. Place for sharing information and resources. Creating, discussing and posting evidence of learning. Connecting and learning from each other during class and at home.

My students and I have crossed one arbitrary finish line together—the conclusion of the ISB COETAIL Program—as better global collaborators, creators, communicators and learners. However, the end of the course is not the end of the race. For the race continues. The goal of preparing students to meet the content and TAIL standards essential to become fully functioning members of today's digital world will always remain unmet as it is a moving goal on a continuum of students' developing knowledge, skills, understandings and habits of minds. More hurdles and successes are expected. But the path we must take is clear if our goal is for our students to become effective learners, communicators, creators and global collaborators of the 21st Century. The path for my students and I must be one of integration and synthesis: a curriculum that draws upon and links the standards of scientific literacy, linguistic literacy, and education technology and information literacy.

First Experience as Teacher of a Virtual Classroom

2010-04-13T03:44:00.000-07:00

Due to a two-day school closure immediately preceding our spring break and subsequent to many earlier cancellations of after school activities, our school finally asked teachers to conduct classes online on Friday April 9th. Given the current political instability in Thailand, the onset of virtual classes on Friday had been preceded by many messages (or warnings to those teachers not yet ready to go online with their classes) from the school's administrators to be ready to continue learning online via PantherNET (the school run Virtual Learning Environment) in the case of a school closure. The day had arrived.

With equal amounts of excitement and trepidation I began to rethink my day's lessons and outcomes for an online medium. Using PantherNET daily with my students, I felt well prepared in the midst of the warnings of a school closure to seamlessly continue my classes online. As it was the last school day before spring break, I as had most teachers (to the chagrin and likely detriment of our overburdened and stressed students—the majority of our students?) had planned to give summative assessments in my classes Thursday and Friday (we see each class every other day for 85 minutes). On Friday I was to have seen my EAP 10 classes and on Thursday (the 8th) my Foundations Physics 9 and Communications classes. By SMS, the school website and email, teachers, students and parents were informed Thursday night and Friday morning that learning would continue online K-12 via PantherNET. Whether this would be retroactive for Thursday's missed classes was not clear to me; however, wanting to try out various options for continuation of learning online, I posted work for both my Thursday and Friday classes.

'Real' (f2f) Class Plans
Foundations Physics: (1) Section Quiz, (2) Return and reflect on Lab Activity Note, (3) Lab Activity
Foundations Communications: (1) Return and discuss 2 formative language assessments, (2) Graded Discussion
EAP 10: (1) Summative Vocabulary Quiz, (2) Collect final draft of group drama script (with earlier drafts and conference notes)
Biology In-class ESL Support: (1) Help students with language accessibility of unit exam

Virtual Class Plans
Foundations Physics: (1) Read over new Lab Activity CD "Question", "Help" and "Resources" files (students have CD of physics 9 labs); (2) Work through additional practice problems in "Assessments" file to review and prepare for section quiz to be given on the 21st (as spring break is an assessment/assignment free week)
Foundations Communications: Correct 2 formative assessments (grammar pre-test and vocabulary word map) and complete a second word map
EAP 10: Write a short composition using their vocabulary words

It's notable how radically I had to rethink my day's lessons for an online medium. While I felt learning did continue online for those students who submitted the work (only 20% or 2 out of every 10 students after posting the work over a week ago!), it was not the scope or sequence of learning I had planned before school was closed. Learning did continue online, but learning that entailed additional practice of 'old learning' and preparation for 'new learning' with all summative assessment of learning postponed until 'real' school reopened again after spring break. I made these choices to not introduce new learning and to not assess old learning as (1) I assume virtual school will be a one off two day affair (rightly or wrongly we will see on the 19th); (2) I am concerned about academic honesty taking a test online; (3) I am not confident when I am in the classroom again on Monday that students will have gone on PantherNET and completed the work / learning assigned there; and (4) it would take longer than I had and tools and experience my students and I lacked to do more.

Switching between a 'real' and a 'virtual' classroom does not seem to me to be a switch that can be easily made day by day. In preparing a lesson, the medium of instruction matters greatly. As teachers we were given a couple of hours the morning of the 9th to get lessons up on PantherNET for students to access. Were we able to post lessons (instructions, resources, links, etc.) for up to four classes in a couple of hours? "Yes." Were they of comparable quality (scope, sequence) and effectiveness as what we had planned f2f? I daresay "No". So why is such a quick switch between a 'real' and 'virtual' class lesson difficult? As with other K-12 online teachers (See Going Virtual: Unique Needs and Challenges of K-12 Online Teachers, a Boise State University national survey of 884 K-12 online teachers designed to identify the unique needs and challenges of K-12 online teachers)—albeit my online experience was only of two days—I found technology tools, facilitation, online content development, digital etiquette, assessment, leadership (management), special needs to be a challenge.

These seven areas posed unique and specific challenges. In terms of technology tools, my students and I were challenged to hold our planned graded discussion online. We could have used on online video chat for our discussion but neither the students nor I have yet to utilize such a tool for such a purpose. As a summative graded assessment I would first want to practice holding a discussion via an online chat prior to grading any such discussion. We could have also held our discussion on a forum or chat (sans video) but that would affect what is graded /the unit outcomes as body language, voice and pacing are found on the discussion rubric. As I stated earlier, it's not a simple switch between 'real' and 'virtual'. It could be done, but would require more than an hour to prepare and conduct and assess.

As for online content development, the Foundations Physics 9 course has an online CD of labs and activities (a CD lab textbook). However, conducting the labs require equipment such as motion detectors, interface, and probes that students do not have at home. Again, the labs could be adapted so that the set up could be done out of materials found in most households; however that would again conceivably affect unit outcomes and require more time than we were allotted.

In terms of digital etiquette and assessment I did worry about academic honesty and having students take and submit the Physics 9 section quiz online and the EAP 10 vocabulary quiz online. Both tests were designed to be given under traditional testing conditions; students were to have no access to their notes, books, electronic dictionaries, the Internet or other people. I could have set out conditions to ensure comparable testing conditions for the students at home as they would face at school (See Harvey Hinsz' blog on the same topic), or I could have rewritten the test so that the testing conditions would fit the students being at home with access to all the above help; however, I chose to postpone the test and give the students additional practice. Again without previous experience giving tests online and without the time to prepare a test designed to be given online, I changed the scope and sequence of my unit lesson.

As for assessment and special needs, the planned student-teacher conference and discussion of the Foundations Communications students' word maps continued; however, given the level of English of the students, a face to face discussion with the teacher is the most effective means of providing such feedback. Written feedback was already provided for each student's word map; yet, students at this level often have difficulty understanding teacher feedback (whether due to conceptual or syntactic understanding of written feedback, familiarity with editing marks or even teacher handwriting itself). While I did scan and post each student's word play with my handwritten feedback on PantherNET for them to revise, I know I will have to go back in person and explain parts of my previous feedback as students at this level are greatly aided by teacher-student one to one discussion and feedback.

In terms of management, my students were unprepared to find a lesson on PantherNET. My students typically access PantherNET for resources and a copy of their homework as assigned in class. PantherNET is a supplement to our class, a place to go to find a copy of resources and homework given out in class. As a result, only 20% of my students have completed the assigned lesson after a week (the due date set by the administrators is Monday the 19th, recognizing that students may not have known there were lessons waiting for them on PantherNET) . Just as it's hard to switch a classroom from a 'real' to a 'virtual' classroom in a day it's hard to switch an online tool from a 'resource room' to a 'classroom' in one day. All of these challenges were further compounded by the fact that students did not know school was going to be closed (that they were switching from a real to virtual classroom) so some students did not even have the materials they needed for their Friday virtual classes at home with them.

The day came. A virtual class. Two days...a start. What have I learned? Lessons are designed for a 'real' or a 'virtual' class, rarely will they do equally fine on both. An effective online unit should be designed for a virtual class from the onset...looking at assessments, outcomes, activities, and instruction. We (students and teachers) are all creatures of habit and while we can expect the unexpected we are never prepared for what we expect. ~James A. Michener

Final Design: HS ESL Independent Vocabulary Study

2010-04-13T00:37:00.000-07:00

For this second blog reflecting on the process of implementing the Independent Vocabulary Study Unit for my Foundations Communications students I have chosen to provide an overview of the final unit design in order to provide a context, a clarity, for my course five blogs.

As described in my first blog of course five and my final blog of course four, for my final coetail course project I chose to create an independent vocabulary study unit for my beginning ESL students in order to help students achieve or exceed their expected annual learning progress in vocabulary acquisition and to develop their technology and information literacy skills as appropriate to the proposed unit of study (See ISB K-12 ESL Speaking and Listening Outcomes, ESL and TAIL Enduring Understandings and Essential Questions from UbD plan linked at start of this blog). The unit is a fairly self-contained unit on our school's Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), pantherNET. All the instructions to get students started, to understand the scope and sequence of the unit, and to guide them through the teaching and learning cycle for this unit are located on pantherNET. There is a one page Introduction / Overview (Instructions) / Main Resource Page attached to an Online Glossary students will create with the words they independently select to study from self-assessment of the their level of understanding of the high-frequency words found on The Brown Corpus. Unit resources are linked on this page (through Google docs) as well as found as attachments on the main entry page for our course. From the main page, it can be seen that the course utilizes in addition to the online collaborative glossary (which includes embedded comments for shared discussion of each glossary entry), an online forum where students can share their reflections and learnings, and a wiki to share and link students' words throughout the course of their vocabulary studies. The online work is supported and reinforced by in-class (teacher-student, peer-to-peer, and independent) work, discussion, practice, assessment and reflection.

This unit is designed to (1) bring vertical alignment and coverage to our HS ESL curricula (Foundations 8/9/10, and EAP 9, 10, 11 and 12)— to introduce, reinforce and refine our HS independent online vocabulary study units in these five courses—and to (2) pilot additional Technology and Information Literacy (TAIL) Standards embedded in the unit so that our students' efforts to increase their vocabulary, and develop their vocabulary learning skills and strategies along with their technology and information literacy skills are introduced and scaffolded with our youngest and least proficient English language learners.

To this end, I redefined, modified, augmented, or substituted learning experiences and activities in the unit to develop students' technology and information literacy skills as appropriate to the proposed unit of study. I embedded opportunities for online collaboration between teachers and students and peer to peer through a redefinition of glossary comments and the addition of a class vocabulary study forum. The online creation of a shared glossary of student-selected words selected from The Brown Corpus along with the online comments and forum will substantially expand learning opportunities and experiences for the students as the time for such creation, sharing, collaboration, feedback and discussion would be hard to fit into current class structure and curriculum. I also embedded additional use of visual literacy strategies with the addition of a Word Map Graphic Organizer (which replaces simple answers to questions using the words as the students first formative task using the words) as well as addressed issues of copyright and fair use guidelines with the Word Maps and Online Glossary Entries. The Word Map Graphic Organizers are submitted online so that proper citation through active links to images found on the Web can be assessed.

I have also, following upon (adapting) the work of Vygotsky, included additional teaching and language learning activities and scaffolding at the earlier stages of the teaching and learning cycle as he proposes is necessary for students to become independent language learners:

Stage (1) Building the Field—extending everyday understandings (of the meanings of the words)

Stage (2) Modeling/Deconstruction—developing understanding of the structure (parts) and uses (of the words)

Stage (3) and Joint Construction—(teacher-student and peer-peer construction of meaningful discourse using the word)

Stage (4) Independent Construction—(student construction of meaningful discourse using the word)

By again redefining, modifying, augmenting, and substituting various elements from the independent vocabulary study of the older, more proficient ESL students, I have brought the HS ESL Independent Vocabulary Study Unit within the zone of proximal development for the Foundations students. Notably, I have provided more opportunities for modeling, sharing, feedback, collaboration, discussion (more formative learning experiences) before the final summative assessment. Specifically, I chose to replace the AWL with The Brown Corpus as the source from which students (upon self-assessment of their understanding of the words) draw words for their independent vocabulary studies. I have provided more model questions and answers using the students' chosen words. With the Word Map Graphic Organizer, students are asked to deconstruct the words more fully before attempting to use the words. And through increased opportunities for teacher-student and peer-peer collaboration through the online glossary, comments, forum and in class opportunities as outlined above, there are more opportunities for joint construction before students' independent constructions and understandings of the words are assessed.

All of these changes, both those related to technology and information literacy as well as research-based best practice for English language learning, have enlarged the scope and sequence of the unit as currently taught in the other ESL classes both in terms of the addition of TAIL Standards and the necessary scaffolding for rank beginners new to the English language. At the end of the year, I hope to share my work at embedding TAIL Standards into the HS ESL independent vocabulary study unit for my Foundation students with the EAP 9, 10, 11, and 12 teachers in hopes of embedding the same or similar standards in their own course-specific independent vocabulary study units.

The First Hurdle: Unreliable Technology (Yes, this is a rant!)

2010-04-12T01:48:00.000-07:00

In designing and implementing the UbD unit planned in course 4: HS ESL Independent Vocabulary Study for the current coetail course I quickly encountered my first peril, unreliable technology—a critical challenge as the unit required the use of embedded technology to enhance student learning. Student learning was delayed by this first hurdle both in delaying the design of the online unit and in delaying student access to the online unit created.

Our school has seen a growth in the use of various technological media in education such as school blogs, panthernet (the school run Virtual Learning Environment that would host the online vocabulary study unit), powerschool and other Intranet and Internet based sites over the past three years. This growth has increasingly burdened the school server. As traffic increased, access to the school server and its Intranet based sites became increasingly unreliable. In the last three months, this burden on the server was made clear to users as students, teachers and parents were often unable to access these sites as they were timed out when trying (as the traffic was heavy) or the servers and connected sites were simply down and inaccessible. Fortunately, the school server was upgraded to handle this increased traffic just three weeks ago and all appears to be working well again. Unfortunately for my students and I, our online vocabulary study unit was designed and is lodged on panthernet so the time to design and implement the unit was unfortunately delayed by a good month.

But that is not the end of my technology woes in starting up this project. Did I mention I live in Bangbuathong, the village of the golden lotus. We have many temples, klongs, and open markets but reliable and fast Internet connections have yet to reach our small Thai village. Compounding the overburdened school server I had the weak IT infrastructure for web-based learning (or any use requiring broadband Internet) in the provinces to deal with when working after school hours. When traffic gets heavy across the lines in our village, connections time out, connections are dropped, and the Internet goes down about every twenty minutes. Patience and an optimistic nature are needed to attempt web-based learning in the village of the golden lotus!

Did I mention I live in Thailand? The recent Thai political unrest, red shirts on the streets of Bangkok demanding the ouster of the current PM, has resulted in (among other actions such as a declared State of Emergency and school closures) the government stepping in to block Internet access to sites used by the red shirts to communicate online. However, the government hand that came down on the Internet was heavy and affected access to many sites...educational sites...sites used for this online project, especially during the design stage.

Could there be any more technological trials? How about three new students? In the past three weeks, three new students have entered our class. We have bee working on panthernet, on the vocabulary study unit, where all the instructions, resources, and assessments are compiled online in one place for the students. With the new students, our first challenge was to get them logged on to the school computers/the school network. We had immediate success with two out of the three students. After trying (the 'old' students and I) all that we knew to do, we called and sent the unlucky new student denied access to Ed Tech. The next challenge was to get the students on panthernet. No success. After another call to Ed Tech, we were informed the students were too 'new' to be in the system yet, and that the system would sync around 3 pm at which time the students should be able to access the panthernet. To summarize this class, ... Time spent on technological problem solving: 40 minutes ... Targeted language learning time: 0 minutes ... Frustration level: High.

Reading Perils and Promises of Educational Technology, I saw myself in the following excerpted quote "... challenges are that computers break down in ways that the teacher nor student can fix immediately. ... Any breakdown can cause a class to waste valuable time, ... In this scenario, it is equivalent to not having enough books for the students to study." I felt helpless. All that I needed to show and give and work together on with the new students was in a place we could not access. Not confident these new students would know how or be able to access the site that night, I printed the various pages and resources they needed that day.

So perils, challenges, hurdles, woes, and trials a plenty in the design and implementation stage of my final course project; however, if indeed "the end justifies the means" than all the time and effort was well-spent as all the students are now off and running (jogging? speed walking?) through their independent vocabulary study.

Reflection on Course 4 Final Project

2009-12-11T09:02:00.000-08:00

For my course 4 final project I chose to create an independent vocabulary study unit and assessment based around our ISB K12 ESL standards that incorporate the ISB TAIL (Technology and Information Literacy) standards. I had originally wanted to incorporate the ISB TAIL standards into our EAP 10 course unit on comparative writing and had discussed and begun to articulate how such a unit would look with Dennis Harter and Jeff Utecht (our two instructors for course 4) but was unable to then convince my EAP 10 team my 'technologically enhanced' vision for the curricular unit would sufficiently enhance student leaning to offset the extra time, effort and learning (and possible failure as we would be dealing with technology) on the part of the students and teachers in order to go forward with this unit plan.

I thus decided that I would lead by example and chose to integrate the ISB TAIL standards into a course in which I am a singleton teacher as there would then be no other teachers who not having taken this course need to be convinced it's our responsibility as educators to provide a 21st Century classroom where students can learn the skills, understandings and attitudes they need to be successful in the today's wired world. The class I chose is my Foundations Communications Class. The class is for 'near rank' beginners and has just been extended from a semester to year-long course, so as of yet there is no 'set' curriculum or curricular time line to work around so that a unit can be created from scratch integrating the K-12 ESL and TAIL standards. I chose to develop a vocabulary unit for the Foundations Communication class as the HS ESL department for the past two years has made vocabulary acquisition our HS ESL organization goal. Our department goal has been to improve and challenge student learning so that each student will achieve or exceed his or her expected annual learning progress in vocabulary acquisition. Furthermore, the team had already agreed to incorporate technology tools into our goal work by setting up a wiki website for students and teachers to collaborate on and demonstrate student learning as they work toward building a personal glossary of newly acquired words. This goal work was being done in grades 9-12 with all EAP (English for Academic Purposes) students but not with the Foundations students. It thus seemed ideal to choose to bring this goal work to the Foundations students while developing a brand new Foundations vocabulary unit incorporating K-12 ESL standards and TAIL standards that could serve as a model for the grade 9-12 EAP classes vocabulary units.

An initial sketch of this unit can be found on our course wiki.

Managing technology peripherals in the ESL classroom

2009-12-11T09:00:00.000-08:00

At ISB, we have a lot of technology tools (peripherals and equipment) and resources available to teachers and students K-12. As a high school ESL teacher, I am lucky that most of these tools are located and stored in the classroom or offices. Laptop computers for teachers and students, SMART Boards, wireless Internet, printers, video projectors, scanners, televisions, VHS and DVD players, audio cassette and CD players, document cameras, copiers, speakers, and more. Our library media center and EdTech departments also store overhead projectors, digital and video cameras, and external microphones for class use, but as most students and teachers in the High School have their own digital cameras or phones, I rarely have need to borrow these peripheral tech tools. The library DVDs are a digital resource I often make use of but again just as often I am able to download videos from the Internet that meet my classroom needs. This week's blog post question is "How do you manage the use of technology peripherals with students? What are some things you've learned (from this course) and hope to implement."

In terms of managing the use of technology peripherals in my class, most of the peripherals are attached to my computer and used with me or by me in the classroom so classroom management of these devises has not been an issue. However, what this course has taught me is that there are many other teaching, learning, or creative applications for these technology peripherals in the classrooms K-12 with the tools in the hands of the students rather than the teacher. In doing so however, I worry about two laws and one hypothesis aptly described by my fellow cohort member Rub Rubis in his weekly blog responding to these same two questions:

1) Murphy's Law—"If it can go wrong, it will"

2) Sod's Law—"A demonstration will always fail in front of an intended audience"

3) "Horseshoe Nail Hypothesis for Educators"—"For the want of a widget the lesson was lost.

However, in fear of these two laws and a hypothesis, I will not be discouraged from moving forward and creating a 21st Century classroom where technology tools are increasingly in the hands of students and teachers for the enhancement of student learning. For whenever Murphy's and Sod's Laws and the Horseshoe Nail for Educators for hypothesis enters my mind and discourages me, I will remember the following three quotes instead:

1) Quote: "You learn from your mistakes" (Thierry Henry)

2) Quote: “Fear of failure must never be a reason not to try something.” (Frederick Smith)

3) Quote: “You have to be willing to put in the time and be very patient with the technology” (Suzette Kliewer)

The last quote is from this week's readings from The New York Times, Industry Makes Pitch That Smartphones Belong in the Classroom.

Managing laptops in the ESL classroom and self access center

2009-12-11T08:58:00.000-08:00

Truthfully, managing two carts of 12 computers (actually only 23 computer as one was 'lost' last school year) that are assigned to our school's HS ESL department (composed of six teachers, including myself, who teach in eight different classrooms) is a headache that often turns into a migraine as the two carts are also shared with two other departments (Social Studies and English, comprising over ten other teachers and classrooms) and the parent-run Dutch program (run by an unknown number of unnamed parents). Zomig please!

For some personality types, this headache could be solved with a deep breadth or a shrug of the shoulders; I require regular doses of zomig. I am very organized (detail-oriented), rule-bound, and dare I say, controlling? (My daughter nods her head.) Rules for managing the use of computers, do we have them? Of course! With over 20 adults, 200 students, and 20 classrooms jointly using two carts of 23 computers on wheels, are the rules followed consistently (without exceptions) and with consequences for breaking the rules? Of course not!

RULES FOR USE OF THE ESL LAPTOPS
1. Student sign-out system
2. Honor system for the students
3. Lock the carts at the end of class
4. Guidelines for computer use:
a. check out for one class only
b. sign-out and sign-in
c. can check out a cart if it is free on the same day
d. for educational use only during ESL class
e. return and plug in laptops in the correct cart in the right spaces

These rules were developed by our department with Dennis Harter, our school's High School Technology and Learning Coordinator, after the loss of 'the computer' last year. The rules have helped, it is the end of semester 1 in one week and no computer has been lost over the past five months. Furthermore, the mysterious case of the disappearing and reappearing weekend and overnight computers has gone cold since the new rules have been implemented (another story, another blog). So why the headache? My very organized (detail-oriented), rule-bound, and controlling personality is under constant assault by the 'unspoken rules'.

'UNSPOKEN' RULES FOR USE OF THE ESL LAPTOPS
1. There is no student sign-out system although an empty clipboard with an empty sign-out chart is occasionally spotted on the top of the carts
2. Honor system for the students—Our saving grace!
3. Lock the carts at the end of class unless you forget your keys or forget to lock up the cart (and on days when you're really rushed the classroom itself)
4. Guidelines for computer use:
a. check out for one class only, but still feel free to get computers at any time from any cart as needed
b. sign-out and sign-in (See #1 above)
c. can check out a cart if it is free on the same day with the expectation that other 20 teachers and 200 students will come knocking on your door while you're teaching class looking for a computer
d. for educational use only during ESL class, when the teacher is looking
e. return and plug in laptops in the correct cart in the right spaces, or to the nearest cart with an available slot and plug in when you think of it or a teacher is watching

What advice or best practices would I recommend based on my experience managing a shared set of departmental school laptops? Rules help but they need to be agreed upon and enforced by all users of the computers. Every teacher and student needs to feel responsible for following the rules. There needs to be consequences for breaking the rules and these consequences need to be consistently followed through on by all teachers and for all students. And finally the value of the computer as an educational tool and school resource needs to be discussed with the students. Such powerful educational tools are a gift from the school to teachers and students and as such their presence and use in the classroom should be celebrated and valued and not seen as a source of headache and stress. So if you have a personality similar to mine, establish rules but know that we are all human and rules will be broken. Take a deep breath, relax...Yoga anyone?

NETs and the "Good Educator"

2009-12-11T08:54:00.000-08:00

I believe that as effective educators, parents, and citizens, "...(we have the responsibility and right) to ensure our students are educated in 21st century classrooms by teachers who have the skill and training to teach well in them” (quote from The International Society for Technology in Education website). This week's essential question, "What obligation is there for teachers and administrators to meet these (ISTE NETs) standards?" and related blogging question, "How relevant are the NETs for Teachers and Administrators to being a "Good Educator" today?" can both be answered by the above quote from the ITSE.

In today's world, technology has become ubiquitous and essential to our day to day life in developed and increasingly so in developing countries. It has become integral in ways both tangible and intangible in most aspects of our day-to-day life. As educators we are responsible for providing students with the skills, understandings and attitudes they need to live successfully in society, so how could we not accept or believe relevant the need to learn and teach the effective use of technology in our schools and classrooms. I believe it is the professional duty of teachers to develop, demonstrate, and teach the skills, understandings and attitudes of 21st century digital citizens.

Schools already have set standards for professional practice for their teachers and administrators. Some of these standards already recognize the relevance and importance of technology and information literacy to a teacher's or administrator's professional practice. Looking at ISB's teaching standards and comparing them to the NETs-T standards, there is a clear overlap. Where the overlap is less clear, with minimal additions but simply explicit reference to technological tools, media and environment, current teaching standards could easily incorporate the ISTE NET standards for teachers. See this linked document for a comparative alignment of the ISTE NETs-T and ISB's Teaching Standards.

Although some teachers may resist such integration or addition of new technology and information literacy standards into an already long list of professional standards for teachers, while other teachers fear the inclusion of such standards due to the dynamic and exponential growth of information and technology in today's world, teachers cannot just bury their heads in the sand and ignore the changing digital landscape of the world around them. Good teachers and good teaching have always been very much about remaining current and connected to the world around us (with our pedagogical practices and curricular content), being adaptive and responsive to the changing needs of our students and society, and integrating the new and the old and synthesizing the two in our schools and classrooms.

For schools and teachers, the questions become not "What obligation is there for teachers and administrators to meet these (ISTE NETs) standards?" and "How relevant are the NETs for Teachers and Administrators to being a "Good Educator" today?" but "How can teachers and administrators meet this obligation—the obligation to model, facilitate and inspire life long learning and creativity for students as they take on the role of responsible leaders and 21st Century digital citizens?"

Essential Learning: Students, Technology and Information Literacy

2009-12-11T06:39:00.000-08:00

This week's blog post question is deceptively complex, "How can teachers and schools ensure that their students are learning what they need when it comes to Technology and Information Literacy?" I believe the answer however can be as simple as opening our eyes and ears and mind to the current and future uses (the educational potential) of the digital world around us and discussing these uses and potentials among ourselves (community of educators and technology experts) and with our students. At its core, ensuring that an individual has what they need is best done by asking and talking to them.

"Only children know what they are looking for." (quote from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery)

Old models of integrating technology tools into our schools such as technology checklists, basic computer skills instruction, or more advanced computer programming and application classes have overall failed to prepare students for the dynamic, creative, collaborative, digital world we live in. What we can learn from this is that its not the more tangible and discrete skills and tools but the more intangible and integrated understandings, habits, and attitudes that will best prepare our students for success in the 21st Century.

"Here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." (quote from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery)

Most teachers today have not grown up digital natives as have the students we teach. While the ins and outs of many of today's digital tools, media and environments are familiar to students, teachers still often feel like foreigners when handling and surrounded by such technology—lacking essential knowledge, skills, and understandings and too often (unfortunately) interest. This divide is so great that for many teachers there has been a role reversal wherein the role of students have been taken on by the teachers themselves who too often rely on today's current generation of teenagers and young adults for help navigating our increasingly digital world.

"Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them." (quote from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery)

However, as teachers and schools we have an educational perspective on today's digital tools, media and environments that our students often lack. We can take back our role of teachers. Having become digital natives mostly outside of school, on their own and with peers, and in predominately social contexts, students often discount or underutilize the full educational (learning) potential of today's technology. Without integrated technology and information standards in many schools, many students focus on the more socio-cultural aspects of the technology available to them and develop skills, knowledge, and understandings that match these social interests and needs only. So, despite being born digital natives, among today's youth there is a limited and varied range of levels of skills, knowledge, understandings, and interest in technology among students and young adults with few being fluent in the use of these digital tools, media and environments in ways that would support life-long learning.

What can schools and teachers do? They can embed technology and information literacy standards within their core course curricula and pedagogy in collaboration with experts in the field of technology and information literacy with appropriate allocation of resources and funds as needed. They can provide professional development so that teachers and all members of their school community can become competent, confident, contributing digital citizens. They can tailor classroom instruction based on regular assessment of students' needs, skills, understandings, and interests in order to differentiate instruction (content, process and/or product) based on the changing needs of the students that populate their schools and classrooms. Throughout the process, schools, teachers, and students need time to review, reflect, modify and adapt. For as I started today's blog post by saying, we can best ask, answer, and reflect on this complex yet simple question together. Students, teachers and schools together can best prepare students with the 21 Century technology and information literacy skills they need for current and future social, educational, and professional success.

"As for the future, your (our) task is not to foresee it, but to enable it." (quote from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery)

Whose job is it?

2009-12-11T01:17:00.000-08:00

This week's assigned blogging question is "Whose job is it to teach the NETs and AASL standards to students?" I believe the answer to the question is it's everyone's job; it's the job of classroom teachers, educational technology staff, administrators, counselors, librarians, parents, family members, family friends, peers, and the students themselves. The African proverb, as was made famous in 1996 by Hilary Clinton's book of the same name, "It takes a village to raise a child ", is I believe here apropos. As discussed in my blog post of April 15, 2009, I do believe raising children is done best as a collaborative community effort with assumed joint responsibility. Whether it is the attitudes, facts, habits, knowledge, skills, understandings, or values that a society deems essential that are being taught, each is best taught not by one person at one time but throughout a child's life at opportune times by those around him or her. I believe technological and information literacy is part of this set of essential skills, understandings, and attitudes that all children today need; and as such we all are responsible for providing essential learning experiences at opportune times for the children and young adults (and adults) around us.

Looking specifically at the ISTE NETs and AASL standards in the context of my job as a high school ESL/science teacher at International School Bangkok, I can see how easily either of these two sets of educational technology standards could be woven into the content (course) curricula, the counseling programs, the library programs, and throughout the school and community in order to develop students who are well-prepared and equipped with attitudes, facts, habits, knowledge, skills, understandings, and values they need as 21st Century learners to be able to find success in the world community. The ease of such an integration can be shown using the ISTE NETs standards as an example. With five of the six ISTE NETs strands, excepting strand 6,...

Creativity and Innovation
Communication and Collaboration
Research and Information Fluency
Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making
Digital Citizenship
Technology Operations and Concepts

and the descriptors under each strand,...

2. Communication and Collaboration
Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others. Students:
a. interact, collaborate, and publish with peers, experts, or others employing a variety of digital environments and media.
b. communicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences using a variety of media and formats.
c. develop cultural understanding and global awareness by engaging with learners of other cultures.
d. contribute to project teams to produce original works or solve problems.

there are benchmarks or learning outcomes that already exist in the ESL and science curricula in the high school at ISB, excepting direct reference to digital environments, media, formats, tools and citizenship. Four general outcomes from ISB's K-12 ESL staged curriculum that best match the descriptors of ISTE NETs strand two above are shown on the linked document to illustrate the above point. Using our existing curricula and linking in specific reference to the digital components of the ISTE NETs or other standards, a more inclusive set of essential skills, understandings, and attitudes that children today need can be easily adopted and articulated in the high school curricula. Less easy perhaps, would be providing the classroom teachers, educational technology staff, administrators, counselors, librarians, parents, family members, family friends, peers, and students with the competence, confidence and motivation to teach these newly adopted standards. Schools and communities thus need to start by building awareness, acceptance and action towards creating learning environments for teachers and students where the skills of a 21st Century learner are articulated, supported and developed.

To this end, I am supportive of and welcoming of ISB's own recently articulated ISB21 Technology and Information Literacy Standards. As a teacher, parent, and member of the ISB community and larger global community, I look forward to the guidance these standards will provide in future unplanned teachable moments as well as planned classroom lessons with the children and young adults of today's large global village.

Final Project: Multimedia Presentation of Oral Discussion Rubric

2009-10-28T20:04:00.001-07:00

Integration, Synthesis and Metamorphosis

2009-10-13T22:55:00.000-07:00

For our final project for course 3, Barb and I decided to use what we had learned about visual literacy to support our student's understanding, retention and recall of the oral discussion skills and language of an effective participant in group discussions in the high school at ISB. The HS ESL Discussion rubric is used by the HS ESL teachers in grades 9-12 to assess students' proficiency and progress in using these target skills and language in their ESL classrooms. Our rationale for choosing to present this rubric to our students in a multimedia format using VoiceThread is discussed in an earlier blog. In this week's blog, I will reflect on the final project and the course overall.

I am satisfied overall with our final project as this was the first time for Barb and I to use VoiceThread and to attempt to present and share a written rubric in a multimedia format. We were not sure going in of the possibilities, limitations, or challenges posed. Yet, we quickly saw the learning and technological possibilities and tried to utilize these to the benefit of our students, and encountered limitations and challenges which we worked together to overcome (both in ways direct and easy and indirect and difficult). We learned a lot on our own and together.

For the final product, I would still have liked to have had a thematic connection to the images outside of their connection to the rubric, perhaps a nature theme or a young adult theme with only photographs (not a mix of drawings or computer graphics and photos). After finishing the project and viewing/hearing the audio feeds and titles, I also now feel it would have been best to simply read the titles (the rubric criteria), which appear briefly across the bottom of the screen, rather than describing the picture and showing how it connects to the main idea for each criterion. I feel the audio feed is too lengthy and takes away from the salience of the pictures and titles. I would rather have this discussion in class with the students—let them discuss the connection of each picture to each rubric criterion. Having the students themselves find the connection will again reinforce their understanding, retention, and recall of the rubric criterion. I feel the VoiceThread stands alone best as a series of minimalist image/title visual reminders of each target skill and language expected of students in an oral discussion. An oral feed that analyzes the connection of the image to the rubric criterion does not do this.

Other possibilities I would like to explore are overlaying the titles on the image itself as they are not noticeable in small font, at the bottom of the screen, as they briefly appear after each image loads. Having made this visual representation of an important class rubric, I am also now interested in having the students create such a multimedia resource themselves with images they choose and with voice threads they prepare where they paraphrase each criterion in their own words.

Some limitations and challenges I still want to work on are becoming more skilled at Internet search engines, whether it's Creative Commons or Google as it takes a long time to find the images or information I am searching for. I feel that with more practice and training must be able to speed up what seems to be an overlong process. Finding images took up the majority of the time Barb and I spent on the project. Embedding video and sharing video of a high visual and auditory quality and manageable size is another area where I need to improve. If we are to create and share such multimedia files with our students they need to be of high quality yet of a size that can be easily downloaded and shared via the Web 2.0 tools used by students and teachers at ISB to communicate and learn.

As for the course overall, I feel this course has given me skill and confidence with a larger tool set of Web 2.0 tools that I can draw upon for the benefit of enhanced student learning in my classes. Since this third course began on September 9th (just seven weeks ago) I now have an account and have posted and shared multiple resources on Google Docs, VoiceThread, SlideShare, and YouTube with my students, colleagues and the larger community of Internet users. (I have also continued to use and explore new uses of our school's Moodle-based course management system, PantherNet) Finally, I leave this third course with an understanding and appreciation of the importance and value of supporting (and where it fits in with my course curricula teaching) visual literacy (along with information and technological literacy) in my ESL and science classes. Big changes in just 7 weeks!

Screencasts in the High School Science and ESL classrooms

2009-10-13T22:54:00.000-07:00

As stated in a previous blog (October 13), screencasts have been used in the HS science classes at International School Bangkok (ISB) to guide students through the steps of using Logger Pro on the Physics 9 course CD for about six to seven years now. These screencasts are very effective as they allow students to view the screencast at any time to learn, practice, review and reinforce the proper use of the tools and skills demonstrated. A screencast provides synchronous visual and auditory input with the ability to pause, rewind, and replay as needed.

Screencasts have yet to make their way into the ESL classrooms at ISB, as most of our lessons do not "lend themselves to fixed demonstrations" outside of our use of a fixed set of technological tools such as panthernet (ISB's online course management system), turnitin.com, and course wikis/blogs (7 Things...). However, after reading the article, 7 things you should know about...Screencasting, I would like to try using screencasting to bring together a synchronous and chronological visual and voice-over audio component to online editing of students' papers. In the article it states that teachers can

use screencasts to provide richer feedback on student performance than a marked-up paper offers. A screencast can show students what faculty are marking and let them hear the instructor’s narrative about the reasons behind those marks (7 Things...)

Given the twenty to thirty minutes it takes to edit one student's paper, most editing work takes place outside of the classroom—during office hours or at home. Either way, it is typical for a student not to be present when a teacher is marking his/her paper. For many students, this asynchronous nature of the editing and feedback component of the writing process can be challenging and even problematic and results in fewer learning opportunities, or opportunities to improve as a writer, as the student is a passive recipient of the feedback and often not able to completely and fully understand all the editing remarks and feedback received without the ability to conference with the teacher. Papers are often returned to students online or in person but with no, or limited, conference time. Teacher edits and feedback are provided as abbreviated editing symbols or text, which end up being indecipherable and incomprehensible input for too many students too often.

Having heard enough times that our handwriting is as bad as a doctor's handwriting, many teachers have moved away from handwritten edits and feedback of printed student work and instead request submission of file copies of a student's work that allow 'insert comment' and 'track/highlight changes' options using word processing problems such as Microsoft Word. Comments can be inserted as written text or spoken text. This has helped students make sense of the edits and feedback they receive. However, with increasing numbers of comments and highlighted changes (or hand-written feedback), the paper without a f2f or audio component becomes less manageable and facilitative of student learning from the editing process. The added benefit screencasting adds is the opportunity to see and hear the teacher discuss and explain the edits and feedback in synchronous and chronological order as they are noted. (Refer to my example marked up paper and sample screencast.) One can see that for a paper that receives a substantial amount of edits and feedback, after twenty to thirty minutes on a teacher's desk or computer, the paper has become the proverbial dreaded paper covered in RED ink (or highlights and comment boxes) that every student is horrified and embarrassed to have returned to them.

Red's legacy as the color used in correcting papers and marking mistakes goes back to the 1700s, the era of the quill pen. In those days, red ink was used by clerks and accountants to correct ledgers. From there, it found its way into teachers' hands.
(Aoki, Naomi. "Harshness of red marks has students seeing purple - The Boston Globe." Boston.com. Web. 21 Oct. 2009)

Receiving such a paper (after editing and feedback has been noted by a teacher) is often overwhelming and discouraging to students who see the edits and feedback as errors and mistakes they have made rather than potential learning opportunities. Screencasting again offers an advantage in allowing students to approach the editing process in a personal, step by step, and manageable manner.

My commenting on a paper, on the other hand, is personal, part of my relationship with my students. I mean it to be conversational, and sometimes my students take it that way, and then it's like passing notes in the back row. ("Red marks in the margins: a professor's take on the evolutionary art of grading | csmonitor.com." The Christian Science Monitor | csmonitor.com. Web. 21 Oct. 2009.)

Finally, using screencasting for editing student work allows for richer oral and written narratives, more active involvement of students in the editing (thinking) process, and ultimately the potential to build stronger student-teacher relationships and enhanced student learning.

Food for Thought: Video and Multimedia Presentations in the ESL and Science Classrooms

2009-10-13T22:53:00.000-07:00

One of this week's course readings on Video and Video Editing gave me much food for thought. I found the New York Times article, Idea Lab: Becoming Screen Literate, well-written (I'm an online subscriber to the New York Times), thoughtful and thought-provoking, and rich in detail and examples. Combined with last week's reading of The Visual Literacy White Paper, I was left with much to think about in regards to my own teaching practice at International School Bangkok (ISB). Teaching high school ESL and science classrooms at ISB, language literacy and scientific literacy instruction is at the core of my pedagogical practice. I have seen the 'traditional' view of language literacy change in my twenty plus years of teaching English as a Second Language from a focus on a small set of basic skill competencies (RWSL) towards a more contextualized, individualized, yet broader view of language literacy that crosses disciplines (EAP and ESP) and incorporates not just ways of communicating but of thinking, knowing and understanding. Similarly in the sciences, there has been a shift towards a more constructive, interactive, and transferable view of scientific literacy. (See: National Science Education Standards definition of scientific literacy.) Having enrolled in this course, I realize that literacy for students in my ESL and science classes goes even further, cuts across language literacy and scientific literacy, and encompasses a range of other diverse and disparate literacies: information literacy, technological literacy, visual literacy, screen literacy, and ___?___, ___?___ , and ___?___ literacy (fill in the blank with your literacy of choice!). Finding an appropriate and effective place to introduce, instruct, assess, and build on such a range of diverse and disparate literacies seems beyond the scope and sequence of any one of my ESL or science courses! This clearly needs to be thought of in a K-12 curricular context. Food for thought...

A succinct and well-referenced overview of the paradigm shift that has led to our changing definitions of literacy in a range of fields, from more traditional skill-based definitions to more "interactive, constructive, strategic, and meaning-based" definitions is found at the following link, Definitions of Literacy by Julia Scherba de Valenzuela, Ph.D.. I also recommend the book, Science Matters: Achieving Scientific Literacy by Robert M. Hazen and James Trefil for both science and non-science teachers and students. (See Amazon.com link for the book.)

So, back to this week's blog question, "How has the explosion of web based video changed the teaching and learning landscape (in my ESL and science classrooms)?" Since starting my teaching career in the early 1980's, the teaching and learning landscape has changed as much as our definitions of linguistic literacy and scientific literacy. In my and most other ESL and science teachers' classrooms at ISB, video/multimedia has become integral to the teaching and learning landscape. I think this change is a welcome and valued change on the part of most students with the caveat that the inclusion of such multimedia can be done in ways the facilitate and enhance students learning just as easily as they can be included and used in ways that hinder and take away from student learning. As with any tool (and going back to my "food for thought" theme), the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Using a video to show students how to make pudding is not a de facto better pedagogical tool if it does not help students learn how to make (and discuss and reflect on making) a better tasting pudding! Having said this, some of the most effective uses of video/multimedia I have seen in my and others' ESL and science classes at ISB that support our evolving definitions of language and scientific literacies are:

Science Classroom

the use of online video to demonstrate various scientific concepts and phenomena (See my earlier blog post of October 5, 2009)
the use of screencasting tools to guide students through the use of various tools needed for data analysis in the science classrooms (Logger Pro, WORD Excel, graphpad.com)
the use of a "website-like CD 'Scientific Writing Guide' for teachers and students to use as a resource in learning to design, conduct, and report on scientific research" (See Jon's blog for more details)
the use of online interactive resources (See my earlier blog post of October 5, 2009)
the use of PowerPoint presentations embedded with still images, video, and active links to other web-based resources

ESL Classrooms

the use of a course wiki, and Ning (a social networking site) to develop language literacy (See SlideShare slidecast from TESOL 2009 Convention)
the use of a Voice Thread to create and share personal recounts
the use of an online glossary of words, with accompanying written text, images and voice
the use of podcasts and other online video as sources of information for the production of both written and oral text types (See my earlier blog post of October 5, 2009)
the use of Google Docs to collaboratively create shared text types

What I hope next to see in my and others' ESL and science classes at ISB is an overreaching scope and sequence of curricular outcomes for other relevant literacies such as visual, information and technological literacy incorporated in a K-12 curricular context into each of our ESL and science classes. There is a lot going on in terms of the effective use of video and multimedia in my and others' ESL and science teachers individual classes at ISB; however, these occurrences are not a fixed and articulated component of the class curricula and as such are experiences some but not all students take away from ISB. As a common team curricular document, the curricula for these classes has not been expanded to include outcomes derived from these new visual, information and technological literacies. Further food for thought...

Using Digital Storytelling Tools in the ESL Classsroom

2009-10-13T22:51:00.000-07:00

For this week's class, Barb and I decided to work together on using Voice Thread not to create a digital story but to use that same tool to bring an important assessment rubric to life for our HS ESL students at ISB. The High School ESL Oral Discussion Rubric was collaboratively created by the ISB HS ESL team two years ago and is used in all our High School ESL classes, grades 9-12 (albeit in modified form to address the developmental gains and curricular emphases at different grade levels), to assess student performance in group discussions in the ESL classes. Used regularly across grade-level units focused on development of students' oral language for both graded group discussions and Socratic seminars, both ESL and mainstream teachers have (since its inception) noted an overall improvement in oral participation by ESL students in the mainstream classes. For many students, the unit language and skills developed in the ESL classroom appeared to transfer to their mainstream classes. However, for some students the language and skills showed less initial development in the ESL classrooms as well as less transfer to the mainstream classroom. For these students the unit language and skills (as assessed by the rubric) seemed less salient, meaningful, and authentic for students. Given that the skills and language assessed on the rubric are skills and language that all students need to demonstrate in all their high school classes where oral participation is expected and assessed, it was hoped that creating a visual representation of these key skills and language—a video of images and text depicting the key elements (criteria) of the High School ESL Oral Discussion Rubric—would help more students recall and use the skills and language of effective oral participants in their ESL and mainstream classes at ISB.

In creating our Voice Thread video for the HS ESL Oral Discussion Rubric, Barb and I first divided up the task of finding photos to depict the criteria assessed on the rubric. After some discussion, we divided up the language of the rubric criteria into eighteen clearly defined and mostly distinct headers. We had initially thought to have both a 'literal' and 'figurative' image for each criteria, but deciding that simplicity would help make the video and its images more memorable we chose to find and use one photograph with a figurative connection to each criteria. Searching Creative Commons for images that would clearly connect to each criterion in a memorable and meaningful way for our High School ESL students and that were available to us to use as educators indeed proved to be the most challenging part of the whole project. Once we shared images and added them to Voice Thread (which was easy as promised), we then discussed the audio component of the video and decided on using audio to make explicit the connection between the image and the rubric criteria rather than explaining the literal meaning of the criteria as again we wanted to focus on making the images salient and memorable for the students and were confident the students understood the literal meaning of the criteria. We are now working on finishing the audio component of our Voice Thread project and look forward to sharing our finished 'visualized' rubric with both our students and the other HS ESL teachers. The final Voice Thread project will be published on this blog around the first week of November.

To reflect on this project seems premature as it is still in the draft stages; however, learning has no beginning and end points. So in reflecting on my learning to date in terms of the planning, design and delivery of our project using Voice Thread to visualize the HS ESL Discussion Rubric, I would say we would have benefitted from spending more time on the planning stage, specifically:

1. I would initially spend more time discussing and agreeing upon the purpose and vision of the end product held by both group members. Jumping into the task seems efficient in terms of time but actually ends up costing more time if there is no clear and commonly held vision for the project.
2. I would discuss all the images to be sought to depict each criterion as a group; both because they are such a major and integral part of the project, and also because they should show a thematic cohesiveness to be most effective.
3. I would also initially discuss the oral component to ensure the connection between the image and rubric criterion can be succinctly stated.

If we had spent more time on these planning components of the project, I feel our time would have been used more efficiently used and that the final product would have been better and more cohesive as our purpose and vision would have been clearer from the start. Our purpose and vision will still be realized but with some roundabouts and backtracks that could have been avoided with better initial planning and discussion.

Digital storytelling (using Voice thread, Photostory, or iMovie) has also been used in the ESL classrooms at ISB to help students tell their own personal stories in the form of personal recounts (grade 9 EAP class), and could easily be used with many other text types taught in the ESL classes at ISB to enhance student communication as they share and recite their own and others' poetry (Summer School English Language Institute), write and share news stories (grade 10 EAP), biographies (grade 10), and explanation reports (grade 10). Digital storytelling and digital storytelling tools are clearly a useful addition to the tool kit of any language teacher, whether used in a more traditional way to communicate a given text type in a multimedia format or in a more nontraditional way as described to communicate a common assessment tool (again in a multimedia format).

Towards Better Presentations..."My Seven Deadly PowerPoint Sins"

2009-10-07T07:54:00.000-07:00

Periodic Table Families Revised 09

View more presentations from Karen Reau.

Periodic Table R08

View more presentations from Karen Reau.

I use PowerPoint in my science classes most days as it is an easy way to organize and share the information I want to cover with students and it provides a record for me and my students of what we discuss each day when reviewing a day's material and at the end of a unit when preparing for tests. I also like PowerPoint as videos, images, url links to information on the web can be contextually embedded in the PowerPoint presentation to enhance the presentation of class content. PowerPoint also allows me to easily revise or add to my presentation based on student misconceptions and depth of understanding on the spot or for subsequent classes. As a language teacher, I like the ability of PowerPoint to support a student's listening comprehension and understanding of a lecture along with student note-taking and deciphering of teacher handwriting and speech decoding. PowerPoint presentations are unfortunately easy to put together quite horribly. Text and images can fill and litter an extensive number of PowerPoint slides in a miniscule number of minutes...to the detriment of student learning and effective teaching. There are many great resources on the web to help presenters create more effective PowerPoint presentations. I especially like these blogs from Presentation Zen blog website:

What is good PowerPoint design? (talks about the importance of context in determining what is 'appropriate or inappropriate' in terms of creating and presenting a 'great' PowerPoint)
From design to meaning: a whole new way of presenting? (talks about six fundamental aptitudes relevant for today's 'conceptual age' and presentaions: 'Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play and Meaning')
Make your next presentation naked (talks about designing and delivering presentations with 'simplicity, clarity, honesty, integrity, and passion')

As a teacher, reading the above and other resources I did not so much find myself surprised at any novel ideas found in these articles but rather ashamed that in the interest of time I was using PowerPoints that I knew could be greatly enhanced for more effective student learning and teaching. So as a reminder to myself and a visual record of my promise to find the time to create better PowerPoint presentations for my students, I will list my seven deadly PowerPoint sins...

Using PowerPoint as a time saving rather than a creative tool
Using PowerPoints that require students to be passive listeners rather than active participants
Using PowerPoint to relay (lecture on) rather than discuss class content
Using PowerPoints in ways with which I am comfortable and familiar
Using PowerPoint slides that are loaded with sentence-level text using complex structures and vocabulary
Using PowerPoint slides that are 'busy' with text, images, links, color
Using PowerPoint slides that are impersonal, not show my personality

A first step in moving beyond these sins has been the revision of the attached PowerPoint. Periodic Table_r08 is the original class PowerPoint and Periodic Table_Families revised_r09 is the revised class PowerPoint predominately for slides 37-48 of the original PowerPoint. In comparing the two PowerPoints, I hope the following areas are notable and improvements on the original PowerPoint and my seven sins:

Time was taken to improve a PowerPoint used in previous years in order to enhance its pedagogical and creative potential
The images depicting key terms (slides e.g. slide 22), videos (slide 15), interactive web sites (slide 3), and blank slides for student generated text (slide 8) require active participation on the part of the students
Active participation as demanded in # 2 above and the elimination of the need to take notes with the provision of a PowerPoint slide handout facilitated class discussion
Using PowerPoints to facilitate class discussion
Each slide has less text than the original and color to identity key terms and images depicting key vocabulary
The slides have more images, color and links but less text (~a trade-off, perhaps)
The choice of images (slide 31) and cartoons (slide 9 and 24) showed my personal interests and humor

In using the revised PowerPoint with my Chemistry 9 students I noticed a greater interest, understanding, and retention of the content through the use of more video clips (especially MythBusters, which the students ask every day if we can watch another video clip from what has now become their favorite Discovery channel show), images, and less text per slide. I also printed the revised PowerPoint for the students as a 3 slide handout so that the students and I could focus on discussing together the content of the presentation rather than having the students' focus taken up with notetaking. Having more video clips, URL links, and images and less text also freed me to engage the students in a more natural discuss versus lecture on the class content. Overall, I found the PowerPoint, revised and presented as describe above, provided the students more time for reflective thought and class discussion while presenting the content with more salient and memorable visual connections. There is much more I can do to improve this and each of the PowerPoints I used in my class so I encourage myself to continue by the words of Scott Reed, "This one step - choosing a goal and sticking to it - changes everything."

Using Visual Imagery to Support Curricular Content

2009-10-06T04:36:00.000-07:00

In teaching comparative writing to my English for Academic Purposes (EAP) grade 10 students, one of the aspects of comparative writing that students struggle with is finding a meaningful purpose for comparison (and to a lesser degree choosing subjects to compare that are similar in nature). Finding or brainstorming similarities and differences between two or more subjects is an easy first step for my students, but to find a meaningful purpose for comparison of two or more subjects that is well supported through the selection and description of key similarities and differences (and grouped into aspects) that themselves make the comparison of subjects meaningful and interesting is the challenge.

In using this picture at the start of the unit to help students understand the importance of choosing two or more subjects similar in nature and aspects of comparison with relevant, meaningful and interesting points of comparison, I would guide my students through the following questions:

1. Who is being shown in the picture? How are they likely related? (~subjects)

2. How are these three girls similar? (~points of similarity)

3. How can we group these similarities into labeled categories? (~aspects)

4. How are these three girls different? (~points of difference)

5. How can we group their differences into labeled categories? (~aspects)

6. Which categories overlap for the similarities and differences identified? (~meaningful subjects and aspects)

7. Why might there be a need to know points of comparison (similarities and differences) between these three girls? and by whom? (~meaningful purpose and target audience)

8. Which of these purposes is most meaningful and interesting? for whom? and which aspects and points of comparison are most meaningful, interesting and relevant in support of this purpose of comparison? (~meaningful purpose, aspects, points of comparison)

By starting the unit on comparative writing with the above image and questions, I can begin to address what is the most challenging aspect of the initial stages of the writing process with comparative writing—choosing subjects similar in nature, where there is a real need to describe (compare and contrast) the subjects through the selection of meaningful, relevant, and interesting points of comparison. Such a start to the unit also allows me to introduce key vocabulary early on (See bold words in parentheses after each question above).

The image itself I believe the students will find memorable and interesting and an effective link now and later to the vocabulary and concepts of comparative writing described above for the following reasons:

1. The photo is unusual for today in being a black and white photo and memorable for the old-fashioned attire (clothes, tights and hair pieces) of the girls.
2. The photo is of children, three young girls, a subject to which we are all drawn—have an emotional (evolutionary) connection.
3. Yet there is an emotional disconnect between the joy and innocence of youth and the stark black and white color of the photo and the lack of emotional affect of the body language and facial expressions of the girls overall.
4. Twins are interesting! Thinking about twins addresses issues of personal identity for us all.

Using this photo as outlined thus helps to jump-start the unit in an interesting way that links key concepts and vocabulary to a salient image for enhanced short and long-term memory retention.

To end this blog, I would like to share one of my favorite uses of an image for facilitation of memory retention on how to start a compare and contrast essay, piece of comparative writing. Students are asked to start their writing with the use of (a)...

S Startling, shocking, surprising Statement or Statistics 
Q Question or Quote
 D Dialogue or Description 
F Flashback or Anecdote
 L List of images 
S Setting: time, place, atmosphere
H Character: physical or personality traits

* Or a mixture of any of the above.

To help students remember the various options for starting their compare and contrast essay I show students the following picture and tell them to remember Squid Flesh, or a fleshy squid!

Reflective Blog Post: How has the program changed my teaching?

2009-10-05T05:08:00.000-07:00

Looking back upon the past school year and my enrollment in the ISB Certificate of Educational Technology and Information Literacy Program, I would say the first two courses—course #1: Information Literacy and Ourselves as Learners and course #2: 21st Century Literacy Ideas, Questions, and Issues—of this program have impacted my classroom practice and reflective thinking in a number of ways. The main impact of these two courses has been to raise my awareness of the issues and possibilities and responsibilities inherent in preparing our students with the knowledge, skills and understanding they will need to be literate in the 21st Century. With this increased awareness I have sought in my classroom practice to accept greater responsibility as an educator to provide my students with greater exposure to the possibilities and issues connected to 21st Century literacy while creating opportunities within my class curriculum to build the knowledge, skills and understandings students will need to be literate in the 21st Century. To this end, in my EAP 10 class unit on news writing, a stronger emphasis (more class time) and higher expectation (increased weighting on the unit rubrics) was established for the skills of quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing and citing sources (inclusive of images and text) using MLA format. This discussion, instruction, and assessment with these skills then carried over throughout other units where the expectation for fair and accurate citing of sources is reinforces. I also am more cognizant of the learner benefits and confident as a teacher in the classroom with the use of various multimedia sources of information and communications. In my class I now use more...

podcasts (some of my favorites are: CNN Student News, Grammar Girl, and Scientific American's 60-Second Science and 60-Second Psychology podcasts from the iTunes Store),
online sources of videos (some of my favorites are: Nova, The Periodic Table Live from the University of Wisconsin, SciTech Video channel along with other YouTube videos),
online interactive resources (some of my favorites are: The Biology Project of the University of Arizona, DNA from the Beginning, from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and the Dynamic Periodic Table),
images (I still prefer Google image searches for the images I use in my science and ESL classes over flickr searches as I am better able to find the concrete or 'real' images I need for my science and ESL classes), and
SMART Board files and PowerPoints.

Furthermore I now use a virtual learning environment (via our school's online course management system (CMS), panthernet and turnitin.com) for online discussion forums, course glossaries, and submitting written assignments.

Student interest is clearly captured, and understanding and memory enhanced by the use of images and videos. Furthermore, the effective selection and use of images and videos more easily generates class discussion that is broader and deeper than that generated by text alone. One student in my Foundations Chemistry 9 class asks each day if we can see more of Discovery Channel's MythBusters videos after showing the following video, MythBusters Viewers Special Threequel: Alkaline Metal Explosion Part 2, demonstrating the reaction of Alkali metals and water.

Looking forward to the next three courses of the ISB Certificate of Educational Technology and Information Literacy Program, my goal is to have my students (and myself as well) more equally develop receptive and expressive information technology and visual literacy skills by becoming creators of the multimedia resources that have become more prevalent in our classroom.

Reflection on Final Project: HS AUP (May 12, 2009)

2009-05-10T02:16:00.000-07:00

For our final project, Patience Soule, Jonathan Eales and I decided to take what we had learned from the course to revise—update and improve (we hoped!)—the current ISB HS AUP, the ISB Electronic Resources Acceptable Use Policy, which had been created in large part by Dennis Harter, our HS Technology and Learning Coordinator, a few years ago.

Patience, Jon and I began by independently reviewing current 'best practices' in the creation, revision, and use of secondary school AUPs on the web. We reviewed what an AUP is, its purpose, importance, contents, and various school models as well as guidelines for revising and updating existing school AUPs. Next, we contacted key individuals at our school (those most closely involved in the creation, implementation and enforcement of the HS AUP) and requested their feedback, based on their experience, on how they would like to see the HS AUP revised, updated and improved.

Patience, Jon and I then discussed and worked out our 'big picture' view for the revised HS AUP, renamed the ISB Information Technology Acceptable Use Policy for the High School. Before beginning the actual task of revision, we were all in agreement that we had the following goals for the revised HS AUP. The HS AUP we wanted to create would:

1. provide a vision, a philosophy, of IT use at ISB

2. have a positive tone focusing on the responsible use of IT, showing respect to self and others

3. address misuse of IT as it connects to respecting self and others

4. summarize consequences of misuse with reference to ISB's Discipline Code

5. be relevant to current uses of IT but not limited by mention of specific IT tools

6. be informative and accessible to all readers

In keeping with these goals, we added a statement, a Philosophy of Information Technology Use, at the beginning of the AUP. We framed responsible use around two basic principles: Respect Yourself; Respect Others. Under these two principles we bulleted seven categories of responsible use and used these seven categories as organizing threads for the subsequent information on responsible use. We also added information on IT uses and issues not specifically addressed in the ISB Electronic Resources Acceptable Use Policy such as support copyright and intellectual property laws and inclusion of IT resources, both personal and school provided.

I think the final document we created, ISB Information Technology Acceptable Use Policy for the High School, meets the goals we set for ourselves. As we began reworking the document, we kept these six goals in mind and used these goals to guide our decisions as to what to add, delete, and modify in terms of the language, content and format of the current HS AUP. Ultimately, changes were made to all aspects— language, content and format—in line with the goals we established for the project. In working together, Patience, Jon and I were able to express our personal thoughts and opinions and yet where unanimity was not initially evident among three individuals (three writers/editors), in viewing any difference of opinion through the lens provided by our project goals, agreement could fairly quickly be found. In collaboration, I feel we came up with a better AUP than any of us could have done alone.

Prior to submitting our final project, we again sought feedback from key individuals at ISB closely involved with the creation, implementation, and enforcement of the current HS AUP. I would like to acknowledge the time, effort and commitment shown by one of these individuals, Rob Rubis. In reflecting on his personal experience (as ISB's HS librarian) using and enforcing ISB's current HS AUP, Rob provided much food for thought and constructive feedback for Patience, Jon and I.

Finally, I would like to thank Dennis for his support and final words of encouragement and praise, and most importantly for offering to talk and encourage the HS Admin to use the ISB Information Technology Acceptable Use Policy for the High School put together by Patience, Jon and I.

To read more on the changes and rationales for changes made to the HS AUP, I would direct you to Patience's and Jon's blogs on our final project.

If you are interested in further readings, I found the article AUPs in a Web 2.0 World from EdTech online magazine and the Acceptable Use Policies (AUPs) white paper from Nancy Clemens most informative.

Three Dragons Image link

Are we preparing students for a world of Mass Collaboration? (April 26, 2009)

2009-04-24T07:51:00.000-07:00

Are we preparing students for a world of Mass Collaboration?
How do we prepare students for a world of Mass Collaboration?

To answer these two questions I did a lot of online research as the term 'mass collaboration' was relatively new to me. I knew of course of Wikipedia, the oldest and most refined mass collaborative project, but I lacked a working definition and deep conceptual understanding of the word and the creative process it represented. I first turned to Wikipedia for a working definition: “Mass collaboration is a form of collective action that occurs when large numbers of people work independently on a single project, often modular in its nature. Such projects typically take place on the Internet using social software and computer-supported collaboration tools such as wiki technologies, which provide a potentially infinite hypertextual substrate within which the collaboration may be situated. A key aspect which distinguishes mass collaboration from other forms of large-scale collaboration, is that the collaborative process is mediated by the content being created - as opposed to being mediated by direct social interaction as in other forms of collaboration.”

I then chose to read the introduction and first chapter of the new book, Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing the World, by Don Tapscott, author of internationally best-selling books on the application of technology in business and society such as Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything and of Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation, online. In the introduction to his new book I found a description of wikinomics and mass collaboration. Tapscott states that wikinomics and mass collaboration is based on four powerful new ideas: openness, peering, sharing, and acting globally. The new Web (the Web 2.0, the living Web, the Hypernet, the active Web, the read/write Web.5) is “becoming a place where the knowledge, resources, and computing power of billions of people are coming together into a massive collective force. Energized through blogs, wikis, chat rooms, personal broadcasting, and other forms of peer-to-peer creation and communication, this utterly decentralized and amorphous force increasingly self-organizes to provide its own news, entertainment, and services.” He furthermore describes today's Generation Y or 'Net Generation' and their "natural affinity for technology". In "instinctively turn(ing) first to the net to communicate, understand, learn, find and do many things", Tapscott argues that "these young people are remaking every institution of modern life, from the workplace to the marketplace, from politics to education, and down to the basic structure of the family".

I then focused my research on education and mass collaboration and found an excellent article on collaboration for educators, Can Web 2.0 Improve Our Collaboration? In this article I found a definition of collaboration I like which quotes Schrage (1990) who defined collaboration as a "process of shared creation: two or more individuals with complementary skills interacting to create a shared understanding that none had previously possessed or could have come to on their own." This article highlights how we as educators are using Web 2.0 to collaborate professionally, formally and informally; to share ideas, information and data to improve our pedagogical practice; and to create learning experiences for our student that are interactive, engaging, (authentic, and current) and that help students succeed at school.

An alternate view was presented by Wesley Fryer on his weblog speed of creativity blog. While he credits most school systems for providing the physical wiring necessary for broadband Internet access he expresses a need for educational reform so that our students "USE those wired connections for actual COLLABORATION rather than just information consumption (Internet research and other non-publishing activities)" and that replaces "high-stakes standardized testing...with a truly student-centered, constructivist agenda (inclusive of collaboration and project-based learning) that embraces diverse modalities for learning as well as assessment." I agree with Wesley and thus by answer to the first course question for this week, Are we preparing students for a world of Mass Collaboration? would be "Not as well as we could". Wesley then poses five questions that I believe can be turned into statements that can answer the second course question for this week, How do we prepare students for a world of Mass Collaboration?:

1. Provide more time for professional development opportunities for teachers to learn about and support each other in the innovative uses of IT that improve learning and facilitate global connections
2. Articulate a school-wide vision of global collaboration that becomes a vehicle for how learning takes place in and outside of school each day
3. Encourage students (and teachers) to regularly collaborate with other learners (and teachers) around the globe throughout the year
4. Embed more project-based learning opportunities in the school curricula
5. Foster a school culture of creativity, innovation, and (global) thinking

What makes the web so powerful? (April 19, 2009)

2009-04-15T03:20:00.000-07:00

What makes the web so powerful? It's seemingly unlimited scope in terms of users and uses and its openness and accessibility to new users and uses. The Internet currently has 1 billion users a month (as of Jan. 09 as reported by CNET news). Where else can 1 billion people go each month to bank, watch movies, take a university course, talk to their parents, buy an airline ticket, see a doctor, sell a house, participate in historical events, solve a crime, or create, share and critique their own and others creative works? Sitting at my desktop, I (a relative digital immigrant) challenged myself to come up with these and more (50 total) uses of the Internet. (Excuse the random nature of the list, but it's a brainstorm—what came to mind in whatever order) For uses that are less common, newer, I provided an article link in parentheses. For uses that are familiar to most Internet users I provided examples of those I use and enjoy the most. Feel free to comment and add to my list. So here goes, the World Wide Web, the Internet, is powerful because it allows 1 billion people each month to...

1. to send messages, connect, with others (e.g., email, Facebook, Twitter, ...)
2. to learn (e.g., video conferences, university podcasts, long distance education, ...)
3. to prepare and provide multimedia curricular lessons
4. listen to, share, create and critique music (e.g., iTunes, Limewire, ...)
5. play and create online games (e.g., WOW, DotA, Neopets—my children's favorites—...)
6. watch TV Shows (e.g., surfTheChannel, ...)
7. watch and critique movies/videos (e.g. iTunes, Rotten Tomatoes, You Tube, ...)
8. to share creative works (i.e., Flickr, You Tube, ...)
9. to plan trips
10. to plan parties
11. to receive health information
12. to receive health care (See article)
13. to conduct business, work, online (e.g., video conferencing, ...)
14. to bank online (e.g., online banking, currency converters, ...)
15. to buy things online (e.g., iTunes, airline tickets, Amazon...)
16. to sell things online (e.g., eBay, ...)
17. to participate in history (See article)
18. to manage your identity (See article)
19. to track and identify individuals by police or concerned citizens
20. to store data (Time Machine, ...)
21. to send documents (email, ...)
21. to send cards online (e.g., eCards, Hallmark, Blue Mountain, ...)
22. to call, telephone, others (e.g., IP phones—Love it!, Skype, ...)
23. to read, watch, comment on and create the news (e.g., CNN iReport, ac 360 live blog, twitter)
24. to manage online subscriptions (e.g., Scientific American, Discover, TIME, ...)
25. to check the online catalogue of a library
26. to check movie times (e.g., Movieseer, ...)
27. to work from home with access to school servers (e.g., remote access—ras.isb.ac.th, ...)
28. to post grades away from school (e.g., PowerSchool, ...)
29. to communicate with students away from school (e.g., email, blogs, and wikis, ...)
30. to collaboratively write and edit docs (e.g., Google Docs, ...)
31. to support and contribute to charity (e.g., WWF, The Nature Conservancy, Red, ...)
32. to stay politically active (e.g., The We Campaign, ...)
33. to vote abroad (e.g., Democrats Abroad, ...)
34. to file taxes abroad (e.g., IRS, ...)
Oops! considering this is April 18th, this should not have been #34 on my list
35. to share photos and photo albums (MobileMe, FaceBook, ...)
36. connect with old classmates (classmates.com, ...)
37. to view your child's work and learning (Room 305 blog—thanks Robin, ...)
38. to track your family genealogy
39. to solve technology related problems (e.g., Apple Support, iTunes Help, ...)
40. to help find alien life (e.g. SETI, ...)
41. to see places I have never been (e.g., Google Earth, Google Earth Sky, ...)
42. to try out new hairstyles (hairstyler.com, ...)
43. to check your grades (e.g., PowerSchool, ...)
44. to register for classes (e.g., PowerSchool, ...)
45. to look for a job (TESOL, ...)
46. to read professional journals (TESOL, EBSCO, Science)
47. to read magna online (onemagna—my children's favorite)
48. to publish and share lesson plans
49. to register for professional conferences (TESOL, ...)
50. to have the latest news, blogs, and information sent to you (e.g., Google Reader, ...)

AND another amazing thing about the Internet is that today's 1 billion users and already myriad of uses continue to grow. The future of the reach and uses of the web seems unbounded.

Whose responsibility is it to teach students to be safe online? (April 12, 2009)

2009-04-15T03:19:00.001-07:00

This week's class on cyberbullying was eye opening to me as a relatively new digital immigrant. I was surprised at the ubiquitous nature of the act and the varied forms cyberbullying can take. The website STOP Cyberbullying defines cyberbullying as "when a child, preteen or teen is tormented, threatened, harassed, humiliated, embarrassed or otherwise targeted by another child, preteen or teen using the Internet, interactive and digital technologies or mobile phones." as distinguished from such acts by an adult which are then termed cyber-harassment, cyberstalking or sexual exploitation. The website further states that the "methods used are limited only by the child's imagination and access to technology" and common forms cyberbullying take include:
1. Instant Messaging/Text Messaging Harassment
2. Stealing Passwords
3. Blogs
4. Web Sites
5. Sending Pictures through E-mail and Cell Phones
6. Internet Polling
7. Interactive Gaming
8. Sending Malicious Code
9. Sending Porn and Other Junk E-Mail and IMs
10. Impersonation
And these are only the common forms that direct attacks take, for examples of cyberbullying by proxy see the website.
Of interest to our class, the website also states that "When schools try and get involved by disciplining the student for cyberbullying actions that took place off-campus and outside of school hours, they are often sued for exceeding their authority and violating the student's free speech right." The site then goes on to say, "Schools can be very effective brokers in working with the parents to stop and remedy cyberbullying situations. They can also educate the students on cyberethics and the law. ...We recommend that a provision is added to the school's acceptable use policy reserving the right to discipline the student for actions taken off-campus if they are intended to have an effect on a student or they adversely affect the safety and well-being of student while in school. This makes it a contractual, not a constitutional, issue." As for the home, the website states that "Parents need to be the one trusted place kids can go when things go wrong online and offline. Yet they often are the one place kids avoid when things go wrong online."

The essential question of the week is then, "Whose responsibility is it to teach students to be safe online?" whether it be from cyberbullying, . My answer would be in the form of a now famous African proverb, "It takes a village to raise a child" and I would add that for me the proverbial village includes the child as well. Children as well as the villagers (parents, siblings and other family members; teachers, counselors and school administrators; churches and other community organizations; police, lawyers and policy makers; an online communities and industries) need to take personal responsibility for educating today's children, digital citizens fluent in media literacy, about how to protect their own and others online safety. The focus should be on education, on learning, not on punishing and policing. What we need are collective collaborative solutions where digital citizenship and responsibility are promoted and modeled by all villagers such that awareness is raised, teachable moments are taken advantage of, and critical thinking, ethics and behavior (values and character), and media literacy are taught in our schools to the benefit of the well-being and safety of all members of society.

I would like to end this blog with a quote, "Martin Luther King, Jr. once said “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” (STOP Cyberbullying website)

Copyright and Fair Practice in Education (April 5, 2009)

2009-04-15T03:17:00.000-07:00

The course's essential questions for this week on the topic of copyright and fair use in education were:
1. What is the purpose of Copyright?
2. What is Fair Use?
3. What's our role as educators in copyright usage in schools?
4. Do we as a global society need to rethink copyright laws?

To answer the first two questions I refer to the course reading "Understanding Copyright". Copyright law is a "bundle of several different rights" conferred upon individuals and their creative work or "intellectual property". Creative work encompasses varied "fixed symbolic forms" of shared ideas and information including "books, movies, music, paintings, photographs, websites, images, videogames, performances, ... and software. "The purpose of copyright is to promote the creation and use of knowledge" by conferring intellectual property rights upon individuals for a limited time (rewarding and recognizing their work) subsequent to which these works are available to other creators (sharing their work) to use and build upon in the expression of new creative works. Copyright law when applied fairly in terms of the rights of the owner and the users of intellectual property leads to the growth of knowledge and innovation in society. (Understanding Copyright p.1)

Fair Use is a doctrine or "right" (Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education p. 16) established to facilitate this growth of knowledge and innovation in society. It allows members of the public at large to make (unauthorized) use of copyrighted works given that the use of the copyrighted work is 'fair' and benefits society more than it hurts the copyright holder. As stated by Chad in our f2f of April 1 and reiterated in the course readings on fair use, a reasonable determination of fair use is made by considering four factors and two overreaching questions:

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;

(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Q 1. "Was the unlicensed use of the work transformative?" (Understanding Copyright p.2)

Q 2. "Was the material taken appropriate in kind and amount, considering the nature of the copyrighted work and of the use?" (Understanding Copyright p.2)

In determining fair use, users (and judges, if need be) must analyze the context and situation of each use as well as the norms within the community of users—their peers or fellow professional and creators. Many communities ("documentary filmmakers, film scholars, and online video creators") have established their own best practices in fair use. Educators can refer to the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education available at the Center for Social Media website. (Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education p. 7)

As for our role as educators in copyright usage in schools, I agree with Wesley A. Fryer, "Teachers at all levels have the responsibility and the legal obligation ... to model appropriate respect for copyright law and educate students about how they can do the same." This modeling of respect for copyright law, and I would add the doctrine of fair use, supported by the code of best practices for educators is complicated for international school teachers by the range of national copyright laws (and school policies) they encounter as they move from country to country and school to school. As international school educators, we need to be aware of such differences and work within the diversity of copyright laws (and school policies) around the world utilizing the doctrine of fair practice such that we are able reach a "level of comfort" in our professional lives by being able to apply and model fair use reasoning with our colleagues, students, administrators and others who encounter our creative works.

What should schools be teaching students, teachers and administrators? Doug Johnson of the blue skunk blog states that schools need to:

* "teach users that the use of copyrighted material in research and projects, if properly cited and if it supplements, rather than supplants the researcher’s product, is perfectly legal. (And to teach how) to cite a source and how to avoid inadvertent plagiarism."

* teach "the concepts and tests of (four factors used to determine) Fair Use."

* "teach that a copyrighted work’s use is considered Fair Use if it is of a “transformative” nature." (two questions used to determine Fair Use)

* inform teachers of all special rights given to them as educators.

* inform teachers of the availability of professional codes of best practice (Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education.)

As for the final question, I do think we need to look at copyright laws, the doctrine of fair use, professional codes of best practice in light of societal changes—culture, technology, education, and others—in order to guarantee that we as citizens (local and global) have the rights and opportunities we need to freely nurture the growth of knowledge, innovation and creativity both locally and globally. Universally agreed upon copyright laws, doctrines of fair use and professional codes of best practice would be ideal in this new global digital age. I also think we need to look at copyright laws, the doctrine of fair use, professional codes of best practice in light of the uncertainty (and even fear) they instill in educators. These laws and doctrines and codes to be clear, accessible, simple and nurturing of the growth of knowledge, innovation and creativity both locally and globally in a way that is fair to the rights of both owners and users of creative works so that we can move beyond the atmosphere of uncertainty and fear that prevails in many classrooms (homes and businesses) today. (See quote below)

"As documented in the report The Cost of Copyright Confusion for Media Literacy
(centerforsocialmedia.org/medialiteracy), educators involved in media literacy feel
uncertain in this new environment of heightened commodification. On the one
hand, they sense that copyrighted material should be available for their activities and
those of their learners, and that such availability has great social and cultural utility.
But on the other, they are aware of the increased vigilance with which copyright
owners are enforcing their rights. And their actual understanding of the subject is
incomplete or even distorted. As a result, there is a climate of increased fear and
confusion about copyright, which detracts from the quality of teaching." (Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education p. 4)

Is there such a thing as privacy online? Part II (March 29, 2009)

2009-04-15T03:16:00.000-07:00

I like quotes. Quote #1: “How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”— George Orwell

I like questions. Question #1: "Is there such a thing as privacy online?"
I like facts. Fact #1: “The Internet is Public.” (Fact from Don't overestimate privacy of online information)

I like using facts to answer questions.
Q: "Is there such a thing as privacy online?"
A: “No. The Internet is Public.”

I like definitions. Definition # 1: Privacy is "the 'right to be left alone' or the 'right to control information about oneself.' ...privacy is a concept that embodies a number of ideas, including confidentiality, anonymity and solitude."
Definition # 2: ‘Communications privacy’ is defined as "the right to expect that a letter, email or telephone conversation will remain confidential - that it will not be intercepted, read or listened to by a third party
Definition #3: ‘Information privacy’ is defined as the right to "be able to interact with government and commercial entities and provide them with personal information without losing control over subsequent uses of that information" and without such information being used unfairly. (Definitions from The Center for Democracy and Technology website)

I like observations. Observation #1: “Privacy is a basic human right.” (CDT site)
Observation #2: “Web users are concerned about their online privacy. (CDT survey) Observations #2: “Few individuals do all they can to protect their privacy online.” (CDT survey)

If online privacy is a naive assumption, a false hope that held on to can leave the user exposed and open to potential harm, and Internet users are concerned about their privacy, then why do so few take the steps necessary to protect their online privacy? The CDT and many sites offer a comprehensive list of ways web users can protect their privacy online. Yet, few people take advantage of this information fully. While the topic of online privacy is much discussed, it seems comprehensive protective measures lag behind the discussion for most Internet users, myself included. Why is this so?

I like lists: List #1: “Why do web users take too few steps to fully protect their online privacy?”
1. Limited awareness
2. Limited education (facts, skills and understanding)
3. Limited time
4. ‘Trust in the fates’ or the kindness of strangers

As educators, I feel are job is to raise awareness, provide the necessary education and time so that our students do not need to put trust in their security online in the hands of the fates or the kindness of strangers.

I would like to end this blog with one more quote from the CDT website, or Quote #2: "Without privacy, freedom of expression is chilled and dissent becomes risky. A sense of being watched is deeply corrosive of democracy and human development. Privacy is also one of the building blocks of trust in the security and confidentiality of communications and sensitive data - a trust that is essential to e-commerce and full realization of the potential benefits of the Information Society."

Question #2: “Are you doing all you can to protect your privacy online?”

See the CDT site for further reading on the topics from Leslie Harris, President and CEO of CDT, for the Huffington Post (Reports & Articles on CDT) as well as the CDT's Guide to Online Privacy.

When and where should we be teaching students about their digital footprint? Part II (March 22, 2009)

2009-03-28T21:52:00.000-07:00

After reading some of the other blogs in the class -- particularly science in flower, Eschew Obfuscation, and Martin's COETAIL -- I would like to say more on the topic of when and where educators should be teaching students about their digital footprint and AUPs. As stated in Part I of my blog on this topic, I feel that teachers and parents should both be educating students about the nature of their digital footprint and how to manage their digital footprint in a way that protects them and others (starting with first time online users, children) and allows them to create an online image (starting with MS students) and brand (starting with HS and college students and adults) that contributes to and showcases their learning, accomplishments, values and relationships. Given the wired world kids of today are born into, this education needs to take place at a very young age -- when they first enter the wired world -- both at home and in our schools.

In her blog on the topic, Patience stated that she felt educators (and ISB) need to do more than teach about the "dangers of online life" and that while there was some classroom instruction on the topic taking place at ISB, "these efforts (by teachers 'in-the-know') can not be counted upon to reach all students" she was not sure of the best place ('approach') for these lessons (whether it should be the classroom, freshman seminar, or counseling).

In his blog on the topic, Jonathan stated that he feels "we need to be teaching students from an early age about their digital footprint." and that "ISB’s AUP ... is more a statement of ideas and philosophies, than a policy."

Finally, in his blog on the topic, Martin stated that "Digital footprints are most likely not the domain of any one course and time" nor of just parents or teachers and that classrooms (technology, Humanities and others) are places where he could see this issue addressed recurrently throughout the school years. As for the MS AUP, Martin expressed general satisfaction with its wording in addressing this issue and stated, "it's just a matter (now) of disseminating this information to staff, students, and parents."

Reading these three blogs and others helped me clarify where I feel students should be 'taught' about digital footprints in the schools. And I do think they should be taught. Having a clear and targeted AUP, especially an AUP that staff, students and parents are not familiar with nor invested in, is clearly not sufficient. I believe such instruction belongs appropriately embedded in the curriculum of every class students take K-12, not in a separate technology course, or 'home room', or grade-level seminar. Just as we were asked to embed the NET Standards for Students into our final course project (to combine our unit standards, or outcomes, with the NET-S standards), I think each course, grade-level, or department should be asked to similarly embed 'standards' addressing the safe, responsible and effective management of students' digital footprints. Doing so will allow all students to be effectively 'reached', to allow students to become safe, responsible and effective managers of their own online brand (a 'transportable gift' in the parlance of ISB), and to allow staff and students to feel comfortable enforcing and following a clear and targeted AUP about which both students and teachers are knowledgeable and invested.

Is there such a thing as privacy online? Part I

2009-03-28T01:42:00.001-07:00

After reading the recommending readings this week and last I would say the answer to this week's essential question is or should be a resounding 'No.' As clearly stated in the second recommended reading for this week, Don't overestimate privacy of online information, "The Internet is public". This message was also clearly (and cleverly) expressed through the video allegory of a FB friend and his friend coming to your house and graffitiing the 'wall' of your house. To expect privacy in a public venue is foolish at best and dangerous at worst. Both recommended readings and the video this week stressed the inherent lack of privacy online and the subsequent importance of vigilance in regards to our actions online in order to protect our (and our friends') identity, reputation, character and future prospects. As an adult, the reference to identity theft in the second article was concerning; and as a new FaceBook user (one-week and counting), the references to FaceBook in the video and third recommended reading, Beware: the Internet could own your future, were of further concern. However, as stated in my earlier blog, we need to move beyond fear (with our students and personally) and be proactive about finding our voice (our 'brand') in this new digital landscape, armed with knowledge and skill at protecting and promoting ourself and others.

An Internet search found these additional readings on the topic that others may find informative:

EFF's Top 12 Ways to Protect Your Online Privacy -- Self-explanatory title. Some excerpted useful tidbits:

"If you are "required" to give an e-mail address to use a site (but will not be required to check your mail for some kind of access code they send you), you can use "someuser@example.com" (example.com is a non-existent site, set up by the Internet standards to be used as an example that will never accidentally coincide with anyone's real e-mail address, which is always a danger if you just make up one off the top of your head.)"
Check out tip 8) "Be conscious of web security" if you don't know the difference between "https://" and "http://" and secure URL (Web address) lines.
Check out tip 1) "Do not reveal personal information inadvertently" if you want to make your web browser and "Internet defaults" programs anonymous and prevent inadvertent disclosure of personal information.

Your guide to online privacy -- Provides detailed background and current issues in regards to the issue of online privacy, with specifics on companies like Google and FaceBook. Concludes with a helpful list of resources. Key excerpts:

"In the U.S., the 'right to privacy' is not enshrined in the Bill of Rights, but it has long been a critical issue for many Americans. ... American courts and legislation have had a mixed record in protecting privacy, curbing data-sharing in medical records and other areas, and regulating data collection from children online. But there has never been comprehensive national legislation in the U.S. to protect people's personal and financial information online, or standards for the way businesses collect, save and share data."
"Google should be given credit for producing a video series explaining online privacy on its various services -- from Gmail to Google Docs -- found on a YouTube channel."

When and where should we be teaching students about their digital footprint? Part I

2009-03-28T01:38:00.000-07:00

The two recommended readings for course 2 this week (March 16-22) — Your Online Reputation Can Hurt Your Job Search and Protect Your Digital Footprint — were a nice review and extension of what Jeff spoke about during our f2f of March 18. Although the essential question for the March 18 f2f, "When and where should we be teaching students about their digital footprint?", focuses on students' digital footprints and the 2 recommended readings focused on adults' (job-seeking adults') digital footprints, I found the readings valuable as my own knowledge of this topic prior to this course had been very limited so the review and limited extension were helpful. I like the second article's definition of a digital footprint, "...a compilation of everything that's on the internet about you...", as the use of 'compilation' and 'everything' and 'you' hit home with the message that all our actions (photos, blog postings, searches, comments, links, groups, email addresses, et. al.) on the Internet are permanent and freely available to anyone who searches for such information for any purpose. This public accessibility of information that most people feel to be private is unwelcome and invasive (and worrisome for some) but a reality that has to be shared, discussed and managed. As educators, I do feel that we need to be discussing and helping students manage their digital footprints in the classroom so that they can safely and confidently navigate, access and find a place for themselves in today's digital landscape. In terms of timing, as the first article stated, it's easier to "promote the positive" than to "remove the negative" and so developing an understanding of the concept of a digital footprint and the skills to manage it and reputations online should be addressed in schools when students first begin accessing the Internet and then repeated throughout their schooling so that an age-appropriate understanding and skill set is developed.

Both to address the week's essential question and to deepen my understanding of the topic, I used my Google reader account and a newly created a delicious tag 'digital footprint' RSS feed to search for information about students and when and where educators should be teaching students about their digital footprints, their online reputations and how (the weeks' enduring understandings)...

Online behaviors and actions impact the access and safety of personal information.

Responsible use of online tools can help protect the personal information of others.

Unfortunately, the delicious tag led me mostly to blogs which reiterated many of points from the two recommended readings and class so I turned to a 'traditional' Google search. I found three articles which begin to address the focused question of "When and where should we be teaching students about their digital footprint?" and that also provide new and useful information on the subject of digital footprints which could be shared with students and/or parents.

You Are What You Post: dual emphasis on the role of parents and teachers in helping students learn about their digital footprints. Well-written article with some new information such as three fallacies the majority of kids believe about the Internet that can damage their online reputations:
Myth #1: Setting an online profile to “private” allows control over who can see it.
Myth #2: Deleting an e-mail, instant message (IM), video, photo, or profile comment erases it permanently from the Internet.
Myth #3: Downloading, remixing, or copying content to use for a personal web page or to share with friends is legal.

Your Child's Digital Footprint: emphasizes the roles of parents in helping students learn about their digital footprints and mentions that "some colleges now offer seminars about how to use Facebook, MySpace and other social networking sites."

Personal Branding Blog: discusses personal brands (See next paragraph) and states that "To start teaching them about personal branding in college may be too late..." and that "...we can expect social media classes to pop-up in even more schools. Teachers value these tools, especially when they are supported by the school...When teachers use social media tools for class projects and communications, then students will learn much easier, ..."

Everything I read online points to the need for adults (parents and/or teachers) to guide teenagers to understanding the nature of their digital footprint and how their actions online can both damage and enhance their and others' online reputations.

Finally, I would like to end with reference to our guest speaker Silvia Tolisano. I like the switch in emphasis Silvia brought to the topic of digital footprints and online reputations. While Silvia did discuss the need to protect your reputation online, more of her presentation was on the value of using today's digital landscape to create an online brand for yourself. It shifted the emphasis from the potential negative to the potential positive side of digital footprints and online reputations which was a good note on which to end our first class.

Technology worries of a digital immigrant (blogpost of my choice)

2009-03-01T05:26:00.000-08:00

As a 'digital immigrant' teacher and parent I have concerns about the impact of today's wired world on today's youth. I understand and appreciate (to the extent of my current knowledge) the empowerment, creative potential, reach, speed, and wealth of information and knowledge available to those who participate in today's digital landscape. However, as stated by Mark Prensky in Adopt and Adapt: Shaping Tech for the Classroom, as with most digital immigrants I retain my pre-digital accent (and values) despite solitary and group forays (successful and unsuccessful) with my students and children into today's digital landscape.

So what are my concerns?
1. Although one of the powers of today's technology is in connecting people around the world, I see it isolating people (families and friends) in the same room. The attractive interface of the technology draws people in so that they lose touch with their surroundings and the people in it.
2. Most of today's technologies seem addictive. People are 'obsessed with' their technology of choice (gaming, face book, chatting) and lose track of time while engaged and become distracted thinking about their preferred technology of choice when not engaged.
3. Age appropriateness of content made available with today's tools. As a parent and educator in having these tools in your home and classroom, How can you ensure the appropriateness of the content of each game, each website, each video? The task seems impossible as the tools become more pervasive and information available through these tools grows exponentially.
4. Cost. Again as a parent and educator having the latest technological tools available to our children and students is expensive. And as with all marketed goods, anything we buy is soon outdated and needs to be updated with a new purchase or upgrade.
5. Time. There are only so many hours in the day. Given the addictive nature of many of these technologies I worry that what is being lost can be found on my list of "What will never be wrong..." below.

I don't agree with what Mark Prensky describes happening in many US schools, "locking down machines, refusing to allow students to access email...block(ing)instant messaging, cell phones, cell phone cameras, unfilitered Internet access, Wikipedia..." but I am cautious and don't believe we need to jump wholeheartedly as teachers or parents behind something just because of its pervasiveness in society. New is not always better and old is not always wrong.

What will never be wrong...
1. Reading books together as a family each night
2. Talking to your children (and husband or wife) about their day when they come home each day
3. Making a family meal together
4. Creating a birthday card from scratch
5. Climbing trees with your friends

Feel free to add to either list if you feel like me...

Image URL.

What are the implications for teaching & learning?

2009-02-28T00:05:00.000-08:00

As stated previously, I have been a bit overwhelmed by the pace of the course and the amount of information, tools and strategies introduced during the past six weeks. What I need now is time to reflect, evaluate, and synthesize all I have learned vis-a-vis my own and my students' learning experiences—our interests, readiness, learning modality preferences and needs. I would then need to apply this new understanding towards the process of integrating, creating and evaluating meaningful uses of the information, tools and strategies for me (personally and professionally) and my students.

As the class ends, what possibilities for my students excite me?

empowering my students (giving them a voice and sense of accomplishment and power)
connecting my students with fellow learners and teachers around the world
allowing my students to create and share their creative efforts with a wider audience
helping to prepare my students to be global citizens of digital society

As the class ends, what possibilities for myself professionally?

developing my own personal learning network

As the class ends, what possibilities for myself personally?

staying connected and reconnecting with family and friends at home and abroad

I hope to have the chance to make these possibilities actualities I can share and reflect upon with this cohort group as I continue through the certificate program's other courses.

Image URL.

Reflection on Project Based Learning/Project Sketch

2009-02-28T00:03:00.002-08:00

Project Sketch: Personal Narrative addressing Literary Themes as Digital Story

Essential Questions:
1. What defining moment in your life led to a significant personal metamorphosis?
2. How can you effectively communicate your metamorphosis using symbolic language, graphics, music and voice to others in the class and in the larger community?
3. What have you learned as a result of your metamorphosis?
4. How does your and others’ personal metamorphoses connect to themes in Kafka's work?
5. As a result of your project, what did you learn about communication in a digital age?

ISB Students in the ESL class ELW (English Language Workshop) 3 study the graphic novel (novella) Metamorphosis (by Frank Kafka) adapted by Peter Kuper. Students analyze the text, visuals and literary devises of the novella to uncover universal themes. The novella models an honest expression of personal identity, so in response to the novella, students are asked to openly express their own personal metamorphoses using symbolic language, metaphor, or motif in a way that shows understanding of the universal themes found in the novella. The final project is for students to create, narrate and share a digital story of their personal metamorphoses using Photo Story 3 and wetpaint. Students consider the emotional impact on the viewer when selecting or creating graphic images and music. Students show an increased level (+.5) of written and oral fluency in their personal narrative (written script) and video narration (reading of the script). The stories are made available to other ELW students and teachers on the wetpinat site for support, feedback and reflection throughout the creative process. Finally, students share their experiences with a wider community by posting their final products/digital stories to youtube or sharing them with others outside the ELW class.

The Project would address Teacher NETS Standards:
1. Teachers use their knowledge of subject matter, teaching and learning, and technology to facilitate experiences that advance student learning, creativity, and innovation in both face-to-face and virtual environments. Teachers:
a. promote, support, and model creative and innovative thinking and inventiveness 
2. Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments
Teachers design, develop, and evaluate authentic learning experiences and assessments incorporating contemporary tools and resources to maximize content learning in context and to develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes identified in the NETS•S. Teachers:
a. design or adapt relevant learning experiences that incorporate digital tools and resources to promote student learning and creativity

The Project would address Student NES-S Standards:
1. Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity
Teachers use their knowledge of subject matter, teaching and learning, and technology to facilitate experiences that advance student
learning, creativity, and innovation in both face-to-face and virtual environments. Teachers:
b. engage students in exploring real-world issues and solving authentic problems using digital tools and resources
2. Communication and Collaboration
Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance,
to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others. Students:
a. interact, collaborate, and publish with peers, experts, or others employing a variety of digital environments
and media

Bloom's Revised Taxonomy (2001)
LOTS
1. Remembering: Students will describe their life (defining moments, personal growth and change); Students will define theme, metaphor, symbolism and motif.
2. Understanding: Students will interpret and explain theme, metaphor, symbolism and motif in class literature. Students will explain use of multimedia resources.
3. Applying: Students will use knowledge, skills and understanding of a personal narrative and online tools to create a digital story.
4. Analyzing: Students will deconstruct narrative text type.
5. Evaluating: Students will critique their own and their peer's personal narratives/multimedia digital stories.
6. Creating: Students will create (publish) a multimedia digital story of personal metamorphosis
HOTS

Image URL.

UbD/Six Facets of Understanding (blog post of my choice)

2009-02-28T00:03:00.001-08:00

In the spring of 2004 I took the Understanding by Design EARCOS Course Workshop, SUNY EDU # 596 Emerging Programs, Issues and Practices for International Educators, with Jay McTighe here at ISB. An excerpt from my 2004 course reflection summarizes my understanding of student understanding as connected to the six facets of understanding after taking this course…

In their book, (Understanding by Design), Wiggins and McTighe show that student understanding cannot simply be assessed at the end of a unit of study on a traditional paper and pencil test (as a number of correct versus incorrect answers), but is developed, refined and evidenced over time through six different but related “facets”. For a student who really understands a subject can explain (facet 1), interpret (facet 2), apply (facet 3), see in perspective (facet 4), demonstrate empathy (facet 5) and reveal self-knowledge (facet 6) about the key inquiries and core ideas of a discipline. Understanding then is a matter of degree, with understanding mapped on a continuum over time, where progress is movement from left to right as students move from superficial to deep, naive to sophisticated, and simplistic to complex understandings. To facilitate such learning or understanding, teachers (curriculum designers) need to consider, first and foremost, what they want students to be able to do; and then, and only then, to determine what evidence they will accept that students have learned it; and then, and only then, must teachers consider how students can best learn.

At that time Barbara Kalis and I (both English for Academic Purposes, EAP, 9 ESL teachers but with different backgrounds outside of ESL, English literature and Biology respectively) collaborately created two UbD units—a unit teaching the text type of a recount and a unit teaching the text type of a Lab Report, Conclusion and Evaluation Section— for our EAP 9 classes that are still part of the EAP 9 curriculum today, 5 years later. Understanding by Design has been a powerful and lasting addition to our ESL program that we have shared and collaborated on in curriculum design with other ESL teachers, old and new, at ISB. I’m glad our final project for this current course, Information Literacy and Ourselves as Learners, requires the use of the UbD template, as it has become a standard template for my HS ESL courses at ISB.

For members of our Tech cohort group unfamiliar with Understanding by Design and Wiggins and McTighe’s six facets of understanding I have also attached an excerpt from the following page with what I feel are important additions (see yellow highlights) to the information presented in our course reading on the six facets of understanding below.

The Six Facets of Understanding
We have developed a multifaceted view of what makes up a mature understanding, a six-sided view of the concept. The six facets are explanation, interpretation, application, perspective, empathy, and self-knowledge. They (facets) are most easily summarized by specifying the articular achievement each facet reflects. When one truly understands, one
Can explain: provide thorough, supported (‘support’ not shown in our reading’s summary of six facets of understanding), and justifiable accounts of phenomena, facts, and data.
Can interpret: tell meaningful stories; offer apt translations; provide a revealing historical or personal dimension to ideas and events; make them personal or accessible through images, anecdotes, analogies, and models.
Can apply: effectively use and adapt what one knows in diverse contexts.
Have perspective: see points of view through critical eyes and ears; see the big picture.
Can empathize: find value in what others might find odd, alien, or implausible; perceive sensitively on the basis of prior direct experience.
Have self-knowledge: perceive the personal style, prejudices, projections, and habits of mind that both shape and impede one's own understanding. One is aware of what one does not understand, of why understanding is hard, and of how one comes to understand.
The facets reflect the different connotations of understanding, yet a complete and mature understanding ideally involves the more or less full development of all six kinds (facets) of understanding. The first three facets represent the kinds of performances one with understanding can do; the latter three (facets) speak more to the types of insights one has.
These facets are different but related, in the same way that different criteria are used in judging the quality of a complex performance. For example, a "good essay" is composed of persuasive, organized, and clear prose. All three criteria need to be met, yet each is different from and somewhat independent of the other two. The writing might be clear, but unpersuasive; it might be well organized but unclear and somewhat persuasive. Similarly, a student may have a thorough and sophisticated explanation but not be able to apply it, or may see things from a critical distance but lack empathy.

Misconception Alert
We caution readers to treat these divisions (facets of understanding) as somewhat artificial and not the only possible take on the subject. The number six is not sacred, anymore than the five-paragraph essay is the only way to write discursively. The analytic framework we offer makes teaching and assessing for subject matter mastery more manageable. Another analysis might yield only three facets (e.g., application, explanation, and perspective) or five (as our initial theory had it). We have no doubt that further analysis might yield a different number of conceptual distinctions and hierarchies, and we, too, may make changes as we hear from readers and ponder further.
The number and names of the facets matter less than the differences in meaning of the term "understanding." The important point is that understanding should be seen as a family of related abilities. We trust that readers will see that "understanding by design" is made more likely through the kinds of distinctions we are making here.

Image URL.

Nature Versus Technology (blogpost of choice)

2009-02-28T00:01:00.000-08:00

The quote below is an introduction to an interesting philosophical read on nature versus technology (in all its branches, 'digital technology' and otherwise)

"The question of technology versus nature must be set within the larger question of culture versus nature, as it is an intensified form of that more general issue. Technology involves artifacts, both in its etymology, from the Greek tekhne, 'art' or 'skill,' and in its central idea, the body of knowledge available to a culture for fashioning and using implements. Generally in anthropology all and only humans have a technology. More specifically, this dimension of culture has dramatically escalated in modern times, with the coupling of science and industry. That also presses the question whether such technology is natural, a question made more urgent, and puzzling, in cultures with high technology.

The parallel question is whether nature ends with technology, whether technology can and ought to bring nature to an end, and that question too has its urgency. Technology versus nature? That suggests a contest, and that technology might win, and nature be defeated. The question what is natural thus leads to conservation questions, asking whether and how far, in a technological society, the natural ought to remain. Willy-nilly, the technocrat is making decisions in environmental ethics. Those decisions are likely to be confused without a philosophical analysis of the technological and the natural."

Some other key quotes from the article to ponder and peek your interest with...
"Unlike coyotes or bats, humans are not just what they are by nature; humans come into the world by nature quite unfinished and become what they become by culture. Information in nature travels intergenerationally on genes; information in culture travels neurally as persons are educated into transmissible cultures. The determinants of animal and plant behavior are never anthropological, political, economic, technological, scientific, philosophical, ethical, or religious."

"Using a metaphor, nature is the womb of culture, but a womb that humans never entirely leave. Nature can do much without culture-the several billion years of evolutionary history are proof of that. Culture, appearing late in natural history, can do nothing without nature as its ground. In this sense, nature is the given. No culture can ever be independent of nature, not unless some future society learns to produce matter ex nihilo. Culture will always have to be constructed out of, superposed on, nature."

"Humans depend on air flow, water cycles, sunshine, nitrogen-fixation, decomposition bacteria, fungi, the ozone layer, food chains, insect pollination, soils, earthworms, climates, oceans, and genetic materials. An ecology always lies in the background of culture, natural givens that underlie everything else. Some sort of inclusive environmental fitness is required of even the most advanced, high-tech culture."

"The rapid development of contemporary technology opens up the possibility that, in the next millennium, nature will be less and less constitutional, as it is more and more modified, in the increasingly technologically sophisticated world of the future. Nature will become not so much redundant as increasingly plastic. The technicians can get houses out of trees, also clothing out of crude oil, a turkey with more white meat by gene-splicing, and this molecule out of that molecule, even this atom out of that one, whatever x out of whatever y. Human life will depend less and less on working with natural kinds (feldspar, turkeys, cellulose, or carbon) and more and more on artifacted kinds (vinyl, transgenic turkeys, fiberglass, or Teflon).

How far might this go? Engineers are hard at work on artificial photosynthesis.[7]Might we prefer this, if it gives us a better food supply? Biochemists have already made artificial blood, where the hydrogen atoms are replaced by fluorine atoms.[8] Such blood is being tested in medical treatments because it is resistant to leukemia and to certain toxins. People might come to prefer it. What would be wrong with people with artificial blood eating artificial food? One way to answer is to set this question in a larger framework, to look at what might be the end of which this is the beginning. What would be wrong with people rebuilding the planet? This forces the question whether and how far we really do wish for nature to be replaced by technology."

"Earth will be a managed planet. ... At the one extreme in range is microtechnology, already realized in computing and genetics, with nanotechnology in prospect.[10] We can design our children, or make transuranic elements. At the other extreme is planetary engineering, for example in weather manipulation."

"In our epoch, we have seen the coupling of science and technology. The next century will indeed launch a new millennium. The industrial age. The technological age. The postmodern world? The postnatural world?"

"Humans have always had to rest their cultures upon a natural life support system. Their technosphere was constructed inside the biosphere. But in the future that could change; the technosphere could supercede the biosphere. The focus of science would no longer be the laws of nature and how we can use them. Classical science has been grouped into the natural and the social sciences, depending on the object of study, nature or culture. Interestingly, today we have a new domain of science: the sciences of the artificial. Computer science, for example, is a science of artifacts."

I don't agree with all that is said in the article, especially about chimpanzees and their lack of culture and developing technologies (the undergraduate primatologist in me couldn't help but disagree with this statement), but the entire text by By Holmes Rolston III Technology Versus Nature: What is Natural? is well worth a read and a thought-provoking discussion with your friends.

Final Reflection on Experience of Creating Final Project

2009-02-28T00:00:00.000-08:00

Working on the final project with Barb (Barbara Kalis) was as always a creative, energizing and rewarding experience. Barb and I have worked together for 11 years now in the same department (HS ESL at ISB), and for 8 years as co-teachers in EAP 9 (1998-2006). We soon got to know each other well as teachers (our individual strengths and weaknesses, backgrounds, values and beliefs) and realized as teachers we complemented each other like yin and yang. She is holistic; I am analytical. Basically, she sees the big picture; I see the details. Or according to Bloom's new taxonomy, she usually 'creates' and 'applies' while I 'evaluate' and 'analyze'. We both remember! So all together that covers Bloom's six facets of understanding. We complement each other even in our education backgrounds. Outside of our shared background in ESL, her early training was in reading and literature while mine was in biological anthropology and the study of human evolution. Over the years we have taken many of the same courses together and throughout these courses have enjoyed extending are collaborative partnership outside of the classroom through these courses but then bringing our learning back to the classroom and sharing our new knowledge, skils, understandings and perspectives with the other HS ESL teachers.

Our final project for this course, the Metamorphosis Project, is a multimedia personal narrative communicating a student's personal metamorphosis with the use of symbolic language, metaphor, or motif that connects to one of the universal themes found in Kafta's Metamorphosis, which the ELW 3 students read as a graphic novel. Although I do not teach ELW 3 (advanced level students), I hope to adapt the project to my ELW 1 (beginning ESL students) class curricular and students and share what I learned about the project with my current co-teacher for EAP 10 and ELW 1, Karen Rosenbaum, who was unable to take this course.

For my final reflection on the course, I've pasted my answers to the survey of Feb. 28 below...

What was done well...
Introducing us to the world of possibilities -- the set of tools currently (and in the future) that we can (could) use to support our students' learning experiences and our own professional development.

What could be improved?
The pace of the course was fast in terms of the amount of reading and the number of technological tools introduced. I know a little about a lot of the tools but not a lot about one of the tools introduced.

What have you learned?
That technology is not just about supporting classroom learning but about breaking down the walls of the classroom and allowing students to learn from the entire wired community of learners and that effectively entering this wired world of learning is a two-way street. You get out of it what you put into it. As with any relationship, there is joint responsibility and expected reciprocity for the effectiveness of online communication and collaboration .

What are you still wondering about?
How this will all impact my students' learning and my own professional development. I need time to reflect and synthesize and integrate all I have learned into my own and my students' learning experiences.

Any other feedback?
Looking forward to course # 2. Thanks Kim and Jeff for your patience, time, caring and hard work!

Image URL.

Feb. 8, 09: How are my thoughts changing? (Connectivism, New Bloom's Taxonomy, Messing Around)

2009-02-06T07:07:00.000-08:00

How are my thoughts changing...Hmmn. I think the main change has been the understanding that the digital world we live in today is more than new tools to do what we currently do in our professional and personal lives. Technology has become more than a tool to use in the classroom, the wired world can itself be a classroom for our students and us, professionally and personally. University podcasts, professional blogs and communities of online learners ... I'm still coming to grasps with the potential classroom at our fingertips and look forward to this course continuing to change my understanding of what this new digital classroom looks like and what it can do in a better way for us as teachers and for students.

As for this week's readings, I would like to write on Andrew Churches' article, Bloom's Taxonomy Blooms Digitally, as Bloom's Taxonomy has been so integral to teaching and student learning since its creation in 1950. To begin, overall I like the changes made in the revised 2001 Bloom's taxonomy by Lorin Anderson. See below (HOTS --> LOTS)...

creating
evaluating
analyzing
applying
understanding
remembering

I especially like the addition of a new category 'creating' at the top (most HOTS). I also like the renaming of the two bottom categories as I feel 'remembering' and 'understanding' are better key words/categories to get at the cognitive workings going on at these two levels than 'knowing' and 'comprehending'. Yet, I miss synthesis from the list. To synthesize, to combine various understandings into a new higher level understanding, is so important in today's world with the wealth of information available (thrown at us) to us daily. I would like to see seven levels and add 'synthesizing' on top of 'evaluating' and below 'creating' rather than replacing 'synthesis' with 'creating' as Anderson did. I feel without synthesis it's just information overload and/or unconnected bits without any production (creation) that meaningfully draws upon the wealth of information and knowledge available today.

My preferred revised Bloom's taxonomy

creating
synthesizing
evaluating
analyzing
applying
understanding
remembering

And while Andrew Churches (Bloom's Taxonomy Blooms Digitally) states that the revised 2001 Bloom's taxonomy does not "address the new objectives presented by the emergence and integration of Information and Communication Technologies into the classroom and the lives of our students" (p. 2) and so adds in verbs to identify and integrate Information and Communication Technologies into the revised 2001 Bloom's taxonomy, I believe this isn't necessary where the verbs added in are specific to a tool and not a thinking skill. We don't need a technology checklist of tools as in years past. Yet many of the verbs Churches adds in seem very much like tools or tool sets (googling, bullet pointing, twittering, subscribing, linking, blogging, wiki-ing, podcasting, etc.) and not thinking skills (locating, listing, explaining, comparing, reflecting, critiquing, etc.). For example, I feel, it's important for students to locate information (not neccesarily google information), for students to list things in an organized matter (not neccessarily through bullet pointing), for students to reflect (not necessarily through a blog). We need to not get caught up in each new technological advance (the tools) but to stay focused on key cognitive and metacognitive tools (the thinking/learning process).

Image URL

Feb. 6, 09: Nature-Defict Disorder (blog post of my choice)

2009-02-06T05:30:00.000-08:00

As mentioned in my blog of January 31, I was upset by the two readings for that day. I was especially upset by the reading, Engage Me or Enrage Me, in its one-sided and blanket description of today's 'wired generation of children' with the sole purpose of telling educators that to educate today's children we and the learning process itself must also become wired. I fundamentally disagree with the logic behind the author's argument that because today's students are wired there is a need for pedagogical change for "some damned good curricular gameplay for our students" in order to engage today's students in learning. Yes, today's children are a wired generation and this does present us as educators and parents with a call to change but I believe the change we need is not to follow suit and become ever more wired but to take students and our children and their education in the opposite direction—not toward a more wired future, but toward a future more connected to the natural world and real-world relationships with other people and living world around us. Of further upset and to connect to our f2f meeting of Jan. 31 on truth and bias in information, I found the article Engage Me or Enrage Me very biased and subsequently its conclusion calling for wired classrooms weak. Looking at the purpose of the article and its author (two factors to assess truth and bias from Jan. 31), we can see that Marc Prensky, the author of the article, is also the author of Digital Game-Based Learning and the founder and CEO of Games2train, a game-based learning company. The purpose of the article is clearly to persuade educators of the need for change, to invest on some "good curricular gameplay". In consideration of these two factors and truth and bias of information, I would encourage my own students to question the validity of this article (as I myself did) when seeking information to determine the best pedagogical direction to meet the learning needs of today's students. In conclusion, looking at the subtitle of the article—"What today's learners demand"—I am reminded of what all adults (teachers and parents) know: what children demand (want) is not always what they need.

I also have a bias which you can see if you read my blog's profile. As a parent and educator I see our chidren disconnected from other people, other living things, from the natural world when connected to the wired world of today. It's like an addiction (a drug) that negatively affects their mental, social, spiritual, and physical health and takes them away from the people and relationships and natural world around them. Educators, parents and adults I admire have taken themselves and their children and students away from the wired world and back to nature. Their is a beauty, an honesty, a realness or purpose and spirituality in nature that we all need. To have a more balanced view of this upcoming technological revolution in education, I would encourage all parents and educators to read Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv to see perhaps what today's children really need. Below is a quoted excerpt from this linked page that provides an overview of the book and nature deficit disorder and the impact its discussion has had on educators and parents...

"In this influential work about the staggering divide between children and the outdoors, child advocacy expert Richard Louv directly links the lack of nature in the lives of today's wired generation—he calls it nature-deficit—to some of the most disturbing childhood trends, such as the rises in obesity, attention disorders, and depression.

Last Child in the Woods is the first book to bring together a new and growing body of research indicating that direct exposure to nature is essential for healthy childhood development and for the physical and emotional health of children and adults."

If you are interested in learning more about the book and 'Leave No Child Inside' initiatives throughout the USA I would direct you to Richard Louv's website and listen to Louv on the npr morning addition. argue that kids are so plugged into television and video games that they've lost their connection to the natural world.

Image URL.

Jan. 31, 09: Finding information online: How do we address truth and bias in the classroom?

2009-01-31T00:04:00.000-08:00

I found Chris Betcher's Skype presentation a timely review of basic search syntax and the importance of discussing truth and bias in online information. I like the simplicity of Chris Betcher's 5 Factors for Evaluating a Website: Authority - Currency - Content/Purpose - Audience - Structure/Workability. However, although a list of 5 factors is easy to remember (hence its simplicity) I have not found these five factors so easy to evaluate when doing online research personally, as a parent with me children, and as a teacher with my students. I have found most students would agree and perhaps offer these five factors as those they would use to evaluate the truth and bias of information from an online site but where they struggle is having sufficient experience and expertise to accurately evaluate these five factors for the varied sources of information they encounter online. Just as Chris Betcher provided us with sample sites to evaluate and discuss as a group, we need to be doing this with our students and guide them in searching and discussing both sites that 1) are designed to entertain, to mislead, to persuade/present one side of an issue and those that 2) are designed to inform fully with factual information and open about any bias that is intended in the information presentation. Searching this topic in the web, I found the following website with a list of factors (scope, audience, author, authority/publishing body, currency, treatment, arrangement/ease of use) similar to Chris' (and others on the Internet) that also included associated questions (appropriate to HS level students) for students to ask themselves when evaluating the truth and bias of online information http://ils.unc.edu/~fents/310/#Evaluating%20Web from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill:

Information Quality Checklist

These are questions that users might ask themselves to evaluate a piece of information on the Internet. Of particular importance is the need for outside verification. Does similar information appear elsewhere, outside this one Web site? Although repeating misinformation will not make it into quality information, the inverse (finding a "fact" in only one place), can be a pointer to inaccuracies or untruths in the information.

1. Scope:

Is the information at an appropriate use level?
What is the purpose of the site?
Does it promote a position?
Is the information primary or secondary in nature?
Do the pages include links to support the ideas central to the paper?
Is the site inward-focused or outward-directed in its linking? (disinformation is often self-referencing)

2. Audience:
Audience is a key factor in evaluating site information. Information needs to be at a level that the user can understand and assimilate it. Information which is too complex or too simple is often useless.

What audience level is the site intended for?
Is it research application oriented, informational, or entertaining?

3. Author:
Is the author a known expert in the area?
Author credentials may be evaluated by traditional means, such as checking directories, publications, Who's Who, etc.
Additionally, Internet credentials can be evaluated through personal home page information or institution directory information. Using programs like "finger" or "Whois" can also help to track down electronically an author’s credentials.
If the author is not a name you are familiar with, there are unique verification tools available using the Web:
Was the page linked to another page which you are familiar with? Can you establish a clear relationship or connection between the two sites?
Does the Web site give biographical information, including the author’s position, institutional affiliation and address?
Is an e-mail address included, can you connect the individual to an institution using this?

4. Authority or publishing body:
As commercial activity has increased on the Web, marketing has also increased. Many "information" sites are thinly disguised marketing or public relations efforts created by interested corporations. Identifying the publishing body can go a long ways toward understanding the bias (if any) present in the creation of the site.

Is there an organization which has taken credit for the site which you are viewing?
Are there headers, footers, or background "watermark" which could establish a relationship to an institution?
Can you contact the Web master of the site?
What can you determine about the site by reading its URL? What is the suffix ending (.edu, .ca, .gov, .com, .net, etc.)
Backtracking is a technique for uncovering the location of the base organization. This entails eliminating files and/or folders one at a time proceeding from going from right to left. After eliminating each folder, try to connect to the site. This can take you back to the sponsoring organization of a site and also uncover related sites and folders.
Once you have identified the publisher of the site, the next determination is whether they have an inherent bias (religious affiliation, political party, industry lobby, right-to-life, etc.)

5. Currency:
Currency is of vital importance in science, medicine and similar fields. It might not be so important in languages or some of the other social sciences.

When was the site created?
When was it last updated?
Does it include the date when the information was gathered?
Is there a date of copyright?
Or a date that the research was conducted?
Is there a publication date from a conference or another journal?
How up to date are the links?

6. Treatment:
For a research document, there should be an explanation of the data which was gathered and an explanation of the research methods used to gather and interpret it.
The methodology outlined should be appropriate to the topic and should allow the study to be duplicated for verification.
If the work involves a new concept or procedure, there should be a discussion of the elements of this technique or theory and a discussion of the appropriateness and limitations of this approach.
Other sources which the document relies upon are documented in a bibliography of acceptable format and/ or connected by hyperlinks
Sources used in the preparation of the research or study are documented.
Any other related information can be identified and verified.
A bibliography is included or available.

7. Arrangement/ Ease of Use:
Does the site require proprietary software or passwords to access the information?
Are either of these easy to obtain?
Is there a cost?
Is the site user friendly?
Is the information presented in a logical, ordered manner?
Is there a clear site map or hypermedia index?
Do graphics and hypermedia add to the or detract from the quality of the site?
If multi-media is used is it appropriate for the site?

I also found a pdf checklist http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/EvalForm.pdf from University of Califormia Berkley that I like and would use with my students for them to evaluate information they find on an online site.

Image URL.

Jan. 21, 09: What I hope to get out of this course

2009-01-30T23:50:00.000-08:00

I'm taking this course in order to get a better understanding and experience with the possibilities current technology offers my students and I as learners in a networked classroom and world.

Jan. 31, 09: My thoughts on Personal Learning Networks

2009-01-30T19:33:00.000-08:00

For today's class I very much enjoyed hearing from Clarence Fisher. The articles we read for the class today

Engage Me or Enrage Me by Marc Prensky (Educause)
Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project Overview pg. 4-5, and "Hanging Out" 13 - 20 (MacArthur Foundation Report)

troubled be a bit as they seemed a bit biased against 'traditional' pedagogy, especially Engage Me or Enrage Me, and didn't really speak to who ISB and our students are, or my values as a teacher.

Clarence's presentation reassured me that using technology in a connected classroom can support values of mine as a teacher and parent in empowering students personally, socially, and intellectually,

by giving students a voice, platform and audience (both in my class, locally and globally) to share their learning
by giving them confidence and competence in their role in a networked world
by giving them access to the "latest and greatest information for free"
by allowing students to learn from others (both in my class, locally and globally) and to establish their own personal learning networks
by exposing students to information in varied forms from different parts of the world

I also found Clarence's presentation useful in recognizing the possibilities of a networked and in reminding us of our role as teachers in...

modeling comments and blog posts
engaging with our students as networked partners in learning
and mainating a leadership role as a network 'hub'

Image URL.