Technology Integration

This semester in EDU 584, I used tools such as Comic Life, i-movie, and garage band to produce a slide show for my class. I learned how to use Skype in order to communicate face to face with someone over the computer. We were asked to upload pictures from the internet and from our own desktop to make our our wiki pages more attractive. I learned that "command, shift, 4," would take a picture and automatically put in on my desktop. We used Microsoft Excel to enter, average, and correlate data.

Collaboration

Collaborating with Brenda Burnnell for my unit on retelling did not happen this year as she is no longer working in this building. Another monkey wrench was thrown into the mix when I was told that I would not be working with any second grade students this year. In order to meet UMF requirements I asked if I could have one second grade group for seven weeks. This shortened my unit greatly, but I was pleased to be able to continue with students that I had taught in both Kindergarten and First grade. We jumped right in with review on questions we ask ourselves when we read. They have learned about text-to-self connections, text-to-text connections, and text-to-world connections. We discussed how these connections helped us better understand the new information we were gathering. The students decided that a better understanding of the book led to a bigger possibility of retelling the important details in the correct order. We read and made "connections, with a few books at their DRA levels, before I dove into teaching them each component of a super retelling. With "Jack and the Beanstalk," I modeled retelling with puppet characters, two backgrounds (the settings) and the story line. After, we brainstormed what to include in their own retellings. The characters, setting, and the important details in the beginning, middle, and end, is what they came up with. From here we began retelling every book we read. They wrote about some stories and retold others orally. We used a kid-friendly rubric to be sure each component was included as they retold to a friend or myself. Our final project was to reenact Little Red Riding Hood. Characters were chosen, simple propts were made, and they decided which parts of the story were the most important to reenact. Later, They learned how to drag their photos into Comic Life, add "speach bubbles," and eventually make a slide show of their reenactment. Using their input on the final survey, I realized that this unit was a success. If I had had more time I would have covered more, but with the amount I had they seemed to learn a lot. Better yet, they had fun doing it. They are now off and learning with a second grade Title 1 teacher who has commented on how proficient they are at retelling the stories they read!

BME- collaboration......

Teaching a colleague something that takes a great deal of personal time is a difficult task. Especially when you’re teaching a highly respect teacher who has taken a similar class and agrees that planning to the several facets of learning sometimes over does a unit that can be taught effectively in a shorter amount of time.

In any circumstance, I teach others best by providing detailed examples of what they will need to accomplish. I talk about the steps taken to complete the assignment, and show the links and paperwork that were presented to me before I made my first attempts. Being a k through two teacher, I am use to gently guiding “students” through the process before letting them go and try on their own.

Brenda B. and I met on the Monday before my assessment timeline was due. I had not received my stage 3 assignment back, but feeling like I was on the right track, showed her the work I put in to creating my six lessons. I also showed her the corresponding assessments and the assessment timeline that I was working on. After looking at these examples I decided to show her our class wiki and the links that helped me through this project. We looked over the WHERETO’s page, the “facets of learning” page, and the “Backward Design: Stage 3” sheet. I also showed her the design checklist for stage 3. Keeping these stage 3 goals in mind helped us begin mapping out each letter of her WHERETO’s.

Feeling a bit guilty about putting this much work onto a fellow teacher (who has already gotten her Master’s degree), I stayed to help her map out and complete two of the six lessons for our writing component. We talked a great deal about the superlative parts of the backward design, along with the parts that seem a bit far fetched.

These were our thoughts: Designing with the end goal established is an awesome idea. We love knowing exactly what the students will need to accomplish before establishing the “mini” lessons that lead up to it. We love the thought of integrating technology into parts of the seven lessons, and how easy it is to establish assessments when planning this way.

We agreed that fitting lessons strategically in to the specific facets of learning is not always productive. Pushing lessons in to fill a particular category, rather than teaching lessons that fit well with the final goal ,doesn’t really make sense. Being exposed to the facets and WHERETO’s help to remind us how important it is to teach to the many different learning styles, but after years of teaching, this happens quite naturally. Finding a genuine audience for every unit is a bit far fetched. It would be great, but how do we do this with such limited resources and money?

Although the backward design would be effective, elementary teachers are not given the time needed to plan in this manner. I, for instance, get 25 minutes a day to plan my lessons, and this is not a common planning time. Just meeting with Brenda was difficult as we both had duties before or after school, we both have children who play baseball, we both are involved in a PLC, attend PET’s, teach all day, and I have class every Wednesday. Unfortunately this leaves very little time for collaborating.

Her's the history of technological tools presented and learned throughout my time at UMF:

Wiki Spaces-EDU 580 with Sue Thorson. We were asked to discuss big ideas using our wikispace.

Zotero- EDU 580 mod. 2. We used this tool to find articles on our research topics.

Blogs, Comic Life, and tagging in "Delicious"- EDU 583 with Grace Ward. Over this past trimester, I have jumped feet first into navigating around our class wiki, blogging, tagging sites, uploading pictures, putting them into Comic Life and on our wiki, linking, and much more. I've also been exposed to garage band and making i-movies.

Jenny R. Couture- Chapter 12

Chapter twelve, by J.B. Harris, was about TPCK in in-service education. I agree that teaching for veteran teachers is a combo of “careful, creative planning and spontaneous improvisations.” In-service teachers have a bag of ideas to choose from for every lesson they teach. They combine their own style and ideas with the style and ideas of other professionals. For many in-service teachers, it’s becoming clear that it’s time to start adding to our “bag of tricks” by learning and experimenting with technology. Harris makes it clear, however, that “educational technologies need to be applied appropriately in many types of teaching and learning. Technology should assist with- not overshadow- teachers helping students to meet curriculum based standards (p 252).”

Technology is meant to assist good teaching, not take the place of it. In doing this, teachers must recognize content, structure, and advantage. To me this means that we must follow the given curriculum while choosing the most appropriate (old or new) ways to teach it. If we have a technology that supports “inquiry, collaboration, and/or the re-configured relationships among students and teachers” than this may be more appropriate than a method previously used to teach the content.

The chapter went on, pointing out aspects of technological problems that we’ve been made aware of in previous chapters. Harris reiterated the “wicked problem,” of technology use by teachers, but later gave examples of ways in which technology could be used to enhance lessons. Keypals, information exchanges, telefieldtrips, social action projects were just a few excellent ideas mentioned.

One last quote that I feel should apply to both adults and to students:

“Adults need to know why they should learn something, and how, if at all, it will benefit them directly. Adults resent and resist situations in which they feel others are imposing their wills on them. Adults respond better to learning if their past experience and expertise can be acknowledged and used in the present learning act. Adults prefer authentic learning, in which direct ties to particular tasks, problems, or similar real-life situations are made (p.267)”

Giving students the same will enhance motivation and the likely hood that they will walk away realizing why it is important to be learning the lessons being taught.

Please see Chapter 11's first blog before reading this one!

Chapter 11- Continued...... As I finished this chapter, I reflected upon how “times have changed,” since I was a student teacher. The integration of type two technologies were never though about ten years ago. Now, presevice teachers are required to teach with technology during their student teaching, and are lucky enough to learn with their placement teachers. Preservice teachers are asked to wade through internet sources, critically questioning the data they find, and strategically incorporate it into their lessons. They must question whether direct experience, past ways, or a technology model or simulation would be the most appropriate way to increase student learning. “They are being asked to organize in research groups to conduct focussed observations and interviews in multiple classrooms where students use a variety of technologies as learning tools (p. 230).” They are questioning whether the technologies they’ve seen and used helped or interfered with the learning of the students. They are also being asked to think about using effective management strategies in order to create a more successful learning experience for the students and how technology tools might help us assess.

Since the beginning of this class, I have seen an increase in technologies being used to instruct in my school. Veteran teachers are allowing students to use smart boards, computers, digital cameras, and more. My students have taken virtual field trips, have searched the internet for information, and learned about comic life. Initially, I thought that these were the things I’d see in the future. Obviously the future is here, and our students do need to learn how to successfully use these technologies.

Although engaging students in experiences that we have not yet had is scary, it is crucial that we learn for our children and students.

Chapter 11

This chapter provided many ideas about what preservice teachers need to learn in gaining technological pedagogical content knowledge. I have to agree, that even today’s teachers (me) need to rethink, unlearn and relearn, change, revise, and adapt knowledge to better prepare our students and children to not only learn the content, but to think about it, challenge it, search it, explore it, and learn even more about it. Teaching is no longer just standing in front of the room giving information. It’s no longer round robin reading or asking just one to tell his or her thoughts. It’s now about guiding students to search for knowledge and make meaning from what they’ve found. Giving them some of the information and guiding them to create something more is so powerful. Teaching them to think, solve, ask questions, and self correct allows students to practice skills needed in the world outside the school.

Engaging students in experiences that we have not had is scary, but crucial for our children and students.