My final blog for Tech class.  I never would have predicted that after writing seventeen blogs, I’d actually like doing it and I wonder if I will keep up the task.  It seemed so scary and intimidating that very first time (and second).  It is good that as I am in the throes of studying for our final that we have to summarize the class in this post. Hopefully it will also work as a review tool.

There are so many things that we have learned and that I have digested.  I’m not even sure what I knew and didn’t know when I came into this class.  I have definitely processed a lot of what we learned, which is surprising to me.  I thought that this class would be like a reference book that I could pull off of the shelf when I need to look something up.  It just proves the point of how much technology is infused into our lives – we are so enmeshed in it that the routines begin to feel natural.

I am no expert, and I do have all my notes and that awesome resource page to pull from, but I feel so much more capable and not afraid of the technology.  I’m assuming that was Dr. Ransom’s goal. 

The things that stick out for me from class are many.  Let’s start with the short clip about technology.  It had a black background and talked about the number of computers and how many people had access to them.  I remember thinking that we as teachers have such a huge responsibility to get our students exposed and educated about using technology.  Of course the Frontline video about the dangers of not understanding the boundaries in terms of teenagers was jarring, especially because I have two.  But instead of feeling scared, I feel empowered by what I learned.  I can actually have a conversation about the web, not only with my own kids, but also with my students.

There are so many useful elements when you look back, from understanding web page authoring to using Word and Excel towards learning and not just word processing.  I will try and employ the use of concept maps, PowerPoint, and blogs with my students.  Depending on the grade level I will teach, I may use a wiki, but that is something I could use with my own colleagues.  I will definitely use podcasting for my students and try and post their stories and readings on my classroom web page.

I looked back at what I wrote as my expectations for this course and what I hoped to get out of it. My expectations were to expand my knowledge, learn how to integrate technology into a classroom, and learn how students use technology.  I aslo wanted to make sure I wasn’t frightened of technology and would only use what I was comfortable with.  This class accomplished all of the above, and as whiny and confused as I was at points, I do feel very comfortable with technology and being able to incorporate as much technology, with content as my first priority, into my classroom.

 

I’ve decided that using technology in the classroom must be like teaching a Home Economics class, specifically cooking.  I am not a fabulous cook, but I’m a really good baker.  I can make a great cake.  I can measure the ingredients, watch the clock so that it’s never overdone, and decorate really nicely.  I’m a terrible critic though.  Everyone tells me, “what a wonderful dessert”, and I usually respond with a big letdown of a sigh. 

I see that this is the same as my approach to technology.  I love technology.  I can grasp it pretty quickly, remember details, and make sure I have everything on the checklist done.  But I’m not so sure that I like the way that my products always come out.  I really liked my podcast at first.  I liked the script, I liked the music, the images and where I chose to put the chapter markers.  But then I listened to it about twenty times and decided I hated my voice, hated the music, and thought it was mindnumbingly boring!  I did a powerpoint the other night that when I was at home, I thought it looked great.  When I presented it, I wanted to crawl under the table. 

How do I keep the dissatisfaction part out of my concoctions?  I tend to do this in all areas of my classes, and I’m sure it will carry over to my teaching.  I always think about how I should have done something with more clarity, or more energy.  I’m always second-guessing myself instead of feeling as good as I did when I finished.  And this is my fear.  I loved it, then I decided it could’ve been so much better.  I should have had a better script, a better choice of music, more chapter markers.

I know that it is good to be refelctive as a teacher, and as a person, but I’m afraid of letting my students down.  What if I lost a student when I was explaining how to write complete sentences.  Will they hate writing now?  How do I ensure that my students feel good about their efforts, when I’m not so sure how I feel about my own?  And I feel somewhat trapped by the technology.  Maybe I’m spending too much time worrying about having all of my lesson plan attachments look great, and not the lesson.  Maybe I’m worrying about making the power point look professional, instead of worrying about speaking and explaining. 

It’s such a delicate balance.  It’s that point in the recipe where I think, was that 1 tsp of baking powder and 1 tbsp of baking soda, or vice versa.  It sounds ridiculous, but it affects the way the cake tastes (and if it rises!). 

I was going to begin this post with a primal scream.  I can’t decide if I’m having a nervous breakdown, or just in graduate school!  As Dr. Ransom advised us the other night, I’m going to just try and suck it up, but I still feel overwhelmed.  I thought that I would be a lot calmer during this part of the semester, but I do feel as if my heart is about to leap out of my chest.  Is there a technology to help with the level of stress I feel right now?

How will I help my students when I put them through this level of anxiety?  Everything is relative and I distinctly remember having this sick feeling in 6th grade when I had a big book report due. 

I will counsel my students to just take lots of deep breaths, get up and stretch every once a while, and don’t give up.  It will come together, even if you’re tired and exhausted.  Somewhere you will be able to pull an acceptable performance out of your pocket, and life will go on.  Maybe you won’t have the “A” (cue music), but you will have done the best that you could do in the time that you had.  

Where does the technology fit in to this?  Definitely what we talked about last night – don’t plagiarize, whether out of laziness or exhaustion.  It’s easy to do, but also easy to recognize.  Ask for help from someone who has experience with the technology, don’t just spend countless hours trying to make one little ding work on your project.  Interestingly, it comes down to what Dr. Ransom talked about the first or second class (it’s a coffee haze at this moment and it’s 6pm).  Make sure that the technology is the tool.  You, as a student or teacher, are responsible for the content.  If you had to write it by hand, it would be the content that was important. 

So on that note, it’s brief, but I’ve got to make hay while the sun shines!  But it would be nice if I had a robot to type all of my stuff for me!  We’ll work on that one.

I started to write this about 45 minutes ago, but my 11-year-old and I have been donating rice instead!  I would say that we would personally give the Free Rice site another ringing endorsement.  If it works with my son leaving what he was doing and coming over to check out the site while I was looking at it, then I think it falls into the success column.  At first he was frustrated because he was trying to work at the same vocabulary level that I was working at.  As soon as I adjusted it, he was addicted.  How wonderful that someone found a way to have social awareness and learning experiences combined into one.  I’m sure that you could apply this concept to many activites, you just need the initiative.

We also worked on our PowerPoint more this week, along with learning more about podcasting.  I have to say, I can see how PowerPoint would work, you just have to get over the learning curve of how to put it together in a timely manner.  Plan, plan, plan, and use time effectively.  I’m not sure how I feel about how much I will use this in the future.  However, I will be using podcasting in the future!  I love it!  I can’t wait to record my podcast next week.  Podcasting seems more current and usable to me.  I’m sure I’m just comparing apples to oranges, but with podcasting I had about 25 ideas immediately pop into my head of how to use it in teaching. In fact, I’m going to use podcasting and blogging as part of my literacy class final.  I’m going to design a fictional after-school club that uses these two technologies as a way of encouraging community literacy. 

The really exciting thing is that this would be something I could actually do, non-fiction, in the not so distant future.  It’s nice to know that I’m actually thinking of ways that I will apply technology in my future classroom.  Back to work for me now on all of my final two weeks of work, and some rice donating for relaxation (it’s much better than solitaire!).

While I do see the power of PowerPoint as a tool to have students learn to find information, be creative and develop presentation skills, it was not the most interesting part of class for me.  I actually got excited during the last part of class when we learned about podcasts and when Dr. Ransom showed us this cool feature on iTunes called iTunes U.

Whenever I learn something, I always file it away somewhere in the context of when and where I will teach it.  At times I think teaching is something that can only occur in a downward movement.  I, the teacher or expert, filter the information down to my students.  What I discovered however, is that I can teach “up”.  Teaching is really the process of taking information and helping a learner apply it to themselves.  Every learner comes to a situation with their own level of experiences, and I am actually helping to build that scaffold (thank you, Vygotsky!) for the learner to create new understanding.

The first person I thought of when learning about podcasts was my father-in-law.  He is an amazing person.  He is in his mid-80’s but you’d never guess it, and not just because he looks good and is in amazing health. It is his insatiable search for knowledge that keeps him so youthful.  He is, without a doubt, the smartest person I have ever met – a true Renaissance man.  It would take 3-4 blogs to tell you all that he has accomplished and list all that he is (M.A.S.H. doctor in Korea, retired Chief of Medicine, astronomer), but the thing that I most admire is his noble quest for knowledge. 

After class, I knew I had to go home first to see my kids, but then after dinner, I drove over to my in-law’s house.  He and I sat at the computer while I showed him what I had learned.  I tried to answer his questions as best I could while we tried to find philosophy podcasts, biology podcasts, and medical podcasts.  The lure of a podcast is valuable for him because he is always trying to maximize his learning opportunities.  He usually listens to lecture series tapes in the car while he is driving to the hospital, or out on an errand.  The ability for him to download, for free in most situations, a lecture on a topic that has stirred his imagination is tremendous. 

Just like the example of the Aspirnaut Initiative in Arkansas, there are all sorts of opportunities out there to aspire to greater levels of learning, if we can only explore all of the paths to seek them.

With the past two weeks being the equivalent of a 24 hour roller coaster, I’m not quite sure what to write about.  I missed class on Thursday thanks to the beckoning atmosphere of Strong Hospital, so I guess I’ll have to comment on my use of technology in my literacy class last week. 

I probably invested about 5 or so hours into mastering the use of VoiceThread on a laptop, replete with a microphone, pages to write a script on, clear images reflecting the topical subject matter, copious pages of notes on content, only to be greeted with a “huh?” by my peer group.  Someone else in the class basically did the same project, except on PowerPoint, and it looked great!  Mine looked a bit like a wedding cake decorated by a preschooler.  Why???

Teaching and technology are a learning experience.  I can’t expect to get it right every time and I certainly have to know my students. I fully expected my “students” to understand VoiceThread to the extent that I did, not appreciating that they didn’t spend 3 hours trying to figure out how to upload images and test recording into the microphone I bought.  I even went to campus during the morning of my presentation to make sure that everything would work right.  I also expected my “students” to have all done their homework.  They had done an approximation of the homework, and what they did know wasn’t enough for them to competently write a script.

But my biggest mistake was not assigning roles.  We only had twenty minutes to work on our projects with our “students” and that was definitely not enough for my goals for the group.  I gave them the choice of working as a group on all parts of the project, or each choosing a job.  Because of their initial “huh?”, they decided to work as a group.  After about 13 minutes they finally understood what I wanted, leaving us only 7 minutes to do our recording.  We got two done (my goal for the group was six), and we weren’t able to edit because of time. 

All of the presenters, or “teachers”, then had to go to the front of the class and explain their project and how it worked.  The best part was when our professor asked what the “students” thought.  That was when you heard the crickets chirping in the background. 

But it got worse.  The PowerPoint “teacher” with the Apple laptop (nice prop!).  The students with the enthusiastic response.  Aarrgghh! 

So what did I learn?  Actually quite a bit.  I introduced some real technology.  Technology that could be uploaded to a class webpage.  Technology that could have many editors and be accessed without having to send as an attachment.  I learned that I need to know my students.  Not just their names, but the way that they learn.  I need to know how well prepared they are and how well they catch on to ideas.  I learned that I must assign roles.  It doesn’t always have to be the artsy student always doing illustrations or the outspoken student always being the group leader.  Roles help facilitate group work, and that’s what we were doing. I learned that not all students, even graduate students, do their homework the same.  Some read every word of the readings, some skim, and some even skip !  I also learned that I need to very, very clear.  Instructions should be straightforward.  I also expected everyone to “get” it very quickly.  They did get it, but too late for my plan.  And there was my master mistake. 

I had a plan that I wanted to get through and that was how I wrote the “lesson”.  I didn’t mean to do it, it just kind of came out that way.  I should have taken the time to write an objective or two just to provide insight for myself into what I needed to write for my group.  I learned that I need to make sure that I am teaching and not expecting.

Even though it didn’t work out at all like I wanted, it worked as a teachable moment for myself.  Plan.  Be clear.  Write the objective even it is a group of graduate students.  All of the technology preparation I did was awesome, but I forgot to teach. 

This week I have finally hit my “overwhelmed” limit.  I don’t know if it’s being laid low,  or trying to manage all the balls I’m juggling, or just the amount of information to process in a finite space–my brain. 

During class this week we learned about flickr and SlideShare.  We also experimented with RubiStar and PowerPoint.  All of these are things I have never used so it was great to see how they worked and try them out.  I have already employed flickrStorm and VoiceThread for a project due on Monday.  These are resources I wouldn’t know about if not for technology class.  So, even though I’m overwhelmed, something is obviously sinking in because I’m making good use of it. 

I’ve also found it interesting how so much of what we learns crosses over into other classes.  My research paper was about computer simulations while my lesson plan topic is electricity.  In learning about electricity I found a resource for my research paper, and when I was working on my research paper I found some new resources for my lesson plan.  My topic for literacy is graphic novels and I’ve learned about two initiatives to use graphic novels in curriculums in urban schools, not unlike the urban school I’m placed in.  It’s kind of like six degrees of separation, education style.

I just wish I could fix that 24 hours in a day problem.

As I’m listening to the whir of the printer spitting out my research paper, it’s not hard to reflect on my topic:  enhancement of computer simulations in science education.  It just seems obvious that simulations enhance learning. 

It was difficult to restrain myself in the paper to not shout out that a tool that students think is fun, engaging, interactive, and a learning experience is a great thing!  Everything I read made me think that we have just scratched the surface of learning opportunities with simulations.  They do not take the place of real experiments, but they do encourage students to think as scientists and use tools that scientists employ, namely, simulations.

Simulations are a great science learning tool for looking at space, physics, biology, geology, genetics.  The list could go on and on. The simulations are based on real-world data and allow the student to manipulate variables and test their hypotheses.  Then students can revise their hypotheses and jump off into new ideas.  Students can even create their own simulations.  It seems that every step of the way, the scientific method is in action.

The negatives to simulations are so minor and any good educator would hopefully ensure that the simulation is appropriate for the curriculum. Good teacher preparation would require you to test the simulations before using them.  I do recommend testing out links and running experiments yourself before having a class of 20 students begin working.  As teachers we must do our homework first and ensure that the simulation meets our learning goals.  I strongly support the use of simulations in science education and believe that they are a tremendous enhancement to learning with technology.

My mind this week has been somewhat horizontal, allowing me to think about technology and education from a new perspective, or borrowing from Mr. Stegner, a new angle of repose.  I injured my back, quite badly, on Monday and have spent the week getting an MRI and taking a lot of medication.  I have a high pain tolerance (both my kids were delivered without any pain medication), but this has set a new threshold.  We decided not to call 911 in the wee hours on Wednesday morning (couldn’t move) so as not to alarm the kids, instead opting for a few vicodin and a complete ice backpack until we could get to the doctor.  At first they thought I had a fully herniated disc (they are actually just in the “bulging” stage) and now I am on a pain relief regimen and have started steroids (it is Spring training), so hopefully I will be able to get all of the work done that I had planned on doing earlier in the week.  Thankfully, I can’t sleep for more than an hour or so at a time.  What does all of this have to do with technology and education? 

I started thinking about adaptations that I might have to make for my students.  I can’t sit for longer than about 15 minutes, so I’m typing in spurts.  What if I have a student in the same position?  A broken arm or an operation?  How do I keep them up to speed?  Perhaps with the posting of all assignments  and resources on a class web-page.  In fact I had to email Mike to fax me an assignment page from our literacy class which was then sent to me from my husband’s work by an email with an attached pdf file.  Three types of technology right there! Thank goodness for that technology or I would flat out miss the assignment.

Perhaps a student could listen to a pod-cast or even see a web-cast of class so that they wouldn’t miss a lecture or important discussion.  It could even be two-way so that a student could participate.  A student could use a wiki to collaborate with other classmates without having to physically meet with them.  A student could also use voice  recognition software to help  with the typing.  For me, my assignments will be typed from a hand-written copy by my loving sister-in-law.  The fact is that a student could truly be self-sufficient with a laptop, Internet connection and a printer.  However, even the printer may not be necessary since a student could submit work (I actually have to) electronically.

There are a lot of architectural adaptations already in place: elevators, ramps, easy access to bathrooms.  I will have to send my family out this weekend to get a rolling briefcase/backpack for me as I won’t be able to pick anything heavy up for quite a while. I will have to speak to my professors about  seating adaptations during class time, although hopefully by next week I’ll be able to sit longer than a quarter hour.  Thank goodness for all of those laws we are learning about in the diversity class that apply to public spaces and education, but especially for the technology that will allow one of my future students, or me, to stay up to speed and on task despite an injury or disability.  There are solutions, thanks to technology, out there!

There were a few things we talked about this week that really piqued my interest and that I will add to my toolbox.  Some of the tools I can use now, others I will have to wait until I am in a classroom.

The first was Edgar Dale’s “Cone of Learning” (Dale, 1969).  I am always fascinated by what kinds of images and information actually sticks in our memory banks.  It seems logical that the more active you are when doing a task, the better that you remember it.  This follows along with the topic I picked for my research paper – simulations for science.  It will hopefully be more lasting for students if they can perform a simulation of an experiment rather than just reading about an experiment. 

Another tool I will be using now is Voice Thread.  I am going to try and use it to create a dramatic presentation, with images, in a short amount of time.  I will need to practice it so that when I use it, it and I will run smoothly. I think for a lot of the tools we are using, we need to practice and do several run-thrus before doing them in front of a class of students.

Lastly, I am interested in the ePals program.  This is definitely something that I can see incorporating into my classroom.  Being able to create projects with another classroom that is a continent (or two) away, is full of teaching opportunities, from geography to science.