EDTC6535 Educational Technology Creed

My name is Mary Eun and I am a high school math teacher.  This is my Educational Technology Creed for use by me as a guide and for use by my students, their parents, and my administration to understand my philosophy.

I believe our students must be prepared to continuously learn and innovate in order to stay competitive in a highly connected international economy and to help create new types of jobs that do not yet exist. (Education, 2006)

Our students’ futures require skills to quickly adapt new technologies, the understanding and skills to use the technology ethically, and the understanding and practice of responsible social online behavior.

I believe that through the use of technology, teachers have offer more authentic learning experiences because our students currently use digital information and technology extensively and many enjoy using digital information and technology outside the classroom.

I believe teachers can better address the diverse needs of our students by using technology and providing equitable access to digital tools and resources.  I believe that because internet access is available at public libraries, and because more and more homes have internet access, teachers can and should offer additional opportunities to learn using the internet.

I believe teachers can, and should, help students learn to safely, legally and ethically use digital information, including respect for copyright, intellectual property, and the appropriate documentation of sources.  We can do this by modeling responsible use, by fostering the understanding of positive and negative consequences through examples, discussion and online resources, by providing opportunities for students to practice ethical use, and by providing individual feedback.

I believe students’ online social interactions are powerful and can potentially do great good and great harm.  (Willard) Because of this, I believe students should be taught digital etiquette and responsible digital social interactions.  I believe teachers can foster this development by creating opportunities for students to understand potential negative and positive consequences.  This can be done through research and class discussions of case studies.  Teachers can provide online and in-person resources to address damage that has been already done, and can provide resources to model responsible online social interactions.  Teachers can emphasize the importance of avoidance of harm to others and enforce moral values and social expectations in all class interactions, whether in person or on a class website.

I believe there is tremendous potential for student growth and satisfaction by collaborating with each other.  I believe teachers can create opportunities for global awareness and cultural understanding by facilitating online collaboration using technology.  I believe teachers can help students develop collaboration skills through discussions of case studies, opportunities to collaborate, group feedback, self reflection, and individual feedback.

Bibliography

Education, T. A. (2006, January). Reinventing the American High School for the 21st Century. Retrieved October 23, 2009, from The Association for Career and Technical Education: http://www.acteonline.org/uploadedFiles/Issues_and_Advocacy/files/ACTEHSReform_Full.pdf

Willard, N. (n.d.). I can’t see you – you can’t see me. Retrieved 2009, from Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use: http://csrui.org

EDTC6535 Wk05 Ed tech and critical thinking reflection

This week’s reading on the iste wikispaces site (Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making) was great for a couple of reasons.  First, I found a lesson plan that I would use (Scenario B, with the suggestions made by Thomas D. Wright).  I gave an assignment like this last year, but much simpler, and the next time I give it, it will have more of the higher cognitive demand tasks that were suggested.

Second, it’s a great example of online collaboration.  Perhaps because we are developing our own website, I am now more aware of how clearly the owners of the site gave direction: “Select Edit This Page to comment on which of the following scenarios best represents the standard that refers to Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making. How would you modify the scenario to better represent this standard?”  How wonderfully clear!  And it helped that the collaborators were doing what was asked: making suggestions to the scenarios to make them more authentic and require higher cognitive demand.  It gave me a model for the clear directions I want our site to give.

Regarding using technology to improve critical thinking:  In one of the classes I’m observing, students used CBR’s (gadgets that detect speed and send the data to a graphing calculator) and graphing calculators to develop their understanding of inverse variation and graphs.  The experience was consistent with what I read in the articles about developing Critical Thinking with technology: the need to plan is great, and we should keep it simple to start with.  Part of why the need to plan was greater is because of all the unexpected obstacles that came along (students putting in batteries backwards, students playing with the CBR’s like toys, many student groups and just one teacher floating between them , just to name a few.)  The pre-activity lesson was well done, in my opinion, by having the students make conjectures about what they expected to see.  The activity portion was a bit chaotic, even though the teacher had recruited several students from a previous class to help this class.  Even though it was chaotic, it was still a more authentic experience than graphing data from an equation by hand, or watching a more traditional lecture, such as can be seen here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_90IciEE5E

On a different note, I am becoming a fan of Delicious.  Reading through what fellow students have found in their searches, I really appreciate the well written notes!   I can see how much time it’s saving me to peruse the sites and how much higher quality my results are than from a Google search.

Bibliography

Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making. (n.d.). Retrieved Nov 2, 2009, from iste wikispaces: http://nets-implementation.iste.wikispaces.net/Critical+Thinking,+Problem+Solving,+and+Decision+Making

Wk02 Technology Standards, Blogging

The 9 page introduction of the Washington State K-12 Educational Technology Learning Standards was useful for understanding how technology fits into the state’s learning goals, and what these goals are.  I found the framework of the Integration EALR and the Digital Citizenship EALR helpful for my understanding.  I think of the technology goals as falling into either of two buckets:  using technology to do the work we want (EARL 1), and learning how to use this technology with good judgment (EARL2).      

The blogging articles in Coming of Age (pages 29-31, 35-36, 49-55) were just what I needed for inspiration.  Reading about the successes and the great potential is encouraging me to keep going even though it’s been a technologically frustrating week.  I’ve seen how some of my students come alive when they’re on the computer.  For these students, they were in the classroom because they had to be, but being in front of a screen is where they want to be.  In one case, it was the only time I received any work. 

I’ve been coming across the term authentic learning and recently did some research into it.  It looks like one of the requirements to be authentic is to have value beyond school.  It makes total sense that educational technology greatly increases our chance to make learning authentic, because what is done outside the classroom is very often on the computer, whether at work or at home, and often at both places.

All of my students have some proficiency in technological literacy.  They all gain some in a 9^th grade tech class, as well as in earlier schooling and outside of school.  I’ve had my students research data in the computer lab and all have some proficiency.  Making connections between technology and math should be easy, but currently we are using books and paper.  Some of the textbooks are online, so it does help to avoid lugging the heavy text books around, but not everyone has access to Internet at home, so it’s not a solution for all. 

Technological fluency is another matter.  This requires higher cognitive demand, and I expect my students span the range from hours wasted on simple games to hours focused on new creations. 

I’m most interested in accessing other math websites, so I searched for “pre cal.”   It still makes Google’s first page, although it’s no longer the first result.  I’m looking forward to exploring this site http://pc40s.blogspot.com/ further.

The screencast and Youtube videos are great for awareness and understanding the concept.  However, I found that I need to supplement them with my notes or a print out of directions.  For example, I recalled that there was a way to get a count of characters in Word.  However, I didn’t want to watch a video for 15 minutes for the 3 seconds I needed.  The next time I watch a screencast, I’ll be pausing it here and there, and writing the time and a description of the info I may want to come back to.  I wonder how my students keep track of scenes they want to see again? 

On a personal note, when reading the differences between technology literacy and technology fluency, and reflecting on my struggles with these past two weeks with Delicious, Sidewiki, Google groups and Google sites, I have to admit that the world has been moving much faster than I have.  It’s been humbling and frustrating.  Just because I spent much of my days on the computer for years and years does not mean I’m able to do much of what is needed in the Web 2.0 world without difficulty.  It really pointed to how I’d gained enough technological literacy to do just what I needed, but didn’t do much in technological fluency, especially when it comes to adapting.  I’ll be working on Component 2.4:  Adapt to Change over this quarter.

Lastly, the learning curve has been time consuming.  Unknown to me, there was a problem between Delicious and Internet Explorer, causing IE to closing every time I close a tab.  While we’d been told to install Firefox during week 1, no explanation was given, so I saw no reason to change.  After a week of this problem, I finally reached out to the group and found out about known incompatibility issue.  I won’t be making this mistake again, and will be reaching out much sooner next time.

 

References

Washington State K-12 Educational Technology Learning Standards December 2008. (2008). Washington Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.   

Retrieved from http://www.k12.wa.us/edtech/techstandards.aspx

 

Freedman, Terry. (2006). Coming of Age: An introduction to the new world wide web. Terry Freeman, Ltd.  Retrieved from http://fullmeasure.co.uk/Coming_of_age_v1-2.pdf

meaning of authentic learning

I’d been coming across the term “authentic” and wondered what it meant when teachers and papers refer to “authentic learning.”   Here’s what I know so far from my searches:

There’s a consulting company at http://authenticapproaches.com/index.html that defines it as follows.   An excerpt from the site of their 3 criteria for authentic achievement:

1. Construction of Knowledge: Teachers and students construct or produce rather than merely reproduce meaning or knowledge. They express this knowledge in written and oral discourse, by making and repairing things, and in performances for audiences.
2. Disciplined Inquiry: Teachers and students use a prior knowledge base, strive for in-depth understanding, and express conclusions through elaborated communication.
3. Value Beyond School: Teacher and student achievement has meaning apart from documenting the competence of the learner. They have practical value beyond being an indicator of success in school.

On a side note, this site has the honor of being my first Delicious bookmark!

Also, I saw that I could purchase a paper titled Authentic Pedagogy and Student Performance, Fred Newmann, Helen Marks, and Adam Gamoran, University of Chicago, American Journal of Education 104 (August 1996) at  http://www.jstor.org/pss/1085433.  The paper states that while there’s been active (i.e., constructionist) activity, it hasn’t translated to “enhancing the intellectual quality of students’ work.”