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 Wk 7 Podcasts and Productivity

This week’s reading was focused on Component 2.3 Select and Use Applications: Use productivity tools and common applications effectively and constructively.  The reading was on podcasts.  While I subscribe to a few podcasts for fun through iTunes, this week I explored podcasts and videocasts for potential application to my students.

I can see the usefulness of using online lessons and podcasts as an extension of the classroom.  Studies at various colleges have shown enhanced experience for students and higher quality work. (Ovadia, 2007).  I especially liked the Drexel University chemistry professor who podcasted lectures and then used classtime to review problems. Certainly, not enough of my 9th and 10th graders will listen to podcasts to make it something I can require.  However, I like the idea of giving students options and using tools that are already embraced by student culture.  Some students learn by listening, and those are the ones that I’d be interested in fostering an interest in math by subscribing to math podcasts.

While I am not in an environment where all my students have iPods or internet access from home, I have been considering creating a Google site for my students with links to podcasts and videocasts.  For example, I could send a student who is having problems with solving multi-step equations to http://www.mathtrain.tv/play.php?vid=100 .  While it’s probably needed by the students I send, the fact that it’s made by 6^th graders, might make it feel embarrassing. I have been thinking about adding links to various online videos.  There are a number of Algebra videos on Youtube.com.  They are fairly dry, but perhaps watching a video a few times, even if it’s at the library, might make the words more familiar.  Again, it gives the students choice if they want to watch another teacher explain it a different way.

Bibliography

Ovadia, M. (2007). Poducate me: Practical solutions for podcasting in education. Retrieved 11 14, 2009, from Poducate me: http://poducateme.com/guide/index7.php

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

Learning from EDTC 6535 self-assessment

Completing the self-assessment for my Educational Technology class was a highly educational experience.  Having me grade my own work showed me what I need to do far more effectively than giving me the rubric and explaining it very carefully.  What a great insight to take to my classroom!   

While this particular lesson learned did not require technology, it did have the effect of having me closely examine the rubric when I had initially glossed over some details.  It’s expected that my students will zoned out here and there, and I’ve seen it happening while going through the details of a rubric.  When I saw the students zoning out, I felt both empathy and exasperation. Empathy because the details can get tedious, and exasperation because they were missing out on how to get the grade that showed they’d worked hard.  I hope that some of these times can be prevented by having the students doing their own grading.

We are currently having the algebra-geometry classes do their first project.  It is on collecting, analyzing and displaying data.  In addition to giving them the rubric and assignment, I’ll suggest to my mentor that we have the students use the rubric on a mock project.  The intent of this additional step will be to ensure the students really notice each item being graded without having to pay for the learning with an assessment score.

Classroom surprises

My coordinator asked me,  “Have there been any surprises that you have observed or experienced in the classroom in general, in students, in yourself?” 

We get surprised when something happens differently than we expected.  One expectation I had is that a lesson plan has a lot of weight, and when applied to different classes of similar ability, would get similar student responses most of the time.  It seems that this has happened only about half the time between the two periods of 9^th and 10^th grade geometry classes.  The other half of the time, one or the other class is very inattentive and /or noisy, but it isn’t consistently one class.   I’m guessing that by planning for the diverse learner and applying it to the whole class, we would have our contingency plan for those days when the students have trouble settling down.

Another expectation I had is that a new building with new technologies would have more teachers using the technologies.  I’ve visited schools in older and newer buildings, and not noticed much difference in the use of technology.  So far, the document camera is the most frequently used technology.  I expect it’s been adopted well because teachers don’t have to change their processes much when using it.  I am interested in seeing how many teachers use Quizdoms, but it seems that only one out of a dozen teachers that have it uses it.