EDTC6535 wk 10 final reflection

As I look back on what I’ve learned from this EDTC 6535 Educational Technology course and the work related to the ISTE / Washington standards in technology, I see that I’ve gained a wide breadth and also some depth in current internet technology and resources, and expectations of teachers. At the start of this course, I knew nothing about Web 2.0, even though I’d heard the term and some related terms, and were even using tools that fall under Web 2.0 but unaware of their designation. Now the intimidation is far reduced, and I have even set up a Google Site for my algebra class. Learning by jumping in is a great way to learn quickly, and it feels like that’s what I’ve done. I’ve found tools and resources that I’m likely to use this year, and some tools and resources that may be used in the coming years. It’s fair to say that I’m more likely to use technology in my teaching because I’ve tried it and am more comfortable with it.

A few of my favorite finds from this course are the TED videos and the ISTE wikis. I am a regular reader of a blog by another algebra teacher in the midwest who shares his lesson plans and reflections. I have a list of sites with “math” or “algebra” tagged in Delicious, and I’m glad for the helpful organization of that site.

One thing is clear: there’s no shortage of tools available, and many are quite intuitive to learn. However, it’s still a challenge to figure out which ones will help me in my teaching, or my students in their learning. Technology still has a way of taking up a lot more time than I plan for it.

Many students are enamored with technology, and this can be useful when trying to engage students. It’s also a leg up in making teaching authentic. The road ahead is going to involve technology for certain, and this course has been helpful in removing some barriers for me.

When I ask myself, “how has this class helped me in my preparation to be a teacher who is learner centered?” I can look at Standard L-4, where students are to be prepared to be responsible citizens for a globally interconnected society. I can imagine projects in which technology allows for collaboration with others in a foreign country, and projects where ethical use of copyrights will be taught.

My educational technology creed

I have created a screencast of my Educational Technology Creed. It was fairly intuitive, and required using Powerpoint, Flickr.com, screenr.com, and VodPod Firefire extension for WordPress.

more about “Screenr – @TeachMath1: My educational…“, posted with vodpod

EDTC 6535 Week 8 Changing technologies

This week’s reading took a look at emerging technologies and their significance to small and medium businesses.  The technologies were grouped by time to adoption.   Under one-year or less, cloud computing and mobiles came as the top two technologies.  (The New Media Consortium, 2009) These technologies are here now and rapidly growing.

I’d heard of cloud computing just a few weeks ago when a Language Arts teacher asked the question, “When will we use cloud computing at this school?” At the time, I had no idea what he was talking about.  While I hadn’t known that Facebook was using cloud computing, I did hear recently that Facebook has over 300 million members.  So, when I read this week that Facebook uses cloud computing, it made sense.  The exponential growth in membership probably could not happen at the rate that it has if Facebook were limited to just the hardware it owned.  The reasons supporting cloud computing make sense to me.  Why pay for infrastructure and the maintenance of infrastructure when you can keep your overhead low and just pay for the service?  Why not choose a robust system that can automatically switch to available resources when a resource goes down, one that is scalable and flexible?  At this point, I see cloud computing benefitting my classrooms if the district were to put in the structure such that great amounts of data could be generated, manipulated, and stored by my students.

Mobiles, from specialized tools to mobile phones, have a great potential in the classroom.  I know a teacher who takes short movie clips of his students so he can document participation or misbehavior.  I think it’s a handy tool for the teacher.  I won’t mind the day my students want to record what we’re covering in class so they could review the notes at home.  In math, we currently use graphing calculators, and I look forward to the day when students don’t have to have to buy a separate $100 calculator but instead download a $1 application that lets their cell phone become a graphing calculator.  If the sixth sense device were to become available, I expect my students to adopt it quickly because the user interface is more intuitive.

For the 2 to 3 years time frame, augmented reality and location based services were the top two technologies.  It was hard for me to relate to these technologies that early adopters are testing.  I wonder if the Wii would fall under augmented reality?  As more cell phones and other devices have built in GPS, I can see how handy and feasible it will be to have location based services.

It was amazing to me that there was even a 4 to 5 year time frame category in the paper.  I would speculate that the top 2 technologies, semantic-aware applications and smart objects, as neat as they are, will go through significant changes over the next 4 to 5 years and as the rate of change makes a few years seem more like an era.

Bibliography

The New Media Consortium. (2009). The New Media Consortium Publications . Retrieved November 25, 2009, from The New Media Consortium: http://www.nmc.org/publications

 

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 Wk06 Reflection on online safety and ethics

I know that my students have Myspace or Facebook accounts and gaming entities, but I wasn’t sure what I would say or do when and if I come across a student asking me about social networking.  Thanks to an editorial essay (Tynes), I’ll consider these 4 guidelines:  1) Maintain open and honest dialogue;  talk frankly about the risks and benefits associated with the internet. (Research indicates that girls who discuss internet safety with a teacher are less likely to agree to meet in person with a stranger encountered online). 2) Help youths protect their privacy online. Encourage the use of privacy settings on social networking sites. and 3) Develop an exit strategy. Help kids recognize unsafe behaviors, warn/block suspicious persons, and report threatening behavior to authorities.

It is nice to have a few links to forward to a student so they can read the common sense advice (Internet Education Foundation) for themselves, instead of me potentially coming across as lecturing.

On a personal note, I’ve posted videos on YouTube.com without a pseudonym, and I’m on Facebook without a pseudonym, but after reading about hijacked identities, I’m reconsidering this decision.

For student projects and teacher lessons, I can stay clear of copyright infringement as long as I remember the fine print.  For instance, all Internet images can be used, as long reposted to the Internet without permission.  Also, sound files and video can be used from the internet, as long as it’s not longer than 3 minutes, legally acquired, and given credit. (Copyright and FairUseGuidelines forTeachers)  Anything longer needs to come from sites identified by Creative Commons and Google Advance Search that allow for copying.  I did print the 2 page chart because I copy and paste information from the Internet all the time as I put together handouts, and can see myself and my students needing to reference this table.

Bibliography

Copyright and FairUseGuidelines forTeachers. (n.d.). Retrieved November 7, 2009, from Technology & Learning: http://www.techlearning.com/techlearning/pdf/events/techforum/tx05/TeacherCopyright_chart.pdf

Internet Education Foundation. (n.d.). Kids Online Safety Guide. Retrieved 11 8, 2009, from Get Net Wise: http://kids.getnetwise.org/safetyguide/

Internet Safety Gone Wild?: Sacrificing the Educational and Psychosocial Benefits of Online Social Environments, Tynes, Brendesha M., Journal of Adolescent Research, Nov 2007; vol. 22: pp. 575-584

EDTC6535 Wk04 21st Century learning reflection

This week, we dug further into 21^st century skills, tools, and learning. “21^st century” is a bucket in which all of what we’ve been doing in this class (social bookmarking, wikis, blogs, online collaboration, RSS), plus more, fits.   All the websites that my peers are finding, with all the great educational content available, has me wondering… where does school fit into this when there’s so much you can learn by just searching and looking into great websites all day? For most high school students, total self-direction is not as fruitful as guided direction.  We teachers have roles as guides, and as needed, translators.

I’d been wrestling with how to integrate what I’m learning in this class to the classes I’m teaching.  I was glad to learn that teacher prep programs are evolving from a focus on the tools to now a focus on how to use the tools to do our jobs.  Of course, that means we have to know how to use the technology, but more is done to show how to use in a classroom.

This is how I learned of Camtasia Studio, a program that lets you record and edit what’s on your computer screen, found at http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp .  While it costs $299, it does have a free trial.  I know that opportunities for small grants come up, and this might be one to request if I find the free trial worthwhile.   Today, in one of the classes I’m student teaching, we broke up the class into two groups because some of the students needed a refresher, while the other students would have been bored and disruptive.  I took that 2nd group and taught them a separate lesson.  My mentor and I agreed that this was a nice privilege that having two teachers offered, and had said that it wouldn’t be something we could do if there were just one teacher in the room.  Now I see how I can offer this while on my own!  I could have recorded a lesson for those students that need a different lesson from the rest of the class and they could be self-directed on their PCs while I teach the rest of the class something else.

Bibliography

Schafthauser, D. (2009, September 9). 21st Century Teaching Which Came First – The Technology or the Pedagogy? Retrieved October 23, 2009, from The Journal Transforming Education Through Technology: http://thejournal.com/articles/2009/09/09/21st-century-teaching.aspx

EDTC6535 Collaboration technology reflection

For this week’s Educational Technology assignment on collaboration, I found neat collaborative tools (for example http://mind42.com/mindmaps ) and looked for ways to use them.  Upon reflection, I did it backwards.  It reminded me of a previous job I had, where we were trying to convince suppliers that demand should drive supply, not supply drive demand.  How easy it is to get enamored with the technology and forget the customer!   Here, the supply is the list of free applications and the demand is the desire for learning in my students.  I started searching for the supply first, while I’ll get further in the long run by looking for what demand exists, or could be generated.  To find what demand is there, or can be generated, I can share with my classes how technology is being used in classrooms, and how it’s enhancing learning.  I can share what others are doing and see what interest and curiosities can get piqued in my students.  So far, I haven’t found any collaborative projects done by other high school math classes, but I will keep looking.

The reading on wiki’s (Freedman, 2006) was somewhat helpful because I have a heavy association with wiki and Wikipedia, but had exposure to no other wikis.  Even more helpful was the comparison table supplied by (Guhlin) comparing Blogs, Wikis, Docs found at http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=ddnzwcn8_15g3jrbpdf. It was unfortunate that of the 6 links I tried in the table’s examples, only one led to a site that was up and running.  I wonder about the life expectancy of a wiki?  It’s reasonable to think that if a site does not generate or sustain enough interest, it’ll get abandoned and its purpose can get addressed by some other site.

My most fun find of the week was from reading a fellow classmate’s blog and finding out about http://picapps.com/ A good picture can capture a lot more interest than all the words I can generate. Here’s one from the Festival of Lights in Berlin

Bibliography
Freedman, T. (2006). Wikis: an introduction. Coming of Age , 83-84.

Guhlin, M. (n.d.). Blogs, Wikis, Docs: Which is right for your lesson? Retrieved 10 17, 2009, from Blogs, Wikis, Docs Chart: http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=ddnzwcn8_15g3jrbpdf

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.

Wk01 Intro to Educational Technology

This class holds a lot of promise for teaching me something that could engage my students.

Whenever I hear of a new word or term, I want to know what it is. But rarely can I find the time to go search for the meanings or definitions. How nice to have a class incorporate overviews of delicious, Learning 2.0, and other ideas that I’ve only heard of but knew nothing about.

I like that one of the class tutorials was through youtube. I’ve learned skills and posted videos on youtube, but this is the first time I’ve used it for a class.

I’m looking forward to using delicious. I’ve recently started using tags for my blog, and was initially avoiding it because of a lack of confidence in my ability to categorize. My recent use of tags was spurred by my realization that there will be a ton of entries to sort through and SOME attempt at tagging will help me more than having none at all. I think I will also focus some of my reflections on just one topic, so that I make sure I occasionally go deeper, instead of the same depth in multiple occurrences. I did make a mistake in initially having delicious import my existing bookmarks. This cost me almost an hour of having to clean up years of outdated bookmarks. I didn’t see an undo button, and I didn’t see a way to highlight multiple bookmarks to delete at once. Just another example of how learning technology can be riddled with mistakes that suck up time.

The overview of Learning 2.0 was helpful to understand some of the key ideas around the term. The list of resources is certainly handy and I’ll be checking out go2web20.net.