Week 5 of 525

What questions do I have about using technology to generate and test hypotheses in my classroom?

I teach business and there are not many times that I expect my students to generate and test hypotheses. In some of my classes students will predict what will happen, but it is difficult to test theories when business is pretty black and white. So, I guess since I find it difficult to hypothesize in my classroom it is difficult to think about what technologies could be used.

What kind of technologies can I use to help students identify similarities and differences?

I do this often in my Personal Finance class. Just recently we compared banks and credit unions, debit cards and credit cards. In the past we have compared saving and investing. When doing this I encourage the students to use a graphic organizer to sort out their thoughts. It is very easy to use Microsoft Word to create a Venn Diagram to use.

What kind of technologies can I use to help students with homework and practice?

I have had students use many different technologies for homework and practice. Often I use spreadsheets in accounting for financial statements, journalizing, posting, and creating a worksheet. I also use spreadsheets in Personal Finance when the students are creating a budget. First, we create a budget together in class and then they are expected to create a similar budget for themselves. Currently, in my Entrepreneurship class, students are  creating a new cereal. They create a new box and design a magazine ad and television commercial. The students are using goanimate or xtranormal for their television commercials and Microsoft Publisher for their magazine ads. The Entrepreneurship students are also using Google docs for many of their assignments.

Cooperative Learning and Reinforcing Effort

This week in 525, we focused on cooperative learning and reinforcing effort.

What is the purpose of asking students to work cooperatively?
Cooperative learning can be a very powerful tool to use in the classroom. Students get the opportunity to work with others and share ideas and talents. It is important for students to learn to work with others that they may not be comfortable working with, since that would most likely happen when they are adults in the workplace.
Our first task was to explore It's a Wild Ride! This project is an interdisciplinary project where students work together to create a new roller coaster ride for an amusement park. The project incorporates the four main content areas throughout the different phases. While I think this is a great project, I am a bit surprised that other content areas weren't considered. Tech ed standards could be considered for the engineering of the roller coaster and business ed could be considered to help market the roller coaster. (But, I guess that is just me being biased to my teaching area!) Overall, the project seems to incorporate many important ideas. The students are working together, several content areas are linked together to answer the student question of "When am I ever going to use this in my life?", and it gives the students clear guidelines to follow.

Next, we had to watch two videos by Clay Shirky, Institutions vs. collaboration and How cognitive surplus will change the world. In the first video, Clay was talking about people collaborating via the internet and used the example of Flickr. His point showed how collaboration typically works, in my opinion, especially when high school students are involved. It showed how one person typically contributes the most work and the other collaborators differ in how much they contribute. I see this often when my students are doing group projects. The second video discussed how cognitive surplus is used. Clay told us that cognitive surplus is the ability for the world's population to volunteer, contribute, and collaborate on large, and sometimes, global projects. There are two things that make up cognitive surplus:  the world's free time and talents and media tools that allow more than consuming, they allow creation and sharing as well. Cognitive surplus can be a powerful tool for students. Technology will allow them to increase their "surplus" of knowledge and also share their knowledge.


   

Cues, questions, advance organizers; nonlinguistic representation; and summarizing and note taking

In week 3 of 525, we discussed cues, questions and advance organizers, nonlinguistic representation, and summarizing and note taking.

What is the purpose of asking student to use cues, questions, and advance organizers? And what kind of technologies can I use to help students?
I was asked to review three online tools. I looked at bubble.us, Education Oasis, and MindMeister. Bubble.us was very easy to use, but I found it a bit restrictive as it only allowed me to make one kind of map. Although it did allow me to move the boxes around on the page and make the map look how I wanted it to look. MindMeister was also a bit restrictive as it only allowed one type of map. MindMeister was free up to 3 maps and then the user would have to pay to use the site. Education Oasis had several types of maps available, however, they were in pdf format and couldn't be saved or changed for the user's specifications. Using any kind of map to organize ideas can be useful to students. Students learn in different ways and using a map can reach  many different kinds of learners.

I can think of a time when I asked students to use nonlinguistic representation and I was pleased with the results. Why did it go well?
In my entrepreneurship class, I asked the students to create an organizational map of our high school. They could set it up however they chose as long as all staff was included. Most of them used Microsoft Word to create their map, others used Microsoft Publisher and color-coordinated the chart. This happened to be a day that my principal was in observing and he particularly enjoyed that part of the class. The students were able to convey their ideas in a different way than just in writing or by reading it.

I can think of a time when I asked students to use a KWL chart to assist in summarizing and note taking and I was pleased with the results. Why did it go well?
In my personal finance class, we spend a great deal of time discussing credit. It is a very important topic for the students to learn about and understand as it affects their entire lives. I start the unit with a KWL chart. The students list what they already know about credit and what they want to know about credit. Throughout the unit, I try to make sure to discuss the things that they want to know and also the things that I feel they need to know. In this unit the students work in groups to teach lessons about different credit topics, so many of them are responsible to teach some of the things that other students want to know. Finally, when we have finished th unit, we finish the KWL chart and the students list what they learned during the unit.

Providing feedback, setting objectives, and providing recognition (Week 2 CEdO525)

This week in 525 we focused on providing feedback to students, setting objectives, and providing recognition to students.

I read the article Feedback That Fits and found many things interesting in it. I found the section about relating feedback to the goal the most interesting. The article talked about commenting on improvements that a student would have made since previous assignments. This is especially helpful for students who are struggling in a particular class or on a particular subject. Dealing with unsuccessful learners is a challenge that many teachers face. The student typically doesn't look closely at assignments or tests that have been handed back, making feedback difficult. The article suggested pointing out improvements made by the students and then giving suggestions of some steps to follow for the next assignment and following up with more feedback. Tone of voice becomes very important when giving any kind of feedback. It should indicate that the teacher is making helpful suggestions. In my opinion, tone of voice and eye contact go hand-in-hand. Students can sometimes misread a tone of voice and making eye contact with that student becomes essential to the student understanding what the teacher is trying to say. The major emphasis in the article was being clear about the feedback and giving suggestions that the student can comprehend. A student may receive feedback and not read it or may misinterpret it completely. A teacher must make sure that a student understands their expectations and their intentions when giving feedback.

What kind of technologies can I use to help students receive proper feedback?
We were asked to review one of the rubric websites; I chose to check out rubistar. I found this website to be very easy to use. I was able to create a rubric from their database of products. The site allows the user to change points offered and choose their own categories for evaluating the assignment. The category description may be changed and the criteria may be manipulated for each category to suit the user. This site seems like a great, easy way to produce rubrics. Rubrics can be very time-consuming to make and this makes the process much more efficient!

When reviewing the online quiz creators, I chose to take a closer look at QuizStar. This site requires the teacher to create classes to assign the quizzes to. QuizStar allows the teacher to import a quiz that has already been made or it allows the teacher to create their own quizzes. It seems easy to use and I think it would be easy for students to use. This is definitely a way for teachers to save paper and ink by not having to make copies of quizzes, however, if a teacher does not teach in a computer lab they may have trouble getting access to computers for the students to take the quizzes.

What kind of technologies can I use to help students receive recognition?
We use Power School as our grading program where I teach. The grade book program provided allows the teacher to not only enter grades, but indicate if the assignment is late, missing, or exempt. It also allows the teacher to add specific comments on assignments or general comments about the student's performance.

I also have begun using Google docs in one of my classes, which is a great way for me to provide needed recognition by using the comments tool. Students would be able to see exactly where the comment is linked to and they would be able to see if changes are needed or not.. I also would be able to email the students to provide recognition they may be needing.

Readings for week 1 of CEdO525

The first article we had to read for week 1 of 525 was Principles of Teaching and Learning, I was reading the section about teaching principles. I found the fourth point especially hit home with me. It discussed coverage of topics in the classroom and how a teacher decides what to teach and how much to teach in a semester. I teach business and have many different state standards available. Since I am the business department in my district, I am limited in how many of those standards are reached. So, I attempt to meet as many of them as possible, however, sometimes that becomes a challenge because of the make-up of the class. Each student learns in a different way and at a different pace and all have different backgrounds and experiences. My class sizes have been increasing since I began teaching which also poses a challenge for me. I find myself adapting how I teach certain material or how I present information to my classes. For some classes, I am not able to cover as much material as I would like to, but with others, I can cover much more than expected.

Teachers must be willing to be flexible with how they teach and what they teach. It is important that each student receives the education that they are expecting to receive, but it is also important to not lose other students in the process. It is a fine line, and a difficult one, that teachers walk. We must prepare ourselves for any challenges that may arise.

The second reading we had in Week 1 of CEdO525 was A Meta-Analysis of the Effectiveness of Teaching and Learning With Technology on Student Outcomes. I will be honest and admit that I struggled with this article. I am not a scientist, nor am I a mathematician. So much of this article confused me. What I did understand from the research were the results and I was quite surprised by them. The results indicated that when technology is used to assist in teaching and learning, it had a slight positive effect on learning. And in some cases, technology had a negative effect on behavior. I find much of this hard to believe. It has been my experience when using technology in my classroom, that often the students are better behaved and have much better outcomes with learning. 

Copyright, Privacy, and Internet safety for children

In our final week of CEdO525 we discussed copyright and Internet safety for children with our groups and wrote about privacy and ethics on the Internet individually.

One of the sites that was recommended to look at in regards to copyright was Creative Commons. I had never heard of the site prior to this class and found some of the information interesting. The website supports legal use of another's work. The site offers six different types of licenses for creators to choose from. Most of them allow a user to change or build upon the material as needed as long as proper credit is given. The licenses also have three different layers to them. The first layer is legal language, the second layer is "human" language, and the third is machine readable.

When looking into the information for Internet safety for children, the FBI provides a guide for parents about Internet Safety. It is very inclusive as it discusses signs to look for that a child might be at risk online, what to do if a parent suspects their child is in contact with a sexual predator, and how to minimize the chances of a child coming into contact with an online exploiter.

This course has been very helpful! I particularly enjoyed learning how to use Google Alerts and creating a website evaluation tool. Researching different Internet learning tools also proved to be valuable. I find it very important to know what resources are available, especially free resources, in the recent happenings in Wisconsin. With threats of deep cuts in state financing, using online tools may become a requirement.

Google Alerts!

In week 2 of 520, one of the things we focused on was Google Alerts. It's awesome! I have never used it before and didn't know it existed. What a wonderful tool to use to keep up on topics that are important to you! While discussion boards and listservs are valuable resources to have in the teaching world, sometimes it is helpful to have tool like Google Alerts to tell you when something new has been put onto the Internet. I teach about so many different topics and it is very difficult to stay on top of everything that is changing in those areas. Google Alerts would allow me to do this. I see myself using this a lot for my classroom.