820 Developer's Notebook

While earning my teaching degree, I thought the hardest thing I would do would be to plan out a unit of instruction and then teach it to a class.  That was until I tried to create an online unit.  When I first started creating this unit, I thought it would be easy but there were, and are, a great deal of things that need to be considered when developing an online unit.  The first thing I learned was that it does not have to be super long as long as it covers the objectives of the course.  For example, every online course I had taken had always been between 8 and 15 weeks.  Because of this, I made the assumption that my course needed to be that long.  This was not the case, 4 weeks works.  Coming to the understanding of how long you want your course to be is important because from there you can outline your “pacing guide” for your course.

For the creating  of my course I choose to t use CourseSites (a product of Blackboard).  This caused both frustration and  a great learning experience.  The reason I picked CourseSites was because  I had some experience with my students using it for their AVID online courses but actually being an instructor and using CourseSites from the instructor perspective was a big learning experience.  When selecting a platform for creating a course, you need to make sure you can fully manipulate any part of the site you wish.  There are certain menus and such that I would like to remove from the site but don’t know for sure how to.

Another factor I found important to consider was that online education is different than face to face.  Initially, I was designing my course to be 100% online but found this to was not going to be effective, which would defeat the entire goal of my course.  Deciding to use a hybrid model also meant that a tighter schedule had to be in place.  This ties into the idea of Universal Design for Learning and Criteria for Evaluation of Online Course Design.  Prior to building my course, I thought that I would just put this here and that there.  Yet while using the rubrics and viewing them is helpful, when actually building and evaluating your course choose one and stick with that one.  Going back multiple times and evaluating where you are at each stage ensures that your students will get the most out of what they course offers.  Online courses are constantly evolving and changing but there is a need for constant evaluation require.

One important lesson I learned was to remember that the learners do not know the material so take out any preconceived notions.  This is not saying they  are not smart but they just have not learned the material before or are unaware of what it, so when creating the individual lessons it is important to remember this because you could accidentally create lessons with a information missing.  This could cause some problems because you also have to remember that you are not there to explain any missing details so the lessons need to be fully explained, even if you think it is self explanatory you must explain all aspects of the unit.

While creating the course, I had to make a choice between Asynchronous vs. Synchronous assignments.  Did I want the lessons to be built on one another or could be done at any time?  Due to the nature of the material of what I was wanting to teach, it needed to be synchronous because to get to Week 2, the learners had to go through Week 1.  This is a crucial choice to make in any lessons. I know that in some online courses I have taken in the past, you could do any unit in any order as long as you finished by the final due date (in an asynchronous way).  This all depends on what and how you are presenting information.

Overall, the creation of my first online course was informative and sometimes frustrating.  I learned a great deal about communication and the core concepts of developing a course.  There are some key ideas that are important to remember, keeping these in mind whenever I create another online course.  The main point I will always remember is the UDL and making sure learning is accessible to all students in the online courses.

Action Mazes and technology reflection

AVID (Advancement via Individual Determination) is a program that is designed to prepare students for college.  Many students in my class struggle with the idea of critical thinking, these students do not really think “outside the box” which causes some difficulty when they are entering the world after high school.  With this in mind I chose a lesson centered on implementing technology to increase the skill of critical thinking. The goal of the lesson was to increase students’ critical thinking through the use of action mazes and blogs.  Students will participate in a variety of action mazes (action mazes are best described as choose your own adventure) the student is presented a situation and chooses between 2 options, each chose leads to another situation which has its own set of options.  They proceed through this until they get to the final result.  These cause the students to think outside of their comfort zone and deepen their though process.  This helps develop their thought processes and become better prepared for the world after graduation.  After completing the action mazes, students will write reflection blogs that are posted to their Gaggle account (a program through our school for students that is similar to Angel).  Each reflection blog will have a series of questions for the students to answer.

I was curious to observe and discover what using a variety of technology would do for the student’s learning.  The technology I had chosen to use was mainly the iPad; therefore, I incorporated a variety of apps into the lesson.  Gaggle was the central app utilized.  Gaggle is an online tool that our school district uses that allows the students to have blogs in a safe and monitored environment. Using this app, the students were able to blog about their experience and create a record of their reflections.

While implementing the lesson there were some changes that were made.  These changes were due to various reasons; such as technology issues and students writing skills.  One of the changes made was the students using the Gaggle app in place of the Gaggle site.  Since Gaggle did not have a mobile version of their website for the students to access we had to install the app on all the school owned iPads as well as the student owned devices. 

The implementation of this lesson was very interesting.  The group of students that participated in this lesson were my AVID II students.  These students are sophomores who are college bound and come from lower income or minority families. The students were actively engaged in the action mazes and posted multiple responses/reflections to the action mazes on their blogs.  What I found most exciting was student engagement and excitement.  Each student participated in a different action maze, and I found the students were sharing their reflections and many wanted to do multiple mazes.  This resulted in the students writing multiple reflections for multiple action mazes, thereby increasing their thinking in various situations.

Before teaching this lesson I had some underlying assumptions about what the students would do and what they already knew.  One major assumption was that students would already know how to use the iPad.  This was not the case.  I did not take into account the fact that since a majority of the students come from lower income families they do not have access to the same technology I am using to teach.  As a result of this assumption I had to spend the first part of the class teaching the students basic operations for iPad use.  This also caused a constraint in understanding because tasks I had planned for the students to start with needed extra explanation, this in turn slowed down the overall pace of the lesson.

This lesson had some constructivism elements in it because the students would work individually to complete each action maze.  They were not asking each other what they thought but rather thinking for themselves. This way they were making sense of the world around them.  This lead into the lesson as being a way to enhance current learning the students are doing.  This is the 2^nd year that I have these particular AVID students and developing critical thinking skills is something we have been working of since they were freshman.

While implementing this lesson the various learners were taken into account, each student was only required to finish one maze and one reflection.  They were not told this so that each would work at a pace that was appropriate for them.  Slower learners worked at a slower pace and quicker learners at a quicker pace.  It was whatever suited their learning style.  Analyzing the student learning is a key factor for another teacher trying to implement this lesson.  One thing also to be aware of is how to work the iPad, Gaggle and action mazes.

Most of this lesson is student driven. Using knowledge I had of Vygotsky’s learning theories I wanted to create a lesson that would allow students to work in their zone of proximal development. They are the ones who are discovering the critical thinking skills and the teacher’s role is more of facilitator.  Reflective blogging was used as a form of accountability for their work.  By using a blog, the other students and I could access the blog quickly and leave comments.  Through this students receive instant feedback and also make it easier for the class to have a discussion because it provides an interactive venue where everybody had access to their classmates’ thoughts.

Technology had a major role in my lesson, without technology it would have been difficult to complete the action mazes.   The advantages of having the technology could also be found in access to blogs.  Instead of the students writing their reflections in journals we turned the journal into an online document and caused the students to read multiple people’s reflections at their own pace.  The student’s did not have to wait for someone to finish before they read, they could just read the next reflection and comment. One expectation I had in regards to using technology was that the students were going to be distracted.  This was the first time that I was letting them use the iPads and I was worried they were going to take photos or do other things that would be off task.  This did happen but only for the first 5 minutes.  After the novelty of the device wore off they began to focus on their work. Before we began working many of the questions were simple questions of how to use the iPad.  Since many did come from lower income families who did not have access to technology, they were confused on what to do.  What really amazed me was the few students who did know how to use it, really stepped up and while I was helping one student, they would help another without me having to ask them to. 

By completing the action maze digitally there was no room for them to cheat and skip a few pages ahead to see what the result was or they could not go back and change a choice that did not work out.  They really had to think about through the options and which choice to pick.  While reading the reflections I could tell many students were applying more critical thinking to a variety of scenarios and thinking through all the options, thus becoming deeper thinkers and learning to think past their current situation and push past their comfort levels.

Well after some technical difficulty, I was finally able to upload my CEP 800 Digital Storyboard. For my storyboard, I decided to tell the story of the AVID tutorial. It is a great strategy that I use with my students to help them gain a better understanding of the material in their core classes. By completing these tutorials in class, the students learn better study habits and really take control of their own education.

First 800 Post!

This is my first post for CEP 800.  For this assignment, I conducted a series of audio interviews to clear up some misconceptions about the subject I teach.  The reason I picked the entire subject of AVID is because the program is fairly new to my school.  For this reason, there are many misconceptions about what exactly is AVID.  For this interview, I spoke to a current student, Brianna.  She is a Freshman this year and is new to the program.  I also spoke with Jeff Taylor, the Academic Coach and AVID director for my school.  I chose these two people to clear up some misconceptions pertaining to AVID.

Final Wicked Project

WOW! 8 weeks has flown by and here I am now presenting my final presentation for my Wicked Project.  What an interesting lesson/unit it was to teach.  I learned a few things about ways to get studetns to respond and even sparked some interesting adaptations to make for next time.  Overall the students had a great reaction to the lesson and therefore were able to learn something but I still wanted them to learn more.  What inspired me to choose this topic was the fact that students are using social media sites as the new bathroom wall, so to speak.  They are writing things and stirring up problems without the thought that this is slander and can hurt people.  To solve this problem, the unit I created had the students deductively researching the answers as well as the effects of negative social media.  We used role playing to showcase scenarios that students can learn the appropriate way (not RT something) to respond. One thing that was added late to the unit was the fact that I had such great support from my principle.  She was very willing to sit down with me and share many of her experiences with kids and negative digital citizenship.  What I hope to do next time is similar to the scared straight program.  Instead of having criminals come in and speak to the kids about bad decisions, have students who have lost scholarships or been expelled due to negative social media come in and explain their first hand accounts.  This is something that, regardless of the topic, students relate to.  You can tell someone something but until they hear a first had account, it is almost like they think "that will never happen to me".  Overall, I really enjoyed creating this project.  It really made me consider options that I hadn't.  I had always seen this problem but now I can see a solution to help me in the future deal with this.  Teaching kids before they fall victim to the poor choices the rapid expansion of technology has.

PLP

Learning is an everyday occurrence in life.  When I began my courses this summer, we were assigned a Professional Learning Plan to create.  While creating this plan I established a few goals for myself.  Through the completion the certificate program at MSU, I have completed a few of those goals but also established a few more.

One goal that I saw myself completing was learning more than just Smart Boards and technology I am currently using in the classroom.  I was able to go into the school year with excitement about technology and seeing that it isn't just what I currently have in my room.  I will be able to incorporate blogs and Google Docs into my daily lessons that will allow students to create portfolios and long assignments that can be worked on from course to course.  This is one thing that I have added into my plan: the idea to carry assignments from year to year. I will be able to achieve this because I will have my students for 4 years.

A second goal that I had was really using Twitter.  The Academy Director and my school district both use Twitter but I never saw it as anything more than "this is what I did today".  After this course I really see the impact of Twitter.  Sending substantial Tweets is beneficial and useful in education and the classroom. I can convey messages to my students and parents without the fear of students having my personal cell phone number.  I was always unsure of how to do this without giving my phone number and this course showed me that it was a possibility.

While not 100% sure of how to use it but with a desire to learn about it more, I have created a podcast. This was a beneficial lesson because I learned a great deal about podcasting.  The idea I would like to pursue with podcasting is how can I use this to convey thoughts and messages to my students.  I think it would be interesting if my AVID students created a podcast where they are each responsible for one cast.  This could range from topics to make it more of a AVID/school wide talk show.  They could have guests and topics relating to life at the school.  I'm not sure how I would convey this idea and actually fulfill it but it is something that was sparked in my mind following the completion of the lesson during this course. 

To help accomplish these goals I plan to involve peers as well as continue on into the Master's program at Michigan State.  This will help me to learn more about different technologies that I can convey to my students and peers.  After completing these CEP courses I have a desire to finish strong and finish as many technology courses as I can .

Get up and going on Twitter

Twitter is something that, as my students say, is the new Facebook.  Being able to use Twitter effectively or just simply use Twitter is a challenge.  For my groups tutorial creation we decided to teach about the use of Twitter.  This is something that every teacher will have to become familiar with in the future since many students are beginning to use it. Having a Twitter account is not only a one way communication but rather it is a tool that can be used to communicate with classes as a whole.  While developing this tutorial I learned a lot not only about Twitter but conferencing tools.  One such tool was Google Hangouts.  This was something I had only dabbled with but with the support and help of my fellow group members I learned about the amazing elements of the Hangout.  I also learned about creating lists with Twitters.  This is something I think would be useful to transfer to my class. Having students grouped into Twitter lists would allow me to send specific messages to classes rather than as a whole.

If I were to do this project again, I would focus more on a specific element of Twitter.  Rather than simply of starting a Twitter account, I would focus on the use of Twitter in the classroom.  This is something I feel is beneficial to educators using Twitter because it is something that can be beneficial in a classroom setting.