Week 14

Week 14

Cool

To be honest the reason I was struck by the idea of advanced performance tracking was for two reasons. One my love of sports and weight lifting because having a suit that is able to help students/athletes accomplish the correct form is very important. Especially in weight lifting because all too often, when you walk into a high school weight room many are using the wrong form that could cause injury. The second reason that this hit me as cool is the fact that it reminds me of shooting Golem from the Lord of the Rings movies, where the suit the actor wore mapped and recorded his every movement and converted that movement to the screen.

On a traditional classroom educational level, the advanced performance tracking could help keep track of a students’ progress through a unit. Meaning that the program would not let the student move on to the next step of scaffolding until it was deemed necessary that they have learned all the information from the previous step. All too often the work tracking is thought of as evil in the educational world. (Even though that is exactly what standardized testing is accomplishing and the inclusion of every learning level in one classroom.) Advanced performance tracking could be used to make sure that students are not leaving the classroom with giant gaps in their knowledge of a particular subject. This would not be tracking to discriminate or label, but tracking that would help the teacher know exactly what each individual student needs to learn. With this information a teacher could divide the class and let the students who have a concrete concept of the information onto a more elaborate project, while spending their time filling the gaps of those who are not there yet. Both groups would be learning and working with the same information, but on different levels, allowing for the classroom to become more efficient.

Favorite hands on activity

To be perfectly honest, this is one of the few courses throughout my college career that have kept me both interested and learning. Most of the activities that we had to complete in the course were tools that I have used in the past or have seen used, but never knew they were this free. The greatest realization I will take away from this class is the endless possibilities that many of these free tools open up to be used by everyone in the classroom. Teaching in an economic struggling community and school system makes this information valuable to both me and my students. These tools will allow them to keep up with technological progress without putting pressure on the wallets of their guardians.

The greatest tool that I will take away from this class is the free websites that anyone can make under their Google account. The ability to load up my projects to a website that the students can navigate and access from anywhere there is an internet connection will make their lives, and mine, a great deal easier. No longer will they have to depend on a sheet of paper to tell them the requirements or will they have to ask me questions to find a starting point for their research. The website will allow me to communicate and be a guide of information, leaving the students to initiate their own learning and become their own teacher. One of the greatest items I try to teach my juniors is the act of self initiation and the technology I have been given in this class will allow me to cut free the ones that know how to learn on their own and focus on the ones that are not there yet. Ultimately letting me teach the students that need it and allowing me to be the guide for the students that can learn on their own.

Chapter 30

Chapter 30 Reflection

First Idea

The first idea that I can apply to my classroom from reading this chapter is working using more visuals with audio narration.  The catch for me on how this could actually be useful in my classroom stars with the Modality Principle. This principle states, “Students learn better from animation and narration than from animation and on screen text.” (Reiser and Dempsey pg. 317) From experience over the years I have learned to modify my PowerPoint’s to be limited on verbal information on screen, but also to have that information be a trigger for me to expand upon to help the class learn the information.  This year in fact, I have let the students write the information down on paper first and then only after they have finished (I have a timer, so they do not have all day) I will start talking.  While I am talking and explaining the information, I also try to use maps, pictures, and graphs that will help the students understand.

The second part of this idea of using visual with audio narration is that I picked up that’ “working memory has at least two separate subsystems for storage of data.” (Reiser and Dempsey pg. 318) As a teacher you can also, “overload the visual/pictorial channel” if the graphic that is put in place to explain the information is to complex. (Reiser and Dempsey pg. 318)  Over the past three years I have been working to take complex information and convey that information to the students into the simplest form possible, but still allow them to learn the overall picture.  This means that the 30.2 table on page 318 makes total a complete sense to me.  The six steps that are laid out are exactly what I want to do for a learner in a social studies class room.  In every other core subject matter the facts are pretty much set in stone and social studies is the only real place for a student to learn to take a stand or opinion on real life issues such as economics and politics.  Therefore if I can incorporate graphics and narration that are simple and straight to the point, there is a better chance that more students will find it easier to take a stance and stand up for their opinions and thoughts.

Second Idea

The second idea from the reading that I would like to incorporate more into my classroom and every, social studies classroom around the country, is the idea of minimizing unnecessary visuals and text. This idea plays off of the first idea and to me this section was summed up perfectly in the following: 

“Seductive details consisted of textual information inserted into instructional materials that were intended to arouse interest.  Seductive details in lessons are typically related to the general topic but are irrelevant to the main instructional goal.”(Reiser and Dempsey pg. 319)

What I am attacking in a social studies classroom though is not the seductive details of history or politics, but that of what the state and federal government tell us to teach our students.  Take the Civil War in 8^th grade history in Michigan for example.  The five benchmarks are so vague, that it is left up to the teacher to decide on what information is important to teach. An example of this is benchmark 5.2.2, where it states to make an argument to explain the reasons why the north won the Civil War by considering the critical events and battles in the war.   So, most teachers go by the textbook and focus a great deal on the Civil War in the east because it is the seductive version.  Problem is that the Civil War for the North was really won out in the West because it helps solve the blunders of the war out east.  Overall, at least in a social studies classroom, my teaching ability would greatly improve if both the state and I stopped with the vague seductive details.  Then as a teacher I could teach straight to the point and allow the students to make up their minds on the situation.

Document/Photo Editing Review

Google Documents Review

The greatest part of Google documents for me is the fact that you can access any of your documents from anywhere in the world, as long as you can log into your Google account.  That means that you do not have to carry around a flash drive that has everything for the classroom on it. It frees you to think about other items that may be useful in the classroom.  If you’re anything like me, my life is on my flash drive and at least once a month I find a way to stress myself out by misplacing it.  I have all my documents saved on the work computer, my personal computer, and the flash drive, so it is not a problem of backing up.  It is just a problem of losing convince.

I also liked the thinkfreeonline tool because it was basically an online flash drive for your documents.  I also like the fact that you could work in the Microsoft program itself.  The reason I would choose the Google documents over the thinkfreeonline is because of Microsoft.  I know and use Open Office all the time with my students because most do not have the Office program at home, so it is a necessity sometimes.  The main reason is that being a district with money problems, an Office program for the computer is way at the bottom of concerns. Google Documents allows the students to have access to the abilities of a Microsoft Office, but at none of the price.  There is another advantage to the Google Documents in that, as I said in the above paragraph, the students can access the information from anywhere on the web.  Meaning that there is no more excuses of leaving the document at home because they forgot their flash drive.

Foto Flexer

I will be honest that this was my second image editing program that I went to.  The first one that I went to was Sumo Paint and that was based squarely of the name itself.  To me Sumo seemed to be an online version of paint on my computer that I could access everywhere.  That did not seem like something I would really use in the classroom as much.  So I went to Foto Flexer and discovered all the cool imaging editing I could do to a great deal of my pictures.  The other reason that I liked the program is because it is already connected to photo bucket, which I found existed because of this class, and I could load in my pictures from Philadelphia and make them have an old school photo appeal.  Being a social studies teacher, this program would be helpful in the case of civil war reenactment photos.  I would tell the students that they are not real, but some of the reenactments take their hobby so seriously that with a tweak of editing online I could turn their battle in to an “old time” visual for my class.  To be honest this could probably be done in Sumo Paint, but once I saw how close it was to regular paint, I left the website and went to Foto Flexer.  It just seems to be more beneficial to a Social Studies secondary classroom.

One other upside to this editing program is that I can have students dress like the time periods we are talking about in class.  Then have pictures taken and converted to black and white.  This would allow the students to have a little fun with the era, but also gain a personal connection to the material that is being covered in the classroom.

My Website

Once I work on this website over the summer, this will be the greatest tool in my class.

https://sites.google.com/site/economicprojectofsweetness/home

Week 12

The first set of competencies that I would like to cover in this response is the ID, training manager, and instructor competencies as found in table 27.3 on pg 275-276. After reading through the table, I feel that my main strength is that of being an instructor because of the teacher background. An instructor in ID seems to be exactly what most of us try to accomplish in our own classrooms. Although I do feel that I need to work on my instructional methods and strategies to better integrate technology into the classroom.
Strengths
Professional Foundations
As a teacher you are constantly communicating with students, parents, and administration, while trying to comply with the legal standards handed down by the state and federal government through the benchmarks. A teacher also must keep up their training and schooling, at least in Michigan, to keep their license and professional credibility up to date.
Planning and Preparation
This is a personal strength because over the last three years, I have been able to be more comfortable with my subject matter. This leads me to be able to plan and prepare better and more complete instruction.
Weakness
Instructional Methods and Strategies
I personally do not feel that this is a horrible weakness to have as a teacher. Reason being that if I am trying to keep the interest of students in the lesson I am teaching, the ability to stimulate and sustain motivation in them is a must. I have use power points for the last two years of teaching, which has allowed me to be a better presenter of information and allow for a greater amount of clarification and feedback from the students. I believe that I am not to a level though that is promoting the retention of knowledge and skills of where I want to be. Overall I label this as my weakness because I always want to improve and do not want to be complacent.

The second set of competencies I would like to talk about is set associated with online instruction. This is an area that I would love to build over the years, but as of right now it is a total and complete weakness. In my classroom I try to allow for discussion based learning to happen by presenting the class with at problem and idea that they come up with the ideas for. Then we come together as a class to discuss the answer and I can fix any questions that they have about the topic. The main competencies in table 27.4 that I would love to develop is the idea of establishing ground rules for the discussion but only have minimal interaction with the students. As of right now, I would consider myself a little bit of a control freak in the classroom, so if I could have an online class it would allow me to be able to have class lead by the students and it would force me to sit back and watch what they are learning.

The last set of competencies that I would like to develop for my professional goals is that of a training manager and the section of responsibility to others in table 27.5 on page 277. My ultimate goal of earning this degree is to help bring technology into the classroom, but also to be able to help other teachers with questions that they have on their educational tools. Sometimes I forget that some teachers are not as ready to have the technology aspect brought into their classroom. In my district there are still teachers that keep grades by hand in a grade-book. The main idea I would have to work with is being fair in my interactions with these teachers because they have been teaching longer than I have and have a great deal of knowledge outside of technology.

Week 11 Response

One significant theme that seems to be in all three chapters is the idea that if you have a job in instructional design/technology, you will be constantly adapting and adding to your profession. In the business world there is a chance that you will play many different roles with in the team and organization, which means that you will have to learn how to accomplish multiple aspects of your job. In P-12 there is a chance that through the requirement of continuing education you will move up to different levels of the school structural system. By achieving a masters degree new possibilities open up and if you have a instructional design/technology degree there is even more possibilities. The last reading of higher education seems to be the straightest forward of the three. To gain a full time professor’s job you must gain experience working with in the instructional design field. This makes complete sense because these are the teachers that are teaching all college enrolled students.


Another theme that works is way through all three chapters, at least to me, is the systematic approach that is taken when it comes to holding an instructional design/technology job. All three chapters have at least one system laid out in a graphic organizer that lays out the successful steps for change. For example the higher education reading lays out the promotion/tenure progression of both the Australian and US educational system. Both of the systems are different, but have necessary steps in place to further the education and specialization of their staff. In the P-12 there is a Step Up to Excellence program laid out in a lovely step format. Each step of this program is put in to better the improvement ideas for a school district by having a greater input of information and opinions from different sources. The business portion on the other hand allows the input of one person to determine a part, then the team as a whole puts the project or plan together.


One major difference between the three chapters is each area of employment seems to have a different component to the role that instructional design/technology plays in the work place. In a business the idea that seemed to be a theme to me was that an instructional design/technology employees were to work as part of a team. They could be the manager, a designer, or just a member of the group, but they each only did their assigned job. Then everyone would come together to produce the final product the team was working on. While in the P-12, or school environment, the aspect of the team was everyone working together to develop new approaches for improvement for the schools. Unlike the business approach, the schools would have to pull members from different levels together to weigh in their opinions on every step of the process. Higher education is a lot like the P-12, except the readings makes it out to be more specialized. In higher education the professors have obtained their high level degrees and are training others to become more specialized in their field of expertise.


The idea that I can positively say would work the best in my place of employment is the importance that is placed on communication and cooperation at every level of the school. If each level of the school system would come together and try to work a great deal of our differences, then more plans could be implemented with out a great amount of up rise.

The following is a concept map on the three branches of government in the United States. I would use this concept map in both my 11th and 8th grade classes to help students orginize the main information that they have to know for all three. The concept map would allow the students to visually follow the information in a step by step and orginized way. In a lesson I would give the students a blank concept map and have them fill out the information as it was given in the correct bubble.

Week 10 Reflection

The first trend that hit home with me was the Step Up to Excellence.  By looking at the step diagram on pg. 214 this idea became more apparent to me.  In most cases, this seems to be a great system to help school districts change from one level of achievement to the next one higher up.  I even think it would work to help my district in a way, although this is not what is coming to my mind when I read this. What comes to mind is the new laws passing in my states government as I write this.  Some of you in this class do not live in the state of Michigan, but as of right now in this moment the way government and schools are ran is about to be changed.  Michigan is about to become the next Wisconsin in the news and when I saw the steps laid out for me it seems to close to what I have been reading and hearing in the new government to not respond in this way.

Step 1- Our wonderful governor Rick Snyder have purposed a new law that has passed the senate and house of Michigan where a appointed manager can come into towns and schools redesign and fire the whole system. 

Step 2- Then the manager can come into the school and align the clusters or departments of the schools in the way that he/she deems is the best and most efficient way to conduct an educational classroom.

Step 3- Along with the clusters within the school the manager can also help align the school itself.  Just as the clusters or departments in the school, the manager has control over the whole school district itself.  Meaning that the manager, appointed by the governor, not only controls the departments he/she controls the school district.

Step 4- See Steps two and three and it applies to teams and individuals.

Step5- The manager then has the ability to evaluate the whole systems performance that he/she has set up to determine whether to take a new course of action or start it over again from the feedback gathered.  (A luxury that the original elected employees did not have)

Through these steps the government of Michigan has purpose a Step Up To Excellence program for failing towns and school districts around the state. 

The second trend that hit home with me was the role of instructional design and technology specialists in a school.  According to the book, “A role that IDT specialist can play is in working to create improvements in the core and supporting work.” (Reiser and Dempsey pg. 216)  This is the exact reason I decided to pursue this master degree program.  When I started working at my school district three years ago, most of the staff were older and did not necessarily use the technology that was available to them in the classroom.  I wanted to be able to help these teachers incorporate the technology into their classrooms so that they could transfer their vast amount of knowledge and teaching skills to the modern student.  Along the way I also wanted to sharpen and be exposed to more technology myself, but helping my fellow teachers was the main point.  Now three years later great deals of those teachers that I started this degree to help have retired, in their place though is a great staff that is of the younger generation.  This new staff is eager to incorporate technology into the classroom, so my mind has shifted from a case of training people on technology to helping discover new ways of incorporating it into the classroom.

Jing

This video made by me on Jing is a demonstration I would use to help my students at the start of their financial project in economics.  What is contained in the video is a way to look up stocks using the tools of Google finance.  In the begging of the project the students have to find three companies that they want to invest their money into.  After they choose their three companies they need to find a place where they can keep track of their stock options. The easiest place that I have found is using Google finance. Eventually the students will visit this site once a week and insert the numbers into a table that is keeping track of prices, profits, and losses over the whole semester.

Week 9 - Chapter 18

The fist interesting fact to me in this reading is the idea that instructional designers are spending, “much of their time is now spent as project managers, supervising contractors with varying degrees of instructional design expertise.” (Reiser and Dempsey pg.177) To me this sounds like a major application of technology within a teacher’s classroom. With the right amount of training, conditioning, and technology a teacher can create a classroom atmosphere where the students have the necessary skills to be successful at various levels. When the teacher creates this type of classroom they can become more of a manager of learning, rather than the main component of learning. Meaning that the students are taking more self initiated approach to their own education and the teacher is the guide. This frees up the higher end or more experienced students to move at a faster pace, while allowing the teacher to “manage” students that need assistance. This is where we as teachers in this class are aiming for our classroom to be. To have technology be an educational tool that frees both students and teachers from traditional chains and allows for new avenues of learning to be built.


The second interesting idea from the reading for me comes from the globalization of training. Instructional Design/Technology has led to the necessary requirement of training employees to the ever changing work force. This is not just a US idea; it is now part of the rest of the world that is moving at a quick pace of life. Cause and point is the fact that a great deal of “text and instructional strategies must be modified for different cultures.” (Reiser and Dempsey pg. 181) This is just like the classroom because as a teacher you are required to gain new knowledge through the wonderful world of professional development. As a teacher you are always refining you skills and this training that is put upon you is to achieve the idea of progress and change. Once you have this new information you have to take it to the classroom and change the language and ideas for the different students in your room. Just as Instructional Designers have to change the language to fit different cultural ideas, the teacher must change the language of a lesson or idea to fit the various levels of students. In a way a classroom is a small cultural globe contained in a single room, but as the teacher you must reach each end of that globe.

My Lewis and Clark Expidition

View Modern Lewis and Clark in a larger map

My Lewis and Clark Expidition

The lesson that I have in mind for using Google maps is a Lewis and Clark adventure.  In 8^th grade we cover the Louisiana Purchase, along with the surveying trip that Lewis and Clark took. As a class we map out the route that was taken from Missouri to the Pacific Ocean and back.  This allows the students to not only read about the history, but gives them real life examples of the places that are talked about in history. 

After going through the Lewis and Clark route I usually assign a project where the students make their own adventure across the United States.  They have to draw on a map the route they are taking and the places that they stopped at along the way.  With the use of Google Maps, I can have the students describe the adventure on the map itself.  There will be no need for paper because the students will be able to put the information on the checkpoints.  It will give them experience with technology and it will allow them to see parts of the country through pictures that they might not have looked up with just drawing the map.

Podcast

Week 7 Write Up

Part I-Chapter 14 reflection

Being an economics teacher the first idea from Chapter that could be applied in my classroom is the importance put on human capital.  “”Human capital yields higher rates of return than physical capital in corporate settings. HPI has adopted at its core the maximization of human capital achievements.” (Reiser and Dempsey pg. 136) Over the last three years of teaching I have been trying to stress the importance of gaining a post secondary education in either a college or trade school to my high school students.  The above quote helps me prove to my students that gaining the extra education allows for a person to be more productive in the corporate settings.  The overall translation being that the more education you receive, the better chance you will be more productive and have the ability to make more money.   

Another idea from the chapter that would help me in my classroom is the idea that, “human performance improvement is what we wish to achieve and human performance technology is the means we use to achieve it.” (Reiser and Dempsey pg. 137) This quote alone makes the whole chapter make sense.  To me this means that technology is a key to success, but not the only thing.  A great deal of students in my classroom stay connected to technology in some form or fashion from the time they wake up to the time they go to bed.  This does not mean that all of this use of technology is working towards a higher performance though. In most cases the technology that is used to produce useful products and work is driven by a desire of a human to improve their performance.  For me as a teacher this fits my saying of, “just because you know how to text, does not mean you know how to type.”

The last part of this reading that I could use in the classroom is Gillbert’s Behavior Engineering Model on pg. 140.  In this model Gillbert states six different categories that affect work performance.  Looking through all six of these categories, I see a great deal of reality.  By using this model in an economics classroom the students could see the different types of stimulus, response, and consequences with in a work environment and the drive of an individual person.  I always say to my students that no one does anything for nothing. This chart would help organize that thought and allow me to show the class what I am trying to teach.

Part II-Podcast Description

http://epnweb.org/index.php?request_id=319&openpod=11#anchor11

The podcast website that I have found is called the educational podcast network.  It is a site that is trying to bring together many different subject matter podcast's into one website.  The category that I decided to listen to and look at was Shades of Democracy.  It gives a look at the different types of masks democracy can take. Teaching Civics and what is going on in the Middle East at the moment, it seemed to be an appropriate subject matter. I have been able to listen to these some of the podcasts at times, but some of the links do seem dead.  So if you are looking around and find one of the dead links just keep searching.

Part III-Usefulness of a Podcast in the Classroom

I personally think that podcasting has two main values with in the classroom.  The first would be the ability to help students catch up on information that have been absent over a period of time.  Having your lessons/lectures put into a podcast and posted on a blog would allow students the ability to know what is going on in class and not feel so lost when they return.  The second value to me of the podcast in the classroom is the help it could provide in helping students study.  In a podcast the student could skip over information that they already know and go straight to the information that they need.  To me this would cut down on useless time spent studying information and ideas that the students already know.  Overall the podcast is a high tech tape recorder that can be posted on the web and accessed by anyone at any time.  It seems to be so simple, but very useful.