American Revolution History Challenge (iRLO)

Ahh…nothing like the last minute. I love pressure.
In creating this iRLO, I invested many, many hours of thought and time. It was VERY challenging to me because of the interconnected and complicated nature of programming. I would like emphasize my appreciation for the simplified process we utilized through the Scratch program. Scratch took most of the work out of true programming and I am lucky to have it as a resource.

Now that I have working model and can adapt it to meet my future needs, I am very excited about the potential for creating multiple activities related to class material and content. I believe these programs are an excellent way to engage students with material. However, I will, over the course of time, improve the questions, add visual appeal, and MUST attempt to incorporate sounds to reinforce the interactive nature.

I am very interested in utilizing this type of program because it is easily accessible outside of school, and if developed appropriately, very engaging with a very broad scope and depth of content. There is a ton of potential here…

American Revolution History Challenge (Scratch Program)

B.8.7 Identify significant events and people in the major eras of United States and world history

The iRLO is developmentally appropriate for 6-8^th grades and probably 9-12^th grade as well depending on individual student needs. The standard I have selected is specified for 8^th grade students but is applicable to younger students as preparation for the standard. Furthermore, it is appropriate as a refresher for students who have theoretically already achieved the standard. I like the statement, “If you don’t use it, you lose it.”

The iRLO is developmentally appropriate because the questions are general and highlight significant events during the American Revolution. The wording of questions and answers may be challenging for some students, but the words can be changed to suit the needs of students.

My iRLO is a simple program which asks a series of questions related the history of the American Revolution. The question list is short (only seven questions) but definitely challenges students recollection and/or study skills to find the correct answer.

The iRLO is interactive through the student/user needing to click images and press letter keys which correspond to correct answers to questions. I have included my peers’ suggestions to include responses for incorrect answers, thus increasing the interactive nature of the program. I also changed the timing of words being displayed on screen increase the efficiency of the activity.

Rethinking a Technology Dominated World

Oooh...that last chapter.

After reading the last chapter of Rethinking Education in the Age of Techonology, I am full of many, many reactions, notions, and feelings. Overall, I agree the current system of the institution of school needs to change in big ways for it to be more effective; however, I whole-heartedly resist the idea that the place and purpose of "school" will one day be inneffective and pointless. I do no like the idea of certificates and of students choosing to work versus continuing thier education as soon as middle school. (The suggestion of an eigth grade understanding of math is a joke...right? I hope so.) There is a great benefit to being exposed to, challenged, and required to develop an understanding of a variety of broad topics. The challenge is making interesting and meaningful. 

The sentence which means the most to me is, "The rethinking of education that we promote with this book should aim towards strategies that provide access to the new educational resources for everyone in society, and give people the motivation to take advantage of these resources. This demands rethinking education not in isolation, but considering the interplay of society, education, and learning" (pg 129). I love this sentence; however, the vision and direction the authors see is nothing like my own. I agree in attempting to incorporate technology as a supplemental, engaging, and useful tool/resource, but I will always emphasize the importance of individual thought and contemplation before "asking and searching" for the answer online. The ability to search, evaluate, and decipher informational sources should be emphasized as well due to the increasing diversity and amounts of information available, but becuase I recognize the potential for abusive and inappropriate uses of many forms of technology, I will emphasize and model moderation and responsible utilization.

Interactive Learning Communities

Also, it is my goal to engage students with the material which interests them, but within the required content areas I teach. I will allow as much leeway as possible, but in the end, student focus should be upon a variety of material content. This is a challenge, but is very possible through creative and flexible assessments which utilize individual student interests and strengths. Furthermore, I believe that by attempting to and finding ways to incorportate parents/guardians and other community members into the learning process, relevance of material through opinoins and express creates itself. If recognizable figures and members of students' lives have reactions, thoughts, and feelings about material, then so too will students, even if only on a much smaller level. It is my goal to create an interactive learning community between myself, students, parents/guardians, and larger communities. In this way, I will make learning real.

Habits of Mind

1) From what viewpoint are we seeing, reading, or hearing this?
2) How do we know what we know? What's the evidence, and how reliable is it?
3) How are things, events, or people connected? What is the cause and effect? How do they fit?
4) What if...? Could things be other-wise? What are the alternatives?
5) So what? Why does it matter? What does it all mean? Who cares?

These are an incredible series of questions which all people should ponder at all times. I will incorporate something similar into everthing I attempt to teach.

Peer Led Discussion (What Does it All Mean?)

In coordinating our peer led discussion of the chapter we chose from Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology, our group did an excellent job of suggesting questions and directing the focus of our discussion. In fact, and as Professor Boyer noted, we probably had too much content prepared for an effective in-class discussion. I beleive this is mostly the result of our number of group members (4). Other groups had only two members.

We presented questions to the class, organized and fostered discussion, collected group input via internet/computer access, and attempted to foster further discussion by exploring group contributions. I recall our discussion time went very quickly, especially because of how we shaped the discussion around each member leading a topic. We had a lot of materail!

Overall, I beleive we did a fairly good job of engaging chapter material and invoking class thought beyond the direct content of the chapters. We engaged them by challenging them to think about how they would achieve certain tasks such as communicating with and engaging parents/guardians and students. (This is one of my goals. I envisions parents/guardians and students teaching one another and sharing in the experience of learning.)

As a future educator, I will look back upon this and other experiences and remember the benefits of the challenge presented by having students shape and lead discussion (learning). Many of the best learning experiences, outside of my failures, have occured as I attempted to explain my understanding of material to others. I love it!!

Coping With Technology

In Rethinking Edcuation in the Age of Technology, I really like the ideas of customization, interaction, and learner control. To be honest though, my definitions for these terms and the ideas are not exactly as the authors see them.

Customization

In my mind customization, is found through the variety and types of options students have in shaping and engaging the content materail. As an educator, I envision this as presenting a lesson to include a scope of material and topics, expose students to this information through readings, brief lecture, discusssions, and assessments designed to allow students to explore material. Furthermore, these assessements will then be utilized by studetns to prepare a presentation through which they will communicate thier understandings of material with the class to overlap and cover as much material as possible related to the lesson. Also, I will allow students to suggest assessment topics and formats.

Interactive

The interactive format of learning will incorporate a variety of levels of feedback, such as, my own, peers, parents/guardians, other faculty, principal, etc. I envision fostering the student learning experiences with as much positive reinforcement and criticism as possible. I will make it a point to quickly express to students my thoughts about their achievement and ability. Also, through the utilization of other sources of feedback and assessment, I will incorporate other perspectives and thoughts into students' experiences. In this way, they will be engaged multiple types of positive feedback.

Learner Control

Also, learner control means a that students have a voice in their experience of learning. I will do my best to create a variety of assessment topics and formats, but I will always students to suggest alternative topics and formats. It will be my goal to be flexible and open-minded. Furthermore, in an effort to engage students with their experience of learning, I will allow/require students to reflect upon the tasks and projects they complete, as well as the assessment critiques they recieve.

Certifications

At this point in my experience and understanding of the educational process, I am not sure how to feel about certifications. My initial understanding is based upon the perceived benefits of overall and comprehensive learning. I realize the amount of material makes learning very difficult, but a balance should be achieved between what is required and what is optional. It has been my experience that the more things people learn about the more rounded and appreciative they are of the world around them. This is one of the most important things about education which I whole near and dear to my heart. As an educator, I do not want to produce minds, I want to help people create themselves and make this nation and this world a better place.

Public Service Announcement (PSA)

In creating this PSA, our group prepared a message related to inattentive texting. It is my opinion that attempting to multitask while texting is dangerous, irresponsible, and will lead to larger and long-term social problems than are currently apparent. We do not oppose texting, but we feel texting should be utilized more responsibly and in moderation.

The topic for our PSA took about two days to form as we bounced ideas off one another. After selecting a topic, we spent about an hour discussing ideas for scenes and a theme for our message. While we planned, practiced, and shot our scenes, we felt very confident and hopeful our PSA would turn out to be appealing and effective.

After filming our scenes, I was unable to participate in the editing process becuase I was scheduled to leave for another weekend of military training.

*Also of interest is to note the partners I had arranged to create a PSA with backed out because they decided to change thier grade contract and thus did not need to complete this project. I luckily was able to find Andrea and Molly.

As a future educator, I feel this experience will be beneficail in assisting and development of assessments and my expectations for student achievement. Because I know the fun and challenges of such assessments, I will be able to guide student projects towards successful completion. With the experience of the PSA and SLE, I will attempt to create group projects which are fairly simple, allow students significant autonomy in choosing a topic, and challenge students to effectively organize and communicate the understanding they have developed of material.

Below is the link to our PSA:
http://youtu.be/YszEzo3edww

Public Learning Community (PLC)

BFF's in Broadfield

Our group attempted to put together a rough format which showed specifically how technological resources could be utilzed by teachers overall. We created a theoretically classroom and showed how the technologies could be utilzed together. This was the intent anyway...

From this project, I contemplated a great deal about the technologies which I will undoubtedly utilze in an attempt to engages students both in and out of class, as well as their parents/guardians. I envision a classroom setting which emphasizes students exploring content and asking questions of one another and myself. It is my intent to only lecture when absolutely necessary, such as early on and at the end of a lesson. I intend on fostering student learning through group and individual work as well as a variety of projects. Furthermore, I will also incorporate student presentations into lessons, thus engaging students with each other's learning.

I also intend to engage students with material outside of the classroom as often as possible. I am hopeful students will have access to computers and internet. If not, I will have to adjust fire and attempt to format outside work to be fairly simple and allow for utilization of the computer resources at school.

I also intend to get parents/guardians as involved with students learning as possible. I will do this by creating an online source of some sort through which parents are able to access class assignments, grades, and updates related to class activities. Furthermore, I will develop assessments which challenge students to share thier understanding of material with thier parents/guardians/elders, etc.

In all honestly, I feel my effort in fostering this PLC was very minimal. This is not to say I did very little though. It was my idea to develop a connection between the topics (edmoto, edublog, and John John's rap) to encompass a potential class format and structure. Also, during our discussions about the topic(s), I contributed a fair number of ideas which were incorporated by group members. I don't know if they were already thinking those same ideas, but I did notice my ideas being stated.

In completing this task and presenting our information to class, there are many benefits hidden within the assessment. For me, I believe the most important are cooperation and group work, public speaking (epic fail for me again), and the reflection which occurs afterwards. My thinking about the future teacher I will become has been greatly influenced by my experiences in these classes.

Teaching Ella

I will utilize technology to communicate assignments and expectations to both students and parents/guardians. This will allow access to information by all persons involved and responsible for the education of the students of my classroom. Technology will be the key and like through which I reach the parents/guardians of students and utilze them, hopefully, as a source of motivation and encouragement.

I will also undoubtedly utilze a blog of some sort through which I challenge stduetns to engage course material and express their understanding of it. Furthermore, through blogging, I will expose students to the ideas of others and encourage them to critiqie, positively and respectfully, the ideas of others. This critique will hopefully creat dialogue, respectful communication, and development of thoughts and ideas.

In class, I will also utilze technologies which allow students to create presentations through which challenge students to effectively and accurately communicate their understanding of course material. I will then utilze presentations to engage students with one another and open another line of dialogue.