Wicked Problem Part B - Application of TPACK

Technology/Pedagogy:
The main technologies chosen for my project are video cameras and video editing software. For the purpose of the project, getting students to work collaboratively as a small group, these technologies need to be fairly simple to use. The purpose is not to teach them how to use the technologies, but rather to use the technologies as an aide in presenting the content they have learned. I will require that students first work together as a group to solve any problems that come up before coming to me for help. They need to decide as a group that they need help and have exhausted all other resources before asking for help. In this project, I anticipate students will have a solid knowledge of using video cameras, but many will struggle with the video editing part. Part of group work is being able to admit when you are not the most knowledgeable person to get the job done and allowing someone else to take control. The fact that they are, together, creating one video forces them to work together and use each others' strengths to create the best video possible. I will, however, show them some simple tips to using the video software before they get started. This will allow them to get the basics down and then work together to continue making their video better.

Technology/Content:
The purpose of this project is for students to be able to show the learning they have done about a particular topic or topics. It is intended to be a unit summary/assessment in which they must work together to show their learning. Using videos to display their learning creates a final product that can be saved and shown many times to many people. The permanence of the video makes it accessible for years to come as an information pertaining to a specific content area. It also allows students to edit and re-record the information as they go along to create a professional final product that truly represents the information they learned in the unit. Students need to think specifically about what they learned and how to best represent it in a video.

Pedagogy/Content:
By having students work in groups for this project, they are able to take what they have learned and combine it with what the other students in their group learned. The combined effort allows them to produce a more accurate representation of the content and also allows students to continue learning from each other. Many students will have different amounts of information that they retained and combining these ideas in a group will allow them to continuously expand their learning. The students will also be learning video editing from each other. The video editing is a secondary outcome of the project. Again, the group work aspect of the project will force students to rely upon each other to produce a quality video. Ideas from every member of the group will need to come together to accurately reflect the content as well as the group members.

Group Project: Part A - Brainstorming

For our first group conference, we chose to use vyew.com. It was a fairly easy site to navigate through, but it was something everyone in our group was unfamiliar with. The level of unfamiliarity, combined with our desire to get the first part of our group project completed caused us to not dive into figuring out the website much. We used the chat function mostly, but also used the voice option. It became difficult to continue using the microphones because the feedback and echoing was too much to handle. We did use the typing and drawing functions of the program to communicate our ideas as we became more solid on what our project was to be about.

It seems like there are many more functions that could be used with Vyew, but it would take patience to figure them out. It also doesn't seem like the best program to use with more than 3 or 4 users because the chat feature is small and it is easy to become lost in the conversation when there are many people typing. I tried to use the screen sharing option, but there was a connection problem of some sort that I did not have time to figure out. Perhaps next time I will try to figure this out before our group meets to talk with each other.

I could see vyew.com being used in the classroom to connect students to each other during group projects or to connect students from around the world in "pen pal" type communication. Having small groups connect eases the frustrations of the program and allows students to have better conversations. It seems like an okay program, but I would need to spend more time playing around with its features before using it in my own classroom.

Wicked Problem Project: Part A - Description of Need or Opportunity

1. What is the important educational need that you want to address?

The important educational need that I am seeking to address is the need for students to work collaboratively together with various classwork and projects. Students need to learn the life skills of cooperation and collaboration from a young age, as they are skills they will need for the rest of their lives. As with all teachers, I strive to have creative opportunities for students to work together. Many times this would include discussing things together or working together to create a project. While I enjoy these group work activities, I would love to see alternative ways for my students to work together. In many cases, using technology in the classroom causes students to work individually, whether that be at a computer or at their desks. While learning and using technology to further academic knowledge is a great goal, I would like to see technology used with group work in the classroom. My ideal goal is for students to work together in a way that allows them to be completely dependent upon each other to complete the project. Students will need to learn the technology and learn to work in a group while demonstrating or learning academic content.


2. How you plan to address this educational issue with technology?

In order to demonstrate students working collaboratively in a group using technology, I would plan a unit in which students take all of the information they have learned in a content unit or multiple content units and create a short "TV show" about the information. Depending on the content of the project, the TV show could take different formats. For non-fiction content, it could be a news broadcast or a documentary or something similar. For fiction content, they could create a sit-com, a music video, a movie, or something similar. I would prefer to give the student groups the ability to choose their method of relaying the information learned. The intent with this project is to get all the group members involved in the planning and processing of each step. They first need to collaborate on the information they have learned in the unit, then determine what they want to focus on, and work together to come up with an appropriate way to convey the content. Studies have shown that when technology is involved with education, student motivation increases. This is my intent with this project. Students have learned the information in the unit, now they can show what they have learned through creative, technological, collaborative avenues. They must work together to complete the project and part of the design is to work through the difficulties of working in a group.


3. Logistics of solution:

Before even beginning this project with students, I need to make sure my guidelines and expectations are clear. Students need to know what I am looking for and what the purpose of the project is. For me, the purpose is to assess the learning of a unit or units and to use technology as a collaborative group to show what learning happened. For this project, each group will need access to a video recorder and potentially more technology as they decide what they will do. To include other technologies, and so I can keep track of what they are planning, I would have each group record electronically their brainstorming and development of their plan as they discuss and decide things. This record could take the form of a word document, wiki, google doc, or blog. As the project continues to get underway, each group would utilize the video camera to record the information they are presenting and then edit the video using an editing program such as iMovie or Microsoft Movie Maker. In order to be of best help, I would need to familiarize myself with the video editing software they use, to show the whole class the basics and let them figure out the tricks of the program as individual groups. In all, I would anticipate this project taking at least 2 weeks of class time, possibly more.

4. Relevant research and resources:

As I have thought about this problem, I first reflected on my own classroom experience. From the lessons I have taught, it seems that student engagement increases when students are working together, especially on a long-term project. I have also noticed, though I have no data to support my assumption, that students remember the content from group projects longer than information from individual learning. According to Susan Stras and Joseph McGrath in Journal of Applied Psychology, "as group tasks pose greater requirements for member interdependence, communication media that transmit more social context cues will foster group performance and satisfaction." In other words, as a task requires students to collaborate and work together more, technology with a great amount of communication capabilities should be used. This article also stated that groups who are able to communicate face-to-face were more productive than groups that met online. Also, Anuradha A. Gokhale, in the Journal of Technology Education researched collaborative learning environments. The study found that, "if the purpose of instruction is to enhance critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, then collaborative learning is more beneficial" than individual learning. This further supports my desire to use technology with collaborative learning and group work. Students would have face-to-face time to interact during class and their critical-thinking and problem-solving skills would be enhanced from working in such a collaborative group.


5. A plan for the portion you will implement during this course and the portion you will implement after this course completes.

During this course, implementation is rather difficult because I am currently not teaching. To prepare me to implement this lesson during the next school year, the best thing I can do is familiarize myself with video editing programs. Editing will be a large component of the project and many students will not be familiar with how to use the software. I can also think over what units would be ideal to use a video project like this to conclude a unit or several units. The purpose of the project is varied. On one hand, it is to assess a unit or several units, to have students demonstrate the knowledge they learned instead of taking a paper and pencil test. On the other hand, it is to have students work collaboratively while using technology. Instead of having students use technology individually, I want them to work together and depend on each other for the success of the project. After this course will come the actual implementation of the entire project. I would have students complete the entire project and let them reflect on it to give me feedback.


6. How would you know you were successful?

I would know I was successful if the students were able to produce quality videos that clearly show the learning that occurred in the unit/units. I would also be able to informally evaluate the collaboration and participation level of each group as I watched throughout the process. If all group members are working together equally, learning new technologies and being heard, then I would consider it a success. If one or more members are slacking off while others take the lead, it would not be as successful to me. The student evaluations would also be a clue of the success of the project. If students note that they were working collaboratively and produced a quality video, then I would consider the project a success.

CEP 812 Intro

Here's a brief introduction to me...

Reflection

The progression of this course has gotten me thinking more about how to incorporate technology into my classroom on a regular basis. Using technology in the classroom requires different types of teaching strategies. First, the management style you use will probably be different when using technology. Students react differently when technology is around, so the way I introduce and use technology needs to be different. Technologies can also incorporate different teaching strategies. Some technologies are more interactive than others, so I need to decide what teaching style I want to use and then find a technology that fits that style.

The most popular technology to use in the classroom is the Internet. Students now have greater access to research and educational games as well as inappropriate content. When I think about using the Internet in my classroom, I need to think about the possible negative outcomes as well as the benefits. The evaluation process also includes testing the links of websites being used to ensure they are active and appropriate. If a website has inappropriate or inaccurate information I need to consider carefully if I should use it for my lesson. Part of my responsibility as a teacher is to teach my students how to evaluate their use of technology, specifically the Internet. With so much available at their fingertips, they need to be able to be responsible about what they use the Internet for. Instilling values and morals is part of being an educator and will help my students develop into conscientious adults.

I believe I have met my personal goals for this course. I learned about new technologies as well as how to use them in my own classroom. The information shared by the instructor as well as by the other students proved to be incredibly helpful. The best resource we have is each other and I believe I took great advantage of the resources available in this class.

Currently, my goal is to continue finding ways to integrate technology into each unit of social studies and science that I teach. I have only picked these two subjects to start with because I know smaller goals are more realistic for me. As I plan through these units this year, I will be looking for ways to incorporate technology in various ways whether it be me using the technology as a teacher or using the technology with my students or teaching my students how to use a new technology. The more I can responsibly and effectively use technology in my classroom, the more likely my students are to become engaged in learning.

Online learning

I think I could use educational blogs in my classroom this year. I have done some research as to the benefits of using blogs in the classroom and want to see those benefits with my students.
Many times I have my students reflect on the books they read in class. I could use blogs as a way for them to reflect still, but then make each blog available for the others to see and comment on. Sometimes students don't know what book to read, so reading someone else's thoughts on that book might help make a decision. Since editing is not a major feature of blogs, I would not use it for editing, but rather as a medium for the students to get their own thoughts out as well as to read each other's thoughts. I would use a more laid back teaching approach with this online experience. The students do not need to be directed through the process, but rather guided along as they learn something new.
It would be difficult for me to use interactive discussions with experts. In order to attend my school, students need to speak English. In China, there are not many native English speakers. Doing an interactive discussion would be difficult because most English speaking "experts" that I know either already live in my city and we would, therefore, not need to do an online interactive discussion or the people I know live in the United States. Because of the 12-hour time difference, it is difficult to schedule a time to talk when my students are in school and someone in America is available.
I like the suggestions given in the companion paper. There were many ways to incorporate online learning in the classroom that I had not recently thought about. It's good to have a document like that in which lots of information is put together in a user friendly format.

Google Calendar

• Describe your experience as a user of the application. What functions did you like and what functions did you find frustrating? Why?

As I explored through Google Calendar I was pleased with the simplicity of the site. It was incredibly easy to add events to the calendar. There are many options for when events would be posted whether it be daily, weekly, monthly, yearly or even on certain days of the week. I created a calendar for the remainder of our online class and was pleased with how easy it was to create as well as share with other people. The people you share the calendar with can have different access to the calendar. The creator of the calendar can choose to allow others to view only, view and edit events or to view, edit events and share the calendar with others. I liked that it was easy to use and easy to create new events. There is also a task list that can be displayed on the side that is easy to use. For people who receive satisfaction from crossing things off their list, this task list is a nice feature. Multiple calendars can also be created by the user. Each calendar shows the events in different colors and you can choose which calendar events you want to show at any particular time. The church I attend has a Google Calendar and the events for this calendar are visible when I sign into my own Google Calendar. I liked this feature because I don't have to add in the church's events, but I can see them with the click of a button.

The only downside I saw to the calendar was that it was difficult to find where to change the calendar settings. When you set up a new calendar it automatically takes you through the steps of creating the specific settings. Once you create the calendar, however, it is harder to find where to change the settings. I'm sure once you get used to it, though, it becomes easier and more logical where things are placed. The only other feature that I think might be helpful to have is a way to communicate with the creator of the calendar. If parents have questions or concerns, they might want a way to contact the teacher directly from the calendar. This feature would be great to have as an option, as some teachers would not want another mode of communication to be available.

• Think about its application in the classroom
  • What knowledge or skills would students need to use the software?
  In order for students to use this software, they would need to know how to type and navigate through a calendar. When I was exploring the application I was not viewing it through the eyes of a student, but rather a teacher. I see this application being more useful as a communication tool between teachers, parents and administrators. The calendar can have important meetings, homework and tasks posted for parents to view. Administrators might also want to know what events are happening in a particular classroom or have events to add to the calendar. Teachers need to know the basics of navigating through an electronic calendar, but the majority of skills needed are basic as the site is user-friendly.
• • How can you share the products you create with this application
  When a calendar is created, you simply have to know the email address of the person you want to share it with. You can then send them an email notifying them you are sharing a calendar with them and they can view the calendar. If you choose, other people can have the authority to change and add events to your calendar, but the creator has to give permission for this to happen.
• • How could you see the application being used to teach a particular subject matter?
  I see this application being used less to teach subject matter and more for communication purposes. You could use Google Calendars to teach students about calendars, time management, etc., but the main purpose in my mind would be to communicate with others.
• • What are some things a teacher could do to help students collaborate using this application?
  A teacher could help students and parents work together using Google Calendars. The more information parents have about what is happening at school, the better they will be able to help their children succeed at school. If parents are informed, they are more likely to be involved.
• • What sort of organization or managerial considerations will a teacher have to take into account?
  A teacher would need to be very organized in lesson planning to use this application most effectively. He/she would also need to remember to update the calendar on a regular basis so parents could stay informed. This is a technology that I see myself wanting to use, but being leery of it because I don't know if I will have the time or energy to consistently use it. It has potential to be a great tool if it is used regularly by both teachers and parents.