Social Media in the Classroom

How does social media affect learning and the classroom community?

I believe that this issue is very important for a number of reasons.  What really made this issue come to mind and stand out to me was an article on the upcoming Olympics.  This summer Olympics is being referred to as the first “social Olympics” where social media is going to play a large role in how we experience the Olympic games.  In this article they had statistics of the massive jump in social media users since the last Olympics.  Facebook had 100 million users last Olympics, this Olympics it has 900 million.  Last Olympics Twitter users were sending 300,000 tweets per day.  Now there are over 400 million tweets per day.  (Laird, 2012)  

This just goes to show the trend of how people are using the internet.  More and more people are gathering and sharing information from social media and as educators we had better be aware that our student population is definitely among these users.  It is important for us as educators to really see and understand the impacts and effects that social media has on both student learning and building a classroom community. 

I believe that this question is significant to all educators.  Social media can be a great tool in the classroom if we understand how to use it effectively.  To use social media effectively we must first understand the impact and effects that it has on student learning and collaboration to build a community of learners.

There is also the topic of cyber bullying and several articles that I have found on the link between a person’s social media use and their self-esteem.  These are the kinds of factors that need to also be considered when thinking of how and/or if to introduce social media into the classroom.

In a study conducted by University of Salford in the UK on how social media can actually increase our anxiety and lower our self-esteem because we are constantly comparing ourselves to others online and many of us have forgotten how to switch off.  We are in control of the technology, not the other way around. (Indvik, 2012)

Despite these negative points I believe that addressing and using social media as educators will become and should be very important.  I believe that the negative impacts should enhance this reason rather than subtract from it.  We should take the opportunity to teach students about social media and help them learn how to deal with it and not let it control their lives.  Social media isn’t going away and is very prevalent in our daily lives so how would we be helping students by ignoring it in the classroom?

Works Cited

Indvik, L. (2012, July 08). Social Media Fuels Low Self-Esteem, Anxiety [STUDY]. Retrieved July 09, 2012, from Mashable.com: http://mashable.com/2012/07/08/social-media-anxiety-study/?WT.mc_id=en_top_stories&utm_campaign=Top%2BStories&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter

Laird, S. (2012, July 08). Why Social Media Will Reshape the 2012 Olympics. Retrieved July 09, 2012, from Mashable.com: http://mashable.com/2012/07/08/2012-olympics-social-growth/?WT.mc_id=en_top_stories&utm_campaign=Top%2BStories&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter

Lesson Plan Reflection Paper

Brief Lesson Description:

My lesson plan involved teaching a 4^th grade class about the Lewis and Clarks expedition using Google Lit Trips.  Students would be responsible for a chapter of a book about Lewis and Clark.  What this means is that they were required to summarize the chapter, note the location and find images that would go along with this part.  The students would then take this information that they summarized and the pictures they gathered and plot them on a Google Lit Trip.  Once the whole class had posted their different locations, summaries and pictures, we would have a complete Google Lit Trip of Lewis and Clarks adventure.  This Google Lit Trip would allow us to see their entire journey that Lewis and Clark took using Google Earth.  We can see where they started, how far they went and all of the different places and things they encountered along the way.

Implementing the Lesson:

The students were a 4^th grade class.  Everything went very well with this lesson.  Students were excited to use Google Lit Trip once they saw the demo at the beginning of the lesson.  Some students did try to rush through just so they could play with the Google Lit Trip however.

Lesson Question Set:

Students learned about the expedition of Lewis and Clark and about the struggles and challenges faced by early settlers that moved west.  In general this lesson focused on constructivism.  Students came up with their own observations and conclusions using the Google Lit Trip as a tool.

The benefits of this lesson are that students work in pairs which allow the teacher to provide support to students who struggle with reading by pairing them with a strong reader.  That way they can still be a part of the lesson even with weaker reading skills.  The nature of the lesson is also very open with a few guidelines focusing student effort.  In this way students that want to strive to go above and beyond or include more information are free to do so.

This lesson was intended to supplement existing curriculum.  According to the curriculum students are required to learn this information.  The goal of this lesson was to use technology to give them a better understanding through visual representation of the adventures of Lewis and Clark and westward expansion, specifically settlers that moved west which is a big focus of the Michigan curriculum.  Through the use of Google Lit Trip students were not only able to achieve this goal, but they were also able to acquire background knowledge that will greatly help them in the future when talking about other parts of the United States and events such as the gold rush.  Having an idea of what the map of the United States looks like along with images of different areas is a resource for students.

Differences amongst learners are taken into account in this lesson through the flexibility of some options students have.  Students are required to read a chapter, provide information from that chapter and plot it on the map but as far as which information to provide, the image and other important information they want to present and how they want to present it is where there is some flexibility which allows students to show their unique talents and learning styles.

This lesson requires the teacher to do some work to become proficient in Google Lit Trip.  This takes a little time learning how to plot points and add information like a summary and images at each of these points.  It is a bit challenging at first however once a teacher uses Google Lit Trips, I can almost guarantee they will be using it more than once.

The assessment comes from their demonstration of their knowledge when they present the Google Lit Trip at the end.  The Google Lit Trip is an amazing tool that allows students to have a clear and interactive visual of journeys in literature, it is only a tool.  The assessment needs to be of what the students learned about the information itself or it’s like a hammer with no nails.  The hammers really cool and fun to swing around but you need those nails to build something permanent.  Students are held accountable for the work they did by being responsible for one chapter and placing a point on the Google Lit Trip. 

Technologies Role:

Technology plays a large role in my lesson.  It is the overall product that students are creating.  The advantage of this technology is that it gives students an interactive visual to follow the adventures of Lewis and Clark.  The reason that this is different from just plotting a point on a map is that students can add images and summaries to each point.  They can also go through the journey virtually showing them the distance, time, geography and several other features.  It also can be easily saved and stored for viewing later.  The challenge of using this technology is just that, using it.  Google Lit Trips is something that takes extra time to learn and to teach but it is well worth this extra time.

Students loved using this technology.  The demo at the beginning of the lesson to show them how a Google Lit Trip looks as a finished product was a big motivator because it looks really impressive when it’s complete.  Students biggest question, once we got into the lesson, was how to know where they needed to plot their point on the map.  The book doesn’t come out and tell you longitude and latitude so I told them to look for clues and write down what they though could be used as locations.  I told them to look for names of states, cities, mountains, rivers, forests, and anything else that might be used to help us plot their point on the map.

Most of the time students focus on the challenges that Lewis and Clark faced or the obstacles and difficulties of the settlers.  They know they had a hard time but I’ve never really seen students understand the distance of the journeys.  When reading a book and trying to imagine it on a map or even with a map to use as a resource, this can still be a difficult abstract concept.  However seeing all of the points that we plotted on our map and going through the expedition virtually really gave the students a good idea of the distance that Lewis and Clark traveled. 

Misconception Interview

I was unable to get into a classroom and interview students to understand what misconceptions they have about the concept of measurement.  So instead, after seeing a clip on Youtube of some Harvard graduates that didn't know the correct reason we have different seasons on Earth, I decided to see how well my college educated roomate would do and see if he had any misconceptions about measurement.  What I found is that even though many people assume only kids don't quite understand things, there are areas that are still difficult for adults and that they still don't fully understand.

Misconceptions Interview

Digital Story Telling

Here is the digital storyboard I put together that outlines my plan for training new employees how to use the computer system we use to manage and monitor customers

Google Lit Trip Lesson Plan

Overview: 

4^th Grade lesson – the class will read and reflect on the book Seaman:  the Dog Who Explored the West with Lewis and Clark by Gail Langer Karwoski.  Students will use Google Lit Trip to plot Lewis and Clark’s expedition to highlight important events.

Materials: 

·         Computers with Internet Access

·         LCD projector

·         SmartBoard

·         Printer

·         15 copies of Seaman:  the Dog Who Explored the West with Lewis and Clark

·         Graphic Organizer

Procedure:

1.   Introduce Google Lit Trips and tell students that they will be creating one together as a class for the trip they are about to go on with Lewis and Clark

2.   Introduce the book and read the first chapter to the students

3.   Students and teacher will then use the graphic organizer to summarize the first chapter together

4.   Students will then work in pairs and work on their assigned chapters reading and filling in the graphic organizer

5.   Students will then present their graphic organizers and summaries to the class

6.   Teacher will take students on a tutorial of Google Earth and Google Lit Trips allowing students to experiment with the tools and features along the way

7.   Students will then input their place markers, summaries pictures and discussion questions about their chapter

8.   Upon completion students will then have the opportunity to go through the entire Google Lit Trip to see all the work they and their classmates did and to go on Lewis and Clark’s expedition.

Content:

Content Standard 3: All students will describe, compare, and explain the locations and characteristics of economic activities, trade, political activities, migration, information flow, and the interrelationships among them. (Location, Movement and Connections) II.3.4 - Describe some of the major movements of goods, people, jobs and information within Michigan and the United States and explain the reasons for the movements.

SS4H6 The student will explain westward expansion of America between

1801 and 1861. The student will

a. Describe territorial expansion with emphasis on the Louisiana Purchase, the

Lewis and Clark expedition, and the acquisitions of Texas (the Alamo and

independence), Oregon (Oregon Trail), and California (Gold Rush and the

development of mining towns).

Using the story of Lewis and Clark students will learn about why people went west to explore and expand our country.  Students will be able to identify a number of reasons that are illustrated in the adventures of Lewis and Clark.  They will be able to use what they learned to make connections and draw conclusions.  Students will be able to identify what makes a certain location important or significant for migration within the United States.

Pedagogy:

Students will be responsible for summarizing a chapter of the book Seaman:  the Dog Who Explored the West with Lewis and Clark by Gail Langer Karwoski.  Students will be given a graphic organizer to help them with their summary.  After summarizing, students will create discussion questions to help teach the rest of the class about their section of the book.  Using Google Lit Trip, the class will create place markers with pictures, summary and discussion questions to create a virtual map of Lewis and Clark’s exploration.  To support students the teacher will provide scaffolding by modeling and working with students on how to fill out their graphic organizers to create a summary.  The use of Google Lit Trip as a technological tool is also engaging to students and helps them stay focused on the essential questions.

Content & Pedagogy: How do these particular strategies help you teach the content mentioned above? Why choose these strategies over other approaches? Are there any technical or physical constraints that figured significantly into your choices?

Technology:

The technology that I will be using is called Google Lit Trip.  This is a way, using Google Earth, to map out where main characters traveled in a novel and mark significant locations with images and/or a summary of what happened there.  It then allows students to see the entire journey from start to finish with all of the points they marked along the way.  Students will have a visual representation of the journey the characters had and a better understanding of the history.  For example in this lesson I have planned to use Lewis and Clark.  In the book it talks about the different places these two uncovered on their exploration.  Students will be able to see a geographical location and images of these areas to go along and support the learning they got from the text which will greatly enrich the learning experience.

Technology & Pedagogy:

The technology of Google Lit Trips is an engaging tool for students to use.  It also helps keep students focused on the essential questions.  Presenting the objectives and essential questions in the beginning of the lesson will let students know what is expected of them.  Knowing what they will have to do with Google Lit Trips, students will have a set goal to help them stay focused.  They will focus on the summary, the location of where things happened, discussion questions about these events and images to go with them. In this way the technology not only enriches the content but also works as a guide to keep students on task and in the right direction

Technology & Content:

The technology supports the essential questions because it lets students see how we can better understand history when we have visuals to go along with it.  Students will be able to use the technology to see where on the globe the actual locations Lewis and Clark explored as well as images to help support the text.

Assessment:

Students will have to know the locations of Lewis and Clarks exploration and place markers on the Google Lit Trip.  Students will also be assessed on their presentation of the place marker they added to the Google Lit Trip and the summary and discussion questions from their chapter. 

Mobile Learning

Poll Everywhere is a very good tool for instantly being able to get feedback from your students.  I really enjoyed the way that this site is set up and how the tool supposedly works.  I say supposedly because since I don't have a classroom of my own I wasn't able to test it out in a real environment.  However if I did have my own classroom I have several ideas for integrating this technology in the classroom.  One technique that I used during my teaching internship was a quick write.  This was something that students would do at the end of a lesson that would allow me to see what students understood the material covered and which parts students still weren't understanding.  I would read these at the end of everyday and tweak my lesson plans accordingly.  It would save me a lot of time if I could get this feedback instantly.  I would also do this polling about 10 minutes before I wanted the lesson to end that way for the last 10 minutes I could cover any areas of difficulty.  If all students understood the content then I could cut those last 10 minutes and move on.  It would allow for the teaching in the class to be much more targeted on what the students need to know and what the already know.  It would help with pacing and keeping students engaged.

As with any tool you want to implement in your classroom though there will always be challenges that you will have to overcome.  The most obvious challenge I see is that fact that cellphones are not allowed in many schools, especially elementary.  This would obviously cause a hindrance in the effectiveness of this tool.  Another obstacles would be the fact that not all students would have cellphones and therefore be able to participate in these types of polls.  As with most things in an ideal situation this tool would be great but most of us don't live or work in an ideal situation for implementing these technologies.  This is why teachers need to be creative to figure out solutions to these types of problems.  I think this has great potential to increase the power and effectiveness of education and I would really love to see this implemented in classrooms.

WPP Final Presentation

1. Text of your problem:  Engage students during transitions and in the instance of lessons not lasting long enough to increase classroom management
2. Text of your solution:  Use of activities through Gizmo and videos from teachertube and youtube to fill these times and keeps students engaged and busy so issues won't arise
3. Text of the TP, TC, & PC questions and your answers:
4. 1.   What is the TP knowledge for the solution?  (i.e., how does the technology you have chosen support the teaching strategies and methods you have chosen?)

The technology supports the teaching strategies and methods that I have chosen by allowing the teacher to have quick access to a variety of transition activities.  It would do no good if the transition into one of these activities lasted just as long as it would moving into the next part of the lesson.  That would defeat the purpose.  The technology allows for these activities to be presented to the students quickly to hold their attention and keep them engaged.  Technology also gives the teacher or substitute teacher the advantage of being able to access things such as videos and music quickly as well.  The technology has the advantage of providing a wider array of options to implement this strategy.  Technology can also be used to differentiate activities for students that may finish with assignments early.  This way you can challenge all students without a set task that may be too hard for some and too easy for others and won’t engage that student.

2.           What is the TC knowledge for the solution? (i.e., how specifically does this technology make the content in your problem more intellectually accessible?  Be sure to think about representation.)

Technology makes this content much more accessible.  While substitute teachers should bring things in with them transition and extra materials technology gives these teachers a much wider array of options.  Technology allows teachers access to short videos, music and other activities that can engage students keeping them from causing disturbances during down time.  These down times often occur during transitions or if a lesson runs short.  This is something that happens more often with substitute teachers but is an issue of classroom management for all teachers.  The technology and its ability to let you access a wide array of activities also allows for teachers to differentiate instruction for different students.  An activity that may engage and challenge one student may be too easy and therefore not engage another.  Of course this differentiation can’t happen all the time, especially as a substitute because there would be no time for the lesson.  But if a student finishes with a lesson early this access to several resources will come in handy as it will allow you to challenge that student and/or give them multiple activities.

3.           What is the PC knowledge for the solution? (i.e., how specifically do your pedagogical choices make the content in your problem more intellectually accessible? Be sure to think about how the student will experience the content given these instructional strategies.

Technology is a large part of our culture and especially the culture of the students we teach.  The purpose of activities to support classroom management is to have engaging and challenging activities that will hold a student’s interest during transitions and/or if a lesson doesn’t run as long as planned.  Implementing technology into these activities help make the activities into something engaging and meaningful for the students and not just busy work.  A short video clip of something like current events can be engaging for example because it is happening in the world and is something students can relate to.  It is also educational and gets them thinking about the issues of the world.  Technology can be a great tool for something like this because it allows us to access these types of video clips.  There are also several educational activities online such as gizmos.com.  This is a place where students can learn through inquiry.  There is such a large array of choices with these inquiry activities that a teacher can find one that relates to the topic quickly and easily.  Each activity also comes with questions so that students will have to have something to show for their work and won’t just goof around.  The main goal with these activities is to keep students engaged to help classroom management as well as learning and stimulating their brains.  Technology is a great tool that allows us to accomplish both of these goals

Group Leadership Project

Our group used Camtasia for our PD tutorial to demonstrate a screencasting software.  Camtasia is one of the best screencasting software’s on the market and gave us the freedom and ability to create a really clean and professional looking presentation.  I have also tried other software liked Cam Studio and that was not anywhere near as clear in production and options where very limited.  For our purposes and to really give a good overview of what screencasting really is and what it entails Camtasia was the best choice.

I learned a lot about how screencasting works.  I understood the general concept of what screencasting was but it was my first opportunity to really use the software first hand.  I was able to experiment and play around with a lot of the different features.  I have video editing experience and Camtasia was very similar.  I actually found the Camtasia software to be much more useful that most other video editing software.  I would recommend Camtasia for teachers who not only want to screencast but to create any kind of video to use in the classrooms.  It is very conducive to educator’s needs.

If I had to develop a similar product again I would probably have wanted to split the whole thing into 4 parts instead of 3 parts and one person doing the editing and voice-overs.  This way it is much easier for the person who is doing the screencasting to do the voice over.  This will allow the voice to match up with the video much more easily.  I struggled with this when I was putting together the final product and doing the voice-overs.  Every person reads at a different pace and it is tough to match up the video and the audio.  I really had to watch the video several times and using our storyboard to explain what was going on in the video.  Doing it where every person does their own part would make putting the final product together much quicker and easier.

Here is the link to our final project:

www.msu.edu/~dionneer/camtasia/Final.mp4

PART C - Implementation

Here is the link to my podcast:

WPP Part C

PART D - Findings and Implications

Formative:  Yes the project was implemented as planned.  It was a little difficult in some classrooms since there isn’t a consistent level of technology depending on what room you are teaching in.  However, for the most part, I was able to use the technology and implement my plan to engage students in transitional activities that in turn led to better classroom management.

Summative:  This project was somewhat difficult to show hard evidence that it worked.  Even through anecdotal records, the way that I had to implement this project made the results comparing apples and oranges.  I looked for and kept notes on number of disruptions, outburst and number of times students needed to be redirected.  I was looking for overall engagement and classroom management and I found these to be the most measurable indicators.  The difficulty in comparing the results came from the fact that as a substitute I was in a different classroom, with different students and sometimes even in a different school.  This made it difficult as I didn’t have a baseline so I couldn’t be sure if it was my project that I implemented that was having a real effect on classroom management.

In an ideal situation I would have been able to approach this project differently and used it in the same classroom.  I would have liked to have been able to have a before and after to compare things too.  In the project itself though, I would change the type of transitional activities that I focused on to see if I could find ones that would work the best.  For example, going into this project I had assumed that showing short video clips about the topic they were learning about would be the best.  They were often easy to find thanks to youtube and teachertube and I thought they would be the most engaging.  However I ran into some problems when trying to use videos.  First of all, they only work if all students finish an activity and are ready to transition at the same times.  And secondly, I found they aren’t as engaging as I had hoped.  Many students, since there was no activity or reason for them to be engaged and focused, still caused disruptions.  I actually found that using activities where I had students actively working on an activity and told them I would be collecting their results had a much higher success rate in lowering classroom disruptions.

I will endevear to do this project again and when I do I will focus on these more active and engaging activities.  Things like watching videos may be easier; however they are a much more passive activity.  Having an activity where students actively have to be engaged and produce something has a much higher success in classroom management. 

Part B - Storyboard and Script

Here is the link to our group's Storyboard and Script:
Storyboard

My responsibility and effort in this project is a behind the scenes focus.  I will be taking the different parts of the project from my group members and using them to put together a final product.  When working in a group project it is sometimes difficult to pull all of the pieces together.  Since I am proficient with the technology that we are using and creating a presentation with I volunteered to fill in this role.  I will also be doing all of the voice overs and syncing them with the videos.

My group is going to (and has done) a great job of gathering information and putting together their parts.  This part was split up into 3 parts with each person creating slides for each.  I will then take all of these excellent pieces of the puzzle and put them together creating our overall picture and presentation.

Part B - Application of TPACK

1.   What is the TP knowledge for the solution?  (i.e., how does the technology you have chosen support the teaching strategies and methods you have chosen?)

The technology supports the teaching strategies and methods that I have chosen by allowing the teacher to have quick access to a variety of transition activities.  It would do no good if the transition into one of these activities lasted just as long as it would moving into the next part of the lesson.  That would defeat the purpose.  The technology allows for these activities to be presented to the students quickly to hold their attention and keep them engaged.  Technology also gives the teacher or substitute teacher the advantage of being able to access things such as videos and music quickly as well.  The technology has the advantage of providing a wider array of options to implement this strategy.  Technology can also be used to differentiate activities for students that may finish with assignments early.  This way you can challenge all students without a set task that may be too hard for some and too easy for others and won’t engage that student.

2.           What is the TC knowledge for the solution? (i.e., how specifically does this technology make the content in your problem more intellectually accessible?  Be sure to think about representation.)

Technology makes this content much more accessible.  While substitute teachers should bring things in with them transition and extra materials technology gives these teachers a much wider array of options.  Technology allows teachers access to short videos, music and other activities that can engage students keeping them from causing disturbances during down time.  These down times often occur during transitions or if a lesson runs short.  This is something that happens more often with substitute teachers but is an issue of classroom management for all teachers.  The technology and its ability to let you access a wide array of activities also allows for teachers to differentiate instruction for different students.  An activity that may engage and challenge one student may be too easy and therefore not engage another.  Of course this differentiation can’t happen all the time, especially as a substitute because there would be no time for the lesson.  But if a student finishes with a lesson early this access to several resources will come in handy as it will allow you to challenge that student and/or give them multiple activities.

3.           What is the PC knowledge for the solution? (i.e., how specifically do your pedagogical choices make the content in your problem more intellectually accessible? Be sure to think about how the student will experience the content given these instructional strategies.

Technology is a large part of our culture and especially the culture of the students we teach.  The purpose of activities to support classroom management is to have engaging and challenging activities that will hold a student’s interest during transitions and/or if a lesson doesn’t run as long as planned.  Implementing technology into these activities help make the activities into something engaging and meaningful for the students and not just busy work.  A short video clip of something like current events can be engaging for example because it is happening in the world and is something students can relate to.  It is also educational and gets them thinking about the issues of the world.  Technology can be a great tool for something like this because it allows us to access these types of video clips.  There are also several educational activities online such as gizmos.com.  This is a place where students can learn through inquiry.  There is such a large array of choices with these inquiry activities that a teacher can find one that relates to the topic quickly and easily.  Each activity also comes with questions so that students will have to have something to show for their work and won’t just goof around.  The main goal with these activities is to keep students engaged to help classroom management as well as learning and stimulating their brains.  Technology is a great tool that allows us to accomplish both of these goals.

Screencasting Leadership Project Web Conference

Here is the link to the video of our web conference about our screencasting leadership project:
https://www.msu.edu/~carlrobe/CEP812/CEP812_Group_Meeting.mp4

Our group used the Google+ hangout feature.  It is a great video conferencing tool that allows up to 10 people to have a meeting all at once.  One of the advantages of the Google+ hangout tool is that it shows one persons video bigger in the middle of the screen.  Depending on who is talking and how loud they are talking it changes whose picture  is in the middle.  This is a good feature but it puts the focus on who is talking and keeps people from talking over one another.  Google+ hangout feature also has a text chat feature.  A disadvantage of Google+ hangout is that it can be a little temperamental.  During our web conference Jon was dropped from the conference when he tried to go to play around with some other features.  In its basic form it works very well but the other features need to be worked out.

PART A - Description of Need or Opportunity

1.   What is the important educational need that you are seeking to address? This element is fundamental in this project. Since we have limited time, energy, and resources, cool technology without a clear sense of why it matters or what we gain by it is of little value in the educational setting.

It was difficult for me to come up with a topic for this project since I am not a full time teacher so many of the problems that can be focused on as a full time teacher aren’t practical for me as a substitute.  What I decided to focus on then instead is something that all teachers, especially substitute teachers, need:  Classroom management.  This is an essential tool for any teacher.  As a new teacher it is also something that I believe would be very beneficial to have a better understand and knowledge of.  The more ammunition I have at my disposal for when I eventually have my own classroom the better off that I’ll be.  This is a very broad topic so I am going to focus on ways to keep students busy to limit downtime when problems usually arise.  This will focus on using technology to fill transitions and if lessons run short.

2.           How you plan to address this educational issue with technology?  You need to make a clear and convincing case that your proposed solution will make a real impact on the issue you identify, and that your proposed approach is a reasonable approach given its costs and possible alternatives.

Issues of classroom management usually arise when students are bored and/or have too much down time.  Students who are consistently engaged in learning are not going to have any time to be disruptive or get into trouble.  Technology can be a great asset in helping keeping students engaged.  One of the places that students have down time and problems can arise is during transitions.  As a full time teacher these transitions are usually smoother since you did the planning for them, however problems can still arise here.  Transitions can be especially challenging for subs since you aren’t always sure how long things will take or exactly how the students are used to things flowing.  Technology can be used to fill these times.  By putting on a short clip or a fun word or logic game up on the screen or smartboard for students to work on when they have their materials out.  There are several options you have when using technology to find small and quick games to fill these times in transition or even at the end of a lesson.  Another way to use technology to help solve students being bored if a lesson runs short or a student finishes work quickly is to have them do research on any question they might have come up with about the work and then possibly report back to the class on their findings.

3.           Logistics of solution: For example…

a.            What is the scope? (e.g., when and where will tool be used and for how long? Who all will use it?)

The scope of this solution is very large.  This is something that can be used anywhere by anyone for as long as needed.  It is a topic that several PHD educators and others have researched in attempts to make more effective teachers and teaching methods.  For my specific part of this project, my solution will be used by myself and the students I am teaching.  This solution will help me improve my classroom management and make learning more effective for the students that I am teaching.  I hope this is something I will be able to implement in any classroom with any set of students.  That would be ideal.

4.           Relevant research and resources (from the Internet and elsewhere) including reports on the closest effort you can find to what you are planning to do as well as ideas and materials you may be able to build upon in your own effort.  Your description should include:

a.             The results of your search (What resources may help guide your project? What resources may help in the implementation of your project?)

2. What you learned from performing this search. For example, which search engines did you use? What strategies did you use? What helped or hindered your search? How would you search again next time?

http://jc-schools.net/tutorials/classroom/management.htm - I found several good ideas here on several ways to use technology as a classroom management tool. Cambourne, B., Labbo, L. D., & Carpenter, M. (2001, November). What do I do with the rest of the class? The nature of teaching-learning activities. Language Arts, 79 (2), 124-136. Teachers need to challenge students by keeping them occupied with appropriate learning activities. - Technology allows more access to these types of activities that will keep them challenged, learning and engaged. http://www.explorelearning.com/index.cfm?method=cResource.dspResourceCatalog - Gizmos is on online catalog of simulations that all relate to teaching standards.  These are all short interactive simulations that come ready with questions to keep the students focused.  It is a great resource for students who have finished quickly.  You can easily find something related to what was taught that day. I used Google to perform my search and found that there are several ideas out there for classroom management techniques however when it comes to technology most of the information out there is about classroom management techniques for implementing technology in the classroom not technology for implementing classroom management techniques.  What I decided to do was take the information that was out there on classroom management techniques (especially for subs) and incorporate technology in to that.

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 I will implement strategies as a substitute.  The ideas to extend a lesson or fill up down time.  This will be the extent of what I’ll be able to accomplish without having my own classroom.  After the course hopefully I’ll have my own classroom that I’ll be able to implement other, long-term strategies in place for classroom management and test their effectiveness.

6.           How would you know you were successful?

The success of the implementation of using technology to assist with classroom management is something that will be hard to know immediately or with 100% certainty.  To measure the success I will have to do things like keep anecdotal records of student behavior.  I will focus on number of outbursts by students, number of times I have to redirect students and other disruptive behavior.  The difficult part of analyzing the data will be trying to account for factors like different students in different classes.  As a substitute it will be difficult to compare from one day to another since I am usually in different classes.  Different students means different types and frequency of behaviors.  I will have to use generalizations to analyze the data.

A Funny Thing Happened With Technology - The Podcast

Here is the link to my story about a funny thing that happened with technology.  I hope you enjoy.

https://www.msu.edu/~dionneer/AFunnyThingHappenedWithTechnology.mp3

Video Bio

Hello everyone!  Below is my video bio.  I used audacity to record the audio and a movie making software to combine both the audio track and the pictures.  Enjoy!

Webquest Evaluation

Healthy Eating Webquest

Intended Audience:  Middle School Science/Health

Educational Goal:  Students will understand what makes up good nutrition.  They will understand how to read a nutrition label on food, count calories and find healthy alternatives to some foods they may be used to eating.

Curriculum Standards: Not stated in the Webquest

The way this webquest is presented to students gives them a real word problem to solve which will increase student’s motivation and desire to complete the task.  The webquest uses deductive strategies by giving students guidelines of calories to make a meal plan.  This will allow students to see how healthy foods are and create a diet plan that they can actually use.  This webquest is scaffolded by first having students look up some of their favorite foods and identify the number of calories to see if they are healthy.  This will give students practice looking up different foods before they create their own diet plans.

The webquest uses different internet sites to help students find foods and their calories to make a diet plan.  This could however also be done with photocopies.  Below is a screen shot of one of the resources the webquest provides.

Several popular foods and their calories could be printed out and handed out to students for them to reference.  The use of technology in this webquest does little more than help save paper and to make the process a little bit faster.  Technically the webquest does work and none of the links are flawed.

To improve this webquest I would include a place online where students could compile their diet plans.  If possible something that has an interactive user experience to make the plans easy to manipulate and reorganize.  Then all of these diet plans could be posted in one location so that students can see each other’s diet plans.  This will allow students to get more ideas beyond just what they have come up with and have the activity have more meaning for the students. 

The webquest can be found here: diet plan webquest

The name of the author of the webquest was not displayed.

Evaluation by: Eric Dionne

Educational Gaming

Educational Gaming could be used to teach students a wide variety of content.  There are several simple games out there that can be used to help students learn and/or review information.  For example, there is one game I found in which students have to land an airplane at a city in Europe.  Students are given points on how close they get to the city not only teaching them the names of different European cities and capitals but also their locations.  A strategy that I might use with my students is using the points in the game as motivation for students.  The points could correlate to a grade or another type of reward.  This would create intrinsic motivation in students to try to compete against themselves to reach an objective.  This is the characteristics of games that make them so addictive.  There is also immediate feedback through points received.  Electronic portfolios would probably be challenging to use.  It would require students to have computers with internet connection at their homes.  This is not always the case with students and some families can’t afford to have this.  This would be the same problem with any online experience that requires students to use the internet at home.

Wiki Post 2

I went to go back to the Wikipedia page I had already made and I found this:

What happened is that there was an online discussion about whether or not to delete the wiki page I had originally created.  People argued for both sides but ultimately it ended up being deleted.  So what I did instead was added the information from my originally wiki page to the Lansing School District page instead.  Here is what I added to that wiki page:

I added information about Forest G. Averill Elementary school as well as included links to Averill's home page.  I discussed Averill's Spanish immersion program and also linked to another wiki page that describes what language immersion programs are.

You can find the wiki page here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lansing_School_District

MERLOT Learning Resource Evaluation

MERLOT Material Link - http://pathways.thinkport.org/about/about1.cfm

Quality of Content:

1. Does the software present valid (correct) concepts, models, and skills?

Yes the software presents valid concepts, models, and skills.

2. Does the software present educationally significant concepts, models, and skills for the discipline?

Yes the software includes information in a variety of ways such as text, visual, audio as well as interactive media.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching-Learning Tool:

1. What stage(s) in the learning process/cycle could the materials be used?
1. Explanation or description of the topic/stating the problem
2. Demonstration of the curriculum/exploration of the problem
3. Practice using the curriculum/analysis of the outcomes from solving the problem
4. Applying the curriculum to "new" problems/application of the outcomes to other problems
2. What is(are) the learning objective(s)? What should students be able to do after successfully learning with the materials?

Students should be able to understand what the underground railroad was and how it worked.  They should know the different routes that slaves took as well as some of the signals and songs they used to communicate.

3. What are the characteristics of the target learner(s)

The target learners are students just starting to learn about the Underground Railroad.  This particular resource focuses on the underground railroad in Maryland so that could be the audience it was designed for.  Students will also need basic computer and webpage navigation skills.

4. Does the interactive/media-rich presentation of material improve faculty and students' abilities to teach and learn the materials?

It accomplishes this through pairing interactive presentation with explanations and visuals to help increase understanding and learning.  It also breaks the information down into small manageable parts to not overwhelm the learner.

5. Can the use of the software be readily integrated into current curriculum and pedagogy within the discipline?

Yes this software can be readily integrated into the current curriculum and pedagogy.  It provides information through the use of text as well as the use of music and visuals including maps.  Reading maps is another part of this discipline on top of learning about the Underground Railroad.

6. Can the software be used in a variety of ways to achieve teaching and learning goals?

Yes this software can be used in a variety of ways to achieve teaching and learning goals.  It presents information through text, visual, audio and interactive.  It can also be used as a reference material since it provides lots of information all in one place.

7. Are the teaching-learning goals easy to identify?

Yes the teaching-learning goals are easy to identify. The navigation sidebar on the website clearly outlines the different areas and topics that are covered and can be found in this resource.

8. Can good learning assignments for using the software application be written easily?

A learning assignment could be easily constructed since this website resource is laid out in a very clear and distinctive way.  Teachers would be able to use their goals and learning objectives to figure out what they want their students to focus on.

Ease of Use:

1. Are the labels, buttons, menus, text, and general layout of the computer interface consistent and visually distinct?

Yes this resource is visually very well done.  There is a navigation sidebar that is present on all the different pages making it easy for the user to navigate the site and get to the information they are looking for quickly and easily.  The only apparent shortcoming of this resource is with the interactive piece.  The way to use it isn’t apparently clear and it is also very small which could make it difficult for some students to see.

2. Does the user get trapped in the material?

No.  The navigation sidebar makes it very easy to get back to where you were before.

3. Can the user get lost easily in the material?

No.

4. Does the module provide feedback about the system status and the user's responses?

The resource does not provide any feedback.  It is designed more as an information hub than a resource to make sure the user is learning the information that is being provided.  There is no assessment or questions along the way for the user to test what they have learned.

5. Does the module provide appropriate flexibility in its use?

The module is very flexible.  One of the big advantages that this resource provides is that most long sections of text have the option for the user to listen to an audio file of the text instead of reading.  This would help students who struggle with reading to still learn the information and not fall behind.  Students could also read along with this audio file.

6. Does the learning material require a lot of documentation, technical support, and/or instruction for most students to successfully use the software?

No this is a stand-alone resource.  It does not require outside documentation or technical support.  It can also be used effectively with very minimal instruction.

7. Does the material present information in ways that are familiar for students?

Yes the material is presented in a way that is very similar to most other websites that students would be familiar with.

8. Does the material present information in ways that would be attractive to students?

The information is often accompanied with pictures or interactive media making the resource interesting and attractive to students.