Student Showcase

Last Friday, my group and I presented our student showcase. In attempt to foster some meaningful discussion with the class, we tried to concentrate on how we might use technologies in the classroom, rather than explaining how to physically navigate through them. I think this approach was important, as we know, our students don't need direction on how the technology works, but rather they need guidance to ensure deep engagement with the material (which is caused by our carefully designed intentional learning experiences).



Skype

First, a big thank you to Seanna and her lovely friend in Korea, who had been up about 20 hours when we spoke with her over skype (AND she was impressively still coherent!) I think having skype in the classroom, provides a new, incredible learning experience. I found dozens of youtube videos which showcased students gathered around a computer and webcam, as they listened to experts (scientists, authors, politicians) in real time. This tool really lets us show our students that what they are learning, are things that are really going on in the real world. They issues and ideas they are grappling with, are the issue and ideas these adults face everyday. It allows them to see the "big picture" and feel that there education matters and is more than questions on an exam at the end of the year, it is also part of these experts life work!



I also have to thank our class, who shared many insights on how we could use this technology or how they have seen it used in their school. Before this presentation, I knew the basics about skype-- but because many of our classmates use the technology regularly, they had other information/pointers/cool features of the technology to share with us. I thought the virtual white board was terrific, and had no idea it existed (thanks Chad!) Thanks to everyone else who shared their knowledge with the class.



Voxopop

This was a technology that was shared by a teacher at the school Sarah and I were placed at last semester. It allows users to record their voices in different discussion groups-- which you can make private and require an invitation to join. It is also not blocked by CBE (as of yet) so many of you really could use it in your classrooms next year.It is similar to some other technologies, (as was mentioned by our fellow classmate) such as voice thread , which also allows users to post video and documents and their own commentary accompanying them. Awesome!

I think this tool is great for many reasons; such as ESL learners practicing the English language, student self assessment, and an interviewing tool. As was mentioned by one of our classmates,it is also a great tool if your school does not have macs or garage band software available.


Wall Wisher

This is the last piece we left the class with. It is kind of similar to delicious which Neil Stevenson introduced to us during his talk. Delicious allows users to create a "portable" bookmark of websites/URLs so others who are given the delicious link can have access to the list of sites. I think Wall wisher is a little easier to use, and Sarah set up our page so that she wouldn't have to approve the posts before they were revealed. Wall Wisher is also great, because students can identify themselves as anonymous. This would be great for example, if in the classroom we were asking difficult questions where identifying yourself may effect how you answer. The only downside is that you can't make you pages private. However you can adjust your user settings so the creator of the page must approve all comments before they appear.

Check out our SIPS Wall Wisher

This was also the artefact that we provided with our class. It was really a great way to gauge how the class felt the presentation went, and also a space for them to post other technologies they thought were similar/useful/interesting.

I learned a lot about the technologies through using them prior to our presentation, and really appreciated all the comments and ideas we received from the class as we discussed last Friday.
Thanks for your participation, and thanks to my group for a successful showcase!

Great Task- Self Assessment

Great Task: Light's, Camera, Action!

The great task that we chose, was an ELA assignment for grade 10. The topic, of English Language Arts was quite out of my comfort zone (as a secondary Science specialist) but actually turned out really well in the end. We chose a task which required students to pick a novel which has not yet been turned into a movie, and design a movie poster.

Self Assessment

1. In our great task, we chose to use gimp, which is an image manipulation software. I however must admit that the other group members did most of the exploring with this program. Where I felt I gained experience with technology was through the creation of a website credibility rubric. Through creation of this rubric, I gained some insight into guiding students through a process to find useful/reliable resources (technology literacy). I worked with the idea of a website rubric that was first introduced by Neil Stevenson in his talk to our class. I created a credibility rubric, which I then rated some of the websites we were looking at. It's amazing how confusing I found MY OWN rubric to me! I made a lot of changes, after my own attempts at using it, to make it more user friendly (and less confusing!).

2. I took a look at my first blog to see the specific goals I had set out, one goal I made was:

" ... [I] want to know how to incorporate new resources into the classroom which will in turn help students become active, critical thinkers who are involved in meaningful learning activities. (i.e. I want them to remember and use the stuff they learn!)"

I feel that the completion of this activity did require students to engage in meaningful work. It wasn't just simply playing around with the gimp software (although this was needed to familiarize yourself with the technology). They needed a plan first. They needed to first read a novel, where they would develop their own interpretations of the themes in the book, and begin to brainstorm images to represent these themes. This was not just simply an exercise to learn how to use a new software, but this assignment had ties to the curriculum and the discipline.
Use of the website credibility rubric required them to think critically about what they were reading. This assignment required the students to communicate learning that they constructed themselves, around a specific novel. This task was one which allowed students personal experiences with the novel and the characters to be expressed. This expression of personal interpretation, is what I think students will remember about this assignment (and remembering what they learned was one of my goals!).

3. In order to create a meaningful role for technology in learning, we first need to understand what it is we want students to learn! We need to define this understanding, and design the assignment to help them understand what really matters. The assignment needs to be meaningful and strongly tied to the discipline, no matter what technology we are using. The use of gimp software for example, is only meaningful after the students understand the important themes from their novel, and how to express them. Otherwise, it is simply a collage of meaningless graphics.

What I have learned about using technology for effective collaboration from this great task? This is a little hard for me to answer. I think this project is lacking around using technology for collaboration. The students could have shared files associated with the gimp software as they were constructing them, but other than this, most of the collaboration would have taken place in the planning stages. We could improve this task, by requiring students to collectively plan and discuss the important aspect of their groups chosen novel. We could also give them an online medium to do so-- such as google docs. In retrospect, we could have had them create thought webs in a program such as SMARTideas, and then post these files onto google docs.

4. This task, was again out of my comfort zone. This caused me some frustration, however, I really enjoyed the book we read, and enjoyed talking about it with my group members. I am also not at all proficient with using the gimp software, but thankfully, my other group members took the lead on that part. I was also frustrated when I was completing the website credibility rubric, for many reasons, one because it was confusing, and two, because the only person I had to blame for the confusion was myself (as I had created the rubric). Having the other group members use the rubric helped, and using it myself helped me make valuable adjustments.

5. To improve my contributions to my group, I could have been more involved in the actual construction of the poster using gimp. I didn't offer much help or collaboration to the use of the software, as other group members took the reigns and were doing a great job.

I think some strengths that I possessed were my efforts to collaborate with my group members in all other areas. Together we created what I feel to be an effective rubric, which took a few revisions and had input from all three of us.

Interpretive summary of data / feedback from peer review

Our peers had some great insight for us, and good suggestions that we will implement to improve the quality of our task. Some specific things that were mentioned included:

• Put supporting documents online, rather than having only hard copies. This would improve organization of our task.
• Questions were raised surrounding how we would evaluate "students understanding of technology" which was included in our rubric. This requires us to rethink the wording, and revise the rubric.
• It was also suggested that perhaps the students should be required to choose from a list of novels. These would be chosen from the teacher (i.e. the educator would have to be very familiar with each of the books, in order to mark the assignment).
• We were also encouraged to use a wider range of resources, as we utilized mainly getty images for our poster (however we used this website because only pictures which have been released by the owner/photographer are posted on here)
• The idea of showing the steps as we go along was also suggested, things like "thumbnail sketches, exploration in designs, class critique".

I really appreciated all of the feedback that we received. Some of the above things will truly help the assignment to be more directed and meaningful, and were things that I really didn't think about. I think this activity has also revealed how useful peer review is. As we have been told many times, authentic assessment requires feedback loops. This is one "loop"- our peers giving us suggestions, and the opportunity to change things before we officially hand in our great tasks. This idea of peer review is one that I will utilize in my classroom as I see (and have just experienced) so may benefits for learning.