Well, as I finish my coursework for my education technology degree, I have an opportunity to look back over the entire program as well as this final class and make some observations. Regarding the current class, I have particularly enjoyed the assignments, activities and discussions. Our final artifact, consisting of a lesson plan which implements some emerging technology as well as a rationale for the implementation of that technology were a great exercise. I would have to be one of the people who could say with great ease "sure, implementing technology is a GREAT idea." However when it comes down to the nuts and bolts of how you will introduce the technology to your students, get them familiar with it and then let them run, well along with most folks I expect I have a bit more trouble. That's why I enjoyed all the exercises where I actually made lesson plans showing how I would actually incorporate technology. This final assignment had the added bonus of also including a rationale component which required me to prepare a defense, if you will, for the various questions and even attacks of other staff and administrators who may be less eager to incorporate new technologies into a school.
I'm eager to use the various philosophies, practices, techniques and knowledge I have gathered through this course and the program at large. As most of you know I am not currenty teaching. I am working for an exceptional software company in Montana, however part of my duties do include training of clients in various technology based tools and specifications. I have already begun incorporating some of our experiences into my training curriculum and plans and I will continue to expand and improve my programs with further research into emerging technologies that can help me and my students.
Speaking of the entire program in general, I had a great experience with Walden for the most part. I would heartily recommend Walden to anybody seeking a degree who could not physically attend a school with regularity. In many ways this program served as an excellent "proof of concept". What better way to help us accept and appreciate the power of online learning than through a remote course. Even the weaknesses of the program were instructive as it helps me to recognize aspects of technology incorporation into education that I find frustrating. If I were to make any suggestions for course improvement, I would recommend that some kind of 'live chat' opportunities be incorporated into the courses. I understand that different time-zones and schedules make this difficult, but often live chatting with other students can lead to greater comfort and more organic and fluid conversation. I also have to admit that by the end of the courses, the general grind of the format was wearing. Scheduling makes for a difficult partner with these courses but I would be dishonest if I didn't admit to some degree of burnout in the last couple of courses. This was helped substantially however by the fact that the content of those final two courses was very interesting and engaging. If course format could be changed now and then between classes, that may help to alleviate some "grind" however.
I would like to thank all my classmates and professors. This has been a great journey and as I said, despite some very minor recommendations for change I found the program to be a perfect fit for my schedule and needs. I would also like to thank Walden University, the advisors and even the recruiters for making my entire experience from initial researching of online schools to graduation a smooth and fulfilling one.
Please, do keep in touch. I am quite interested in visiting with you and seeing how things go in the future. I have some things I'm working on with a few of you in terms of exercises and collaborative learning opportunities so I hope we call all maintain communication. (Say, Walden, what are the chances of you putting together an "Alumni" message board so we can put some threads together and stay in touch through that?)
Gregg Wigen,
Wig@bresnan.net
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Sunday, July 25, 2010
The Advent of Online Learning
I've just put together a new voice thread discussing online learning and how it may help improve the learning opportunities for many of our students. I'd be pleased if you took a look at it and provided any comments or feedback.
Have a great weekend. I'm off to Dallas next week for work, but I'll be sure and keep in touch.
Voice thread: The Advent of Online Learning!
http://voicethread.com/share/1255360/
Have a great weekend. I'm off to Dallas next week for work, but I'll be sure and keep in touch.
Voice thread: The Advent of Online Learning!
http://voicethread.com/share/1255360/
Sunday, April 25, 2010
End GAME
Throughout the last 5 weeks I have been trying to put the GAME strategy into practice. I have set goals for myself to improve in several areas of my professional life. While the components and strategies of the GAME plan process are not particularly revolutionary, the plan itself does create a framework that allows a person to plan out a strategy of improvement, attempt to execute that plan and come up with improvements and adjustments to continually push forward in an effort to learn and move forward.
The particular goals that I felt I made some good progress on throughout my GAME plan were my ability to use the APA format more consistently. I researched some books and resources and purchased on and have read it. I am also updating my Word application to utilize some APA formatting templates so I can more easily and consistently follow the spec.
Another goal I set for myself was to attempt to communicate more regularly with my classmates through message boards, chat and email. I see that this will continue to be an area I need to really focus my effort on, but I have made strides this term.
I also wanted to increase my comfort and facility with new educational technologies. Through the exercises of the course, I have generated a series of lesson plans that I'm comfortable with and I feel really make good and contextual use of technology.
The things I like about the GAME plan, the mapping out of goals and steps to achieve them, the monitoring of your progress throughout the process an ultimately the review of the entire exercise to find improvements or hangups can be easily taught to students and hopefully incorporated into their learning and lifestyles. I can see framing unit syllabi such that students are allowed to utilize the GAME plan throughout the class, defining goals and exercising activities to meet those goals and ideally over time, they'll learn how best to work so they can learn more quickly and efficiently in a style that works best with their experiences and personalities.
The particular goals that I felt I made some good progress on throughout my GAME plan were my ability to use the APA format more consistently. I researched some books and resources and purchased on and have read it. I am also updating my Word application to utilize some APA formatting templates so I can more easily and consistently follow the spec.
Another goal I set for myself was to attempt to communicate more regularly with my classmates through message boards, chat and email. I see that this will continue to be an area I need to really focus my effort on, but I have made strides this term.
I also wanted to increase my comfort and facility with new educational technologies. Through the exercises of the course, I have generated a series of lesson plans that I'm comfortable with and I feel really make good and contextual use of technology.
The things I like about the GAME plan, the mapping out of goals and steps to achieve them, the monitoring of your progress throughout the process an ultimately the review of the entire exercise to find improvements or hangups can be easily taught to students and hopefully incorporated into their learning and lifestyles. I can see framing unit syllabi such that students are allowed to utilize the GAME plan throughout the class, defining goals and exercising activities to meet those goals and ideally over time, they'll learn how best to work so they can learn more quickly and efficiently in a style that works best with their experiences and personalities.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Getting my students into the GAME!
The question has been asked, how would I go about helping my students develop thier own GAME plans for improving their technology skills, specifically as addressed by the NETS-S standards. Obviously, I think the first step is to make sure the students understand the GAME process.
- [G] setting Goals
- [A] planning and performing Actions to meet those goals
- [M]constantly monitoring thier progress toward their goals
- [E]evaluating the effectiveness of thier actions toward meeting the goals and updating their plans accordingly
Once the students understand the GAME plan process then I think the next logical step would be to provide them with a template game-planner that allows them to identify goals in technology and NETS-S skills that they'd like to improve upon. Once the students have identified goals and actions, they can begin monitoring their progress toward those goals and updating their status through a blog, video-diary or some other evolving record of their progress.
I like the idea of video-diaries because the students can create and then later refer to a clear visual multi-media presentation of their progress. I think that can help them stay motivated and also help them organize their thoughts for presentation. The very process of organizing their thoughts to video-diary their progress helps them with the maintenance part of the GAME process and assuming that inital goal and action planning template helps them to clearly identify their end-state goals they will be able to evaluate objectively how they are progressing.
I think one important factor is that the students realize they aren't necessarily being graded on how quickly or efficiently the progress toward their goals so much as how well they document the process and present some valid reflection on how they've learned and not learned along the way. The real goal of the GAME plan is not so much to quickly conquer a topic but rather to create a personalized process of self-directed learning that the student can apply to practically any task or goal throughout thier life. For this reason, the video-diary (or voice-diary if the student is truly uncomfortable with video media) can be a tremendous artifact throughout the process as it helps the student see where he or she struggled and where they found their successes.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Wig is LOST, He Has to Go Back!
Ok, so what happened is that I completely missed the week 5 blog posting. I let myself get distracted with work and Easter and I flat out failed to see that I was supposed to post another entry on my GAME plan.
So, despite the fact that this post is late and now out of sequence, I'm going to post one anyway. What I should have done originally for this post was to update the activities I was doing to achieve my game plan and discuss whether or not I felt my planned activities were effective. As far as things I was trying to do, I had set a goal for improving my comfort and facility with APA format. I spent week 5 looking for decent APA format books on Amazon and Barnes and Noble as well as some local book retailers here. I did find a good resource book and ordered it. Having researched a bit to find a good book for my needs that was a practical guide I was happy with my order. I had also found some social networking applications, Elgg and Mahara which I began playing with and asking questions about. By the end of week 5 I wasn't terribly well versed with them, but I had made something of a start. While I'm not convinced that either of those tools would make particularly good classroom applications, I was excited with the technology and the influx of ideas. I am starting to think that customized educational portals may be really useful tools for teachers. As an English teacher for example, if I can put together a first-stop resource site for my students that provides them with safe chat areas, moderated message boards, content-appropriate wiki's and user added content that helps them learn and enhance their understanding of core area concepts I may be on the right track for really incentivizing students to start taking more and more responsibility for their own learning.
At any rate, while my current dabbles in social networking tools have given me some real interest in that area, I realize I need to learn a good deal more about creating and managing social and academic portals that can be truly useful to my students. So, like anything else, for every few steps forward, you realize that the journey seems to keep farther and farther.
So, despite the fact that this post is late and now out of sequence, I'm going to post one anyway. What I should have done originally for this post was to update the activities I was doing to achieve my game plan and discuss whether or not I felt my planned activities were effective. As far as things I was trying to do, I had set a goal for improving my comfort and facility with APA format. I spent week 5 looking for decent APA format books on Amazon and Barnes and Noble as well as some local book retailers here. I did find a good resource book and ordered it. Having researched a bit to find a good book for my needs that was a practical guide I was happy with my order. I had also found some social networking applications, Elgg and Mahara which I began playing with and asking questions about. By the end of week 5 I wasn't terribly well versed with them, but I had made something of a start. While I'm not convinced that either of those tools would make particularly good classroom applications, I was excited with the technology and the influx of ideas. I am starting to think that customized educational portals may be really useful tools for teachers. As an English teacher for example, if I can put together a first-stop resource site for my students that provides them with safe chat areas, moderated message boards, content-appropriate wiki's and user added content that helps them learn and enhance their understanding of core area concepts I may be on the right track for really incentivizing students to start taking more and more responsibility for their own learning.
At any rate, while my current dabbles in social networking tools have given me some real interest in that area, I realize I need to learn a good deal more about creating and managing social and academic portals that can be truly useful to my students. So, like anything else, for every few steps forward, you realize that the journey seems to keep farther and farther.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
On Fonts, Forms and Networking...
Looking over my original goals in order to get a feel for where I'm at with them, I am somewhat encouraged by my progress. One of my primary goals was to improve my usage of APA format. To that end, I have purchased a book on APA format and I've been reading through it and improving my knowledge. I have also played with a couple of social networking frameworks, Elgg and Mahara in order to determine whether or not they would be beneficial in a classroom setting. I also have an account set up with SiteGround to host a personal website using Joomla, which is a particulalry powerful and flexible web-site management framework. Through Joomla and it's various plugins a person can incorporate blogs, wiki's databases and any number of minor "canned" applications into his or her website. I intend to use these features to create my own modest web-portal which will present my own information as well as provide embedded and external links to other resources (like you good folks' blog-sites) for my visitors.
As for my goal of improving my online communication and collaboration, I have sadly continued to struggle in this area. Work has been particularly grueling the last few weeks, which is ironic since my travel schedule has actually lightened up. I've been working on some software coding for a demo that my clients require in two weeks so unfortunately my online collaboration time has suffered. The irony of the situation is not lost on my as I have recently commented on the discussion threads that I'd like to schedule some kind of organized chat time so several of us can get together and have a real-time conversation. Nonetheless, despite my lack of progress in this area, I suppose a positive I can take from the situation is the knowledge that often, technology does not necessarily equate with convenience and ease. At the end of the day, good old fashioned organization and time-management are as critical in the new world as they were in the old days of pen and paper.
As for my goal of improving my online communication and collaboration, I have sadly continued to struggle in this area. Work has been particularly grueling the last few weeks, which is ironic since my travel schedule has actually lightened up. I've been working on some software coding for a demo that my clients require in two weeks so unfortunately my online collaboration time has suffered. The irony of the situation is not lost on my as I have recently commented on the discussion threads that I'd like to schedule some kind of organized chat time so several of us can get together and have a real-time conversation. Nonetheless, despite my lack of progress in this area, I suppose a positive I can take from the situation is the knowledge that often, technology does not necessarily equate with convenience and ease. At the end of the day, good old fashioned organization and time-management are as critical in the new world as they were in the old days of pen and paper.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Progress Ho!
Those of you who have been following this series of posts know that I am currently working on a plan to improve some aspects of my personal and professional technology life. Specifically I have set down some goals to improve in various areas including my proficiency with APA formatting as well as social and collaborative networking competencies. I've also committed to creating some kind of professional learning environment wherein other educators can hopefully glean some insight or find some useful information from my endless wanderings.
Fortunately, I have found several excellent resources that can help me toward my goals in a general sense. A simply search of Amazon for good APA reference guides along with some review of the contents of those books has lead me to a purchase that I feel will help me greatly in finally using APA format consistently and correctly. I have also researched several social networking tools and I've found two that greatly interest me. I don't know quite enough about them yet to give them a full recommendation but I intend to play with both of them over the next few weeks and see if they pass muster.
Elgg (http://community.elgg.org/) is a social networking open-source software toolset that essentially allows a user to create a social networking portal. The Elgg manager can create a site that contains a broad number of widgets and plugin tools that will allow him to add features and richness for his visitors and members. At the heart of Elgg is the ability to create and moderate blogs, chat boards, V-logs and collaborative file-sharing complete with source and version management. I haven't played with Elgg enough to know if it's a perfect fit, but certainly it may turn out to be an excellent tool for creating a social, collaborative network that other professionals can access and contribute to. This could be an excellent tool for both my current software position needs as well as my future teaching requirements.
Another tool Mahara, (http://mahara.org/) is a social networking tool geared toward learning and e-portfolio presentation. Mahara also allows a user to create online-learning communities. One of my goals is to create a source of information for other teachers to access and Mahara may be an excellent choice. There is some significant similarity between Mahara and Elgg, but clearly Mahara is more closely geared toward e-portfolio presentation and career learning. As I play with it more, I'll be better able to determine it's strengths compared to Elgg.
Fortunately, I have found several excellent resources that can help me toward my goals in a general sense. A simply search of Amazon for good APA reference guides along with some review of the contents of those books has lead me to a purchase that I feel will help me greatly in finally using APA format consistently and correctly. I have also researched several social networking tools and I've found two that greatly interest me. I don't know quite enough about them yet to give them a full recommendation but I intend to play with both of them over the next few weeks and see if they pass muster.
Elgg (http://community.elgg.org/) is a social networking open-source software toolset that essentially allows a user to create a social networking portal. The Elgg manager can create a site that contains a broad number of widgets and plugin tools that will allow him to add features and richness for his visitors and members. At the heart of Elgg is the ability to create and moderate blogs, chat boards, V-logs and collaborative file-sharing complete with source and version management. I haven't played with Elgg enough to know if it's a perfect fit, but certainly it may turn out to be an excellent tool for creating a social, collaborative network that other professionals can access and contribute to. This could be an excellent tool for both my current software position needs as well as my future teaching requirements.
Another tool Mahara, (http://mahara.org/) is a social networking tool geared toward learning and e-portfolio presentation. Mahara also allows a user to create online-learning communities. One of my goals is to create a source of information for other teachers to access and Mahara may be an excellent choice. There is some significant similarity between Mahara and Elgg, but clearly Mahara is more closely geared toward e-portfolio presentation and career learning. As I play with it more, I'll be better able to determine it's strengths compared to Elgg.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Executing the "Game" plan... or...what I did for summer vacation
As I review my blog post about my game plan, it seems to be a bit ambitious in terms of goals. However, I'm hopeful that with the check-sheet I can at least make some progress on them and perhaps I'll discover that I need to focus on two or three of the goals and then expand to the others later. At any rate, as I mentioned in the earlier blog, one of the main things I need to achieve my goals is a decent book or resource on APA citation. The handbook included in one of my earlier courses just isn't sufficient to help me really learn APA format. I am certain that I can also find excellent resources on the web and likely a great first step would be to complile a list of those sites and references so I can choose a few. As for some of the other goals, I do have access to several excellent tools for networking and collaborative communication. My current company often uses Microsoft NetMeeting to manage remote conferences with people from around the country and I have a moderate understanding of how to use that program. Our education program through Walden also offers several great resources for communication and collaboration, although I've found that almost nobody ever visits the chat room. I should probably also make a list of good message boards and online collaboration resources. I've already located a number of good online blogs and journals that I am tracking through my reader so I have a fairly good start on my professional journal goal, although I'd like to continue tracking down good resources in that area. If anybody knows any good French education blogs I'd be happy to hear about them. As for my final goal of providing materials and aid to other teachers, my blog can serve as a great jumping-off point for that. Hopefully over time, I'll be able to include some videos, audiocasts and voice threads that can help other educators learn about emerging technologies and ways to use them.
Unfortunately I have been on extensive travel for work the last two weeks (hello from Baltimore, by the way). I haven't had much opportunity to do much in the way of 'getting started' although I have begun building my check-sheet in excel so I can attempt to track my progress on my goals.
Unfortunately I have been on extensive travel for work the last two weeks (hello from Baltimore, by the way). I haven't had much opportunity to do much in the way of 'getting started' although I have begun building my check-sheet in excel so I can attempt to track my progress on my goals.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Improving Educational Technology Integration.
I am focusing on areas where I feel I need improvement in my usage and implementation of technology based-education. Specifically, I am working on a plan to specifically identify weakness areas and improve my own fluency so I may be better prepared to teach my students and effectively lead by example.
Of the five NETS-T standards, I definitely feel the least comfortable with standard number 4, Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility and number 5, Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership. In order to increase my confidence in these standards, I have set the following goals for myself:
A) Learn the necessary citation protocol for digital information and technology usage.
B) Develop a reasonable strategy for maximizing student access to technology, hardware and software in my learning environments
C) Learn how to work collaboratively and effectively with networked tools so I can pass this knowledge on to my students.
D) Make greater effort to communicate and collaborate with people through remote communication tools so I may become more proficient and comfortable and learn to escape the "lone island" mentality.
E) Make a definite effort to model collaborative and networked technology usage in constructive and meaningful ways so students can see the value of technological collaborative projects.
F) Find and subscribe to professional journals that can help me keep abridged of new developments in the field of educational technology.
G) Provide materials and aid to other teachers around me in order to help them become more comfortable with the tools, software and opportunities that continue to appear around us.
These goals should help me to improve my fluency in the NETS-T standards that I'm least comfortable with. In order to actually reach these goals, I'll need to put a few things in motion. First off, I'll need to find a better source book for APA format and citation. I'm not really comfortable with the materials I currently have and would like soemthing a bit clearer and more thorough. I'll also need to research some professional journals or blog-sites that can help me with current technological trends and opportunities so I can stay up to speed on new developments.
I need to commit more to communicating through blogs, chat sessions and message boards in order to improve my fluency. Using my RSS reader more faithfully to keep abridged of updates on some of my current tracked feeds would also help.
It is also important that I include a segment in my lesson-planning process for technology implementation and simply force myself to consider how I might implement technology in more of my lessons. Simply modifying my lesson-plan template could provide me a concrete reminder so I continue to focus on working technology into my lessons more effectively. I should also consider featuring a section of my blog-site on technology integration so I can highlight things I've tried as well as receive suggestions from other visitors about how they've used technology. This can help me as well as serve as a resource for some of the teachers around me as well as provide a good knowledge base for myself as I continue to improve my technology integration.
I think a good way of self-monitoring my progress in these areas would be to create a chart that would allow me to review my progress in my goals and action areas every two or three months. This would allow me to verify if I'm actually fulfilling my goals and working on the action items I've created. If I see that some items are simply not being fulfilled, I can review the goals and determine why I'm reticent to work on them. For those goals that I have improved on I can identify which actions were successful and perhaps find ways to modify my less attractive checklist items to come more in focus with activites that were successful for me. Once I see what things work well versus what things don't I should be able to modify my plan to give myself a better chance at maintaining the checklist and improving myself in my skill areas.
Of the five NETS-T standards, I definitely feel the least comfortable with standard number 4, Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility and number 5, Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership. In order to increase my confidence in these standards, I have set the following goals for myself:
A) Learn the necessary citation protocol for digital information and technology usage.
B) Develop a reasonable strategy for maximizing student access to technology, hardware and software in my learning environments
C) Learn how to work collaboratively and effectively with networked tools so I can pass this knowledge on to my students.
D) Make greater effort to communicate and collaborate with people through remote communication tools so I may become more proficient and comfortable and learn to escape the "lone island" mentality.
E) Make a definite effort to model collaborative and networked technology usage in constructive and meaningful ways so students can see the value of technological collaborative projects.
F) Find and subscribe to professional journals that can help me keep abridged of new developments in the field of educational technology.
G) Provide materials and aid to other teachers around me in order to help them become more comfortable with the tools, software and opportunities that continue to appear around us.
These goals should help me to improve my fluency in the NETS-T standards that I'm least comfortable with. In order to actually reach these goals, I'll need to put a few things in motion. First off, I'll need to find a better source book for APA format and citation. I'm not really comfortable with the materials I currently have and would like soemthing a bit clearer and more thorough. I'll also need to research some professional journals or blog-sites that can help me with current technological trends and opportunities so I can stay up to speed on new developments.
I need to commit more to communicating through blogs, chat sessions and message boards in order to improve my fluency. Using my RSS reader more faithfully to keep abridged of updates on some of my current tracked feeds would also help.
It is also important that I include a segment in my lesson-planning process for technology implementation and simply force myself to consider how I might implement technology in more of my lessons. Simply modifying my lesson-plan template could provide me a concrete reminder so I continue to focus on working technology into my lessons more effectively. I should also consider featuring a section of my blog-site on technology integration so I can highlight things I've tried as well as receive suggestions from other visitors about how they've used technology. This can help me as well as serve as a resource for some of the teachers around me as well as provide a good knowledge base for myself as I continue to improve my technology integration.
I think a good way of self-monitoring my progress in these areas would be to create a chart that would allow me to review my progress in my goals and action areas every two or three months. This would allow me to verify if I'm actually fulfilling my goals and working on the action items I've created. If I see that some items are simply not being fulfilled, I can review the goals and determine why I'm reticent to work on them. For those goals that I have improved on I can identify which actions were successful and perhaps find ways to modify my less attractive checklist items to come more in focus with activites that were successful for me. Once I see what things work well versus what things don't I should be able to modify my plan to give myself a better chance at maintaining the checklist and improving myself in my skill areas.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
21st Century Learning Skills in Action
Most educators wouldn't get the slight "geek joke" in the title of this blog. Most of you probably know by now that I am currently in a software position and am responsible for our training programs. I have used the experiences in those training programs extensively for my coursework. Anyway, many of the best software reference books are from the "In Action" series. (Java In Action, EJB In Action, GWT In Action etc) These books generally attempt to teach in-depth knowledge through a series of exercises ultimately working toward a large scaled project. This course served the "In Action" purpose for me.
I was supposed to incorporate 21st century learning skills into my training courses. I assumed this would be relatively easy since I teach adults about web-centric technologies. Ultimately I found the modification of my training to be rather difficult and I had some real struggles to fully implement those skills into the curriculum.
One of the greatest discoveries I made concerned me rather than my students or my syllabus. I had always thought myself very web-fluent. I have very little trouble doing internet searches and generally handle technology very well in terms of discovery and presentation. However as I delved deeper into the course material and tried a few of the exercises I found that I was not a particularly adept searcher, I had merely found ways to work around my shortcomings. I also discovered that I had developed serious crutches for the tools and technologies that I was familiar with but when attempting to expand beyond my comfort zone I was fairly inept. It was quite a challenge for me to incorporate logical, structured web-searching into my curriculum as well as message board seeding and skimming because as it turned out, I wasn't too good at it myself.
I believe going forward I will pay a great deal more attention to the skills that I generally take for granted. I understand now that web fluency is a complicated and ever-changing skill that requires attention and effort to excel. I will also make a much more concerted effort to include the rudimentary information and communication skills into my curriculum that are so necessary for today's employees and managers. For example, the various modifications I made to my curriculum to incorporate more collaborative effort and presentations from the students proved to be very challenging because at times my foundational teaching simply was not sufficient to prepare the students for the tasks I was assigning. Simply asking students to "group up" and work on a project is inadequate. It turns out that without guidance these collaborative exercises more often than not produce additional tension and frustration when they are not properly prepared and presented.
One large part of my updated courses included formal APA citation for the students work. I admit that even now, after all these courses, I do struggle with the APA format and it's quirks and exceptions. From a professional standpoint, I would very much like to 'master' APA formatting so I could do a better job of teaching my students how to write and reference their work. Of course numerous resources exist for this goal so essentially the key requirement is for me dive in and simply master the material. As an English teacher, I admit this should have been done long ago and it is not without some chagrin that I admit this deficiency. However I am committed to improving and doing a better job not only with my own work, but with my ability to teach my students.
I was supposed to incorporate 21st century learning skills into my training courses. I assumed this would be relatively easy since I teach adults about web-centric technologies. Ultimately I found the modification of my training to be rather difficult and I had some real struggles to fully implement those skills into the curriculum.
One of the greatest discoveries I made concerned me rather than my students or my syllabus. I had always thought myself very web-fluent. I have very little trouble doing internet searches and generally handle technology very well in terms of discovery and presentation. However as I delved deeper into the course material and tried a few of the exercises I found that I was not a particularly adept searcher, I had merely found ways to work around my shortcomings. I also discovered that I had developed serious crutches for the tools and technologies that I was familiar with but when attempting to expand beyond my comfort zone I was fairly inept. It was quite a challenge for me to incorporate logical, structured web-searching into my curriculum as well as message board seeding and skimming because as it turned out, I wasn't too good at it myself.
I believe going forward I will pay a great deal more attention to the skills that I generally take for granted. I understand now that web fluency is a complicated and ever-changing skill that requires attention and effort to excel. I will also make a much more concerted effort to include the rudimentary information and communication skills into my curriculum that are so necessary for today's employees and managers. For example, the various modifications I made to my curriculum to incorporate more collaborative effort and presentations from the students proved to be very challenging because at times my foundational teaching simply was not sufficient to prepare the students for the tasks I was assigning. Simply asking students to "group up" and work on a project is inadequate. It turns out that without guidance these collaborative exercises more often than not produce additional tension and frustration when they are not properly prepared and presented.
One large part of my updated courses included formal APA citation for the students work. I admit that even now, after all these courses, I do struggle with the APA format and it's quirks and exceptions. From a professional standpoint, I would very much like to 'master' APA formatting so I could do a better job of teaching my students how to write and reference their work. Of course numerous resources exist for this goal so essentially the key requirement is for me dive in and simply master the material. As an English teacher, I admit this should have been done long ago and it is not without some chagrin that I admit this deficiency. However I am committed to improving and doing a better job not only with my own work, but with my ability to teach my students.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
My Learning Theory - Redux
In reviewing my personal theory of learning submission from the beginning of the course, I must admit that I haven't significantly changed my approach from a philosophical perspective. I still believe in collaborative learning and constructive projects that provide students a chance to create something new and ideally useful from their recently acquired knowledge. The simple restraints of time, resources and endurance do dictate that sometimes other methodologies must be used as well. While I would love an environment that provided students constant opportunities to work together and create literary artifacts, that simply isn't possible all the time. What I would like to focus on his finding ways to harmoniously blend different learning philosophies in such a way that students who respond well to specific methodologies (behaviorism based students, for example who live to destroy the grade curve) can receive instruction that caters to their strengths while they are still exposed from time to time to different theories so they can learn to excel even when the instructional format isn't necessarily their favorite.
A couple of tools that I was impressed with have some different utility. Voice-threads and concept maps were admittedly new concepts for me and on the surface they seem to be relatively trivial technologies. However, these tools can help give students ownership of their knowledge. Concept maps can be used by students to organize thier information on a topic and apply learning connections between ideas and information so they can better remember. Furthermore, the concept maps, created by the students can serve as tremendous study tools. Voice-threads form a tremendous collaborative 'work in progress' construct that students can use to continually evolve their work and produce a team-centric information presentation or simply a running study group converstation. The tool has value both as an organizational construct for the students preparing it, but also a presentation format for other students who want to review the information and gain an introduction to the pertinent points.
I have already started working on a long-term wiki project for my S1000D training. My goal is to provide a centralized knowledge repository where professionals who work with the specification on a daily basis can contribute and benefit from the collaborative brain-trust. I have also considered building a tool I'm tentatively calling a blog-folio which allows teachers, students, parents and administrators to maintain a long-term portfolio of work that can be collaborative and iterative, utilizing input from all involved groups to improve the contents. I began thinking of this concept while learning about the voice-threads. It occurred to me that the voice-thread tools merely incorporated a number of common and well-known technologies into a collaborative platform. It seems to me that the same kind of thinking can be applied to a body of work from a student, incorporating everything from study notes and chat-transcripts to written assignments, quizzes, tests, submitted videos, speeches, or other presentations. Furthermore, feedback from teachers, administrators and input from parents and the students themselves can all be bundled into a manageable format that allows a holistic view of a students' work over a long-term sampling.
A couple of tools that I was impressed with have some different utility. Voice-threads and concept maps were admittedly new concepts for me and on the surface they seem to be relatively trivial technologies. However, these tools can help give students ownership of their knowledge. Concept maps can be used by students to organize thier information on a topic and apply learning connections between ideas and information so they can better remember. Furthermore, the concept maps, created by the students can serve as tremendous study tools. Voice-threads form a tremendous collaborative 'work in progress' construct that students can use to continually evolve their work and produce a team-centric information presentation or simply a running study group converstation. The tool has value both as an organizational construct for the students preparing it, but also a presentation format for other students who want to review the information and gain an introduction to the pertinent points.
I have already started working on a long-term wiki project for my S1000D training. My goal is to provide a centralized knowledge repository where professionals who work with the specification on a daily basis can contribute and benefit from the collaborative brain-trust. I have also considered building a tool I'm tentatively calling a blog-folio which allows teachers, students, parents and administrators to maintain a long-term portfolio of work that can be collaborative and iterative, utilizing input from all involved groups to improve the contents. I began thinking of this concept while learning about the voice-threads. It occurred to me that the voice-thread tools merely incorporated a number of common and well-known technologies into a collaborative platform. It seems to me that the same kind of thinking can be applied to a body of work from a student, incorporating everything from study notes and chat-transcripts to written assignments, quizzes, tests, submitted videos, speeches, or other presentations. Furthermore, feedback from teachers, administrators and input from parents and the students themselves can all be bundled into a manageable format that allows a holistic view of a students' work over a long-term sampling.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Constructivism, Behavioral theory and ... some soup.
When I teach my Junior English class, one of my favorite units is something I call the "isms". We go over the ideas of Classicism, Romanticism, Transcendentalism and Gothicism. My students often groan good-naturedly when I bring up the isms because I enjoy this part of the curriculum so much and we review a good deal of work from these various genres.
In many ways, teachers can look at learning theory as the 'isms' of teaching. We have behavioral theory... or "mouse in a maze-ism" where we reward students for proper behavior and repetition of a task or concept. We may also withhold reward or even provide punishment to students based upon their performance. Mouse in a maze-ism can basically be boiled down to the idea that students LIKE consistency in how they are taught and they LIKE to consistently produce work that pleases their teacher and subsequently provides them with cheesy-good grades. From a technology standpoint, a number of standard tools and technologies that students can learn and rely upon help them to develop a solid reliable relationship with their learning. For example, learning a word-processing tool like Word is generally very reinforcing, because the student is able to learn the various controls and reproduce reliably some work that will provide them with rewards.
One of the other ism's that teachers use more and more of is constructivism. This is a strategy that asks students to create some new and exciting artifact that they can show to others. An artifact could be an oral presentation, a movie, a webpage - even a rock that is painted nicely. the idea is that a student works to create something new by aggregating and synthesizing material into something unique and personal. I like to think of this as "build a better mouse-trapism". (Actually, I prefer constructivism to behavioral methods so the whole mousetrap catching the mouse in the maze is appropriate... sort of.)
There are other learning theory components that tie in to both of these major theories. Dr. Orey has suggested that people learn by classifying items, placing them in little mental boxes and then finding ways to associate all the different boxes in our minds (Laureate Education, 2007). This concept ties in more or less with some of the tenets of behavioral theory. The goal is to help students not only create these "boxes" in their minds but through repetition and personalized episodes help them create numerous links to those boxes so they can find the memory and reproduce it whenever needed.
Another sub-concept of constructivism is the idea of collaboratively working on some artifact. This brings several students together working on some project or deliverable and puts them into a social environment where they not only learn from the material presented but from eachother as well. Environmental theories suggest that students learn from the environment, people and situations around them. Therefore, teachers can combine better mouse-trap-ism with collaborative concepts to maximize the rewards of constructivism and social learning.
references:
Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2009). Program 4. Cognitive learning theories [Motion picture]. Bridging learning theory, instruction, and technology. Baltimore: Author.
Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
In many ways, teachers can look at learning theory as the 'isms' of teaching. We have behavioral theory... or "mouse in a maze-ism" where we reward students for proper behavior and repetition of a task or concept. We may also withhold reward or even provide punishment to students based upon their performance. Mouse in a maze-ism can basically be boiled down to the idea that students LIKE consistency in how they are taught and they LIKE to consistently produce work that pleases their teacher and subsequently provides them with cheesy-good grades. From a technology standpoint, a number of standard tools and technologies that students can learn and rely upon help them to develop a solid reliable relationship with their learning. For example, learning a word-processing tool like Word is generally very reinforcing, because the student is able to learn the various controls and reproduce reliably some work that will provide them with rewards.
One of the other ism's that teachers use more and more of is constructivism. This is a strategy that asks students to create some new and exciting artifact that they can show to others. An artifact could be an oral presentation, a movie, a webpage - even a rock that is painted nicely. the idea is that a student works to create something new by aggregating and synthesizing material into something unique and personal. I like to think of this as "build a better mouse-trapism". (Actually, I prefer constructivism to behavioral methods so the whole mousetrap catching the mouse in the maze is appropriate... sort of.)
There are other learning theory components that tie in to both of these major theories. Dr. Orey has suggested that people learn by classifying items, placing them in little mental boxes and then finding ways to associate all the different boxes in our minds (Laureate Education, 2007). This concept ties in more or less with some of the tenets of behavioral theory. The goal is to help students not only create these "boxes" in their minds but through repetition and personalized episodes help them create numerous links to those boxes so they can find the memory and reproduce it whenever needed.
Another sub-concept of constructivism is the idea of collaboratively working on some artifact. This brings several students together working on some project or deliverable and puts them into a social environment where they not only learn from the material presented but from eachother as well. Environmental theories suggest that students learn from the environment, people and situations around them. Therefore, teachers can combine better mouse-trap-ism with collaborative concepts to maximize the rewards of constructivism and social learning.
references:
Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2009). Program 4. Cognitive learning theories [Motion picture]. Bridging learning theory, instruction, and technology. Baltimore: Author.
Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Tantalus
In Greek mythology, Tantalus was a fellow who upset the Gods. In punishment, they placed him eternally in a pool of cool water that drained instantly whenever he tried to drink. They also placed grapes above his head that moved just beyond his reach when he tried to eat. I felt like that this week. I had problems connecting to the internet and despite all the wonderful technologies that surround us, I was left hungry and thirsty, and really quite frustrated.
I am getting this up late, but I do really hope some of you have time to take a look and comment on it. I've set my topic about helping students who may have trouble connecting to the internet reliable or at all and asking for suggestions to help those students so the technology around us does not actually become a hindrance and frustration instead of a great tool and exciting opportunity.
Please try to take a look at my voice thread if you have an opportunity.
http://voicethread.com/share/661981/
I am getting this up late, but I do really hope some of you have time to take a look and comment on it. I've set my topic about helping students who may have trouble connecting to the internet reliable or at all and asking for suggestions to help those students so the technology around us does not actually become a hindrance and frustration instead of a great tool and exciting opportunity.
Please try to take a look at my voice thread if you have an opportunity.
http://voicethread.com/share/661981/
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Constructionist Theory in Action
It's so much fun to find the proper names for the various strategies we've been using as teachers for so long. It turns out I'm a constructionist! This would undoubtedly make my father proud as he is a construction professional and has long wondered why I fail so abysmally at things like putting up new sheetrock and installing new garage doors... but I digress.
We've been asked this week to take a look at constructionism and how it applies not only to our own teaching but to discuss some of the various activities that were exposed to us this week in our materials. For any readers who may not be up to speed on constructionism (I undoubtedly have many many visitors who are not part of my current classes) I will quickly summarize constructionist theory. Dr. Michael Orey, an associate professor at Georgia described constructionism as a theory of learning wherein people learn best when they build or produce something tangible that they can share with or show to other people (Laureate Education, 2009). So essentially all those craft projects and collages and mobiles and every physical 'thing' you've had your students or children build for you fit under the category of constructionism assuming that you've had them create these objects for the purpose of learning about some topic or system.
Orey further points out that constructionist learning theory builds upon the tenets of Jean Piaget regarding how people learn. These tenets on a basic level suggest that people build concepts, or boxes if you will of the world and everything in it (Laureate Education, 2009). So, you undoubtedly have a "horse box" or a construct that contains the essential information you know of that defines a horse. That may include an animal with 4 legs that is generally tall, that has a long face and may be ridden. I'm certain there are more details in your "horse box". Piaget called this construct your schema (Laureate Education, 2009). Now, sometimes you run into something new... which may or may not easily fit into your "horse box". Perhaps you see a new kind of horse, let's say a miniature pony. Now... While this thing generally looks like a horse for the most part, it's entirely to short to fit easily into your general concept of what a horse is. This incongruity between the horse-thing you're looking at and your schema of what a horse should be is called dis-equilibration (Laureate Education, 2009).
Now, we know that people don't like things that don't fit. An entire entertainment industry has been created to give us jigsaw puzzles because people have a deep-seated NEED for things to fit. That need causes us to do one of two things with our minature pony that doesn't quite work with our horse box. We can adapt our view of the outside world to fit our schema, a practice called assimilation (Laureate Education, 2009). Alternately, we can modify our concept of what should be a "horse" to include the new miniature pony. This is called accommodation (Laureate Education, 2009). Most likely we will accommodate the miniature pony and make a minor enhancement to our "horse box" to include the fact that horses CAN be very small, like a miniature pony. In this way we have increased our concept of horses and simply learned something new about them.
Whew... that was a long and probably less than thrilling overview of some basic constructionist stuff. Now, what you are wondering (I kid myself, I know) is how does this idea of constructionism or creating a tangible artifact tie in with those learning principles. (You may also be wondering why you never had a pony as a child, but again... I digress.) In order to modify our schema and either build up our concepts of things in the world or learn to interpret what we see differently so it makes sense to us, students need to actively think and do. This means that by creating a new item, perhaps a collage made from clipped magazine pictures students have to locate photographs that somehow match the schema concepts of what they are supposed to be creating and then tie them in with the theme. In many cases this can be difficult. There may be a shortage of photographs or the theme may simply be difficult to summarize in pictures. Therefore, students have to really consider their schema and find a way to equilibrate the items they have to construct their artifact with the thematic concepts they are trying to express.
And building the object is only half the process. When the students subsequently present and explain their process in creating the montage, they are continuing to work on equilibration and in that process strengthening their schema.
The material this week showed a couple of examples of tools or lessons teachers can use to include technology in their classrooms while offering students the chance to create their own artifacts. One example demonstrated the use of excel to help students learn fairly complex concepts about money, investment and compound interest ((Pitler et. al, 2007). While I thought this example was certainly interesting and would help students learn the value of investment, I did not feel that the artifact created by the students was significantly meaningful to them to really help drive the point home. I would have preferred to have the students themselves learn how to enter the formulae and create the entire spreadsheet instead of merely having to enter a single value and having the rest of the data auto-generate. While I appreciate the time-savings that method provides, I simply feel that the students didn't necessarily have enough personal involvement to really feel like they 'created something'.
Another example had students making predictions about acid rain content in their local water sources and tracking information that they collected in a spreadsheet to demonstrate the level of acidity in their local water sources ((Pitler et. al, 2007). I found this particular process a bit more interactive and engaging for the students as they had to be more involved in research and data gathering as well as making predictions and charting different values in order to present a final unified graph.
While I do like these activities and see the value in their use I still feel the best type of constructionist activity is one the students define themselves. I like to allow students to create their own criteria based upon some agreed upon assessment parameter at the end of the process. The Orey video showed students creating booklets based upon novels they read. The booklets contained several artifacts that utilized different skills and talents to generate and one of the highlights for the students was creating poems that conformed to some shape they associated with their novel (Laureate Education, 2009). This allowed students to use word-processing programs to create a structure-poem. This group of exercises provides different kinds of activities that will help students learn better by tying in greater amounts of information and types of activities to the themes and content of their books. I've always been a fan of trying to tie different kinds of activities to learning so students who prefer one method over another have several ways to receive and associate information with their "boxes".
References:
Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2009). Program 7. Constructionist and Constructivist Learning Theories [Motion picture]. Bridging Learning Theory, Instruction, and Technology. Baltimore: Author.
Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
We've been asked this week to take a look at constructionism and how it applies not only to our own teaching but to discuss some of the various activities that were exposed to us this week in our materials. For any readers who may not be up to speed on constructionism (I undoubtedly have many many visitors who are not part of my current classes) I will quickly summarize constructionist theory. Dr. Michael Orey, an associate professor at Georgia described constructionism as a theory of learning wherein people learn best when they build or produce something tangible that they can share with or show to other people (Laureate Education, 2009). So essentially all those craft projects and collages and mobiles and every physical 'thing' you've had your students or children build for you fit under the category of constructionism assuming that you've had them create these objects for the purpose of learning about some topic or system.
Orey further points out that constructionist learning theory builds upon the tenets of Jean Piaget regarding how people learn. These tenets on a basic level suggest that people build concepts, or boxes if you will of the world and everything in it (Laureate Education, 2009). So, you undoubtedly have a "horse box" or a construct that contains the essential information you know of that defines a horse. That may include an animal with 4 legs that is generally tall, that has a long face and may be ridden. I'm certain there are more details in your "horse box". Piaget called this construct your schema (Laureate Education, 2009). Now, sometimes you run into something new... which may or may not easily fit into your "horse box". Perhaps you see a new kind of horse, let's say a miniature pony. Now... While this thing generally looks like a horse for the most part, it's entirely to short to fit easily into your general concept of what a horse is. This incongruity between the horse-thing you're looking at and your schema of what a horse should be is called dis-equilibration (Laureate Education, 2009).
Now, we know that people don't like things that don't fit. An entire entertainment industry has been created to give us jigsaw puzzles because people have a deep-seated NEED for things to fit. That need causes us to do one of two things with our minature pony that doesn't quite work with our horse box. We can adapt our view of the outside world to fit our schema, a practice called assimilation (Laureate Education, 2009). Alternately, we can modify our concept of what should be a "horse" to include the new miniature pony. This is called accommodation (Laureate Education, 2009). Most likely we will accommodate the miniature pony and make a minor enhancement to our "horse box" to include the fact that horses CAN be very small, like a miniature pony. In this way we have increased our concept of horses and simply learned something new about them.
Whew... that was a long and probably less than thrilling overview of some basic constructionist stuff. Now, what you are wondering (I kid myself, I know) is how does this idea of constructionism or creating a tangible artifact tie in with those learning principles. (You may also be wondering why you never had a pony as a child, but again... I digress.) In order to modify our schema and either build up our concepts of things in the world or learn to interpret what we see differently so it makes sense to us, students need to actively think and do. This means that by creating a new item, perhaps a collage made from clipped magazine pictures students have to locate photographs that somehow match the schema concepts of what they are supposed to be creating and then tie them in with the theme. In many cases this can be difficult. There may be a shortage of photographs or the theme may simply be difficult to summarize in pictures. Therefore, students have to really consider their schema and find a way to equilibrate the items they have to construct their artifact with the thematic concepts they are trying to express.
And building the object is only half the process. When the students subsequently present and explain their process in creating the montage, they are continuing to work on equilibration and in that process strengthening their schema.
The material this week showed a couple of examples of tools or lessons teachers can use to include technology in their classrooms while offering students the chance to create their own artifacts. One example demonstrated the use of excel to help students learn fairly complex concepts about money, investment and compound interest ((Pitler et. al, 2007). While I thought this example was certainly interesting and would help students learn the value of investment, I did not feel that the artifact created by the students was significantly meaningful to them to really help drive the point home. I would have preferred to have the students themselves learn how to enter the formulae and create the entire spreadsheet instead of merely having to enter a single value and having the rest of the data auto-generate. While I appreciate the time-savings that method provides, I simply feel that the students didn't necessarily have enough personal involvement to really feel like they 'created something'.
Another example had students making predictions about acid rain content in their local water sources and tracking information that they collected in a spreadsheet to demonstrate the level of acidity in their local water sources ((Pitler et. al, 2007). I found this particular process a bit more interactive and engaging for the students as they had to be more involved in research and data gathering as well as making predictions and charting different values in order to present a final unified graph.
While I do like these activities and see the value in their use I still feel the best type of constructionist activity is one the students define themselves. I like to allow students to create their own criteria based upon some agreed upon assessment parameter at the end of the process. The Orey video showed students creating booklets based upon novels they read. The booklets contained several artifacts that utilized different skills and talents to generate and one of the highlights for the students was creating poems that conformed to some shape they associated with their novel (Laureate Education, 2009). This allowed students to use word-processing programs to create a structure-poem. This group of exercises provides different kinds of activities that will help students learn better by tying in greater amounts of information and types of activities to the themes and content of their books. I've always been a fan of trying to tie different kinds of activities to learning so students who prefer one method over another have several ways to receive and associate information with their "boxes".
References:
Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2009). Program 7. Constructionist and Constructivist Learning Theories [Motion picture]. Bridging Learning Theory, Instruction, and Technology. Baltimore: Author.
Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Oops, I missed my cue!
This week's resources discussed cues, advanced organizers and questioning strategies as well as summarizing and note-taking. I failed to notice my cue to fill in my blog this week so I stand chagrined.
Cues of course are statements or comments meant to prepare students for learning, or to elicit some kind of response from them. Normally a teacher would provide cues either before presenting some material or while questioning students about their knowledge to draw information from them, from a behavioral context this is pretty straightforward in that you are attempting to model a behavior or elicit some kind of response from your students.
Advanced organizers are, in my opinion a great idea and I'm sad to admit I have not used them extensively in my teaching. I really like the idea of providing a formatted pre-view of the types of information and material that students will be presented so they can work their way through that material and gain specific information. Also in terms of providing structure and giving students a physical map of material to notice and maintain provides a great form of positive feedback. (I need to find and answer... oh, there it is! I fill in my organizer or content map and presto, I feel reinforced.)
The summarizing section of the book was also interesting. I like having students to self-directed summaries because it helps them to learn what information is important and how best to package that up in a format they can easily remember and recall. And of course the process of determining what should be summarized helps with the memorization and retention of material.
Finally, regarding note-taking - I must admit I was a terrible note-taker until I took Psych 101 my freshman year of college. The prof spend a few days teaching us how to take notes in a specific format and it helped me immensely. Again as far as our behavioral discussions, theres something very satisfying about taking well organized and structured notes and being able to quickly and easily find information when you want it.
At least I think that's what I wanted to say... let me look through these notes... um...
Cues of course are statements or comments meant to prepare students for learning, or to elicit some kind of response from them. Normally a teacher would provide cues either before presenting some material or while questioning students about their knowledge to draw information from them, from a behavioral context this is pretty straightforward in that you are attempting to model a behavior or elicit some kind of response from your students.
Advanced organizers are, in my opinion a great idea and I'm sad to admit I have not used them extensively in my teaching. I really like the idea of providing a formatted pre-view of the types of information and material that students will be presented so they can work their way through that material and gain specific information. Also in terms of providing structure and giving students a physical map of material to notice and maintain provides a great form of positive feedback. (I need to find and answer... oh, there it is! I fill in my organizer or content map and presto, I feel reinforced.)
The summarizing section of the book was also interesting. I like having students to self-directed summaries because it helps them to learn what information is important and how best to package that up in a format they can easily remember and recall. And of course the process of determining what should be summarized helps with the memorization and retention of material.
Finally, regarding note-taking - I must admit I was a terrible note-taker until I took Psych 101 my freshman year of college. The prof spend a few days teaching us how to take notes in a specific format and it helped me immensely. Again as far as our behavioral discussions, theres something very satisfying about taking well organized and structured notes and being able to quickly and easily find information when you want it.
At least I think that's what I wanted to say... let me look through these notes... um...
Thursday, September 17, 2009
.50 cents and 110 Volts!
The basic concepts of behaviorist learning can be nicely summarized with a piece of technology we've all been exposed to for most of our lives...
The soda machine is an excellent model for the principles of behavioral psychology. Let's consider what a soda machine does for us.
A) You put your .50 cents in, click a button and get the proper can of soda.
This is positive reinforcement. You are essentially being rewarded for properly performing a task.
B) You put your .50 cents in, click a button but no can of soda comes out.
This is negative reinforcement. You have properly performed a task, but you were not given a reward.
Scenario B inevitably leads to a behaviorist activity called "extinction".
C) You press the button on the soda machine over and over again trying to get it to drop your can of soda.
Extinction is the heightened recurrence of a behavior in order to try to receive a positive reinforcement when you haven't been given one.
D) You may also put your .50 cents into a soda machine, press the button and due to an electrical short, receive a 110 volt shock.
This is punishment. While negative reinforcement is very likely to produce an extinction behavior, punishment is more likely to actually prohibit the repetition of the behavior. (Who wants to risk getting another 110 volt shock for a lousy can of soda?)
Some research into the inner workings of kids hopelessly hooked on sugared, caffeinated beverages suggests that sporadic positive and negative reinforcement does the most to produce recurrent behavior. For some reason, the possibility of occasional failure eventually rewarded with success leads to more common practice of the behavior.
so, with that in mind... how can this be applied to a classroom? Teachers have a number of ways of providing positive and negative feedback, and of course we can also deal out some punishment as necessary. A key element in the success of behavioral modification is in finding unique and enticing forms of positive reinforcement. Kids LOVE technology and for some unclear reason they will put a much greater deal of effort into a repetitive, uninteresting task if it can somehow be linked to technology. (Some would say positive reinforcement may be a factor here, wink wink...) The fact is, the simple task of having students create excel spreadsheets at home and track their own grades on that spreadsheet can lead to greater effort in the classroom. Students not only have the joy of entering values into their spreadsheet and seeing immediate feedback in terms of how that effects their grade, they gain a sense of control over their performance. No longer are grades arbitrary values assigned and managed by the teachers.
As for using technology for other actual learning tasks, teachers can easily motivate their students to take more time on their homework and put more effort into it by simply utilizing resources available on the web. Many activities and quizzes and forums exist on the internet that can be carefully culled and matched to your curriculum needs. These resources can provide students a pleasant break from more traditional learning activities and get them excited and involved. As an English teacher, projects and presentations are a major part of my assessment strategy. While my students are willing to present material up in front of the class, they are much more exited and involved when they create a multi-media presentation that can be viewed either with the good old DVD player, or better yet from the internet. Using technology tools to interest and motivate students provides them with immediate feedback, generally positive that helps them stay involved and excited in the class.
So... feel free to take your .50 cents and plug it into some interesting and incentivizing reinforcement strategies. Odds are you'll end up with more interested and better-performing students.
The soda machine is an excellent model for the principles of behavioral psychology. Let's consider what a soda machine does for us.
A) You put your .50 cents in, click a button and get the proper can of soda.
This is positive reinforcement. You are essentially being rewarded for properly performing a task.
B) You put your .50 cents in, click a button but no can of soda comes out.
This is negative reinforcement. You have properly performed a task, but you were not given a reward.
Scenario B inevitably leads to a behaviorist activity called "extinction".
C) You press the button on the soda machine over and over again trying to get it to drop your can of soda.
Extinction is the heightened recurrence of a behavior in order to try to receive a positive reinforcement when you haven't been given one.
D) You may also put your .50 cents into a soda machine, press the button and due to an electrical short, receive a 110 volt shock.
This is punishment. While negative reinforcement is very likely to produce an extinction behavior, punishment is more likely to actually prohibit the repetition of the behavior. (Who wants to risk getting another 110 volt shock for a lousy can of soda?)
Some research into the inner workings of kids hopelessly hooked on sugared, caffeinated beverages suggests that sporadic positive and negative reinforcement does the most to produce recurrent behavior. For some reason, the possibility of occasional failure eventually rewarded with success leads to more common practice of the behavior.
so, with that in mind... how can this be applied to a classroom? Teachers have a number of ways of providing positive and negative feedback, and of course we can also deal out some punishment as necessary. A key element in the success of behavioral modification is in finding unique and enticing forms of positive reinforcement. Kids LOVE technology and for some unclear reason they will put a much greater deal of effort into a repetitive, uninteresting task if it can somehow be linked to technology. (Some would say positive reinforcement may be a factor here, wink wink...) The fact is, the simple task of having students create excel spreadsheets at home and track their own grades on that spreadsheet can lead to greater effort in the classroom. Students not only have the joy of entering values into their spreadsheet and seeing immediate feedback in terms of how that effects their grade, they gain a sense of control over their performance. No longer are grades arbitrary values assigned and managed by the teachers.
As for using technology for other actual learning tasks, teachers can easily motivate their students to take more time on their homework and put more effort into it by simply utilizing resources available on the web. Many activities and quizzes and forums exist on the internet that can be carefully culled and matched to your curriculum needs. These resources can provide students a pleasant break from more traditional learning activities and get them excited and involved. As an English teacher, projects and presentations are a major part of my assessment strategy. While my students are willing to present material up in front of the class, they are much more exited and involved when they create a multi-media presentation that can be viewed either with the good old DVD player, or better yet from the internet. Using technology tools to interest and motivate students provides them with immediate feedback, generally positive that helps them stay involved and excited in the class.
So... feel free to take your .50 cents and plug it into some interesting and incentivizing reinforcement strategies. Odds are you'll end up with more interested and better-performing students.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Check out my big brain!
Hey everyone... good to be back on the blogging pipeline again.
I'm involved in a new course right now. We've started learning about different learning theories, (behavioralism, cognitivism, constructionism etc.) as well as a bit of discussion about how the brain works and how students learn and remember.
So far it's been very interesting and I'm looking forward to dusting off my old Pop-Machine metaphor for those of you who didn't see it in the previous classes.
Can't wait to get back into the swing of it. Talk to you soon.
Gregg
I'm involved in a new course right now. We've started learning about different learning theories, (behavioralism, cognitivism, constructionism etc.) as well as a bit of discussion about how the brain works and how students learn and remember.
So far it's been very interesting and I'm looking forward to dusting off my old Pop-Machine metaphor for those of you who didn't see it in the previous classes.
Can't wait to get back into the swing of it. Talk to you soon.
Gregg
Sunday, June 28, 2009
The Future is Now...
I have truly enjoyed my impact of technology on the classroom course. While I have been involved in software development for more than ten years, I must admit I have not used a number of the collaborative tools that are currently available and I have not given them serious consideration in regards to student education. However, the course has truly helped me to stretch my paradigms in terms of educational tools and how they may be used. Admittedly, from a pure technological standpoint I can't say I have specifically developed my skills. However I have grown in terms of my insight in how to use some of these tools to enhance learning.
Because of the course materials and discussions, I have had a number of opportunities to visualize how communication technology can be used to improve classroom education. I have always been a collaborative teacher, but I was admittedly mired in the somewhat constricting mindset of collaboration among my own group of students. The course has helped me to see that we can now provide collaborative learning opportunities that reach far far beyond our own classrooms. I have learned how our young students have quietly and inexorably surpassed us in terms of technological savvy and I now understand that we teachers must make great efforts to stay with the pack in terms of new technologies that are emerging around us.
As I mentioned earlier, I have always been a collaborative teacher and I've always preferred that my students knowledge come from their own exercises and practices rather than through my lectures. However, I have admittedly been stymied many times by what I perceived as a lack of resources to provide rich and contextual learning units that can challenge students and give them opportunities to direct their own learning. Of course I know understand this limitation has been self-imposed due to a lack of creativity. Resources abound for teachers to create, borrow, or steal for their own students.
I believe the best way to continue my progress is to put into practical practice some of the great ideas fleshed out through our discussions. I gleaned several ideas from my classmates and I'd like to think I helped expand upon some thoughts they may have had as well. I want to stay abridged of the 21st century goals and I want to continue reading about the current and emerging technologies that may have educational applications. Thankfully, our exercises in RSS feeds provided all of us with a great way to stay abreast of these developments. I plan on continuing with my blog as my XML training curriculum continues to expand and hopefully some of my classmates will be interested enough to come check it out now and then to see how it's going. I also intend to keep up with their blog updates (again through RSS feeds.)
As for my long term goals. I've been very very fortunate. I have recently been informed that we have been approved for a budget request to enhance our training curriculum and resources. We will be purchasing 6 new netbook computers along with networking hardware and travel cases so we can take along a mobile computer lab on our training courses. These netbooks will be able to access the internet as well as a local network to pull resources for learning and practice. Further we've been told we may purchase a server where we will begin developing a specific Wiki to serve our customers' needs. We'll eventually enhance this wiki into a fully functional help-desk where our students may contact us live for questions.
As for long-term goals for the training program, aside from gathering the hardware and developing the wiki, I have been tasked with re-tooling the curriculum to create more collaborative and learner-centric courses. I intend to develop these courses such that the students may make use of the help-desk and our company resources right from the classroom so they may begin learning how to work on large-scale collaborative projects. I'll be working on individual lesson plans all the way up through the entire curriculum to create a highly interactive and dynamic series of courses.
Frankly, this would not have been possible had I not become so excited about the various tools and resources out there which my company can make use of for our training. My enthusiasm along with my new found ability to demonstrate the benefits of wiki's, blogs, podcasts and real-time remote conversation tools lead my management to approve the course upgrades. I'm excited to dive in and I look forward to the challenges of building this curriculum. I appreciate all your feedback and I hope to hear from you in the future.
Because of the course materials and discussions, I have had a number of opportunities to visualize how communication technology can be used to improve classroom education. I have always been a collaborative teacher, but I was admittedly mired in the somewhat constricting mindset of collaboration among my own group of students. The course has helped me to see that we can now provide collaborative learning opportunities that reach far far beyond our own classrooms. I have learned how our young students have quietly and inexorably surpassed us in terms of technological savvy and I now understand that we teachers must make great efforts to stay with the pack in terms of new technologies that are emerging around us.
As I mentioned earlier, I have always been a collaborative teacher and I've always preferred that my students knowledge come from their own exercises and practices rather than through my lectures. However, I have admittedly been stymied many times by what I perceived as a lack of resources to provide rich and contextual learning units that can challenge students and give them opportunities to direct their own learning. Of course I know understand this limitation has been self-imposed due to a lack of creativity. Resources abound for teachers to create, borrow, or steal for their own students.
I believe the best way to continue my progress is to put into practical practice some of the great ideas fleshed out through our discussions. I gleaned several ideas from my classmates and I'd like to think I helped expand upon some thoughts they may have had as well. I want to stay abridged of the 21st century goals and I want to continue reading about the current and emerging technologies that may have educational applications. Thankfully, our exercises in RSS feeds provided all of us with a great way to stay abreast of these developments. I plan on continuing with my blog as my XML training curriculum continues to expand and hopefully some of my classmates will be interested enough to come check it out now and then to see how it's going. I also intend to keep up with their blog updates (again through RSS feeds.)
As for my long term goals. I've been very very fortunate. I have recently been informed that we have been approved for a budget request to enhance our training curriculum and resources. We will be purchasing 6 new netbook computers along with networking hardware and travel cases so we can take along a mobile computer lab on our training courses. These netbooks will be able to access the internet as well as a local network to pull resources for learning and practice. Further we've been told we may purchase a server where we will begin developing a specific Wiki to serve our customers' needs. We'll eventually enhance this wiki into a fully functional help-desk where our students may contact us live for questions.
As for long-term goals for the training program, aside from gathering the hardware and developing the wiki, I have been tasked with re-tooling the curriculum to create more collaborative and learner-centric courses. I intend to develop these courses such that the students may make use of the help-desk and our company resources right from the classroom so they may begin learning how to work on large-scale collaborative projects. I'll be working on individual lesson plans all the way up through the entire curriculum to create a highly interactive and dynamic series of courses.
Frankly, this would not have been possible had I not become so excited about the various tools and resources out there which my company can make use of for our training. My enthusiasm along with my new found ability to demonstrate the benefits of wiki's, blogs, podcasts and real-time remote conversation tools lead my management to approve the course upgrades. I'm excited to dive in and I look forward to the challenges of building this curriculum. I appreciate all your feedback and I hope to hear from you in the future.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Saturday, May 30, 2009
The 21st Century! Should we be terrified?
I recently read an article regarding the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. I was pointed toward the website (Partnership for 21st Century Skills) and much of the information from the article is pulled from the website.
Essentially the Partnership proposes a new direction in education that focuses on the potential needs of students in the future. Our students must be taught to think critically and solve complex problems often through collaborative efforts. Certainly core curriculum skills are still the bedrock of this concept of education and in fact 9 separate core areas are listed as opposed to our traditional three R's. (This information is available in the core subjects section of the Partnership website.)
Beyond these 9 core areas, the program stresses the need to include additional core skills or knowledge areas in the curriculum. These include Global Awareness and Financial, economic, business and entrepreneurial awareness among civic and health awareness.
The inclusion of these additional areas is indicative of the concept of "world-flattening" wherein technology is making professional and personal resources around the globe available to employers everywhere. In order to compete burgeoning business world our students must essentially be trained to become managers in that they need not only work skills, but they must also possess managerial, collaborative, and economic responsibility capabilities.
Other sections of the website discuss this need for our students to be able to think critically, come up with innovative solutions to difficult problems and most importantly to collaborate with others in producing these solutions. The future workforce must be able to work with others and they must be able to communicate with people from different continents seamlessly. To do that, they must be taught the current technological skills and they must be taught how to continue learning as new technology becomes available.
This leads us to a third component of the Partnership vision, that of teaching information and media literacy, not so much as a means to teach students how to use these emerging tools today, but to enable them to continue learning how to use new tools in the future. The ability to understand and use information and communication technologies will be a tremendous asset to our students in their futures.
Lastly, the program discusses the need to teach our students the professional life skills that will help them later in life. These are really many of the same life skills we've always needed. For example, students need to be flexible and adaptable. They need to be prepared for career changes and project direction switches. They also need to be self-motivated and aggressive workers. With a flattened world with many resources, our students simply can afford to be complacent. Our students need to learn to manage their own tasks as well as the tasks of a group. For this they also need to learn leadership.
Clearly this is all very daunting when it's taken in all at once. The idea is to begin to develop curricula that work these skills into daily lessons in all subjects. Further discussion is lent to the idea of developing assessments that can adequately monitor progress in the targeted improvement areas. While incorporating these principles into our schools may be difficult and time-consuming, ultimately we'll produce students better able to succeed in the future job market.
Essentially the Partnership proposes a new direction in education that focuses on the potential needs of students in the future. Our students must be taught to think critically and solve complex problems often through collaborative efforts. Certainly core curriculum skills are still the bedrock of this concept of education and in fact 9 separate core areas are listed as opposed to our traditional three R's. (This information is available in the core subjects section of the Partnership website.)
Beyond these 9 core areas, the program stresses the need to include additional core skills or knowledge areas in the curriculum. These include Global Awareness and Financial, economic, business and entrepreneurial awareness among civic and health awareness.
The inclusion of these additional areas is indicative of the concept of "world-flattening" wherein technology is making professional and personal resources around the globe available to employers everywhere. In order to compete burgeoning business world our students must essentially be trained to become managers in that they need not only work skills, but they must also possess managerial, collaborative, and economic responsibility capabilities.
Other sections of the website discuss this need for our students to be able to think critically, come up with innovative solutions to difficult problems and most importantly to collaborate with others in producing these solutions. The future workforce must be able to work with others and they must be able to communicate with people from different continents seamlessly. To do that, they must be taught the current technological skills and they must be taught how to continue learning as new technology becomes available.
This leads us to a third component of the Partnership vision, that of teaching information and media literacy, not so much as a means to teach students how to use these emerging tools today, but to enable them to continue learning how to use new tools in the future. The ability to understand and use information and communication technologies will be a tremendous asset to our students in their futures.
Lastly, the program discusses the need to teach our students the professional life skills that will help them later in life. These are really many of the same life skills we've always needed. For example, students need to be flexible and adaptable. They need to be prepared for career changes and project direction switches. They also need to be self-motivated and aggressive workers. With a flattened world with many resources, our students simply can afford to be complacent. Our students need to learn to manage their own tasks as well as the tasks of a group. For this they also need to learn leadership.
Clearly this is all very daunting when it's taken in all at once. The idea is to begin to develop curricula that work these skills into daily lessons in all subjects. Further discussion is lent to the idea of developing assessments that can adequately monitor progress in the targeted improvement areas. While incorporating these principles into our schools may be difficult and time-consuming, ultimately we'll produce students better able to succeed in the future job market.
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