Educational Technology

The Common Core Standards are woven into so many educational conversations lately.  All teachers need to familiarize themselves with what this means.  This is a challenge as they also continue to plan, teach, assess, and modify their plans throughout the school year. We need to find ways to help them synthesize all these new documents and make connections to the good teaching and learning that already goes on in so many classrooms all over the country.

I used wordle to analyze the text of the New York State Teaching Standards.  I removed these common words to get a better idea of the content:  learning, teacher(s), student(s), instruction(al), professional, element, and performance indicators.  Each standard was broken down into elements and performance standards, so those words appeared frequently as well as the other obvious words which would be used in any document about teaching and learning.

What is left shows which words are used most often.  This gives us an idea of their importance.  Several concepts are repeated throughout the document.  Many of them are related to comprehensive lesson design, differentiated instruction and technology integration.

Comprehensive lesson design focused on student understanding (Understanding by Design, Wiggins and McTighe) would help teachers weave together most of the important concepts such as the demonstration of knowledge and understanding, the use of a variety of research-based strategies, formative and summative assessment, and providing clear learning goals with appropriate feedback.

Differentiated instruction can also become a major part of a comprehensive lesson design.  This includes concepts such as meeting diverse learning needs, providing a variety of learning opportunities, adjusting instruction based on student needs, multiple perspectives, and providing appropriate challenge with high expectations.

The integration of technology can help teachers engage students in a variety of ways to match their learning styles, interests, and readiness levels.  Through technology, teachers can provide timely feedback and measure progress toward the learning goals.

In addition, technology can provide access to multiple perspectives and give students opportunities for self-directed learning involving problem solving.  Both critical and creative thinking can be developed through the use of technology as well as students analyze the relevance and authenticity of information and synthesize their knowledge and understanding in creative products.

One may notice that a traditional state test is far removed from these concepts.  So teaching “to the test” will not suffice.  How will the states monitor these worthy standards instead of promoting a focus on these test scores?

After what happened in Egypt this week, I think that social networking has truly transformed our planet.  It was social networks like Facebook and Twitter that provided the citizens of Egypt with a communication tool that allowed them to rise up and take their country back from a 30-year dictator.

The power of people who are connected cannot be underestimated. I have heard some interesting ideas tossed out there. Here’s one worth considering.

• If we want to spread democracy around the world, why don’t we send computers and servers and sources of power to oppressed people?

What are the implications of this?  I wonder how this Egypt affair is going to play out?  There are still more questions than answers, but there is no doubt that conversations about the value of social networking have taken a huge turn from:  Are these tools valuable? TO  What are the possibilities of a world-communication system that allows anyone with an internet connection instant access to the rest of the world?

This reminds me of our age-old research question:  Is technology in education valuable?  At this point, the question HAS to be In what ways is technology valuable to education?

There is no going back–social networking has changed the world and technology is changing education.

It occurred to me when a friend shared this video clip (Macbook Wheel) with me that this would spark a great conversation with kids and/or adults on how we can be “persuaded” by well-designed video to believe even the absurd. (WARNING:  If you use this with students, stop it before the inappropriate comment at the end.)

In another conversation with an English teacher, we talked about using it to teach how to give constructive feedback using a tool such as DeBono’s  PMI (Pluses, Minuses, and Interesting).  Watch the video above and list at least three pluses.  Then turn the minuses into a problem statement such as “How might they shorten the time it takes to type an email?”.  Finally add interesting thoughts that are not really positive or negative but more possibilities or “what ifs”.

The web is just full of thought-provoking content which can serve as conversation starters.  Please share any other clips you have found to be particularly useful for promoting critical thinking in the classroom.

One of the most powerful things I learned in over 25 years of being in the field of education, is the concept of backwards design (Thank you Wiggins and McTighe) and the importance of beginning with clear learning objectives.  What do I want students to Know, Understand, and Be Able to Do (KUDO’s)? Whether I am planning a lesson, a unit, or even a meeting by identifying the KUDO’s first, I find myself more focused and effective.

The other day, a lightning bolt hit.  (I wonder if the light bulb appeared over my head.)

• Fact: We know about the limbic system in the brain–how it acts as a gatekeeper to our neocortex.  And we know that our emotions are centered there in the limbic system, therefore, if we are feeling a strong emotion it can interfere with our cognition.
• Fact: Working in a middle school, it is not uncommon to deal with student (and teacher) emotions on a regular basis.  It’s just part of the culture of this age level.
• Fact: When working with teachers and students in teaching them technology I often focus on those learning objectives and end up feeling frustrated because  I am not able to to help everyone meet the objectives.  Many times this is due to anxiety over using the technology and/or lack of self-confidence.
• Conclusion (Ah Ha!):  When all of these facts come together, it came to me that I was missing an objective about feeling—unless my students feel comfortable and confident it doesn’t really matter how awesome my objectives or activities are.

As soon as I started consciously focusing on the additional objective of making sure all my students felt comfortable, the joy of teaching has been renewed and the frustration has decreased.

tags: learningObjectives

While reading a blog from a fellow educator (theline.edublogs.org) in my Google Reader, I had a dejavu moment.

My doctorate in education can’t be about investigating some esoteric realm of learning that only adds to the pile of knowledge that teachers don’t have the time or resources to implement. It has to be about change: what works in schools, and how to make it happen.

I just wanted to share something important I learned while working toward my Ph.D. I also ran across this same idea when working with several students working on their Master’s Thesis. While I was  under the impression in the beginning of the process that obtaining that degree would be the end goal (and therefore the research should be earth-shattering or at least “prove” what I believe to be true), I gradually learned that the dissertation was only my first attempt at in-depth research. Your dissertation is one step(although a difficult one) in years of continually exploring and learning about your area of interest. It is a drop-in-the-bucket which adds to the body knowledge of researchers from all over the world. Together, researchers build a body of knowledge. No one research effort will initiate change by itself. So even though I have that degree on my wall, I am still a beginning researcher.

That said, my research changed my thinking about running online discussion forums. The results are that our eighth graders continue to get better and better at responding to literature discussions with thought-provoking and insightful responses as we continue to learn from experience. Our learnings are then shared with other educators so they may have similar successes. So although, my research has not reformed education, it has made a difference for the 250+ eighth graders every year, my two to three graduate classes of pre-service teachers, and any teachers who may attend a conference or an inservice which includes the lessons we learned.

So was it worth the five years of intense work and study and the huge student loan I now have?  I would say yes.  I would do it again.  It was a humbling experience but filled with new realizations and a different perspective about research.  As I sat in the auditorium last year with all of the other Master’s and Doctoral graduates in education, I was totally in awe of the number of students sitting in front of me and the amount of research generated by those students.  In addition, up on stage was a number of distinguished professors who are experienced researchers contributing volumes of research to the field of education.

Here’s an analogy:  If one person recycles, it will not change the world.  But if we all recycle, we can change the world. Valid research provides us with support our theories and models of what good education is all about.

tags: research

The advent of readily available multi-media internet content and Web 2.0 tools has brought back a resurgence in creative projects as teachers start to integrate these collaborative tools into their instruction to motivate their students.  This is good news for students, however, a new challenge has emerged.

While working with some very capable seventh grade students, I realized that even though they are good students, most of them are not self-directed at all.  Students were provided with online video clips, an interactive website, and virtual science experiments to gather the information they needed to know about cells. This was an opportunity for these students to be self-directed because the rest of the class was moving through the material very slowly.  It turned out that eight of the eleven students were not comfortable with this self-directed learning.  They wanted me to teach them the important details directly.

I noticed that in the computer lab I work in more and more teachers are leading students to multi-media, interactive content and asking students to learn from these sources and then create a product to demonstrate their understanding.  Here is the problem:  many students are not used to processing information on their own.  They are used to teachers processing the content and then telling them what the important details are so they can memorize it for the test.

We can’t just expect students to become self-directed because we tell them to.  We need to help them gain the necessary skills.  The students need to have confidence in their own thinking.  Many of them now think that the right answers are in the teachers’ heads and if they don’t know what the teacher is thinking, they don’t know the right answer.

There are so many skills that are involved in self-directed learning.  Where do we start?  Future blog posts will address some of these skills.

With the deluge of information and ideas available, it is exciting to be inspired by a single source.   Today a friend and colleague of mine, Mike Russo, emailed some of us with a link for an Eluminate session about Voicethread. I forwarded the email to my home email so I could watch this at home.  It is now 5 hours later after clicking on that link and I have discovered at least three new tools and resources that I can utilize this week in school.

Viddix – Annotate videos and even ask survey questions while video is playing

Jing – Free and easy-to-use screen capture (images and video)

Classroom 2.0 Live – Participate in Saturday Web 2.0 Eluminate sessions about Web 2.0 tools with others from around the world.  Archived sessions are available if you missed one!

Go2Web20 – Thousands of Web 2.0 tools which can be searched by tags.  A great tool to compare several similar tools before adopting one of them.  Also find tools you never knew existed!

Core Web 2.0 Tools – The work has been done for us.  Find the best of the best web 2.0 tools here.

All I need now is unlimited time to continue exploring. Thanks Mike!!  Check out Mike’s blog.

tags: Web2.0

Sometimes serendipitous events come together to inspire us to take action on something that is in the back of our mind.  I have been a minimal observer and VERY minimal participant in the blogger community for some time now. I created this blog account last September and wrote one entry to see what this was all about.  I have discussed the possible uses of blogs with colleagues and graduate students and helped a middle school student create a blog.  But I haven’t spent more than short spurts of time looking into this until last week.

At a technology facilitator’s meeting, someone asked me incredulously “You don’t use Goggle Reader????”  The next day a colleague sent me this article from Educational Leadership. As a technology integrator, who teaches educational technology to teachers and graduate students, I often do not spend much time learning new things myself.  This article convinced me that subscribing to a few great blogs could be the staff development opportunity I have been craving.  I can personalize my aggregator to include the educators who have something useful to offer and check it periodically without having to click on all these websites separately.  I am psyched!

Check this out!

tags: blogs, educational technology, staff development

There are so many new technologies that can transform education, especially the Web 2.0 collaboration tools. The possibilities are endless.  Some of the possibilities will enhance what we already do in the classroom and others could be distracting.

When we are novice users of a new tool, I noticed that most of us use the technology just for the sake of learning how to use it.  This is natural.  What I worry about is that some educators stop there and do not get to the next level of using the new technology to actually help them optimize learning in their classroom.  Most of our students are emmersed into the technology world, and using these new tools are motivating for the students.

I am interested to find out how many others have noticed the same issue.  I am also interested in ideas for how to encourage teachers to go beyond the novice level of the Web 2.0 tools.

tags: Technology Integration, Web 2.0