Summer Doing

Looking around my PLN, it is hard not to feel envious of the accomplishments everyone is making. I must be following the right people. If you had a great summer, congratulations!

I felt like I was treading water - not moving anywhere in my own journey.

So I decided to sit down and write out what I did [professionally] this summer.


* Completed a course to gain credits for recertification
* Started learning Scratch
* Became an MIE
* Became a Screencastify Ambassador
* Renewed my driver's license
* Made it to the "new" Twins stadium
* Created new extension

What I am realizing I haven't done is take some time for myself and just try to relax a little bit. We go back to orientation in two weeks, so maybe I can take a day trip or two and just unplug for a little bit.

Use Blogger to Create a Searchable Database of Your Twitter Favorites

When I first became a technology coach, I wanted to be able to share the interesting ideas I found on Twitter.

I used several different services that allowed me to save Tweets or Posts, but they all lacked the ability to tag posts. Searching for posts is great if you know what you are looking for, but I wanted to find a service that would also allow me to tag posts.

In my research to find the right tool, I stumbled on an applet on ifttt.com that saves Twitter posts that you favorite on Twitter, to a Blogger blog. ifttt.com stands for if this then that and is a site that allows you to create workflows between apps.

This was great because, with a blog, you can search the entire site as well as tag posts. (I suppose there is one for Wordpress too, but I prefer Blogger.)

Two ways to search

1. Head over to ifttt.com to get started

Sign up for an account if you don't have one. You will also need to connect your Blogger account and your Twitter account so ifttt can access and modify them.

2. Create a new applet

Find your username in the upper right-hand corner and click on it. Then select New Applet.

3. Select actions

You will need an if and a that. For this example, the if is a like on Twitter, and the that will be new Blogger post.



Click on +this and select Twitter.

Then choose your that

4. Customize the action fields
Since this is a new Blogger post, there are several ways to customize it: post title, body, labels. Select which ingredients you want to add. 

Here is how I customized my applet.

Be careful to add text to the Title ingredient, otherwise, your posts will look like mine did below.

WHAT MY POSTS LOOKED LIKE BEFORE CUSTOMIZING THE TITLES FIELD

In the end, you will have an applet that looks like this.

This is not the perfect tool for me yet, I still have to go in to adjust labels, but this is much easier than what I was doing before.

Book Creator Chat

Since I discovered it, I have spread the news about Book Creator to whoever will listen. So when I saw that Book Creator was looking for ambassadors, I thought I might as well have a title for what I am doing anyway.

Then late this spring the Book Creator team sent out an email asking for help with the chat series they were going to have over the summer. Thinking I would have nothing to do, I signed up for the chat on June 29th. But as the chat drew closer, things my schedule started getting tighter. I am staying with my in-laws this summer and in addition to the work to do around the house, I am volunteering at a local school and looking for a place to live for next year across the country.

I am glad I went through with it but there are a few things to watch out for when hosting a Twitter Chat.

• time differences - do you know the exact time the chat will happen?
• international collaboration - how engaged are you? do you have a plan?
• chat timing - what else is going on?
• questioning - do you have questions that will engage everyone joining?

See below for the full chat. Or click here if it is not showing up.

ISEdCoach Chat March 22

What a great chat.

Putting Your Learning into Practice

In this activity, we are asked to work with another teacher. Since it is summer, I am going to pull a lesson from our Atlas Rubicon and go this one alone to get practice coming up with suggestions.

I'm not sure if it's because of the summer, but lately, I have been trying to brainstorm ideas for interesting lesson ideas but have been coming up flat.

Ask if they have an activity that the two of you might improve through collaboration.

Character stories - Realism/Fantasy/Plays

Review the information about ways that technology might enhance learning from the last activity with your learning partner.  

Questions to ask ...

How could we add a real-world problem to this unit?
Are there any tools that might scaffold learning?
How can we provide more opportunities for feedback, revising, and reflection?
How can we give students access to quality information, primary documents, or points of view not available otherwise?

How can we allow students to engage in learning activities that would otherwise be infeasible (examples: human/animal anatomy, or online scientific investigations)?
How can we differentiate learning for students with different needs?
How can we help students understand abstract concepts?
How can we help student gather information, organize, synthesize, analyze information and draw conclusions?.
How can we foster student discovery of a concept or construction of their own understanding of a concept?
How can we enable students to share ideas and collaborate with remote groups?
How can we help students receive feedback on their work from outside the classroom?
How can we enable students to participate in the democratic process?


Now review the common learning tasks- communication, collaboration, gather and analyze information and creatively share their learning- with you peer.

communication
Students will read and write during this unit. They will also




collaboration




gather and analyze information






creatively share their learning



STANDARDS

Writing a Play
Write a play with Characters, Setting, including a problem and solution.

Language Arts (HM Theme 3)

·           Compound words

·           Synonyms

·           Action verbs

·           Suffix –able

·           Main verbs & helping verbs

·           Word endings ­–edand –ing

·           Syllables

·           Past/present/future tenses

Performing in a play
This is an oral and visual assessment. Must include props and work on voice.

Identify ways that some or all of those are present in the learning activity your peer wants to improve.
This unit has been


Discuss ways to improve the lesson, and incorporate the changes the two of you agree on.


Once you are through revising the activity, take some time to debrief the process.

• Be sure to ask you peer what was helpful about the process you followed and
• What they might suggest you do differently next time.

Idea - Sway

Technology Integration Example

Lesson being examined:

Your goal is to identify some of the educational tasks like communication and collaboration the teachers who created this project wanted their students to complete. In addition, draw on what you learned about how technology enhances learning from the last activity to identify ways technology is being used to enhance learning in the River Yamuna example.

When I read "educational goals", I think of skills. When integrating technology, I think teachers should first look to learning outcomes/standards, and then think of what skills they want students to learn, so that is how I am approaching this assignment. 

Standards:

Class 11^th NCERT:-

Environmental Education Unit III, Environment Pollution and Global Issues, (Project and activity )

Collect samples of water from different sources and study their physical characteristics like turbidity, colour, odor; the measure of pH, the nature of suspended and dissolved impurities and pollutants, the presence of toxic materials like mercury, lead, arsenic, fluorine and the presence of living organisms. For testing the presence of toxic materials and living organisms the help of a local laboratory or institution may be taken, if available. 

Identify the most polluted sample of water and locate the sources of its pollution. 

Devise an action plan for mobilizing public opinion for checking the pollution. 

image via mypchat.wikispaces.com

Skills from the lesson: (Based on above)

• Research - Information Literacy
• Self-management - Organization
• Thinking - Critical Thinking
• Communication - Communication
• Collaboration - Collaboration 

Identify ways technology is being used to enhance learning in the River Yamuna example:

• Computers are being used to read websites
• Digital camera to photograph the scene (this could be substituted with the student's own cell phones)
• Science lab tools to analyze the water samples
• Multimedia in the presentation (I guess the presentation itself)

---

I'm going to take this activity one step further and try to identify an additional three ways in which technology could be used.

Making a chronology of state of Yamuna in different years post discussions with senior citizens of the area.

Create the chronology using a site such as hstry.com or timeline from Knightlab.

The notes used should be created using Google Docs, or another collaborative tool.

Instead of posters, how about the students create commercials that include some footage of the interviews they did?

Ideas on how technology can improve or enhance learning at my school ...

The following is from ISTE

The authors of How People Learn (2000) believe technology enhances learning by:

• Bringing exciting curricula based on real-world problems into the classroom
• Providing scaffolds and tools.
• Giving students and teachers more opportunities for feedback, reflection, and revision
• Building local and global communities that include teachers, administrators, students, parents, practicing scientists and others. (Bransford, et al., 2000).

Technology enhances learning when it is used to:

• Give students access to quality information, primary documents, or points of view not available otherwise.
• Allow students to engage in learning activities that would otherwise be infeasible (examples: human/animal anatomy, or online scientific investigations).
• Differentiate learning for students with different needs.
• Help students understand abstract concepts.
• Gather information, organize, synthesize, analyze information and draw conclusions.
• Foster student discovery of a concept or construction of their own understanding of a concept.
• Share ideas and collaborate with remote groups.
• Help students receive feedback on their work from outside the classroom.
• Enable students to participate in the democratic process.

This is the next part of the assignment. I am not sure in what direction I should take this question. Maybe it is tricky because I think it is such a fundamental question that everyone should know it is the right path to take.


Ideas on how technology can improve or enhance learning at my school ...

Assessments can become more authentic. I have seen assessments that contained straight "remembering" questions and teachers have to watch over students to make sure the students are not Googling the answer.

What if assessments were made to be Googlable?

I think it sounds exciting to have an assessment where knowledge needs to be synthesized into something new instead of a question that resides at DOK 1 [Depth of Knowledge]. (Alice Keeler writes a lot about this topic.)

I think that is the basic way in which technology can help student learning. Teachers have the ability to use technology to push student thinking forward as well as scaffold their progress.


And leaving myself with some unanswered questions from Silvia Tolisano:

Ask yourself what happens to student learning when: 

• a teacher does not have a (teaching) plan that they are able/required to follow? 
• the “plan” is outdated/has been used for the last 5 years? 
• teachers (across grade levels and subject areas) teach in isolation of each other? 
• teachers have forgotten, are not interested in, don’t have time for, or are not supported in their own learning? 
• collaboration and communication among administrators and teachers in order to pursuit of the common goal called student learning is out of sync or non existent? 
• teaching means covering lessons, units, objectives and standards and does not involve teaching for understanding?

Why Teachers Should Blog

This post in nothing new, but rather is a collection of ideas gathered from many places and a way for me to work out an idea.

I started blogging way back in 2003 when I went to Japan as a way to keep in contact with my friends and family. It evolved into a photo blog, and when I became a teacher, it became what it is today - a blog for me to reflect on teaching and learning.

I am a believer and proponent of blogging. 

I believe teachers should blog for the following reasons (which are all related and some could probably be combined):

1. Blogs are a great platform for reflection. Write about your day, lessons, current issues, or ideas you have and invite others to join the conversation.
2. And speaking of ideas, blogs are a great way to keep track of ideas you have. Sam Sherrat had a great line in his Learning2 talk,"Ideas are like bubbles, if you don't catch them, they float away."
3. Blogging also has the potential to show you your own thinking. As Shelly Blake-Plock explains, in ‘Why Teachers Should Blog’, “… to blog is to teach yourself what you think.”
4. Not only does blogging show you what you are currently thinking, but it keeps a record of it so the changes in thinking can be seen over time. 
5. Blogging helps me organize and articulate thoughts in my head and helps me work through ideas.
6. It helps make connections to other topics.
7. Blogging is a great way to share ideas with others and make connections with other educators. 

Like I said, this is not groundbreaking, but I was doing #5.

You can also take a look at George Couros's ideas on the topic.

Notes and Thoughts About Types of Learning and Learning Technologies

This week was the first of the course, and it was also the week report card drafts were due, so the course took a backseat until today - Sunday. The introduction video was of a model primary class and showed students learning through Minecraft. It was a good reminder of what a class could look like.

Sidenote - video lectures are more powerful when participants are required to answer comprehension/thought questions during the videos.

We watched a video of a class that learned about butterflies. My first thought was of UBD, and my next was that I wish I had seen what the other students in the class were doing when the teacher pulled a small group to guide them through the iMovie process. I liked what the teacher was doing, but if it was my class, I know I would have had students coming up to me with questions - unless they were free playing.

I liked how children worked in pairs with iPads. They were each working on their own task, but were engaged with each other through conversation. This shows technology does not always promote a "zombie-like" atmosphere.

We were then asked to take a quiz and save this answer for later reflection:

What are your main reasons for thinking ICT should or should not be used in primary education?

Some think students need more tactile practice to help develop fine motor skills, and technology does not always facilitate that.

I had planned on completing this Coursera course ... but then I found a different one that really appealed to me called How to Teach Us offered by High Tech High. Since I am taking a summer course, I don't have time for all three.

###


The following is a chart from the course resources.

Table 1: Definitions of learning types

Learning type	The learning experience
Acquisition	Learning through acquisition is what learners are doing when they are listening to a presentation or podcast, reading from books or websites, and watching demos or videos. This is probably still the most common type of learning in formal education. The student is playing a relatively passive role while the teacher uses the transmission mode of teaching… We cannot avoid learning through acquisition. Students need to learn what others have discovered, to hear about expert ways of thinking and practising, and what is known already about the subject. Enabling students to build on the work of others is fundamental to formal education and the progressive development of ideas.
Discussion	Learning through discussion requires the learner to express their ideas and questions, and to challenge and respond to the ideas and questions from the teacher, and/or from other students. The discussion may or may not end with a consensual outcome. The pedagogic value is the reciprocal critique of ideas, and how this leads to the development of a more elaborated conceptual understanding.
Investigation	Learning through investigation guides the learner to explore, compare and critique the texts, documents and resources that reflect the concepts and ideas being taught. Rather than having to ‘follow the storyline’, as in learning through acquisition, they are in control of the sequence of information, and can ‘follow their own line of inquiry’, making them more active, and giving them a greater sense of ownership of their learning, taking a critical and analytical approach, and thereby coming to a fuller understanding of the ideas.
Practice	Learning through practice enables the learner to adapt their actions to the task goal, and use the feedback to improve their next action. Feedback may come from self-reflection, from other students, from the teacher, or from the activity itself - if it shows them how to improve the result of their action in relation to the goal of the activity. This helps them to develop, understand and use the knowledge and skills of a discipline, like ‘learning by doing’, or ‘learning through experience’.
Collaboration	Learning through collaboration embraces mainly discussion, practice, and production. Building on investigations and acquisition it is about taking part in the process of knowledge building itself. It is distinct from learning through practice because although it builds something this is necessarily done through participation and negotiation with peers. It is distinct from learning through production, because although it produces something this is through debate and sharing with others.
Production	Learning through production is the way the teacher motivates the learner to consolidate what they have learned by expressing their current conceptual understanding and how they used it in practice. Producing an output generates a representation of the learning enabled by the other types. In its simplest form it is the learner’s expression of their current thinking, which enables the teacher to see how well they have learned, and to respond with feedback, guidance and further explanation.

Table 2: Definitions of ‘learning types’ in terms of typical technologies used

Learning types	Conventional technology	Digital technology
Acquisition	Reading books, papers; Listening to teacher presentations face-to-face, lectures; Watching demonstrations, master classes.	Reading multimedia resources, websites, digital documents and resources; Listening to podcasts, webcasts; Watching animations, videos.
Collaboration	Small group project, discussing other students’ outputs, creating a joint output.	Small group project, using online forums, wikis, chat rooms, etc. for discussing other students’ outputs, creating a joint digital output.
Discussion	Tutorials, tutor groups, student seminars (students leading discussion), discussion groups, class discussions.	Online tutorials, tutor groups and seminars, email discussions, discussion forums, web-conferencing tools (synchronous and asynchronous).
Investigation	Using text-based study guides; Analysing the ideas and information in a range of materials and resources; Using books, people, field trips, to collect data for analysis; Comparing texts, searching and evaluating information and ideas.	Using online advice and guidance; Analysing the ideas and information in a range of digital resources; Using digital tools to collect and analyse data; Comparing digital texts, using digital tools for searching and evaluating information and ideas.
Practice	Doing practice exercises; using tools; doing practice-based projects, labs, field trips, face-to-face role-play activities.	Using digital tools, models, simulations, digital games, microworlds, virtual labs and field trips, online role-play activities.
Production	Producing their own representations of what they have learned, using statements, essays, reports, accounts, designs, performances, artefacts, animations, models, videos.	Producing and storing digital documents, representations of designs, performances, artefacts, animations, models, resources, slideshows, photos, videos, blogs, e-portfolios.

Definitions are taken from Chapters 6-11 in Laurillard, D. (2012). Teaching as a Design Science: Building Pedagogical Patterns for Learning and Technology. New York and London: Routledge.

We know that the best learning comes when teachers use multiple approaches to to expose/engage students in the material. When planning, teachers should consider how to incorporate these learning types into the lessons, and consider possibilities

• What are the types of learning we are trying to elicit from our students?
• Here is the teaching/learning problem - how can technology help?

ICT and types of learning about
The Ecosystems of Rice Fields

Learning through:	Students learning about your topic could be using:
Acquisition	Teacher selected videos, teacher-created
Discussion	A class-generated, teacher-facilitatd GDoc
Investigation	Teacher-selected website, Skype
Practice	Doodlebuddy, Kidspiration Venn Diagram, Mindmapper
Collaboration	ShowMe, Adobe Voice, iMovie
Production	Adobe Voice, iMovie, ShowMe

Given my learning and teaching goals, how can technology help?