Ms. Sarah Sue Calbio
MY CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE FORUMS
What is the current status of online learning in your own classroom?
Assignments:
For some assignments I have Edmodo for submission. This helps keep track of who has done it and when. Two out of three of my classes use it. The third group is giving some resistance and prefers to submit via hand.
For an upcoming project, I indicated to one of my groups to create a google doc and share it with me. I would be able to make suggestions on the document itself to give them feedback to proceed to the next phase of the project.
Classroom use:
I run a blog/website for each of my classes. It contains notes, other relevant information and assignments. The blog gives a synopsis of what happened in class. I usually post this before the actual class if students want to prepare by watching videos since some of the students are weak and need to hear the information repeated. For my Integrated Mathematics class, this blog is crucial as it is a new course introduced in the Caribbean, there is no textbook and no one else doing it yet in our country.
The blog was initially intended for a flipped classroom idea but not 100% of my students have access to internet at home and I didn't want to leave anyone out so it is used as a resource. The students have indicated that it is very helpful.
I haven't used powerpoint since it is time consuming to prepare but I do carry the laptop and projector to every class to show relevant video clips/animations/ simulations, which are posted on the blog entry for that class. If we have questions to work on I usually have it up on the projector and send them and email with the pdf while in class. This is something new to me but I feel as I have gained time in the classroom as I am not having to write the question on the board and wait for them to copy it.
The students don't usually bring laptops to class although they do have. However, a larger number of them do have a smart phone/ personal device with them. The desktops available in class are a bit slow and students are not very inclined to use them unless necessary.
Contact with students:
Email is my primary mode of contact with my mailing list. I don't use Facebook because it is blocked at school and not every student uses this platform.
For some assignments I have Edmodo for submission. This helps keep track of who has done it and when. Two out of three of my classes use it. The third group is giving some resistance and prefers to submit via hand.
For an upcoming project, I indicated to one of my groups to create a google doc and share it with me. I would be able to make suggestions on the document itself to give them feedback to proceed to the next phase of the project.
Classroom use:
I run a blog/website for each of my classes. It contains notes, other relevant information and assignments. The blog gives a synopsis of what happened in class. I usually post this before the actual class if students want to prepare by watching videos since some of the students are weak and need to hear the information repeated. For my Integrated Mathematics class, this blog is crucial as it is a new course introduced in the Caribbean, there is no textbook and no one else doing it yet in our country.
The blog was initially intended for a flipped classroom idea but not 100% of my students have access to internet at home and I didn't want to leave anyone out so it is used as a resource. The students have indicated that it is very helpful.
I haven't used powerpoint since it is time consuming to prepare but I do carry the laptop and projector to every class to show relevant video clips/animations/ simulations, which are posted on the blog entry for that class. If we have questions to work on I usually have it up on the projector and send them and email with the pdf while in class. This is something new to me but I feel as I have gained time in the classroom as I am not having to write the question on the board and wait for them to copy it.
The students don't usually bring laptops to class although they do have. However, a larger number of them do have a smart phone/ personal device with them. The desktops available in class are a bit slow and students are not very inclined to use them unless necessary.
Contact with students:
Email is my primary mode of contact with my mailing list. I don't use Facebook because it is blocked at school and not every student uses this platform.
Flipping the Classroom
How might flipping the classroom influence the manner in which you might develop your own project? Grade and age appropriateness DO apply to this topic depending on how you approach it. Share your thoughts. Also, interact with at least two or three of your colleagues - get some ideas from them and share your ideas with them.
Flipping the classroom involves lower level cognitive abilities such as Understanding and Remembering to be done outside the physical classroom and higher order cognitive activities (applying, analyzing, evaluating, creating) to take precedence in the teacher's presence.
My proposed project is about online assessment so I will look at how this would be included in a flipped classroom model.
After assigning pre-class activities (usually videos or laboratory simulations) I could include an online formative assessment to gauge what sections of the material most of the class understood and what seemed to be problematic. The results could assist in what topics emphasis is placed on in the face to face session.
Other methods to check that they have in fact interacted with the material could include either commenting on the video posted on my class blog OR creating an Assignment on Edmodo that they can answer/comment directly. The advantage of Edmodo to the website blog is that Edmodo will show me who has submitted and who hasn't compared to manually checking the website blog.
The group that I work with currently are 16-18 years. Giving work independent of parental involvement is possible. However, our school still encourages parental involvement. In a flipped classroom model I would encourage the students to explain what they understood to their parents from the video/simulation and have the parent send an email or online form that the student did the activity.
In my view, there is a huge benefit to be acquired by flipping as more student centred activities can take place and more difficult tasks can be done as a group where assistance is readily available.
Flipping the classroom involves lower level cognitive abilities such as Understanding and Remembering to be done outside the physical classroom and higher order cognitive activities (applying, analyzing, evaluating, creating) to take precedence in the teacher's presence.
My proposed project is about online assessment so I will look at how this would be included in a flipped classroom model.
After assigning pre-class activities (usually videos or laboratory simulations) I could include an online formative assessment to gauge what sections of the material most of the class understood and what seemed to be problematic. The results could assist in what topics emphasis is placed on in the face to face session.
Other methods to check that they have in fact interacted with the material could include either commenting on the video posted on my class blog OR creating an Assignment on Edmodo that they can answer/comment directly. The advantage of Edmodo to the website blog is that Edmodo will show me who has submitted and who hasn't compared to manually checking the website blog.
The group that I work with currently are 16-18 years. Giving work independent of parental involvement is possible. However, our school still encourages parental involvement. In a flipped classroom model I would encourage the students to explain what they understood to their parents from the video/simulation and have the parent send an email or online form that the student did the activity.
In my view, there is a huge benefit to be acquired by flipping as more student centred activities can take place and more difficult tasks can be done as a group where assistance is readily available.
How teaching continues to change
Change can be stressful. However, "stress" and "anxiety" are not synonymous. Stress is good - remember TWANG? Anxiety can be immobilizing. How do you see the difference in your own teaching? This is an important discussion for us to have.
When I think about stress I think about obstacles and I consider anxiety as uncertainty.
Some obstacles include infrastructure, student uptake and administrative support. Generally, I would say that at my current school I have low stress. Laptops and projectors are available, students have desktops available in the library, free WiFi, most students are willing to submit their assignments online in Edmodo, administrative is supportive and I consider myself technologically capable.
The anxiety that I experience, however, comes in the form of uncertainty in educational outcomes. Many new programs and tools are sometimes touted as a wonder drug yet best practices are still being established with these ever increasing list of programs/tools. Limited time to implement this plethora of 'technology' can definitely lead to anxiety as performance objectives need to be met. Effectiveness of a particular strategy will only be known at the end. Anxiety comes about if I feel that I am failing my students. Generally, I am excited to implement something in my classroom if I can see the immediate benefit. Usually, I would attempt to convince myself of the advantage of a "NEW' strategy.
Teacher support groups would be useful in this area of evaluating the efficacy of various programs/technology and reduce the anxiety many teachers face.
When I think about stress I think about obstacles and I consider anxiety as uncertainty.
Some obstacles include infrastructure, student uptake and administrative support. Generally, I would say that at my current school I have low stress. Laptops and projectors are available, students have desktops available in the library, free WiFi, most students are willing to submit their assignments online in Edmodo, administrative is supportive and I consider myself technologically capable.
The anxiety that I experience, however, comes in the form of uncertainty in educational outcomes. Many new programs and tools are sometimes touted as a wonder drug yet best practices are still being established with these ever increasing list of programs/tools. Limited time to implement this plethora of 'technology' can definitely lead to anxiety as performance objectives need to be met. Effectiveness of a particular strategy will only be known at the end. Anxiety comes about if I feel that I am failing my students. Generally, I am excited to implement something in my classroom if I can see the immediate benefit. Usually, I would attempt to convince myself of the advantage of a "NEW' strategy.
Teacher support groups would be useful in this area of evaluating the efficacy of various programs/technology and reduce the anxiety many teachers face.
About blogging
Do you think you could prepare a blog like this? In lower grades you could use it to strengthen school-home communication. In the upper grades you could actually make it very content-oriented with embedded videos and images. How much of a twang would this be for you?
Hi,
At my current school I have one 'blog' for each of my classes. It helps me keep track of what was done and it serves as a resource for the students. One thing I can improve is to make it more interactive and to get parents involved. I am also researching how to embed exams on my website. So that would be my major TWANG point since I haven't done this before. I saw in the Module description that we were discussing limitations to educational blogging and a major one would be to keep it up-to-date. Otherwise, the audience would not keep coming back.
These are the 'blogs' I have for my classes. I'm putting blog in parentheses since I don't talk that much on it but put relevant information. Maybe my experience with blogs was that they had long prose. What has your experience with blogs been like? While reading the posts your excitement was contagious and I am glad that you are enjoying creating and sharing.
http://capeintegratedmath.weebly.com/group-5---ms-calbio
http://izifundo.weebly.com/lower-six
http://izifundo.weebly.com/upper-six
With respect to blogging, I am looking for various ways to express myself since I am not extremely verbose online (in person is a different story). So one way I have found is to make videos using Wideo. Here is an example of one I made https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKCmEx61V2M
In fact, this summer I created a blog to share my Framingham experience since I was curious to find out what the course was like in other parts of the world. I haven't posted much about this course as yet but that will come before this Module is over. In the meantime I will still share the link to show how it looks so far.
http://sarahsuec.weebly.com/blog
Happy blogging and I look forward to reading your blog posts soon!
At my current school I have one 'blog' for each of my classes. It helps me keep track of what was done and it serves as a resource for the students. One thing I can improve is to make it more interactive and to get parents involved. I am also researching how to embed exams on my website. So that would be my major TWANG point since I haven't done this before. I saw in the Module description that we were discussing limitations to educational blogging and a major one would be to keep it up-to-date. Otherwise, the audience would not keep coming back.
These are the 'blogs' I have for my classes. I'm putting blog in parentheses since I don't talk that much on it but put relevant information. Maybe my experience with blogs was that they had long prose. What has your experience with blogs been like? While reading the posts your excitement was contagious and I am glad that you are enjoying creating and sharing.
http://capeintegratedmath.weebly.com/group-5---ms-calbio
http://izifundo.weebly.com/lower-six
http://izifundo.weebly.com/upper-six
With respect to blogging, I am looking for various ways to express myself since I am not extremely verbose online (in person is a different story). So one way I have found is to make videos using Wideo. Here is an example of one I made https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKCmEx61V2M
In fact, this summer I created a blog to share my Framingham experience since I was curious to find out what the course was like in other parts of the world. I haven't posted much about this course as yet but that will come before this Module is over. In the meantime I will still share the link to show how it looks so far.
http://sarahsuec.weebly.com/blog
Happy blogging and I look forward to reading your blog posts soon!
Don't just pile . . . create! The same old ways of thinking will get the same old result.
If technology and multimedia are seen as add-ons to what we are already doing, they are perhaps doomed to a role that is far less important than they should be. Piling technology and media on top of traditional approaches does little but add stress and anxiety. What are some ways in which you can "let go" or a least modify some of the things you've done so that you will not be overwhelmed with the development of your use of technology and multimedia? How can your project help you do that?
Don't just pile.. Create
Analogous to don't put new wine in old wineskins OR don't patch an old cloth with the finest silk.
After some thinking about why piling technology can lead to stress in the classroom my theory is that time plays a large role. Any given teacher has a schedule of work they aim to complete. If they add technology to the old plans, where does the extra time appear to incorporate these new elements? Unfortunately it does not magically arrive and so the stressed teacher reverts to their traditional approaches, leaving technology and its various elements at the wayside more often than not.
I would love to get your feedback on this theory!
So, what is it that we are creating? Is it a blog, website, database?.... No, these are just the tools. My interpretation is that we are creating a new way of thinking and/or a new approach. Remember we are teaching students whose brains are wired differently (see reference here). Yet, we teach them as how we were taught. Are we considering the skills they require for the world they will be living/working in? Appreciating these concepts should help us as teachers to re-think our teaching strategies from the ground up. We need not have to come up with these new strategies ourselves necessarily. Research is ongoing and has yielded some educational truths that we should be mindful of when we consider our lesson plans (see attached pictures).
This paradigm shift is moving from a teacher centric to student centric model using the various technology tools. We should be aiming to produce students who are self-directed learners. Also, using technology makes the individualized learning concept a possibility within reach.
What am I currently doing that should be eliminated/modified?
Digitized Multiple Choice questions alone will not create learners who are ready for the 21st century. However, having them available as formative assessments (e.g. on Moodle/ Edmodo/ Schoology) students can get timely, personalized and specific feedback on the choices they made. The aim is to engage students and to allow for student reflection and growth.
How do I plan to achieve this in a classroom setting? (see attached flow chart)
Don't just pile.. Create
Analogous to don't put new wine in old wineskins OR don't patch an old cloth with the finest silk.
After some thinking about why piling technology can lead to stress in the classroom my theory is that time plays a large role. Any given teacher has a schedule of work they aim to complete. If they add technology to the old plans, where does the extra time appear to incorporate these new elements? Unfortunately it does not magically arrive and so the stressed teacher reverts to their traditional approaches, leaving technology and its various elements at the wayside more often than not.
I would love to get your feedback on this theory!
So, what is it that we are creating? Is it a blog, website, database?.... No, these are just the tools. My interpretation is that we are creating a new way of thinking and/or a new approach. Remember we are teaching students whose brains are wired differently (see reference here). Yet, we teach them as how we were taught. Are we considering the skills they require for the world they will be living/working in? Appreciating these concepts should help us as teachers to re-think our teaching strategies from the ground up. We need not have to come up with these new strategies ourselves necessarily. Research is ongoing and has yielded some educational truths that we should be mindful of when we consider our lesson plans (see attached pictures).
This paradigm shift is moving from a teacher centric to student centric model using the various technology tools. We should be aiming to produce students who are self-directed learners. Also, using technology makes the individualized learning concept a possibility within reach.
What am I currently doing that should be eliminated/modified?
- Being the one to always answer why the final answer is wrong/right.
- Creating/ looking for all the digital content online to have on the class website.
- Having the website as mostly a repository instead of an interactive experience.
- Promote students being responsible for their own learning instead of asking me about every single detail. They could create a forum in Moodle asking their classmates about what misconception they had.
- Have students self-assess their MQCs by having a “reflection sheet.” This sheet asks students to quantify some of their mistakes on the assessment as a whole.
- Sometimes allow students to work at home on the MCQs so class-time is used for developing higher order cognitive skills.
- Include students in the gathering of resources.
- Collaborate with other teachers to share resources.
- Seek out inspiration in what others have done successfully and learn from their mistakes.
Digitized Multiple Choice questions alone will not create learners who are ready for the 21st century. However, having them available as formative assessments (e.g. on Moodle/ Edmodo/ Schoology) students can get timely, personalized and specific feedback on the choices they made. The aim is to engage students and to allow for student reflection and growth.
How do I plan to achieve this in a classroom setting? (see attached flow chart)
Implications for professional development
Based on what you've learned and accomplished in this course, what do you believe are the most important implications for ongoing professional development of teachers and administrators? Consider positive and negative impacts.
- The willingness of teachers to undertake any form of professional development for digital teaching techniques, will largely depend on their school environment. Teacher motivation for undertaking additional professional development will be highest when their school environment is already properly equipped for digital learning approaches. Furthermore, the school’s administration has an important role in, not only providing the needed resources, but also promoting the adoption of digital learning in the classroom. Without this type of support and encouragement, the likelihood of a given teacher undertaking professional development, in digital teaching techniques, would be low.
- Opportunities for professional development in digital teaching techniques are quite numerous. From online courses and open access journals in education, to a multitude of high quality blogs, videos and forums, the number of ways that teachers can access information on digital teaching techniques is large. This would then serve to increase the adoption rate of professional development in digital techniques by teachers, since there are more avenues available to access the information they need. The need for a certain level of computer literacy in order to access these materials however, can serve as a potential entry barrier to some. Fortunately, computer literacy is also a prerequisite, on the part of the teacher, for adopting digital learning strategies in the classroom. As such motivated teachers would not be too affected by this.
- Given the ever changing nature of technology, professional development in digital teaching has to be continuous. Gone are the days when a teaching diploma would be the final professional development activity undertaken by a teacher. Student needs are continually changing as well as teaching technologies and best practices. Hence, in order to remain truly effective, it is extremely important for teachers to remain au courant on contemporary best practices and emerging technologies.
- Additionally, the delivery of professional development to teachers also has to evolve. There has to be a move away from the infrequent, theory based, seminars. Digital professional development for teachers must instead be delivered in a more hands-on and informal environment. Furthermore, the teaching needs to be done by example and not “do as I say but not as I do”.
Since we're on the topic on Professional Development....
I found a website which I found helpful
Resources Supporting the Use of Technology in Teacher Education
ATE's Commission on Technology and the Future of Teacher Education has collected these resources from organizations that play a key role in infusing technology with teacher education.
http://www.ate1.org/pubs/Technology_Resourc.cfm
I found a website which I found helpful
Resources Supporting the Use of Technology in Teacher Education
ATE's Commission on Technology and the Future of Teacher Education has collected these resources from organizations that play a key role in infusing technology with teacher education.
http://www.ate1.org/pubs/Technology_Resourc.cfm