Wicked Problem Project Finale!

The following two videos are part one and part two of an overview of the entire Wicked Problem Project. Please check it out and try it out!


Part 1:



Part 2:


Problem:  "Each day, about 5 million children walk into 274,000 classrooms nationwide and find a substitute. Students today will spend at least one full year with a substitute by the time they graduate from high school -- a figure that's higher in poor schools and destined to increase (http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20010107subs2.asp)."

Unfortunately, this is not something that can be changed as every teacher needs a substitute at some time or another. However, the true issue is the fact that you never know what type of substitute you are going to get. They most likely don’t know the students, the material, or anything about classroom management. A Post-Gazette study found the following when it came to substitutes in the classroom:

• "In all but one state, substitutes now need no teaching certification whatsoever to take over a classroom, according to the Post-Gazette's research
• In at least 28 states, principals are allowed to hire anyone with a high school diploma or a GED. Often, the minimum age requirement is 18
  
• A Post-Gazette study of national test scores shows that states with lower academic achievement are twice as likely to allow less-qualified substitutes in the classroom (post-gazette.com)."

These findings are horrifying, but also no surprise to most teachers who have seen the results of a poor substitute before. Therefore there are two choices a teacher can make when leaving sub plans for an unknown sub; one is to chance it and give the substitute new material, hoping they will come through for you, and the second is to leave a ton of work for the students to do so the substitute only has to monitor all of the students while they work on content they already know.

On more than one accounts I have heard the second option described as “losing a day” as the teachers feel like they lost a day of instructional time, while the first option, being a gamble could result in success or the possibility of “losing 2 days” as the teacher has to take the next day to fix all of the misconceptions that the substitute taught the day before. I have witnessed all scenarios first hand and I’m sure that all of you experienced with the daily life of a teacher can recall the very same things.

Solution: If the actual teacher can’t be in the classroom, the next best thing is to have a recording or video of the actual teacher with vidcasts and slidecasts. This keeps the students engaged and the actual teacher would still be able to teach the students and walk them through the process step by step.

A vidcast could be simply a video of the teacher teaching the lesson in the normal way with possibly a whiteboard or a smartboard, while a slidecast could be a voiceover of the teacher explaining the concepts with a powerpoint presentation. In both cases the teacher would have to do little extra work because they were already prepared to teach that very same lesson. In the case of the vidcast they just have to take the original lesson and video tape it or if they already had a powerpoint slide ready they could complete a slidecast. It would only take the normal time to present the lesson as you tape it.

There are many ways in which this could be accomplished including Jing, Audacity, Screencast-o-matic, and Slideshare. For these free online programs the only additional technology needed outside an internet connection is a microphone to record your voice. There is also Movie Maker that comes on a PC and iMovie that comes on a Mac. With these two programs you would also need a video camera if creating a movie of the teacher. All that a substitute would need to show the students was a single computer in the room and a projector, which is almost standard in most classrooms these days.

This works perfectly in the case of absences that you know about in advance, but what about the case when it is a last minute absence? In this case you could use vidcasts from a previous year if you have it, or borrow a vidcast from another teacher. Not only would this be beneficial with a substitute but teachers could also learn new ideas for teaching material through viewing other teachers’ videos. What an amazing bonus! To see another teacher talk about her ideas and how she incorporates videos in her classroom when a substitute is present check out this site.

TPACK:

1. What is the TP knowledge for the solution?

I teach Spanish using the TPRS method, which is Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling. The students learn an action for each word and they make the action as they say the word. As the teacher, I ask a lot of either/or and yes/no questions in order to get the students practicing the words out loud and to increase the number of times that the students hear the words. The more times they hear the words the more likely they are to remember it. After practicing the words I read a story with the words in it and have some of the students act it out. The last step is for the students to read a story on their own and translate it to English. With the videos, I focused on the gestures and the repetition of the Spanish words.

This is a very hands on method of teaching that is hard to teach if you have never experienced it nor learned how to do it. Therefore, even if a substitute is able to speak Spanish they are unable to teach the class using the TPRS method. Taking a video of myself teaching while using this method really supports and continues the TPRS method even while I am out of the classroom. In the videos, I focused on the gestures and the repetition of the Spanish words, so I encourage the students to do the actions with me and to answer the questions. They are getting the full experience of my teaching method, minus me being able to tell if all of the students understand what I’m saying. But that is where the substitute comes in. The substitute should be monitoring the class, pausing the video when additional explanation is needed or more wait-time is needed or replaying part of the video if the students need additional practice.

2. What is the TC knowledge for the solution?

Most often substitutes don’t speak Spanish and therefore don’t know how to pronounce any of the words. By using this technology I am ensuring that the students hear the correct pronunciation for all of the words and that there is no confusion about what the word means. I am giving the students another way to access the vocabulary that they wouldn’t usually be able to have when a substitute is present.

It also demonstrates to the substitute how I teach and what all of the information means. This would help if the substitute did speak Spanish and wanted to continue my method of teaching after the video was over. This would also help any non-Spanish-speaking substitutes so that they know what is going on and what the students should know or have learned based off of the video.

3. What is the PC knowledge for the solution?

By using the TPRS method, I am able to reach all of my students through different learning strategies. The students have the Kinesthetic method of doing a gesture that directly relates to the word and many times doing the gesture helps the student to remember the Spanish word.

Then I have the auditory method where the students are hearing the word but they are hearing the word in context to ensure the most understanding. They hear the word repeated multiple times to give every student the opportunity to really learn the word.

Finally, the students will also get to visually see the words when they read a story. Students have every way to access the content, though most significantly is usually the motivation. The students love making the gestures and acting out the stories. They know that they need to know the words in order to be able to know what to do when they act out the story, so they pay more attention.

Group Leadership Project

To create the 10 min. tutorial on how to use a wiki collaboratively in the classroom, we used many different tools. First we used google presentation to collaboratively create the slides, which was mainly Stacy and my job with input from the other two. Then Debbie used slidecast to add her voice to the slides. Debbie chose Screencast-o-matic to give her voiceover to the slides because she hadn’t had a lot of experience with it and wanted to explore something new. It also meant that she could simply upload the slides and adjust her voice to each slide as she went along. She did do a version on Audacity as well, in the event that Lisa wanted the voice and slides separate. Finally Lisa used iMovie to put the final touches on the presentation with other slides and transitions. Lisa chose iMovie because she had access to it and had the most experience with it. I definitely feel that both made a great choice after seeing the fabulous final product. To share the movie, Lisa uploaded it to YouTube, which took six hours! I had no idea it would take that long!

I think for the development of the final product I mostly learned about compromise and letting little things go. I had a vision of what I wanted the final product to look like, as I’m sure the other group members did as well, and sometimes it was hard for me to be open to some of their ideas when they didn’t match mine. But all my closed-mindedness created was a block in the production. To move things along and come up with a quality finish, I had to trust my group members to come through for me both in their ideas and in the work that they produced. I think the final product shows that we all gave and took for the betterment of the project and came up with a really great finish.

Although I really liked our final product, I would have liked to incorporate a little bit more animation or interaction with the slides if we had had more time. For example, if we had actually done a screen capture of us showing how to leave a comment on a wiki, rather than taking a screencast and circling what we wanted them to notice. I think the slides all looked very professional and were well done, but in the future I would be interested in seeing how I could take the slides to the next level with the animation. It’s actually something I really look forward to getting my hands into this summer.

Check out our amazing presentation below and please feel free to leave any thoughts, ideas or suggestions!

Personal Learning Plan

Throughout the three educational technology classes that I have taken, CEP 810, 811, and 812, I have set many goals for myself, both personally and professionally. It's time now to review those goals and see what I have accomplished and what I still plan to work on. So check out my video at the following link:

Personal Learning Plan

Mobile Learning

I myself have never been that obbsessed with mobile devices in my personal life. Therefore, I knew the ipod's and mp3 players played music, but not really anything else. I obiously have a computer and a cell phone. I know a lot of what I can do with my laptop, but much of that is specific to a mac. I never really used my cell phone for anything else besides calling and texting.

After my limited experience it surprises and amazes me that there are so many educational ways that I could actually use a mobile device in my classroom. A lot of the devices seem like they pretty much all have the same function such as the ipods, mp3 players, and PDA's. I was actually surprised to see a flashdrive on the list and was really interested in what new things I could do with one that I didn't know about before. But really it just transfers data from one place to another and while this is very useful, it wasn't new information to me.

I think the mobile device that I would like you use the most is the smart phone, especially after learning about the different successful trials already. My school is a smaller rural school without a lot of money or internet access. The idea that my students could all be handed a compact computer that they can use anywhere there is cellphone service just astounds and excites me. This would completely level the playing field and bring everyone into the 21st century.

I especially liked trying out Poll Everywhere. Making a poll was quick and easy, though I have to say that seeing my own results pop up on the screen seconds after I had texted them was really exciting. And I know that if I think they are exciting then so would my students. I already have several students in my middle school classes that bring their cellphones to the class even though they aren't supposed to. Poll everywhere would be a fun way to start off the class occasionally. The only problem I forsee with that is getting permission from the administration and then making sure the students don't play with the phones when we're done with the poll. The best way to solve that would be to use the smartphones that don't have the texting or calling capability, though I know our school doesn't have the money for that at the moment.

PART D - Findings and Implications

The problem that I was addressing is that when I am not in the classroom no new learning takes place. I wanted to resolve that issue with videos of myself teaching the new words in Spanish.

The project was implemented as planned. The videos were left for the substitute teacher who was able to access all of them and play them for the students. There were no problems with the videos or the other aspects of the technology needed such as the projector and computer.

The following day when I returned, I checked with my sixth grade class to see how many of the words they remembered. About half of the students remembered the correct action when I said the words in Spanish after having watched the six minute video. Most remembered se rie, which means he or she laughs, because the substitute worked on that word after the video was over. Unfortunately, very few of the 2^nd graders remembered the words, but it was a week later before I saw them again. They remembered learning the words from the week before, so although they didn’t remember the words, they learned them quicker so it was still a good way to introduce the words.

Besides how much the students learned, the videos also were successful in helping the substitute maintain control in the classroom. Although that wasn’t my main task it was a very positive side effect that got glowing reviews from the substitute. She had substituted for me earlier the week before and was much happier after leaving the second time and very appreciative of the videos. She thought they were a great idea. So overall it was very successful.

If I were to try to do a similar project again I would give myself more time to figure out all of the details as I was slightly rushed due to the imminent end of the school year. I would also try to think of all teacher’s situations, and not just my own, so that my project could be more easily transferable to other teachers.

Some of the things I learned from this project include that you don’t have to make perfect videos, just like in real life you are allowed to mess up. Also setting up a script might be helpful so that the video flows more smoothly. I did that for some of the videos and it worked really well. The students really liked when I used props and when I called out specific people. The calling out specific people works really well, but it also means that you would have to make new videos each time and couldn’t reuse old ones. The videos shouldn’t be too long as the students will lose interest. Finally make sure to leave enough wait time if you are asking a question and be very specific to the substitute on what is the best way to utilize the videos in order to create a successful learning experience.

I plan to create many more videos this summer that I can use in the classroom. I will make sure to include more wait time, possibly even using a timer to help. I will also make very specific, yet generic substitute notes on how to use the videos so that anyone can use it and I will be able to use it over and over. Lastly I would make sure to not make some of the videos quite so long. Besides that I think the videos were a hit and very successful and I wouldn’t change them, even if they were somewhat embarrassing to watch!

PART B - Storyboard and Script

Below is the storyboard and script that my group created to teach other teachers about how to use a wiki collaboratively. I helped the other group members come up with the ideas on what we were going to create and I made the second half of the slides for the presentation including the slides for Student feedback, Students Teaching other Students, and Communicating with another class.

Stacy and I worked the majority on the slides for our part of the final presentation and to finish the project Debbie will add her voice to the slides and Lisa will edit the final project and add in transitions and other sounds. The project will be completed before the due date in order to leave all group members to give final feedback.

Check out the following storyboard and script and give your own feedback!

Storyboard and Script

PART C - Implementation

I implemented the "sub" videos, as I like to call them, during one afternoon I had to be out of the classroom. Please check out the following podcast to find out how it turned out, what worked well, and what needs improvement for next time.

For an unknown reason when you click on the link below only a portion of the podcast plays, however if you copy and past the link into a new window it works properly. If you can't get the link to work by clicking on it please copy and past into a new window. Sorry for the inconvenience.
www.msu.edu/~bushally/Implementation.mp3

Below are a few examples of the videos that I used in the classroom that day:

The above video is a quick video of the expectations I left for my students of how they should act while we have a guest teacher. This is a great way to remind students that a substitute teacher doesn't mean they can forget how to act in the classroom.

Above is a video where I teach the words salta, nada and se ríe to my sixth grade class. See if you can figure out what the three words mean!

This video is of me singing the days of the week in Spanish. I use the song mostly with the 1st through 3rd graders. You can see one of my word blunders here. What's your opinion? Would you have left the blunder or spent the time to rerecord and fix it?

PART A - Brainstorm Session

Our group used Vyew to complete a web conference. The advantages were obvious with many of us being in different states and we were all able to meet each other basically face to face thanks to the webcam. I could see my other three group members and hear them talking (sometimes). It was definitely easier to communicate with everyone at one time in real time and there aren’t multiple copies of the same item like there would be with email. The images were very clear and everyone’s voices were clear and easy to hear.

However, there were also some disadvantages that made the process very frustrating. We had some technical difficulties so my webcam wouldn’t patch me through and the other group members couldn’t see me. One group member could only hear the rest of us off and on and was unable to talk, which meant she had to type all of her comments. It actually ended up that she could hear us better when her webcam was off.

We also quickly found that we couldn’t all leave the talk button on to be able to talk. If you talked it would echo through someone else’s speakers and microphone if the other person left their talk button on. It was also difficult to decide who was going to talk when. We tried to devise a way to say you had something to say by raising your hand on the webcam, but not everyone’s video worked and their pictures were really small so either people were talking over themselves or there was a long pause as we all waited for someone to talk.

This would work well for someone teaching or running a meeting so that one person is talking mostly and someone could raise their hand to talk, but as a group it was hard to communicate equally.

Below is the recording of our web-conference. We ended up choosing to do a tutorial on wikis using slideshare. Check out the recording and post your own thoughts on how it worked.

http://www.screencast.com/t/7l7Ww7rxG

PART B - Application of TPACK

1. What is the TP knowledge for the solution?  (i.e., how does the technology you have chosen support the teaching strategies and methods you have chosen?)

I teach Spanish using the TPRS method, which is Teaching proficiency through reading and storytelling. The students learn an action for each word and they make the action as they say the word. As the teacher I ask a lot of either/or and yes/no questions in order to get the students practicing the words out loud and to increase the number of times that the students hear the words. The more times they hear the words the more likely they are to remember it. After practicing the words I read a story with the words in it and have some of the students act it out. The last step is for the students to read a story on their own and translate it to English.

This is a very hands on method of teaching that is hard to teach if you have never experienced it nor learned how to do it. Therefore, even if a substitute is able to speak Spanish they are unable to teach the class using the TPRS method. Taking a video of myself teaching while using this method really supports and continues the TPRS method even while I am out of the classroom. In the video I encourage the students to do the actions with me and to answer the questions. They are getting the full experience of my teaching method, minus me being able to tell if all of the students understand what I’m saying. But that is where the substitute comes in. The substitute should be monitoring the class, pausing the video when additional explanation is needed or more wait-time is needed or replaying part of the video if the students need additional practice.

2. What is the TC knowledge for the solution? (i.e., how specifically does this technology make the content in your problem more intellectually accessible?  Be sure to think about representation.)

Most often substitutes don’t speak Spanish and therefore don’t know how to pronounce any of the words. By using this technology I am ensuring that the students hear the correct pronunciation for all of the words and that there is no confusion about what the word means. I am giving the students another way to access the vocabulary that they wouldn’t usually be able to have when a substitute is present.

It also demonstrates to the substitute how I teach and what all of the information means. This would help if the substitute did speak Spanish and wanted to continue my method of teaching after the video was over. This would also help any non-Spanish-speaking substitutes so that they know what is going on and what the students should know or have learned based off of the video.

3. What is the PC knowledge for the solution? (i.e., how specifically do your pedagogical choices make the content in your problem more intellectually accessible?) Be sure to think about how the student will experience the content given these instructional strategies.

By using the TPRS method, I am able to reach all of my students through different learning strategies. The students have the Kinesthetic method of doing a gesture that directly relates to the word and many times doing the gesture will spark the student to remember the Spanish word or I can see who understands the Spanish word I say when they can demonstrate the meaning of the word with the correct gesture.

Then I have the auditory method where the students are hearing the word but they are hearing the word in context to ensure the most understanding. They hear the word repeated multiple times to give every student the opportunity to really learn the word.

Finally, the students also get to visually see the words when they read a story. Students have every way to access the content, though most significantly is usually the motivation. The students love making the gestures and acting out the stories. They know that they need to know the words in order to be able to know what to do when they act out the story, so they pay more attention.

Technology Survey!

Please take my technology survey so that I might find out a little bit more about how you use technology in your life.

Technology Survey

Thanks so much!

PART A - Description of Need or Opportunity

Needing a substitute is something all teachers understand. You get sick, your children get sick, you are at a conference, whatever the reason, all teachers need a substitute at some time or another. Lessons need to be modified for the substitute because they possibly don’t know the students or the material well enough to teach something new. 

I have seen this time and time again in my two fields of study: Spanish and Math. In general there are a few to none substitutes who speak Spanish and the higher up in grades you go the less likely you are to find a substitute who knows how to explain the math concepts. Therefore there are two choices a teacher can make; one is to chance it and give the substitute new material hoping they will come through for you and the second is to leave a ton of work for the students to do so the substitute only has to monitor all of the students while they work on content they already know. On more than one accounts I have heard the second option described as “losing a day” as the teachers feel like they lost a day of instructional time, while the first option, being a gamble could result in success or the possibility of “losing 2 days” as the teacher has to take the next day to fix all of the misconceptions that the substitute taught the day before. I have witnessed all scenarios first hand and I’m sure that all of you experienced with the daily life of a teacher can recall the very same things.

With the content we’re expected to teach expanding year by year and the school year shrinking we as teachers cannot afford to lose a day in the classroom. Therefore it is crucial that we look to other avenues to allow learning to still happen in the classroom while the inevitable absences occur. Many substitutes are not allowed to take students to the computer lab, so the solution must remain in the classroom. Therefore I propose the use of slidecasts and vidcasts.

The actual teacher can’t be in the classroom, so the next best thing is to have a recording of the actual teacher. Although the teacher is obviously not able to answer questions, they would still be able to teach the students and walk them through the process step by step. A vidcast could be simply a video of the teacher teaching the lesson in the normal way with possibly a whiteboard or a smartboard, while a slidecast could be a voiceover of the teacher explaining the concepts with a powerpoint presentation. In both cases the teacher would have to do little extra work because they were already prepared to teach that very same lesson. In the case of the vidcast they just have to take the original lesson and video tape it or if they already had a powerpoint slide ready they could complete a slidecast. It would only take the normal time to present the lesson to then tape it.

There is online software that is free and available to anyone with Internet access that would allow these vidcasts and screencasts to be created, such as Jing, Audacity, and Slideshare. There is also Movie Maker that comes on a PC and iMovie that comes on a Mac. The only expense on the district or possibly the individual teacher is a videocamera that records digitally (which many districts might already have and can be shared between the teachers) or a webcam, and a microphone. Many computers now-a-days come with a webcam and a microphone standard, possibly reducing this cost even further. All that a substitute would need to show the students was a single computer in the room and a projector, which is almost standard in most classrooms these days.

This works perfectly in the case of absences that you know about in advance, but what about the case when it is a last minute absence? In this case you could use vidcasts from a previous year if you have it, or borrow a vidcast from another teacher. Not only would this be beneficial with a substitute but teachers could also learn new ideas for teaching material through viewing other teachers’ videos. What an amazing bonus! To see another teacher talk about her ideas and how she incorporates videos in her classroom when a substitute is present check out this site.

The portion that I will implement immediately in my classroom is to make two vidcasts, one for an elementary class and one for a middle school class. I will try it with a substitute and get feedback from the substitute on how it worked and how the students responded to it. I will see if he or she feels that this was more beneficial and helpful to both the substitute and the students. Then I will talk with the students and see how they reacted to the video and what improvements they felt were necessary for the next time around.

For future implementation I would make more videos to prepare for the possibility of a substitute including a standard expectation video, which would break down the expectations I have for my students with completing their work and with the treatment of the substitute. I would also make videos of content that is often repeated or reviewed throughout the class to have videos prepared and to have a fallback in the case of an unexpected absence.

I will know that this is a success if the students are engaged and pay attention to the vidcast that I have created according to the substitute. An additional indicator will be if the students demonstrate learning and growth after my return.

Get to know me

If after reading all of my posts you still don't feel like you know me, well here is your chance to rectify that. Below is a short personal introduction. Check it out by following the link below and then tell me a little bit about yourself!

Personal Introduction

Final Reflections for 811

Through my 811 Technology class I learned how important it is to make sure that technology is adding something to the lesson and not just there to be there. It is important to make sure that the lesson with technology solves an actual problem or need that is applicable to the real world.

I also learned that I can’t take a single aspect of technology but I need to combine many to ensure that I am making my lesson accessible to all of my students. Using the UDL checklist I was able to see where my lessons have holes that my students might slip through. This aspect really opened my eyes to how narrow my lessons are at times and that I need to focus on expanding the different avenues to get to my content.

With the WebQuest Evaluation and the UDL principles I really looked hard at evaluating the uses of technology and making sure that it was worth the time to do it with the students and that it had a clear purpose that solved a problem or a need. I can now more closely analyze my technology and see if it’s a good resource to integrate or not.

I have met my personal goals for learning about technology integration which was simply to absorb as much information as I possibly could so that this summer I could go through it all. During the first technology class my goal was to actually try what I had learned in the classroom, but I quickly discovered I didn’t have the time to do that and modified my goal for this class. Any and all useful information I added to my Diigo account so that I have it whenever I need it and I will have access to it when the class is done.

My new goals, as I’ve already briefly touched on, are to take what I’ve learned and run with it. This summer I’m going to sit down and figure out how exactly I want to incorporate the wiki and the website into my classroom. These will be utilized in different ways based on each of the age groups as I teach K-8 Spanish. I want to make the website more for the parents of the elementary to use to know where the students are at and to give them resources to practice with their children. The wiki I want to use for class collaboration and displaying some of the students work. I’d also like them to make a Spanish dictionary on the Wiki as a class, adding to it as we learn new words.

I would like to make several more stair projects on different cultural aspects so that I can use them as sub plans if I am absent. That way the students aren’t actually losing a day of Spanish when I am absent and it will be engaging to them. I’d also like to make stair designs for some of the stories that we read as a class so that there can be an independent work with the story with questions to gage understanding.

For my timeline I am taking the summer to concentrate on taking all of the information that I’ve gathered thus far from my classes and actually integrate it into my current lessons. Right now I simply don’t have the time to do that and I greatly look forward to the summer to dive into this. I will jump into the master’s program next summer when I’ve had a full year to practice and test out everything I have learned from the certificate. I think these are attainable goals and reasonably spread out to allow me to focus all of my energies on each one.

Online Learning

Online Learning has exploded recently with Web 2.0. The possibilities are endless and a huge plus for the educational department. Using Web 2.0 tools is much more engaging to students and also better prepares them for the 21st Century.

One of the Web 2.0 tools I see as being the most beneficial to me is the Wiki. Through a wiki I could display the students' work, especially the stories that they write. Then the students could view and comment on each others' work. Collaboratively the students could make a visual dictionary of all of the vocabulary that we have worked on. I could put all of the worksheets on the wiki so that students who are absent could access them or students who need extra help could get extra worksheets. The wiki could also be a starting place for many other Web 2.0 tools such as links to podcasts and webquests.

The pedagogical strategies that I would use would include, but not be limited to, Modeling any information that is needed, collaboration with other students on work, analyzing errors to better another students' work, scaffolding with the material as the class goes on, and deductive and inductive. The deductive would be all of the explicit work and instruction that I share with the students, while the inductive would be everything they learn from all of the stories the students would read from both me as the teacher and their classmates.

The three Online Learning tools that I thought would be the most difficult to use with the students are the following: Learning Management System, Educational Gaming, and Online Resource Validation.

The Learning Management System would be difficult because it would be something that the students would have to extensively learn to use and it would also be the most time consuming to get up and running from a teacher standpoint. However, once all of the lessons were into the system and the students knew how to use it then I think it would be very valuable.

Educational Gaming would be fun and entertaining for the students, but it is hard to incorporate all of the words that the students are learning in Spanish in a game that is strictly online. It is important that the students have the opportunity to practice the words verbally and most online games don't allow for that extra piece. Also with the method that my school has chosen to teach Spanish, grammar is not explicitly taught, and therefore grammar games would be used rarely.

Lastly I think that Online Resource Validation would be hard for the students to use. They are so used to believing everything that they read and hear about, rarely do they stop to question the validity of their information. While that makes the need for this online learning that much more apparent, I see a lot of resistance from the students who don't want to take the extra step to validate their findings as well as frustration.

Wikipedia & Wikis

For the first time ever I contributed to a Wikipedia page. You can see what the site looked like beforehand:

And then the changes that I made, which included making an entire new section for Education:

Writing on the site energized me and made me feel empowered. I was the expert.

I can see how much students would enjoy adding to this site as well. Its not often that students are seen as the authority or expert on something. How motivating for them to get to tell the world just what exactly they know!

I also created a wiki for my Spanish classes all the way from Kindergarten to grade 8. Its still just the bare bones but if you're interested to check it out go to Espanol-de-Dansville!

UDL Guidelines

Taking the following lesson plan: Spanish Digital Storybooks, I applied the UDL (Universal Design for Learning) Guidelines.

You can see how my lesson plan held up to the guideline here: UDL Guidelines.

You can also see the changes that I made to my lesson plan, which are highlighted in yellow.

Evaluating Learning Materials

The following site: Spanish Proficiency Exercises presents a multitude of videos with Native Speakers speaking on various topic. Each topic is accompanied by related vocabulary, related phrases, and related grammar points. However, is this a good learning material for in the classroom? 

Checkout my following evaluation of the site and feel free to comment if you agree or disagree with my findings.

Quality of Content:

1. All information that is heard is coming directly from Native Spanish and all accompanying work matches what they were saying. Therefore all concepts, models, and skills are valid and accurate.
2. The site hits all levels of Spanish from Beginner to Superior and a wide range of topics. The topics include your basics of colors, numbers, objects, and family members to name only a few and continues to conversational topics such as stereotypes people would like to see eliminated, as well as a few role-playing topics. All of the videos tailor directly to these topics that are all very important, useful, and necessary when using the Spanish language.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching-Learning Tool:

1. The most effective way to use this tool would be to use it during the Demonstration phase. Students are able to see up to 6 different demonstrations of each topic from a different Native Speaker. Additionally, it could be used as an Explanation tool, though with the Native Speakers it is most likely more difficult to understand and therefore would not be as effective as it would be in the demonstration phase. Unfortunately it does not allow the student to vocally interact, so if it was used as a Practice tool it could only be in the capacity of practicing the ability to understand spoken Spanish. 
   1. Explanation or description of the topic/stating the problem
   2. Demonstration of the curriculum/exploration of the problem
   3. Practice using the curriculum/analysis of the outcomes from solving the problem
   4. Applying the curriculum to "new" problems/application of the outcomes to other problems
2. The learning objectives are that the students will be able to understand the different topics of Spanish and be able to use said topics on their own. Students will also be able to use the topics more grammatically correct after exploring the related grammar section.
3. The characteristics of the target learners is from beginning Spanish to superior Spanish level with self-motivation to learn and explore more of the topics offered as well as the additional learning opportunities on the side. I would guess that the age is most likely high school to Higher Education.
4. The interactive/media-rich presentation of material will improve faculty and students' abilities to teach and learn the ability to understand spoken Spanish, but gives the student no opportunity to engage with the content or feedback on how the student is doing. Therefore its improvement on faculty and students' abilities to teach and learn is very limited.
5. The site can be readily integrated into current curriculum and pedagogy within the discipline. With the wide range of topics that the site offers, it can be readily integrated into current curriculum and pedagogy within the discipline.
6. I don't believe the site can be used in a variety of ways to achieve teaching and learning goals, especially with the lack of interaction on the site.
7. The intro page of the site gives the goal of increasing Spanish speaking ability, but there is no easy to identify goals throughout the main portion of the site, only the many different topics to choose from.
8. Good learning assignments can be written easily for using the site, but the range of them is very limited with the basis being on the ability to understand spoken Spanish and the occasional very specific grammar points.

Ease of Use:

1. The site is very easy to maneuver through with all of the levels always displayed at the top and when you scroll over the top a drop down menu of all of the topics appear. Once you click on the topic the pictures of each of the native speakers appears and a simple click on their picture brings up their video. Then on the right hand side is a bar with an option to chose related vocab, phrases, and grammar. The user can't get trapped or lost in the material. Everything is very consistent, though each section looks identical, so I would not say that each section or topic is visually distinct.
2. There is no interaction with the site at all besides the one sided viewing of the videos so there is no feedback whatsoever from the system.
3. The entire site is very static and has little to no flexibility.
4. All that is required technically speaking for the student is a computer with speakers and access to the Internet that can play Quicktime. All of the videos run on their own after clicking on one. This makes this site easy to use with less technical resources in the classroom as well as for students with less technology background.
5. There are lists of vocabulary with the English translation, which is how Spanish vocabulary is most often presented, but I teach using TPRS (Teaching proficiency through reading and stories) and therefore none of the format would be familiar to them.
6. The only attractive presentation of information is the videos and even those are close-ups of the Native Speakers with little to none background and are occasionally hard to see. Otherwise the material is not presented in an attractive way.

In a final conclusion this is a very organized and easy to follow site that the students would be able to easily access. However its uses are very limited and does not have an interaction part for the students to further their learning and be engaging to them. For me personally, as a K-8 Spanish teacher, it appears to be too old for my students as even the beginning level topics are introduced in full sentences and would be very overwhelming to my students. I believe this is a great resource to expose students to Native Speakers, but falls short in almost every other area. 

Personal Reflection

Technology is a fun new toy that can be both overused and overwhelming. I learned that I need to have a purpose for integrating the technology and not use it to just use it. I also don’t have to be an expert in the subject. Although I do need to have a good foundation, I can allow the students to explore on their own and even teach me. This not only takes the load off my shoulders but also gets the student’s adapting and thinking outside the box. 

However, just like I get overwhelmed, I need to realize that my students may get overwhelmed with technology. It is important to give them little bits at a time so that they don’t get frustrated and give up on the technology. The best way to work on this is to model the technology first, and then let them create something of their own. It’s also a great way to get them hooked! They see it and want to do it too.

Lastly, I learned that as a teacher it’s really important to integrate lessons of cyber bullying whenever using technology. This is a good way to teach the students what it is and to stop them from doing it right from the get go. 

Taking an online course really helped me think about and evaluate uses of technology. Every lesson in and of itself was an example of what one can do with technology. Then every lab really demonstrated how easy it was to explore and create on the Internet without too much direct instruction. I saw that I could create a lab and have my students follow it and then I wouldn’t need to model or demo each individual step. Furthermore, with each project we had to complete I was really able to see the possibilities and the future of that technology in my classroom. 

A lot of my thinking shifted from individual work to collaborative work. The SIG project demonstrated the most with each individual step. I dived head first into the wonders of online book marking and doing so as a group. I was able to see how easy, effective, and efficient it was to create a Google document as a group. All of us were able to type in the document at the same time, while having a discussion on the side and talking about what we needed to accomplish. It opened up my eyes to collaboration, not only between students, but also between cultures. I really want to integrate a collaboration project with another Spanish-speaking classroom that is learning English. 

Finally our group was able to collaborate on the presentation portion of Google docs, and all of us were able to see the wonders of everyone else’s projects. I’m definitely sold on précis now and I only saw it in the presentation, haven’t even tried it myself. Needless to say, the integration of the Internet really got me thinking about everything I can do with technology and I can’t wait to learn more!

Of all of the assignments that I turned in, I really feel that the SIG presentation really exemplifies good teaching with technology. First of all our SIG was created on Google docs so it utilized new technology that allowed for collaboration and easy sharing. The PowerPoint itself was engaging and fun and was rich with links and youtube videos that played right in the presentation. However, the PowerPoint, while fun, was also professional and informative. I could imagine students paying attention and wanting to see what they were going to learn next, which is exactly what you want as a teacher.

Through this class and the labs I definitely reached my goal of exploring a wide variety of technologies. All of the technologies that we talked about were new to me and really gave me an appreciation for how much I’ve been missing out on (technology-wise). Through my own explorations I definitely ran across areas where I had difficulty, such as trying to figure out how to share Google reader or the fact that netvibes has a private and a public page and everything needs to be transferred to the public page, the information isn’t automatically in both. Therefore if I want my students to share their RSS reader with me, they need to put all of the information in the public page first. 

However, I wasn’t able to introduce the technologies into my classroom already mainly because I didn’t quite anticipate the time that it would take to complete the class, being that it is accelerated to complete in 8 weeks, and to maintain my classroom in my first year of teaching. In other words my eyes were bigger than my stomach and I wasn’t able to fit all of that in. I do wish that there was more of a break between the classes because I am very excited about everything that I am learning, but at the moment I don’t have time to include extensive projects and that’s exactly the vision that I have with the technology that I want to implement. 

I guess this leads me to one of my new short-term goals and that is to take something small that I’ve learned and implement it, such as the digital storytelling. I don’t have to get extravagant right away, though the bigger goals of using an RSS reader for current events in Latin American countries and sharing stories with a Spanish speaking school are still my main long-term goals. 

As stated in my Personal Technology Plan, I will also continue to explore the technologies that I have already touched on, especially the Web 2.0 tools. I will learn more about technology with each new class in the educational technology certificate program. I have already begun collaborating with my mentor teacher on different ways of using the technology and what technology we have in the district. I will take this summer to really try to figure out the different ways that I can incorporate everything that I will have learned so far.

Lastly I do feel that I made sure to ask questions no matter what, though I don’t think I had as many as I expected to have. Most likely I simply didn’t know what additional questions to ask, but now I have the resources to get help through Twitter and MACUL space even though the class is ending. 

In short, I have grown a lot through the labs and the projects in this class and am super psyched to take everything into my classroom and revolutionize the way that my students have been learning Spanish!

Creative Commons

 By Huhu Uet (Own work) [GFDL (<a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html" class="external free" rel="nofollow">http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html</a>) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

My Picasa Account

I already use photos in my classroom a lot. Being a Spanish teacher, I use photos to show what a word means in Spanish without using English. On top of that I try to create simple books for my students using the Spanish vocabulary that we've learned in the class. To make the books more interesting and engaging I use photos throughout the book. I also use photos to test how well the students know the Spanish vocabulary. I have pictures up on a smart board and have the students indicate if the Spanish word I say matches picture one, two, or three. The students hold up the number of fingers that match the picture. It is a quick and easy way for me to see how many students actually know what I'm saying. Finally I use pictures along with my smart board to create an interactive slide where the students come to the board and move the vocabulary word to the correct picture. The students really love the actual interaction with this one. There are so many uses for pictures in my classroom and I can't wait to discover even more ways!

Learning Styles

 I am a visual learner who is good at making connections between concepts, hence the logical intelligence. I am dependent on the teacher for guidance and approval and enjoy participating in class discussions. In other words the school setting was perfect for me. I learned well from lectures, especially if there were visuals or notes written on the board, and taking notes. I frequently asked questions if I didn’t understand any of the material and always participated in any classroom discussions. I enjoyed mulling over the information on my own and seeing how it fit within my own life; my intrapersonal intelligence.

There were very few settings when I struggled with how I was taught.  One of these settings was in group presentations. Being a perfectionist and obsessed with getting an A I struggled with other students who didn’t hold up their part of the project and I often struggled with the open-ended portion of the project. If I didn’t know exactly what the teacher wanted, I didn’t know how to proceed.

As teachers we can’t focus on every learning style in each lesson, but I do think that we can mention little things in every lesson to focus slightly on each learning style.  For example a teacher can start the lesson by connecting the new material to past material and quickly explaining the big picture. Then at the end have a reflective part to go over the material. This would cover global and reflective learners to a small portion.

Then I believe the key is to not always teach in the same manner. Maybe each lesson can’t incorporate all of the learning styles but the in the span of a week or two a teacher should be attempting to use different learning styles in different lessons and combining them when they can. For example use visuals when lecturing and this will combine visual and auditory learners. Then in another lesson have group work or a hands on lesson for active or kinesthetic learners.

I believe that the teacher should focus reaching the majority of the students in the full class setting but should constantly be trying new and different lessons in different learning styles to accommodate everyone. The teacher should also attempt to know how all of the students learn best in order to know how to work best with each child individually. Although this is easier said than done, I do feel it is an ideal that teachers should strive for.

RSS Reader Part 2

Working with the RSS reader has created a combination of feelings for me. At first there was a feeling of being overwhelmed because when you first connect with all of the sites there is so much material to read and to cover and it bothers me when it shows that there are still posts to read. I know, I’m slightly OCD. The other feeling was excitement. I finally have one stop to see all of the sites that I want to follow. No more relying on the computer to memorize my favorite sites so that I don’t have to type them all in every time. There is such a convenience that comes along with this. It is also a really great way to connect with the sites that really hit closest to home for me.

I found that the blog pages that I found were not as reliable for new information as they are simply created when the creator has time and something new to say. However, they were more welcoming for interaction and feedback. In a couple of the Hispanic culture blog there were several times that the author stated that the reader was welcome to ask more questions or give their thoughts and ideas and what worked best for them when it came to learning Spanish. In the other blog, there wasn’t a lot of recent posts, but I was able to post on one of the pages to let the author know how useful the information was and how much I appreciated her taking the time to share it with others. I like that I can thank people for their hard work and interact with them if I have questions. It makes it more personal to me and in this case I’m hoping that it will encourage her to write new posts.

With the other sites I really liked how often they were updated, some every day, others every few days. Although at times it felt overwhelming because there was so much to catch up on. I think that its important for me to remember that I don’t have to read everything that comes up only what really interests me. However, I think it is very beneficial that I experience the frustration, so that I can empathize with my students if they feel the same way and I can explain to them how I dealt with that. The site that I had to skim the most was the news site about Latin American countries. There were so many new stories everyday that I quickly learned to pick the stories that really popped out or the countries that really interested me.

I focused more on Argentina and Costa Rica as I have been to both of those places. Argentina is actually focusing on coming up with using natural products like onions and peanuts to create natural dyes rather than synthetic ones. I thought that was really interesting and great that they are making that switch. I also focused on countries that came up a lot, like Columbia that had several stories. It was very interesting to see which countries showed up the most. I would say Argentina, Columbia, and Mexico showed up the most.

I was also really interested in some of the articles that showed up in the National Council for Teaching Mathematics. Since student teaching and working with students who greatly struggled with Pre-algebra to Advanced Algebra, I formed the opinion that forcing all students through Advanced Algebra is not the best way to get students more comfortable with math. Nor is it the best way to ensure that the students learn the math as I quickly found that most teachers were just trying to get the struggling students through the class with a passing grade. That was the end goal, not actually understanding the material. And there was an article on NCTM that talked about exactly that. That Calculus shouldn’t be the end goal for all students, but more applicable math. It was really great to hear their reasoning and know that mathematicians who know and love math, realize that calculus isn’t the best fit for everyone.

Overall, I felt challenged by much of what I read, as well as supported, which I think is exactly what should be happening, especially for me as a new teacher. I can obviously see a ton of resources for this for myself, but when it comes to my classroom I see 3 benefits. One is showing the students how the RSS reader works simply so that they can see the benefit and can learn to use it to make their own lives easier. Two I love the news site that I found and really want to incorporate a “what’s happening in Hispanic culture today” day where each student could talk about something different from different countries to give a wide overview of what all was happening in these other countries. I think it would be a great way of connecting the students to the world as well as letting them see some of the similarities and differences between their cultures and ours. Lastly I would like them to be connected to a blog that deals with Spanish culture so that they can actually interact and hopefully get feedback from the author. This way they would learn about and engage in Hispanic culture. I think that the students getting this information from a source that isn’t their teacher actually makes it more powerful and meaningful. I’m very excited about integrating RSS readers into my classroom.

Internet Security

For my first tutorial I choose to learn about sandboxie. I had no idea that this even existed, but I would definitely tell people that it is free and easy to download and that it allows you to surf the Internet with complete security. It doesn’t allow anything to reach your hard drive. This seems so easy and manageable that I’m surprised more people don’t know about it and use it. My only question was if you did need to download something from the Internet would you have to turn off sandboxie? Or could you download it and retrieve it from sandboxie? Either way it seems like a great resource.

Next I looked at blocking Spam on my Gmail account. I know how to mark something as spam, but what I didn’t know was that I could actually filter out certain sites or domains and just have them automatically deleted. This is very helpful for me as I get hundreds of spam a day that fill up my spam box. If I can set them to automatically delete then it will be easier to look through the spam from time to time in case something isn’t spam. I will definitely be sharing that with others! Besides this, nothing else really surprised me.

Lastly I learned about google search preferences. I was aware that you could monitor how sexually explicit the results were, but it had been awhile since I was in the preferences section and didn’t remember all of the other choices I had control over. I think this is a great tidbit to know for families and schools because children and students would have no idea that the sexual images were being blocked and that they are only seeing what is appropriate. It is monitoring without obviously inhibiting them (which once they reach a certain age they are always annoyed by any parental protection or the word no).

Getting Things Done

I organized my process first by using paper and pencil. I can always have those on hand, though I can’t always have a computer in front of me. Also there is nothing more satisfying than physically crossing off something that you have completed. On the other hand, seeing a long list of items immediately seems overwhelming and is the fastest way to get me to simply stop “doing”. Also, the paper and pencil way doesn’t allow a quick and easy way to reorganize the list for priority or for a timeline. So I can see a need for switching to a computer program or something in the future once I get a handle on how the process works. I also like to use a lot of different folders to organize what I need to do.

The first time through the process was very frustrating and overwhelming. I often ask too much of myself and when setting the system up quickly found myself adding more and more things in my collection box that I wanted to complete. This doesn’t seem like a problem at first, instead it was actually very exciting as I envisioned completing all of these things and how accomplished I would feel. However, when it came to the process and organize stages I found that I didn’t always know what to do with all of the things I had collected. The anxiety of the indecision of what to do is very tiring. By the time I had gotten through the inbox and figuring out what to do with everything I was exhausted and didn’t actually want to DO anything.

I think that this process has the potential to help me, but at this point it is too early to say. I think if I can stick with the process and get the inbox to a manageable size then it could work. But if I can’t get through all of the steps and be able to get done what I actually need to DO, then it really isn’t helping. I also found that even after I entered something in the inbox, it still floated in my head of when I was going to do it and what order I was going to work on everything. I know this means that I need a better inbox so my brain can trust the system, but its simply not there yet.

I think that I will keep trying to use the system, because I love the idea of freeing my brain of all of that worry and anxiety and over-thinking. But I also think that I need to look into the process a little more and see more of what other people do in order to see if there is a better way to complete my system that would be less overwhelming.

RSS Reader

Here is a screen shot of my newly created RSS reader at netvibes. Aside from the 5 sites from class, I chose 5 other sites having to do with Math and Spanish. The reasoning behind Spanish is obvious as I am a K-8 Spanish teacher. However, I am also certified to teach secondary Math, so I included the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics in order to stay up to date with the changes in math.

As for Spanish I included the Michigan World Language Association because I am a member, have attended a conference of theirs, and know it is a good way to stay connected to all of the latest information on teaching a world language. Next I picked a blog (Wanna Jugar con Migo) that has several different children's lessons, links, ideas, and templates for different activities. I will be able to use many of these ideas in my lower elementary classes.

After that I found another blog about hispanic culture, including famous hispanic people. original hispanic recipes, and pictures of hispanic people. Not only will this be beneficial for me to learn more about the culture first hand, but also for my students as they haven't been able to travel to a Spanish Speaking country. Lastly I picked a site that has continual updates of the news in all of the Latin American Countries. It allows you to pick the country you want to focus on or see an overview of all the latest news. This will keep me up-to-date with current events and will be a great resource for my students with all of the information in one location.

Social Networks

When I started college facebook was just getting started. Since then it has exploded and has spread to more than just the college scene. Personally I have seen a ton of benefits with facebook through reconnecting with old friends, staying in touch with current friends, and even getting to know new friends. I know that facebook is just one of many social networks, but the idea is that they bring people together and form a web of connections that is never ending. However, not only do they bring people together, but they do so regardless of location or time.

I have the most experience with social networks from a personal standpoint and from what I have seen from my peers and students, they are also most accustomed to using them in a personal way. Teachers at my school connect with other teachers through social networks about what is going on in their lives outside of school. This is huge for teachers as they can often become bogged down in school or be in school mode too often. Students talk and communicate through social networks and are able to "go on vacation" with their friends through pictures and posts. The possibilities are endless and we've really only begun to scratch the surface in my opinion.

As for a professional standpoint, that is where I feel everyone needs some more work. Social Networks can connect you with so many different people across the world that there are a lot more points of views and ideas out there that I personally could be utilizing in my classroom. Not only could I use a social network to connect my students to other countries and cultures, but I could use it myself to get new, fresh ideas on teaching Spanish and even integrating more technology. For the future of Social Networks I see myself connecting with more teachers who are teaching Spanish as well as Teachers living in other countries teaching English to get feedback and help them out as well. The beauty of Social Networks is that it isn't a one-way street, heck it isn't even a two-way street, but an infinite highway of information and connections if utilized to its fullest extent.

Web Pages vs. Blogs

Blogs allow individuals to display and continually update their own personal news. It reflects their own point of view and interests, whereas a web page is more of a static document on the internet that is usually published by organizations. Both can contain links to other sites and documents, but a web page doesn't go much farther than that. The biggest and most significant difference between a Blog and a Web Page is that a Blog allows a conversation to take place. Outside readers can comment and interact with the blogger creating relationships and allowing more transfer of thoughts and ideas. A community of blogs can be created and people can connect in ways that a Web Page simply can not allow with its lack of interaction by outside users.