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.

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Technology Survey

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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.

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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.