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.