Since I'm doing my capstone project on outdoor education and how to integrate technology into it, I used an app called Seek with my students. It is a plant and animal identification app. It is amazing how many plants and animals it can identify. The app has challenges and you can pass levels after finding a certain number of plants or animals. It keeps a log of all the species you find. It gives you information about the organisms you find, and has a very cool range map that shows where other people have found the same species, all across the United States. The downside to this app is that it needs WiFi or a satellite connection in order to work. When we used it in my class, only a handful of students has smartphones to use it on. We did a scavenger hunt to see how many different plant species we could find on campus. The kids who were taking pictures with the iPads instead of smartphones could only snap photos. They could, however, once back in the classroom, point a smartphone with the Seek app at their photo and identify the species that way. Today I took the app outdoors and completed the "Connectivity Challenge" by walking around my block and identifying at least ten new species of plants. I found a Mediterranean Spurge, a Japanese Camellia, Silver Ragwort, Glossy Abelia, Saucer Magnolia, Wild Daffodil, Fortnight Lily, Oleander, Glossy Privet, Tsutsusi Azalea, California Poppy, Wolly Hedgenettle, Green Liveforever, Rosemary, Mission Prickly Pear, Cuban Oregano, Aloe Vera, Fiddle Leaf Fig, Western Sword Fern, Common Ivy, Italian Arum, Mexican Tea, Bermuda Buttercup, Heavenly Bamboo, Spider Plant, Larustinus Viburnum, Golden Pothos, and Hubei Anenome. Whew! It was great! It got me out of the house! It was a beautiful day and I might not have realized that unless I practiced with this app. While the kids enjoyed it, I think the format is not ideal for third graders. It is a bit mature for them. So I tried a different app for younger students called Nature Cat. It is designed for much younger users. It has nature challenges, but does not identify species. You take pictures of plants, animals, and "cool things" and put the pics into you journal. A good feature of this app is that you can write and record your notes about each photo. Tomorrow I am taking my class on a walking field trip up Oat Hill Mine Trail. We are bringing our nature journals, watercolors, iPads, and smartphones. I'm looking at how the kids interact with these different tools to help me decide how to design another study I'll be doing on our field trip in April. Wish us luck!
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Third grade is a big year for digital literacy. It's the first year the kids have Chromebooks and Google accounts. We have been learning lessons on digital literacy mainly through the "Passion Projects" I have been teaching the students how to do. They are done through Google Classroom on Google Slides. When we begin the project, I remind students that they are only allowed to use the internet to find information about their topic. I let them do their passion project on the topic of their choice, as long as it is not violent or inappropriate in some way. Once they have their topic, they have to stick to it. The lesson here is to teach kids that in school we use the laptops as tools for study. They do not have the freedom to look at anything they want. Some kids do not follow this rule. Sometimes, they get told on by their peers. Other times I can tell that they are off task. Usually there is a group of boys huddled together staring at a screen with fascinated faces. When I approach, the page is exited out of. I do a history search, and find out if they were on a page they should not have been. It's an important lesson to know that your search histories are not private. (If your teacher is not checking to see what you are looking at, you can be sure that advertisers are.)
Another important lesson that students have learned so far this year is how to chat. In Google Classroom, unless the instructor turns off the option, students can chat with each other. I do not tell them about this option, but they typically find it pretty quickly. They like to chat little shout outs to each other. Some get carried away and it's pretty obvious they get off task chatting with each other. I let them know, respectfully and discretely, that all of their chats are visible to the teacher. So this important lesson in digital literacy is to be careful what you chat because it is visible by more people than you think. By experiencing the slight embarrassment of discovering this in this way, I think it makes a mark that will hopefully stay with them and make them less prone to chatting TMI (too much information) in the future. I'm starting to see how these reading are tying in together. In simplest terms, our students make sense of new information we give them every day. As teachers, we can help them bridge the sense making gap by doing a good job of designing our content. It should be visually accessible, following Baggio's suggestions outlined below. But our lessons also need to be well planned in the ways that Clark discusses in her article. For example, we should plan our lessons so that we can measure our students' ability to not just remember, but perform any given learning objective. This is true for both digital and traditional forms of content.
As a student in this masters program, I feel this is how we are learning. The combination of introductory live sessions and extended readings are reinforced through the requirement that we demonstrate our understanding through blogs and projects. I have a feeling we'll be doing some visually emphasized content very soon. Clark/Baggio Reading Notes Jeremy Smith Developing Technical Training By: Ruth Colvin Clark Chapter 1: The Technology of Training
Chapter 2: An Introduction to Structured Lesson Design
The Visual Connection By Bobbe Baggio
Dervin Notes 2: New Dervin Notes: Dervin invented the gap metaphor in sense making to serve as a framework to study how humans do make sense and use information in information systems. It is an innovative, flexible theoretic tool with which to do so. It is both qualitative and quantitative. Underlying Assumptions and Theoretical Foundations We have to understand first that sense making is a set of assumptions and propositions about the nature of information, the nature of human use of information, and the nature of human communication.Some of these assumptions are “taken as given”, or axiomatic. Other assumptions are deductive. Still others are propositions that have received empirical support. These assumptions and propositions provide a methodological guidance for framing research questions, collecting data, and charting analysis. It derives down into a set of methods to interview humans and ask them questions about how they make sense in their lives. That’s why some call sense making a theory about conducting interviews about sense making. Dervin is funny here when she says: “It is that as well.” This was supposed to be funny, right? So, the methods for studying sense making derive from the theoretic effort which built the conceptual frame. The problem is that the connections between the methods, the assumptions, and the propositions are hidden. And depending on what your assumptions are, which DO vary, your methods, propositions, (and conclusions?), can differ. Certain things are assumed to be true and they guide the whole enterprise of the study of sense making. But there could be other ways to do it. So, sense making is simply a coherent set of theoretically derived methods for studying sense making. The core assumption upon which the study of sense making rests is the one of discontinuity. It assumes discontinuity is a fundamental aspect of reality. It assumes there are discontinuities in all existence, between entities, times, and spaces. It is an assumed constant of nature generally and of the human experience specifically. The discontinuity assumption serves as a good framework for Dervin’s research on humans’ use of information and information systems. It especially helps study human behavior around sense making that is internally controlled. One does not have to use the discontinuity assumption when they study information as it exists apart from human considerations. (externally controlled). (objective?) But most studies of information management, design, and practice do involve human actors. (Example: How do we market our information systems to people?) This is pertinent for people in the information design and management field. So, Dervin goes on to compare assumptions to show in a logical way why the assumption of discontinuity is particularly helpful, (even required according to Dervin), when studying how humans interact with information. She is trying to break with past assumptions that have guided research on information systems research. Information Use as Transmission vs Construction Using the discontinuity assumption, information is that sense created in a moment in time and in space by one or more humans. It does not exist apart from human behavioral activity. Because there is no direct observation of nature, all observations can only arise out of an application of human energy. This does not mean that sense making goes full post modern and says there is no order out there and no tools for humans to use to form stable pictures of reality. But it does assume that whatever order is out there is discontinuous from time to time and space to space. It also assumes (I love this.), that whatever order is out there is not directly accessible by humans due to the limitations of our senses and intellect. We are constrained by time, space, and species. Further, sense making assumes that humans have no external standard they can use to assess whether their observations are correct or not. Human standards for personal and collective conduct are created through interaction. Human sharing of observations can lead to more stable observations, but they will always be limited. So depending on your assumptions about information, what you choose to study will change. If you think that information exists out there independent of human construction, then focus on questions of transmission. (Did the info get to the person? Was it correct? How much?) But, if you focus on construction questions, you might frame your research like this: (What strategy did that person apply for them to call that info accurate?). (Will she try to show how the gap bridging metaphor works for both sets of assumptions about information?) Info Use as Seen by the Observer vs Actor Another assumption is that any study of sense making has to be done from the perspective of the actor and not the observer. Almost all current research emphasized the observer perspective. (Librarians typically ask people things like: Of the things we offer, which do you prefer? They bend people to fit their system and not the other way around. They cannot explain how people get use out of systems in unpredicted ways. Info Use as State Condition Vs Process Condition Sense making focuses on the internal and external behaviors people demonstrate as they take steps to make sense. It is a process. While people agree on the process view of sense making, many studies still see it as a state condition. They see people's search for information as a monolithic “state of need”. They do not ask what process led this person to be in this state of need or about the qualities of this state of need. It is assumed to exist monolithically. They do not study the behaviors. Human reasons to search for info are seen as too chaotic and varied to be able to study systematically. They retreat from individual to structural understandings of information use. When we do study the process of human information use, we find that it is actually not chaotic or capricious, but very systematic. Sense making sees people not as static entities but as entities acting in space time. People employ tactics to make sense. New info leads to new actions, some of which are repetitions of previous actions. (I think she’s getting the the gap jumping here.) Ok, yes, sense making is a process of gap defining and gap bridging. Sense making, thus, sets forth the gap idea as a theoretic assumption and a guiding frame for methods to interview people about how they make sense. It works for both observer and actor. It works in both set times and across times and situations. It works in both quantitative and qualitative respects. Many people are using the gap bridging framework to conduct studies. This image was created by one of our high school students and shared in the school newsletter last week. While my third graders are not feeling this way quite yet, third grade is still a big step for students in our school as far as their online presence goes. They switch from iPads to Chromebooks. They get their own Gmail accounts. They log on to many new websites using their Google accounts. They are able to send each other gmails and messages through Google Classroom. Some "digital citizenship" issues that have arisen so far have been students discovering violent or sexual images despite our school's filters, students logging on to other students' accounts after figuring our school's password system (ces+student lunch number), and students using prohibited sites like YouTube during time when they should be doing schoolwork. Up until now, as the problems have been limited, I have dealt with them in a reactive way. I'm becoming more aware that I'll need to be more proactive in fostering digital citizenship. If our students are like I was when I was a kid, they have seen or done a lot more than they are willing to share in a classroom setting. I'm planning on doing the lesson I worked on for this week. I'm very curious to see what they share as far as being safe, respectful, and responsible online. I'm hoping that by addressing issues proactively, we can be better prepared to protect ourselves from questionable content, creeps, cheats, hackers, and haters. I think we set a good tone, one of empowerment, when we approach these issues by creating "superheroes" that fight to set things right. |
AuthorJeremy Smith teaches third grade at Calistoga Elementary School. Archives
July 2020
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