The prompt for this blog response is inspiring:
"There are several questions that you will come across in your life that will be formative. For example: After looking at websites through the lens of “what were the end-user needs?”, how has your thinking changed about designing your own site?" What influences have the SITE model analysis, Baggio’s Visual thinking, Clark, and the design thinking process had on your work? Share significant design steps, progress, challenges, and/or success in creating your research plan for round 2." In my my mind the question is: How have our end user needs drastically changed with this Corona Virus situation we are living in now, and how can we use what we've learned in this class to reach and serve them in these times of social distance and online learning? Hmmmm.... My initial idea during this study was that kids need to get outdoors more and to experience the actual natural, physical world around them in order to be more healthy. I also hoped that increased contact with nature would lead to students being better able to identify, understand, and solve the pressing environmental problems of this 21st Century. My initial inquiry revolved around how educators might use screen based technologies to increase student interaction with and awareness of their natural surroundings habitats. I hoped my humble data might add a drop to the bucket of research evidence pointing in the direction of the need for increased outdoor activity and environmental awareness and action. So when this latest crisis happened, my knee jerk reaction was to create an "outdoor photography scavenger hunt" project where the kids could share their outdoor photographs with the rest of the class through a digital platform that they and their parents were already partially familiar with, called Class Dojo. Happily, this first fun idea has proven, so far, to be the most popular form of contact I have maintained with my students and families. I have received more outdoor photos than any other form of communication with families so far. Now with the tighter "hold in place" orders, even this activity is no longer possible. People are told to stay indoors. The parks are closed. I am at a loss. With my end user needs in focus, the last two weeks have taught me to keep it simple and fun. My first goal is to just get as many kids online as possible. I created more Google Classrooms for reading, art, and science. I put one fun lesson in each. They have videos for the kids to watch. The math is adaptive and gives instant feedback. Since then our grade level has created a plan which includes our curriculum for reading and math. For the kids who want more, it's easy to upload more material for them. For the kids with IEP's, or newcomers to this country, it's equally easy to upload material for their specific needs. What's troubling is the silence from several of my families. We continue to reach out to them. What might be my end user needs these days? Hmm. Maybe a mix of entertaining introductory visual/audio content, combined with common core guided standards, and the flexibility for them to express their understanding in a variety of ways? They also need self paced, adaptive lessons in math that give instant feedback if they get stuck. I'll try scheduling Zoom once a day between 9:30 and 10:30. How much guidance is enough or too much, now that we are physically separated? I've also been pessimistic during these times. I've talked to neighbors about what has happened in these last few weeks. I've spoken about the loss of the all important but seldom uttered "social contract" that exists between parents and schools. Now, that contract is broken and parents are learning to teach. We no longer not have their kids with us for six or seven hours a day so that they can go to work and earn money. What's going to happen now? Will kids and parents take the extra step to get online and fulfill our curricular expectations from home? We shall see.
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I had fun making a few Google Forms. The last time I made one and linked it to Flubaroo was four years ago when I taught sixth grade. Since then, in third grade, I have not felt the need to use it. But now after having experimented a bit I can see its benefits. I stated out just playing around with the different features and made a silly form:
Here's the link Then I made a very short math quiz on fractions to see how to use Flubaroo. I was unable to make Flubaroo work. (This was not unexpected.): Here's the link Then I made two environmental surveys. I might be able to give these to my students this year if we get distance learning up and running. Or, I may use them next year. The data from these would have helped my capstone project. It may still. I used the add on called Form Limiter to limit the time frame in which answers can be given. I still need to work on Flubaroo. While the other add ons looked amazing, I just can't picture myself using most of them....yet? I think that for Flubaroo to really work I would need some responses. Feel free to fill out my forms, if anybody reading this has the time and interest. Not sure why these links are not active. I cut and pasted into the address bar and they worked. Environmental Attitudes: Here's the link. Environmental Affect: Here's the link. My project is in an unexpected upheaval. I'm busy trying to adjust it. The way it's turning out, I think this new idea, born out of adversity, has the potential to be a more compelling and repeatable capstone project. What happened is our nature preserve field trip was cancelled due to Corona Virus precautions. (Our first field trip was ALMOST cancelled due to the October Kincade fire.) My original plan was to do a second nature report based on this second field trip. I was going to compare nature reports done in both tech and non-tech integrated formats. I was going to compare results to see how the integration of photos and data retrieved from nature apps improved my students' ability to communicate their scientific findings.
I actually found out about the cancellation a half an hour after picking up 11 iPads from Mario at NapaLearns. He graciously installed the nature apps I was unable to install on the iPads from our school due to our district's technology use policies. Now I have these iPads that are not under "lock down" to continue my project, but am unable to carry out the original plan. The freedom these new iPads have given us, even for students to be able to take them home, (which Mario is looking into), awoke an idea I had at the beginning of this inquiry but which I discarded because my students can't take our school devices home. Limited access to technology became a barrier, which has now been somewhat overcome. Let's back up and look at the background and needs that I perceived at the beginning of this project. At my school, both parents and teachers are concerned with the increasing amounts of time their kids are using screens, both in and out of the classroom. Through research I discovered that negative trends in child health, and especially among minority groups, have been linked to increasing use of screen based technologies and decreasing outdoor play. In addition, as children move toward indoor environments, their awareness of the environment, and their interest in advocating for its health, declines. My driving question became: How can educators use handheld devices to increase student interaction with the outdoors and awareness of the environment? My new plan is not dependent on field trips. It is taking the shape of an outdoor photography homework unit. It follows the Flipped Classroom model. The photos students will be taking are aligned to our 3rd grade NGSS science standards. Students take photos of different aspects of nature in their community, and share those photos for peer feedback in class on Padlet. Each Padlet will be saved, and the end product will be a student report in Google Slides or Prezi on the NGSS area of "connections in the environment", for example. This project has the potential to increase parent involvement because I will require the students to be accompanied by a parent while they are outdoors taking pictures. The project has the potential to increase student interaction with outdoor environments on a daily basis. I will be able to get some data here with pre and post surveys on the amount of time they are spending outdoors. It has the potential to increase student peer review and collaboration through the frequent Padlet sharing that will go on in class around the photos they took in their neighborhoods. This project also has the potential to be used as a distance learning curriculum for situations similar to our current four week Corona virus close down. I see great potential in developing this idea to include a well developed, unit by unit, flipped classroom science curriculum, or at least a fun Peace Corps project. The key is in knowing what to ask the students to take pictures of and how to discuss/report their findings in class. It would take some creativity to create the lessons. This link will work if you cut and paste it into the address bar. At least it did for me. It's a link to the short video I created on Adobe Spark about how teachers might use the app called iNaturalist into their science instruction. iNaturalist is a social media tool because students are able to share and discuss their nature observations with a worldwide community of scientists and naturalists.
https://spark.adobe.com/video/O6FCoCyjHqsrq How can/Should social media be used to help you develop/collaborate/communicate as a professional? What are the critical issues to consider? One way I use social media is to communicate with parents through Class Dojo. It's a great way to share news and photos with parents. We can also privately send messages to each other. Honestly I do not use this app to award or take away Class Dojo points. I just can't seem to get used to using my phone to incentivize my students. I've tried to use it, but I always forget. I feel it gets in the way of our interaction. Other teachers love it and use it all the time. ANYWAY, another way my school uses social media is to communicate with parents on a district level. Our district office publishes a digital news flyer once a month to share stories. I just found out our district also has a Facebook account. I do not use Facebook, so when someone messaged me and told me I was "famous", I didn't know what they were talking about. Turns out a photo from Read Across America Day of my class was on Facebook. I quit Facebook a few years ago. I did this because never felt the need to share my stories or photos online. When I went on Facebook, the same few people were always sharing theirs and I got tired of it. I also felt guilty that I never shared anything. In addition, advertisements invaded the platform to such an extent that they became the majority of the content I was seeing. I got tired of that. Social media in general does not appeal to me because I feel it distracts me from being able to "be here now". I'm really interested in simplifying my life and finding comfort/inspiration/meaning in the immediate world and people around me. Is this because of my age? I was born in 1970 and grew up without social media. I don't seem to need or want it now. However, tonight's assignment was an eye opener. I had been looking for more ideas for my capstone project. I specifically am looking for more ways to integrate technology into outdoor education. I was struggling to find new ideas. Learning to hashtag on Twitter and Instagram showed me how to connect with other people who are interested in the same thing, worldwide. This is a powerful way to communicate and collaborate! I DO plan on using Twitter and Instagram to "join the conversation" on how to get kids outdoors and learning about the environment. What would you do if you were to come across an inappropriate post made by one of your students outside of the school. Do you address the post and, if so, how? Whom do you involve in the conversations? What considerations must you make in determining your course of action? As far as I know, my third graders are not using social media. They do interact online with other students in video games like Fortnite. In my class, they ALL LOVE the math game called Prodigy because they each have an avatar and can interact in online digital worlds. It fascinates them. The problem is that's all they want to do on there. They get in these rooms together and chat but don't do enough math, in my opinion. So I limit them on the Prodigy. If I ever did find out they were doing inappropriate posts out of school, I'd go to my principal and tell her. I'd feel uncomfortable dealing with that kind of situation without informing her about it. It'd be good to know if our school has a social media policy as described in this ICARE's readings. “Being a Tech-Savvy Educator doesn’t have to be either daunting or complex. It doesn’t mean completely changing our practices or abandoning what already works. It means looking to the tools of technology to supplement those strong pedagogical practices already in place.”
This quote from http://blog.web20classroom.org made me feel better. Maybe I’m uncomfortable using new tech in the classroom because I’m older (49), and did not grow up in a tech driven world. But there’s more to it. All of the choices out there are in fact daunting and complex. The myriad of apps and programs out there are competing for our adoption. Each teacher at our school does, in fact, approach these resources with some form of personal learning plan. We all supplement, (or replace), our core text based curriculums with a variety of programs. While the Common Core standards do guide all of us in our instruction, we are all using slightly different tools to address them. In my classroom, for example, a list of resources we use on a weekly basis looks like this:
This last resource I mention, Google Slides, is actually what I’m planning to use for my next cycle of data collection with my students for my capstone project. My plan is to have the kids take photos using the iPads on our next outdoor field trip to Pepperwood Preserve. Then, they will upload those photos into their Google Classroom slide presentation of the trip. They will do an animal report of an animal that lives in the Pepperwood habitat. The photos will be of the habitat and any plants or animals they see there. I have also taught them to upload photos and videos from the Internet. I want to compare their ability to communicate information in this tech supported format vs a paper and pencil format. We already did the paper and pencil projects. I mentioned in class last week that I was running into trouble getting photos or videos that the kids take from their iPads into the Chromebooks and Google slides. Our district does not give them access to their Gmails until 7th grade. I got some good tips last class on how to skirt around this issue by using different methods. I snapped photos of the chatroom suggestions so that I would not forget the great tips both professors and students gave to me. I brought home an iPad and a student’s Chromebook in order to fiddle around with. Applying the Dervin, Baggio, and Clark Readings to my Project
The best way I could think of to apply what I’ve learned from the Dervin, Baggio, and Clark readings has been to design a set of lessons to teach my students how to create and present animal reports in Google Slides. Here’s a working draft of my plan. Following the Clark guidelines for effective training, I have designed a “learning object”, which in this case is a method for training students to be able to create and present Google Slides presentations. The Clark reading helped me to think about how to best present and teach in a structured manner the skills my students will need to create and present Google Slides presentations. Following the Instructional Systems Design principles, the teaching will focus on two phases: analysis and design, and development. In the analysis and design phase, I focus on needs assessment (who needs what?), task analysis, (what knowledge and skills?), learning objectives, (what will learners be able to do?), and assessment, (were learning objectives reached?). In the development phase, I will focus on development, (instructional materials), try out/revision, and implementation, (pilot testing of materials). This will happen while students create the presentations and during the presentations to their peers. In the design phase, I decided to make the slide presentation pre-formatted. This will help my third graders immensely. Students only need to be able to fill in text and photos. It is geared to grades 2,3,4. The ultimate goal of this training is for students to create and present slide presentations on animals that live in the local ecosystem. The training begins with teacher presentations modeling and presentations. It goes on to practice activities that are designed to develop students’ ability to perform the following tasks:
Students will be trained on finding information from the Internet and presenting it in their slides presentations. This is the part of the lesson where I think about the Dervin reading. One of my biggest burning questions is how I might better assist my students in “gap bridging” as they make sense of information they find on the Internet. Because so many of them are ELLs, and because they are so young, this has always been a challenge. They are still developing much of the vocabulary needed in order to understand the information they find. I need to go back and re-read the last section of the Dervin article to look for insights here. Students will be doing “sense making”. They will be responding to the prompts on the slides. They will be “bridging gaps” in their understanding through web searches. Finding the correct information that is age appropriate for this audience can be a challenge. I will need to show them search engines designed for kids, and how to read articles in order to find answers to questions. The key skills involved here are:
Students need to be trained on how to find and insert images that are from the common domain.
If it does not happen this year, a goal for next year is to have our iPads updated with a number of quality outdoor apps. As long as they get the school’s wifi signal we will be able to use them outdoors on campus. For the real outdoor tech integration we would be doing in the field we would need smartphones with satellite/tower connection. Next, I will adapt the animal report outline that we used after our Fall field trip (paper and pencil) animal presentations into a slideshow presentation. I will use the Baggio CRAP principles to design a slideshow template for my students to fill out and present. It will be 3rd Grade user friendly for the students to insert photos, text information, and sources used. Each slide will contain a student friendly writing prompt in a text box aligned to the left. Font size will be pre-selected to be big enough to see, in a font that is appropriate for audiences to read. Background color on each slide will be neutral so as not to interfere with the message. Each slide will follow the same format so as not to create confusion. It will not allow for too much text per page. Photos will be inserted on the right. Students will be taught how to make each photo reflect the text. They will follow this format: Slide 1. Name: (With a picture of the student) Slide 2: My animal is: Slide 3: To which group does your animal belong? Why? Slide 4: What is your animal’s habitat? (Include countries and the ecosystem name.) Slide 5: What size is your animal? Weight: Height: Length: Slide 6: What does your animal look like? Slide 7: What does your animal eat? What eats your animal ? Slide 8: How long does your animal live? Slide 9: What are the babies of your animal called? Slide 10: Interesting fact 1: Slide 11: Interesting Fact 2: Slide 12: Is your animal endangered? Why or why not?: Slide 13: A question I still have about my animal. Note: If I am able to integrate nature apps into our next field trip experience, additional slides may be needed to show which plants and animals students were able to identify from the animal’s habitat. Once the presentations are made, then students will present their findings to the class, parents, school admin, and maybe even staff from Pepperwood Preserve in a slideshow presentation. I just bought a portable microphone speaker system to assist in these presentations. Students will demonstrate their ability to present based on a rubric which measures quality of: Delivery, Content/Organization, and Enthusiasm/Audience Awareness. |
AuthorJeremy Smith teaches third grade at Calistoga Elementary School. Archives
July 2020
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