My first feeling upon going over these capstone projects has been one of intimidation. They are all so great! How can I ever hope to create a website that has so much great information and is such a great resource for teachers? My project is only half way completed! It's going to be a long summer of hard work. I'm in my growth mindset and ready for the challenge, but I doubt my end product will be as complete as these examples. I'm just not satisfied with what I was able to get done before the Covid-19 crisis struck. The creators all did such a great job of presenting their inspiration, resources, methods, data, conclusions, and directions for the future. I decided to do deep dives on the ones by Ellison and Cerda. It looks like Ellison teaches technology, and while her research will be best used by other technology instructors, the strategy of gamifying the classroom has possibilities for all teachers. Teachers can motivate their students by switching traditional points to XPs or experience points, without even changing the kind of assignments they give. Students can relate to "leveling up" and earning recognition in the form of digital badges. While her project idea was inspiring, she failed to convince me on its effectiveness through clear presentation of pre and post data. Does gamification produce markedly better results from what she was doing before? I did find in her research paper a discussion of the impact of learning coding on student performance. I'm not very good at reading quantitative data results, and her results were confusing for me. I could not get a clear picture of how her gamification worked and how it proved to motivate her students. It might just be me being a poor reader of data, however. I feel like I'm being harsh here, especially when I consider my own data and what I actually did with my kids, but we were asked to practice being critical of our peers so here is my shot at it. What I most appreciated in her website were the links to resources that I might use if I decide to gamify my own classroom. Cerda also had great resource links to show how he integrated video making into his instruction in order to motivate his students with 21st Century skills. I like how he included links to the reading we did in class, as well as student resources and teacher resources for making videos with students. In addition, he linked the scholarly articles that inspired him to try this method of instruction. Gosh, I'm going to have to learn how to use visual icons as links! I admit, I have never done this before. Ahem. I also liked how clear Cerda's site is. I could navigate it easily. I liked his focus on English learners and how the techniques he implemented improved their learning. In his research paper he shows this with clear graphs that were easier for me to understand. He compared their results with those of his EO or English dominant students. This is an important topic, especially in Dual Immersion schools like the one Cerda teaches in. There were some things missing in his website. The sections on the Design Process and Support and Next Steps were unpopulated, I believe. Did his site inspire me to want to try out video making in the classroom as an instructional strategy, however? Yes!
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Reflections on TPACK in Distance Learning How do you make sense now of your perception of the delicate balance between technology, pedagogy, and content as you try to practice TPACK?
I think it's very fitting to address the complex interplay of Content, Pedagogy, and Technology within the sudden, radically different distance learning context. My perception of this interplay has certainly been enhanced due to the current Covid-19 crisis. Knowing the TPACK model has helped me to navigate the sudden changes with a bit more success than I would have otherwise had. It's difficult to know which area to start discussing, since they are so interdependent. Let's just start with Pedagogy. Knowing best practices in this new context is difficult. What I am using is my knowledge of my third grade students' abilities and interests, as well as their parents' abilities and interests. I know my students struggle to maintain concentration for extended periods on tasks that are not motivating, or too difficult to understand and complete independently. The recommendation for third grade is that children should not be doing lessons for more that 2-3 hours a day. My weekly plan consists of tasks that I hope the students will find interesting, that don't take too long, and that they can perform without much adult support, if any. This is a hard time for parents. Many are still working and do not have the regular school day to help them do it. There are parents who can help more than others. I provide all my plans in Spanish and English in case they are able to support their children at home. Much about what is good pedagogy in distance learning is still be figured out by all of us. Luckily, as far as Content goes, there are a wide variety of resources that support our core content standards and yet fit the bill for distance learning. I have been able to link our core reading curriculum and its digital resources into my lesson plans. Students can access the stories and either read them or have them be read to them. I'm avoiding the more difficult and some might say boring grammar lessons. They seem impractical to try to teach in this context. I'm focusing on the core themes and asking students to respond the readings with what I hope are engaging writing prompts. It has been wonderful to have several digital learning programs that are self paced and that provide immediate feedback and rewards. Specifically I'm thinking of Lexia and Freckle Reading. Kids respond really well to these kinds of learning platforms and are able to maintain concentration for more extended periods. It is also great to have access to Epic, which is an online resource for quality, interesting reading material. It has thousands of titles. There are many reading levels, and there are also books in Spanish for my newcomer student. For science, I have simply been asking them to watch Mystery Science mini-lessons, and take short quizzes afterward on Google Forms. The videos are very interesting for the kids! I feel bad they don't have more "hands on" experiences. I DID do an outdoor photo scavenger hunt project, as part of my action research, that went really well at first, but with the fears growing about the virus we have stopped it. P.E. has the YouTube channel called GoNoodle if kids want to move around. Our art teacher has recorded art lessons on YouTube which we share out with the kids. In math, I have been recording and sharing out lessons, too! Thank goodness these classes have given me a head start on using the video recording and Zoom technology knowledge to be able to do this. Which brings us to the third TPACK element: Technology. Zoom has been vital, of course, to maintain any semblance of a classroom of kids. We use it to meet twice a week. In our Zoom meetings we socialize. We go over the previous days' math homework. We do fun stuff like travel on Google Earth to Paris. I also use Zoom to record my lessons because I figured out how to use my iPad as a doc camera there, and share videos and whiteboards. I bet I could also record these lessons directly on YouTube, but since I learned to do it on Zoom, I'm sticking with that, for now. Without Google Classroom, none of this could be happening the way it is. It's our platform to share out the weekly lesson plans with all of the necessary links to videos, resources, and lessons. Let's call it my ICARE. Class Dojo has been an amazing tool to communicate with families and share our learning and art with each other. Without this technology, I hate to think about how much more limited learning would be during these times!!!! So, if we use our imaginations we can see how these three areas overlap in this strange context. I've already written too much, so I'll let anyone who might still be reading this respond to that in comments. I just wanted to close with one funny frustration in TPACK ala Distance Learning. As many of you may already know, running a class in Zoom is disorientating and frustrating at times. To add to the normal frustrations, I have had an additional one. My son and I are at my dad's house in Kansas right now to give him a hand. (Talk about DISTANCE learning.) My son decided to cook pizza the other day during my class. As you can guess, the smoke alarms went off. Disaster. My dad also has a parrot. Guess what? It learned to sing like a smoke alarm. Now the parrot interrupts class. Whew. Blog about how you incorporate gaming, gamification, game thinking into your class. How? What are your objectives? Consider the following:
Wow. This session's material on gamification was eye opening. It helped me to understand my son a lot better, for one. He's really into games. He plays Red Dead Redemption, Battlefield 1, and other "first person shooter" games of the sort. Unlike my third graders, he outgrew Fortnite. I always knew that games gave people a sense of accomplishment and a system of rewards that are not always so accessible in real life. They also provide adventure when this is not always possible in our day to day lives. My fear has always been that if kids gets too dependent the dopamine they get in video games, it would stifle their desire to get these feelings by venturing out into the "real world" and doing "real things" like learning to play the guitar, or playing sports, or meeting with friends in person, for example. I always saw it as a passive activity of consuming media rather than an active and creative "real skills" exercise that might help them in the "real world". So the speakers in the videos really helped me to accept that this new Generation G is here to stay, and that video gaming can be more positive than I thought. Gabe Zichermann helped me understand that the "real world" has changed, that I'm getting old and out of touch, and that the best thing I can do for my relationship with my son is to stop fighting it and enter the game world with him. I especially liked how Jane McGonigal is trying to find a way to use the positive aspects of gaming, (blissful productivity, social fabric, urgent optimism, and epic meaning), in order to solve the big environmental problems our world is having today. Can it be done? Can we really use video games to improve the world? I always thought it was a form of escapism from the world rather than a way to change the future. I hope she has great success. This topic makes me think of my capstone project and how it has turned my attention to virtual reality as a way to interact with the natural world. The Covid-19 pandemic made me consider this option. If kids CAN'T get outdoors and experience nature, then maybe the next best thing IS virtual reality, or, a gaming experience. This just might be the only way many kids ever do get to experience natural environments. The problem here is that the health benefits of being in nature are lost. A lot of hard core gamers don't look that healthy. Are human beings evolving in a physical sense to be more indoorsy, and is this ok? Another question is, when people turn to games and away from being outdoors, is this good or bad for the outdoors? I have read that it's bad because when kids don't know nature they won't be interested in defending it. But you could argue that it is good for the outdoors because kids are not out there stomping on bugs and and shooting birds with bb guns. Maybe the environment will be better off if we stay indoors and get all of our desires met in virtual worlds. One last topic: I'm struggling with Class Dojo. Specifically, I can't seem to get used to rewarding my kids with Dojo points, even though I know, even more now after watching the gamification videos, they love to feel rewarded. The games they play in class that give rewards, such as Prodigy and Freckle, show me this. Other teachers do Dojo points and seem to have great success. I've always just given verbal praise and corrections and it seems to work, but with that, the parents can't share the success or failure. (The Dojo points their kids win or loose at school are visible to them on their phones.) Am I out of touch? I just can't get used to pulling out my phone and pausing to give or remove points during the day. Am I right to say that I'm fostering intrinsic motivation by not relying on this points system, or is that just an excuse for me not getting on board with new technology? Blog this week about what’s on your mind and what you’ve learned from this program that’s helped you transition to remote learning. What insights do you want to share with others, your administration, etc.
In an overarching sense, just being open to innovation and not seeing big changes as problems but rather as opportunities, has helped me to have the right attitude in this stressful transition to distance learning. We are now being required to teach this way. It will probably end soon. The lessons we have learned from this shock to the system will stay with us and change our teaching forever. A few of the concrete, technical skills I've learning in this class that have helped me are a familiarity with Zoom, an ability to create a quiz in Google Forms, the ability to record myself in a lesson in Zoom that includes a doc cam and Wacom device. I'm doing all of these things for 5 math lessons a week in my distance learning. I share the videos through YouTube. Those are probably the main technical skills that this program has helped me with. Also the increased familiarity with linking content has been a big help. Doing all of this has always felt to me kind of like wading in a muddy pond where you don't know where it's safe to step because you can't see the bottom and you have to go slow and feel around for every step. Now, the waters are starting to clear and I am stepping forward with more ease. I'll include a copy here of my weekly distance learning plan. This has taken qite a bit of energy in the last few weeks. It's kept me from my DQ! Wait that's an excuse. I'm so bummed about my stalled research that I am having a hard time motivating to write the DQ Analysis as an unfinished product. Hopefully, my shareable link will share with you all. I think it will! https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AwqvbLdD1xaEIvdAGOVS-4jPbajlAs1iy5ZZvWafqQc/edit?usp=sharing I want to give live, online math lessons from our My Math workbook to my students. I just spent 2 hours trying to set up my iPhone as a document camera and record lessons on Screencastify and/or Zoom. The doc cams are either sold out or too expensive on Amazon. Also, it would take a month for one to get here. I was unsuccessful in turning my iPhone into a doc cam. I tried three different apps from the app store that were supposed to do this. None of them worked for what I needed them to work for. The myriad of glitches, compatibility issues, bad instructions, advertisement overload in the free versions, and my own ignorance has made this night, if not a complete waste of time, then an amazing learning experience. I'm trying to keep my growth mindset intact. Check out the cool doc camera stand I WAS able to make with the left over wood from the kitchen table I made yesterday. Just strap an iPhone in under the swim goggle strap stapled on top, and record amazing distance learning lessons! The hardware was way easier for me than the software. Well, stay tuned as I add to this blog tomorrow. I will continue to read about flipped classrooms, and dream of the day I'll be able to figure out how to record a video to do one.
Next day: This morning I had better luck with iMovie. Here's a link to the video I made about the Nature Photo Scavenger Hunt. https://youtu.be/eCyFiTEuuEg The kids liked this project. I just sent the link out on Class Dojo. I announced we can make another video with even more participants if everybody, (safely), gets outdoors and takes photos. Yeah! Ok, my next project is to TRY to record a video of myself with a Wacom device (my wife's), connected to the computer. I'll try explaining equivalent fractions in the Khan Academy style. I will be doing this in distance learning. I love how this class is lending itself so well to me training up for the next two months of distance learning. Next Day: Success! Wow. Is it just me or is getting this kind of thing to work too difficult? I can't begin to explain all of the difficulties I had in, one, figuring out what to use, two, using it, three, making the pieces work together, and four, share the product. It makes me feel like we humans are still in the early stages of tech integration into our projects. You should just be able to say something like: "Siri, I want to do an online meeting with my students where I share a video from YouTube on equivalent fractions, have a whiteboard to do further explanations, and am able to show our workbook with a doc cam. Please give them all immediate feedback on their progress, and adjust the learning to their level. Oh yeah, please collect, grade, and enter all of their work into Illuminate for report cards." Good luck, right? Well, here's the practice video I was finally able to make on YouTube. https://youtu.be/pI1aIjPgB9s 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. 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. |
AuthorJeremy Smith teaches third grade at Calistoga Elementary School. Archives
July 2020
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