Tech Takeaways

Last Friday my educational technology class and I traveled to Grand Rapids, MI to attend the MACUL (Michigan Association for Computer Users in Learning) conference. I definitely enjoyed going to the conference and talking with educators from around the state and country; however, I left a little disappointed I wasn't able to see more examples of "how" people are using technology in their classrooms. Yet, throughout the day, this conference confirmed two very important concepts for me: conferences are great platforms for starting thoughtful or productive discussions about the use of technology and technology is something everyone agrees is necessary in the classroom, but all of us as educators have a responsibility to find ways where students are positively use technology to engage in substantial learning.

Throughout the day I was able to partake in discussion with not only my colleagues from the MAC program, but also with educational professionals in various fields. For example, one school’s principal talked about how they were implementing 1:1 technology next year. In this process they are going to have a group of students who are Google certified to be the student technology guru’s for their school. Their role would be to help staff and students with the implementation of this technology as well as help the administration and teachers collect feedback and try new ideas. I really like this ide of collaboration and involvement of students in the process of such a learning process. I also found that the conference started great discussions between my colleagues and I about technology and our urge to know more about how it can be implemented in our lessons to help students engage in learning that would be difficult to engage in without it.

As we had these discussions, we kept coming back to the question of although there are many ways to use technology - which one is really working to help students learn? I think this is one of the most important things to keep in mind when lesson planning. If it doesn’t allow for substantial advances in learning and student engagement, is it always worth it? During the day, I heard a few times a phrase similar to this “look at that iPad in the student’s hand, and the smile on their face, they are having fun - that’s learning.” I think as educator’s using best practices we always have to take it one step further – does that smile and fun actually result in learning? If so, is it substantial? As we attended the different sessions, I think all of us educators can agree that technology is necessary in the classroom; however, it is how we use it that we continually have to think about and work towards perfecting.

Overall I feel that my day at the conference gave me a big picture of how to think more about technology in my classroom. Technology is here, it is a part of our students’ lives, and it is always changing. As we continue to think about ways to incorporate in our classrooms, I believe it is important to always think of it through a critical lens and collaborate with other educators to come up with best practices of utilizing it in the classroom now, as well as the years ahead.

The World of Webinars

When we were first asked to watch a webinar and share our thoughts, I have to say I wasn't that impressed. I had never attended one and it was a new experience, but I was fairly bored and got sick of watch the same powerpoint slide on the screen. I also wasn't sure how much I'd be able to pay attention if I attended one live. Upon first impression, I wasn't that impressed.

In our Teaching with Technology class this past week, instead of going to class like normal we were assigned a project where we would work with a partner or a small group to design and give a webinar presentation on a Web 2.0 tool and its uses in the classroom. Although unfamiliar with the process of creating a webinar, it was a good learning experience which involved research, getting to know our Web 2.0 tool, creating slides, and scripting or outlining what we wanted to highlight in the 20 minutes allotted.

When it came to the week of our presentation we did a run through to make sure we understood how all the technology and functions worked, and invited some of our friends who weren't in the class to watch. This turned out to be extremely helpful because it made us aware of small technicalities that we needed to fix and familiarized us with the Blackboard Collaborate program which we were to use to give the presentation. On the actual day of our webinar, I felt really prepared, but like always technology can choose when it doesn't want to function! One aspect I really liked about the webinar, was that although we had malfunctions (our slides for the presentation weren't showing up) I felt like we were able to more easily surpass this problem because we didn't have a live audience. One of us was able to continue to present while the other handled the difficulties. Although it was a little stressful in the moment and disappointing because we may not have been able to share everything we had planned and practiced, the technology allowed us to do a bunch of behind the scenes work that didn't really interrupt the flow of our presentation too much - this is something I really liked about the webinar presentation!

Also, when it came time to watch everyone else's, I can't say I was that enthusiastic about it because the one I had previously watched for our assignment wasn't all that interested or engaging for me. However, I really enjoyed listening to everyone's webinars! I think they were full of personality and that everyone worked hard to make them engaging and interesting. They weren't too long and for that reason they kept you on your toes, because if you got side tracked for just a second you may have missed something. Overall, the experience I had on Thursday night watching everyone's webinar was great!

As for webinars as a tool for teaching, I think given constraints in technology in many cases, webinars are difficult to do within the K-12 educational system. Even if pre-recorded and watched in the school, the live interaction is lost and that is what I found most engaging in comparison to the pre-recorded ones I had watched before. Overall I think that webinars would be a great way for teachers to participate in teacher development with others throughout the country (or the world!) but that for educational purposes I would find them challenging to use in my current setting, for example, in a middle school.

Juggling Two Worlds

"If growing up in an analogue world was challenging for teens in the past, today's growing generations must juggle two worlds - one which will be there forever." 

This quote comes from a blogger I've been following, Ana Cristina (check out her blog CristinaSkyBox), in her post titled Shackled to the Web. I found this post to be extremely relevant to topics we've discussed in our "Teaching with Technology" class about digital natives and our role as teachers to help students understand their digital responsibilities. I felt that this quote adequately summed up one of the major themes that comes with a lesson of this type and that is to remember that whatever you post online is available to everyone, all the time, basically forever. 

Within her post, she talks about how students don't always remember this and they end up saying or publishing things that they believe to be okay in their "digital world" but that everyone knows is something you would never do in person. The challenge for us as teachers who teach digital responsibility is then to help the students understand, that even though these interactions are occurring face to face, they are still coming from the same origin-you! And the digital world is less forgiving than the so-called "real word" because what happens there could be tied to you forever. 

I found it really interesting that she also talked about this generation of students as the generation of learners. She made the point that although students may have made mistakes, she would hope that people in the future wouldn't hold it against them as a person, but understand that they were involved in this learning process of managing their etiquette in two worlds. I had never thought of it this way before. I think I grew up somewhat during the begininng of the popularity of the digital world (instant messaging, email, myspace, Facebook, etc.), my parents always telling me to never put any important information on the web, no pictures, nothing that would have people knowing anything about me. I actually never had a myspace, had limited time allotted to use instant messaging, and didn't have a Facebook until college because of this skepticism. I feel like I am still very reluctant to create accounts or profiles online and I acknowledge the fact that online image is an important part of what people see about you. But since this is so much a part of our world now, and students younger and younger have technology, when students don't know their responsibilities and things end up online, will people view this as a negative part of their history, or part of the learning process of our society in the digital world we are now adapting to?

Either way, I think her post brought up great points about the continued need to help students understand that although they live in essentially two worlds (the "real" world and the "digital" ones), it is necessarily to incorporate it into our classrooms but also to make sure students understand how they exists in both worlds.

New Curiosities

When I think of technology in school, I’m still stuck in thinking about computers, projectors, and tools like PowerPoint. Our technology class has showed me various options for different free online technology tools that could be implemented in the classroom but yet I have a hard time seeing how many of these will have a positive impact and enhance student learning in a world language classroom. Mostly, I think I’m fearful that setting up or getting starting with technology could take up meaningful time out of class, and if the technology too isn’t going to have a significant impact on my students, I’m not sure I see the benefit.

After doing the technology in my placement survey, I learned about even more programs that were being used within the middle school I was working at. And I think that although there are many technologies that are utilized for the reasons I’ve mentioned above aren’t used again, there are others that are used everyday. The everyday types of tools that I found most intriguing to learn more about were those being used for students with disabilities, as this is something I haven’t learned a whole lot about before. I’ve learned about some of the many different programs that can be used for different challenges students might face. Some students have programs that help with sight-reading and spelling words and some have scanners that put their books electronically so that they can program bookwork and worksheets to permit them to type in their answers.

Working with paraprofessionals at my school has allowed me to learn more about how these tools help the students with disabilities; however, a few times I’ve find myself working with the students one-on-one because the paraprofessional doesn’t speak Spanish. Because of these experiences, I believe that learning more about how technology can help students with disabilities and thinking about how this relates to a world language classroom will help make better accommodations. I am curious in how I can work with the paraprofessionals and these tools to help the students even more. 

Capzles Connections in the Classroom

In our class this semester we were broken up into groups to present in class on a “tech tool.” My group was assigned Capzles. Capzles is a time-lining tool that can be used to organize and express ideas linearly. There are a few different features of Capzles that I particularly enjoyed. For one, it is free to join and the steps to insert picture, text, music, and backgrounds are outlined clearly. The ability to put items in order and tag the date for each item within the timeline is a feature that I found neat. Since our last class focused on building student portfolios, I noticed the potential that Capzles could provide for this. It automatically tags the date for you (helps you to keep track of everything in the portfolio) and is easy to navigate in order to look for a particular assignment or photo that was posted. Cazples also provides a unique feature because you can put in music (or any sound) to play throughout the presentation. As a world language teacher, I thought this would be useful for listening activities in the classroom. Some of the Capzles I found on Spanish topics included native voiceovers that narrated the pictures. In my World Language methods class, we recently talked about how allowing the students to listen to authentic materials, even at an introductory level is important; however, if the text seems overwhelming to students they will try to translate everything in their head and thus they won’t be actually paying attention to the details of the narration. Therefore, Capzles offers an opportunity to have students listen to a narration, but will also have photos to help focus in their attention to the more important details of the speech.

During our presentation we had our colleagues get into groups based up their teaching areas and create a quick Capzle. Although these are rough outlines of how it could be used because of the time that was given to complete it, our colleagues were able to become familiar with the way that Capzles functioned. Here is what they came up with:

Math: http://www.capzles.com/c942d186-97ba-4dcd-96fe-389587690e31

Science: http://www.capzles.com/c5612468-cdf5-4715-a921-2d9d9e255ecf

Social Studies: http://www.capzles.com/#/e98d7199-34bd-48b2-834a-0345e2a93e2b/

World Language: http://www.capzles.com/#/3b87b585-b8d3-48a9-ac4a-0d43aaa93aa7/

English: http://www.capzles.com/#/dfb17fbc-bbad-4696-8f79-187f781e858a/

Overall I think Capzles offers an interesting tech tool because it provides yet another way for presentations and projects to be done in the classroom. When asked, 6/11 of our colleagues would use Capzles in the classroom. Some of the ways they suggested they would do this were:

• "The stacking feature! It would be cool to organize units with a few documents or key media. If we ever went over a systematic or procedural topic, Capzles would be perfect."
• "It could be useful as a way for students to aggregate their notes (in science) since science notes tend to be rather dense. Having the dating on each thing could be used to create a chronology of developments of science on a timeline that is seldom made so students may be able to see how developments build upon each other." 
• " It would be good for creating a character map or plot structure review-we could go back after each chapter as a class and add new info."

But as always, there are pros and cons to using any technology in the classroom. Like any technology, it can decide not to function properly. During the work time in the presentation, many of our colleagues experienced difficulties with the website loading slowly. They also found that finding videos, pictures, or documents and then uploading them to be a long process. One main takeaway I had from learning Capzles and giving our presentation is that Capzles is a quick and easy tech tool if you have all the adequate materials already saved on your computer, otherwise, the hassle of finding them (especially videos) can be daunting and time consuming. Given our short time, and some technical difficulties, Capzles didn't appear to be the best tool for many of my colleagues. The time it took to create and its strictly linear presentation made many of our colleagues share that because Prezi could provide a more holistic representation and PowerPoint was more dependable, they would tent to stick to using those programs. Capzles is a unique tool, but it appears to be better suited for some presentations and representations of information than others - and as with any technology used when teaching, it is important to think critically about the purpose that it is serving and what the students are going to get out of it!

Digital Portfolio through SLN's

After a quick break and an exciting new beginning, we’re back in la clase de tecnología. This past week we had a guest come to class to talk with us about building a Student Learning Network (SLN). A SLN is an online portfolio that students create to keep all their digital work organized. Although our guest speaker noted you could use a variety of social sites (Twitter, .., etc.), Google docs and Google sites was used as an example because a neighboring high school was using this system.  On each students’ SLN Google site they had to include class pages divided by level (where all their mastery assignments would go), link to their log in to check their grades, links to common sites they go to for educational purposes, and a screenshot of their class schedule. The students are taught how to do this as 9^th graders, their first year in the school, and are asked to “share” the link with their teachers. Through sharing this link their teachers have access to it but it is not public and will not show up in any search engines.

Upon introduction to SLN’s, I thought that the portfolio was unique because an SLN would allow for a student to track their progress throughout all of high school! This would not only be useful for teacher’s to get sense of where the student is academically, but also for the student to reflect upon and use to better themselves as a learner. It also serves as a great place to store those assignments you don’t want to throw out, but don’t necessarily know what to do with. (How many of you hung on to things from high school until one day you were like, “this is something I’d like to hang on to…but it’s really only collecting dust.”) If students had all these assignments in one place and as an electronic file, so as to not have to worry about losing or collecting piles of stuff, they would be of easier access when the time came that they did need them. This makes me think about the seniors, who might be able to look back across their high school learner journey through their SLN and use what they see as guidance in writing college admissions essays.

I also found what the guest speaker shared about the Google doc part of the SLN interesting. He talked about how in Google docs, you can share your assignment with your teachers, who are able to make comments right on the work. Through this method students are empowered because there is no giving up their work to the teacher, but rather it is more collaborative because they are sharing it. I found this statement an interested way to think about technology facilitating collaboration and student/teacher relationship.

I think overall the idea of an SLN is a great idea to help students in their academic journey through high school. The only drawback is that I worry about those kids who don’t have access to a computer outside of school. Of course there are school computers and the library, but some students still don’t have the means to stay after school. That is something to think about as student work is digitized.

Computer Based Testing

This week in class we discussed how some standardized tests are (or will be soon) given on the computer. I can see the advantages of this from an administrative standpoint, grading will possibly not take as long and results can be published quicker. However, I'm quite conflicted on whether this is actually good approach for the students.

As a class we listed many of the skills needed to take a test online that differ from the skills students need to take it on paper: typing skill and speed, spelling, and the ability to know how to note main ideas from a text on the screen when you can't actually use a highlighter or write in the margins. We talked about how there was different set of strategies or ways of thinking that would have to be taught in order to be successful on these tests and that it would be our jobs as teachers to help the students to learn these.

In order to get us thinking about how to do this, we first talked in our content area groups about ideas that we had for our classroom. Being a world language teacher who's subject is not actually on the particular test we were using as an example (the Smarter Balanced Assessment), it was difficult. We posed ourselves with the question: how do we teach the necessary skills and strategies needed to be successful on the test within lessons where we were teaching a foreign language. Since the subjects on the test are math and English, we focused more on the skills that would be needed for the English parts because in that way we could draw parallels between English and our foreign language (Spanish or French). It was really difficult, and although we came up with some ideas, they would definitely take a lot of time in planing in order to get them to function correctly and benefit the students. They would also be more difficult to implement given resource constraints.

Overall, by the end of class, I wasn't really convinced that testing from the computer was worth it. And by this I mean that I understand we are 21st century educators and that students are familiarized from a young age with technology. I understand that most are extremely adequate at performing tasks on a computer. But I also think about the students who aren't. I think about that although there are strategies that we could teach to help students with these tests, some may still prefer paper and physically being able to scratch out answers or write notes. Maybe offering the option of a computer test, but not enforcing it would be a good idea? Like I said, I see why people are pushing for testing on the computer, but I'm not sure it's necessary or best. Thoughts?