The way the students identified and described the camouflaged animal pictures we discussed as a class, I thought all the students had a good understanding of the four types of camouflage (color, shape, mimicry and pattern). Then the assessment was done. When I read the answers to the form, which were nicely summarized by Google Forms, it became apparent that there were things misunderstood. A couple pairs talked about the texture of the animal. I don't recall myself or any student using the word texture to describe the animals/insects in the pictures we went through together. It wasn't clear to me what they were trying to convey when they used the word texture, so I would like to follow up with those students to understand what they meant. The answers also showed me that there was confusion about mimicry. There were pictures classified as mimicry that would have been more appropriate classified as something else. Mimicry is an area I would revisit.
I really liked how the Google Doc form was very simple to create and distribute and most of all how it organized the data for me. I could look through the answers all lined up together to see patterns among students or see that a particular pair of students having difficulty with a concept. I can then make modifications to my lesson to adjust for problem areas. Looking back, I would have liked to have read through the responses to the form while Sarah was doing her part of the project and then went over analyzed photos with the class when she was done. Knowing where the problem or questionable areas were would have helped me focus my efforts during such a review.
When I first made the form, I didn't include a question asking for the pair's names. As I was thinking more about how I would know who needs or doesn't need more assistance, I added it. I'm so glad I did. I will certainly keep that in mind with all my digital assessments.
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Content Delivery Organizer - Camo
To organize the lesson, Mindmeister and Google Docs were used. What I started with for my portion of the lesson was reviewing a larger tech project I was preparing on camouflage. I analyzed the information, ideas, strategies and technologies used in that project to determine what I thought were the key items to extract, use and modify to fit within a the shorter delivery time frame. By mapping it out on Mindmeister and in the more descriptive Google Doc, I could play it out in my mind and on paper how a more abbreviated lesson would come together. The organizing tools helped me refine, condense and connect the key information yet kept me mindful of the need for engagement. I personally found the Google Doc more helpful to me in building this lesson. It allowed me lay out the lesson in a structure that offered more detail and description. The detail helped me identify the where and how for student engagement taking place in the different parts of the lesson, which gave me a more critical eye for the things to cut, modify and add. By writing it, then reading and mentally visualizing it, then rethinking it, then re-writing and reading the new draft version, and so on, it helped me build the lesson and have it flow in a logical way that would link concepts. For example, in my larger tech project I created a construction paper board to illustrate camouflage through the use of color (visibility of color on light and dark backgrounds). I put it in my outline initially but then when I thought about the main point I wanted to make (colors blend in to create camouflage) and the time constraints with the lesson, which caused me to rethink the construction paper board's use, and ultimately came up with the bush/person example.
The content map offered limited value to me; however, I think it was helpful to my partner who could then have an idea of what I was going to cover without having to go into the detail I wanted/needed (and vice versa). It was a brief summary that could guide her through my lesson structure, and she could use the Google Doc if she wanted to in order to get additional detail. If I were preparing a lesson in the future with a partner, I would use a content mapping tool because of the value it gives to my partner and me by summarizing the key items and sequencing of those items to guide us through the lesson. I would also use the Google Doc or a similar tool for the reasons cited earlier. However, if I was going it alone, I would not use the mapping tool and only use the Google Doc. The mapping tool is not as value-added and doing it would be extra work, as my Google Doc provides the structure and detail that meets my needs.
The content map offered limited value to me; however, I think it was helpful to my partner who could then have an idea of what I was going to cover without having to go into the detail I wanted/needed (and vice versa). It was a brief summary that could guide her through my lesson structure, and she could use the Google Doc if she wanted to in order to get additional detail. If I were preparing a lesson in the future with a partner, I would use a content mapping tool because of the value it gives to my partner and me by summarizing the key items and sequencing of those items to guide us through the lesson. I would also use the Google Doc or a similar tool for the reasons cited earlier. However, if I was going it alone, I would not use the mapping tool and only use the Google Doc. The mapping tool is not as value-added and doing it would be extra work, as my Google Doc provides the structure and detail that meets my needs.
Lesson Delivery - Camo
There were a a few different strategies involved in teaching this lesson - collaboration, digital and non-digital visuals with discussion, a personal story about a game the class was familiar with to faciliate connection, physical use of a manipulative. There was work done collaboratively with a partner (during the assessment piece) and class participation (initial animal slides, apple and invisible man slide discussion). Visuals, both in digital and non-digital form, were provided and in conjunction with a discussion to make the learning more concrete. The discussion was done primarily in the form of open-ended questions, having students talk about what they saw in the pictures and how it related to camouflage. The initial question about the hide and seek game followed by the story/example of hiding behind the bush offered a personal connection that the class could relate to for understanding. Discussing camouflage in terms of people, animals and art offered a variety of connections that were complimented by the students' own pondering of our questions, which I believe helps them build analytical and critical thinking skills.
I believe having a discussion with use of questions is a good way to get the students to engage in critical thinking and problem solving. However, fewer individuals participated than I had hoped and some questions were answered by the same couple people regularly. It made me realize that if I want more involvement, then I need to find a way to increase participation. I may have needed to pair up students sooner and call on the pairs to answer questions, ask someone who hasn't already answered to answer, be more patient, rethink my questions to determine whether the wording is clear or offer different/additional questions. The reason I want more involvement is so I can assess whether all the students are really engaged and understanding the concepts along the way so I can hone in on the areas that may require more clarity.
I noticed that as we mixed things up (from question, to story, to picture discussion, to partner collaboration, to art topics,etc.) students continued follow along. I didn't notice anyone working on something else or looking elsewhere. The students appeared to stay focused on both of us throughout, and I attribute some of that to us changing things up over a relatively short period of time. This tells me that I need to be cognizant of time and be aware of changes in student behavior as an indicator that something may need to be changed, but if we move too fast the students may not be learning the concepts well enough. Doing this exercise it became more apparent to me that time ongoing assessment is very important so I can keep a good pace that maintains engagement while allowing the students sufficient time to learn.
The collaboration among the pairs was enlightening. Hearing the pairs' conversations where they would agree, disagree or question each other along with expressing their reasoning, logic and thoughts provided a way to do an informal assessment of understanding. I think it would have been more beneficial to have gone over the slides they assessed shortly after they submitted their responses so misunderstandings and errors could be addressed sooner than later. I would make that change going forward.
When I mentioned the hide and seek game and told my bush story, the faces of the students changed. This gave me the impression that they were listening and relating. Because they were familiar with the game and could relate to hiding places, it seemed to me that connections were starting to be created with this lesson. This reaffirmed to me the value of relating concepts to familiar things.
The apple too was a familiar item but I think the value was for the students to be touching and moving the object to watch how the light "changed" on it. The students were actively looking and moving their apples around to see the light and discern whether it changed or not. Seeing the students have a hands on opportunity that they seemed to enjoy and really think about was also an affirmation of the value that can come from appropriate physical manipulatives.
I believe having a discussion with use of questions is a good way to get the students to engage in critical thinking and problem solving. However, fewer individuals participated than I had hoped and some questions were answered by the same couple people regularly. It made me realize that if I want more involvement, then I need to find a way to increase participation. I may have needed to pair up students sooner and call on the pairs to answer questions, ask someone who hasn't already answered to answer, be more patient, rethink my questions to determine whether the wording is clear or offer different/additional questions. The reason I want more involvement is so I can assess whether all the students are really engaged and understanding the concepts along the way so I can hone in on the areas that may require more clarity.
I noticed that as we mixed things up (from question, to story, to picture discussion, to partner collaboration, to art topics,etc.) students continued follow along. I didn't notice anyone working on something else or looking elsewhere. The students appeared to stay focused on both of us throughout, and I attribute some of that to us changing things up over a relatively short period of time. This tells me that I need to be cognizant of time and be aware of changes in student behavior as an indicator that something may need to be changed, but if we move too fast the students may not be learning the concepts well enough. Doing this exercise it became more apparent to me that time ongoing assessment is very important so I can keep a good pace that maintains engagement while allowing the students sufficient time to learn.
The collaboration among the pairs was enlightening. Hearing the pairs' conversations where they would agree, disagree or question each other along with expressing their reasoning, logic and thoughts provided a way to do an informal assessment of understanding. I think it would have been more beneficial to have gone over the slides they assessed shortly after they submitted their responses so misunderstandings and errors could be addressed sooner than later. I would make that change going forward.
When I mentioned the hide and seek game and told my bush story, the faces of the students changed. This gave me the impression that they were listening and relating. Because they were familiar with the game and could relate to hiding places, it seemed to me that connections were starting to be created with this lesson. This reaffirmed to me the value of relating concepts to familiar things.
The apple too was a familiar item but I think the value was for the students to be touching and moving the object to watch how the light "changed" on it. The students were actively looking and moving their apples around to see the light and discern whether it changed or not. Seeing the students have a hands on opportunity that they seemed to enjoy and really think about was also an affirmation of the value that can come from appropriate physical manipulatives.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Hidden Agenda
Another construction paper board will be displayed showing pipe cleaner glued right next to each other in a clump to convey pattern hiding similar to zebras, where it's harder to discern how many pipe cleaner pieces are there and where the pieces start and end. This will be followed up with a picture of a herd of zebras to pictorially illustrate the pattern effect. Lastly, I will ask for a volunteer to help me. I'll quietly ask the person to stand by me and copy only my actions. Then I'll ask the class, what is <insert name> doing? This will be a way to introduce the vocabulary Mimicry, how we can mimick by acting like someone or looking like someone. I will show slides of animals mimicking other animals as another means to "hide". The presentation slides are at: http://www.slideshare.net/Tamara_Harmon/camouflage-imagesThe students will be paired up and asked to work together to analyze and classify 5 animal photos based on how they use camouflage, selecting color, shape, pattern and/or mimicry for each animal or insect. Their results will be recorded on a piece of paper. After getting the results, we'll go through the photo classifications as a class with students explaining their logic. Lastly, the students will be given construction paper and some animal photos to choose from to create their own camouflaged animal with explanation as to how and why they are camouflaged.
In this lesson, I used the digital technology PowerPoint as well as incorporated non-digital technologies. The PowerPoint presentation is used to merely make it easier for me to show the animal pictures on a large screen for the whole class to see. I've used Power Point before, so it was not something new I learned. However, Slideshare was new for me. Slideshare provided the avenue to get the Power Point slides linked in my blog and as a means to email the slides to the students for their analysis. Slideshare was easy to use. The only part that I was confused by at first was extracting the link. The instructions said to copy the entire Embed line. It was quite long and it seemed like there was way too much there to use for the link. I worked with it more and learned that after I copied the whole thing I could delete most of it and only show the blue line that would make the link work. I also used my iPhone to take pictures of my construction paper boards and then uploaded them into the blog. That was my first time doing that and it turned out to be quite easy and straightforward to do.
I really wanted to use non-digital technologies for this tech project. The non-digital technologies used were the construction paper boards, construction paper, animal pictures for cutting out, and any scissors, glue or drawing utensils needed by the students to make their camouflage animals. Also, having the student copy me to illustrate the vocabulary meaning for Mimicry is another non-digital tool.
This lesson incorporates prior learning theory, makes camouflage more concrete and provides for effective collaboration. Asking the introductory question about the game of Hide and Seek was to ascertain whether the students understand what hiding and seeking mean so it can be related to predators and the prey. Without having the actual animals in person to illustrate camouflage, using the construction boards and animal photos creates a more concrete way to learn about camouflage than just classroom discussion. The two visual forms (boards and pictures) help illustrate how color and pattern can be used to "hide". The animal evaluation exercise with a partner provides a collaborative way for students to strengthen their understanding of the concept, by talking together about it as they analyze and decide which criteria applies to each photo.
A higher level of thinking, as defined by Bloom's taxonomy, happens with this lesson. The students have to identify (knowledge) and compare (analysis) the initial construction paper boards, explaining why some colors are more "hidden" than others on the different colored backgrounds. They have to examine the animal photos with a partner (analysis) and choose the criterion that apply (evaluation) and then justify their reasoning (evaluation) when we discuss them as a class. Lastly, they create their own camouflaged animals (synthesis) using any of the ways we discussed. The critical thinking and decision making processes described fit within ISTE student standard 4.
The lesson has implementation struggles. On the digital end, I may have difficulty getting PowerPoint to operate properly in class. If so, presuming the Internet is accessible, I could access my Slideshare account and show the slides from there instead of PowerPoint. I have some websites of camouflaged animals I could go to also if Slideshare is done, though it's more jumping around and less focused. If the server for the classroom is down, I may not get the computer to work in any capacity, so I plan to have copies of the first set of PowerPoint slides with me to pass out and one I could speak to and show as I move around the room. I will have paper copies of the pictures for the analysis piece with me also, bringing only half the number of the class size as they will be working in pairs. The construction paper boards may be hard to see if not made large enough, and those with color blindness may have difficulty discerning the colors, particularly red and green. The boards will have other colors on it that should still help make the point, but I may need to provide some additional assistance to those with color blindness. In order to do the picture making project, different supplies are needed. It will be important to know supplies in advance and have some extras available just in case or have students share.
A trade-off of using PowerPoint to show the pictures is that the students all can see it at the same time on the screen, but depending on where they are seated in the classroom, the students will not all see it as clearly or as close. Those closer to the screen may have an advantage in identifying and analyzing the photos. The construction board comparison can help students see colors that standout and those that are more muted against the two backgrounds; however, the background colors and the pipe cleaner colors are imperfect representations of the colors in nature. Students may not see the night/day or seasonal connections. A bias with this lesson is that I'm only focusing on the use of camouflage for animals and not other things that use camouflage (i.e. military use, art).
In addition to meeting ISTE 4 that was discussed earlier, this lesson also meets ISTE student standard 5. The photos used in the PowerPoint presentation were all images found within Google Images that were labeled for re-use, and I attributed each photo to the owner. I will point out the credits under the photos and explain why they are there, illustrating and promoting digital citizenship. I also believe that ISTE standard 5 for teachers was met with this lesson. Although use of digital technology was not the focal point of this lesson, I can show colleagues the value of using non-digital technologies in addition to digital to make for an effective lesson.
Research article summary and evaluation
Rethinking Concrete Manipulatives by Douglas H. Clements and Sue McMillen (1996)
Teaching Children Mathematics, 2(5), 270-279. ©1996 by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.
http://investigations.terc.edu/library/bookpapers/rethinking_concrete.cfm
I thought this was an interesting article, speaking to the use of manipulatives to make learning more concrete. I agreed with the authors' cautionary use of manipulatives, laying out some of the limitations and trade-offs with manipulatives. I believe it is how a teacher uses manipulatives that makes them helpful and useful aids. In conjunction, it is important that the teacher is aware of the limitations, trade-offs and biases when determining how to incorporate them in a lesson. The authors discussed two types of concreteness, integrated and sensory, and stated that ideas are "not simply concrete or not concrete" (1996). They specifically noted that it is the level of connection and meaning for a math idea that makes it integrated concrete. This idea of connection aligns with research studies and discussion in my Topics in Math class. I believe connections are not limited to math, and believe connections facilitate learning in all subjects.
The authors used a significant portion of the article to promote using computer manipulatives. It was beneficial to hear the positive attributes of computer manipulatives for math, but quite disappointing that they only provided the one side. Trade-offs, limitations and biases were not discussed for the computer manipulatives. I disagree with this approach and think the authors should have provided a balanced discussion for more appropriate consideration of the tools. It also fails to promote the idea that teachers need to consider all sides to a manipulative when assessing its use, which is quite interesting given the last section of the paper they offer guidelines on selecting manipulatives including "Select computer manipulatives when appropriate". (1996)
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Wordsift for Habitat Learning
Wordsift is an assistive literacy tool designed to help teachers, and ultimately students, with vocabulary and academic language. This tool has a limited number of functions, yet offers varied ways for teachers and students to work with a text's vocabulary. Wordsift identifies and lists 50 of the most frequently used words from any text. This excludes articles such as "the". The user merely pastes text into a text box, then selects "Sift". The words are sorted alphabetically A-Z and the font is size-adjusted based on the word's frequency in the text, displaying them in what is referred to as a Tag Cloud. For example, the most frequently used word would be in the largest font, the second most frequent word is shown in the next font size down, and so on. The user has several sorting options. The words can be sorted based on commonality (common-to-rare or rare-to-common) or alphabetically (A-Z or Z-A). Users can highlight Tag Cloud words that are academic or those that are specific to a subject area. For example, I could have it highlight the words from the text that are science words or math words. The tool also has a visual dimension. When you click on any of the words in the Tag Cloud, Google Images will appear that provide a pictorial illustration for that word. Additionally, there is a Visual Thesaurus(R) that provides a diagram with related words, including synonyms and antonyms. When hovering over the selected word or its related word, a text box appears that provides definitions for the word. Below the thesaurus are sentences from the original text that include the word being explored. This provides context for the word in the actual text. At the end of this post is a screen shot from Wordsift so you can see how it looks.
I've created a 5th grade science lesson that uses Wordsift to teach what a habitat is and then specifically about grasslands and rain forests, while building student vocabulary. Please note that this lesson will be over a multi-day time period. The lesson starts with me running a Wordsift on a text that describes the word "habitat" for our topic; however, I will not disclose the topic name. I will display the results of the Tag Cloud for the class, and let them think about what they are seeing. I'll ask some questions to have them tell me why they think some words are bigger than others, how are the words ordered, what words they recognize and which ones are unfamiliar, and what words may go together and why. This initial thinking and exploring will prepare them for the next part, when they are put into teams of three to predict our lesson topic. When a team has its guess ready, I'll come check it to see if their answer is correct. If it is correct, then the next step is to create a definition of a habitat and provide an example. For those teams who are having difficulty, I'll have them select some words within the Tag Cloud they want more detail on. I'll use the Create Worksheet function and pull those words into it and drag images that match the words. More guidance will be offered if necessary. Once the teams are done, I will type the definitions into a PowerPoint presentation along with Google Images and applicable word diagrams from the Visual Thesaurus and we'll go through them as a class. I will finish this part by showing the full text on habitats that was used to create the Tag Cloud and have the students read to themselves. I'll address any remaining questions after they have read it.
The topic prediction followed by the team's sentence and example creation are in line with the prior knowledge component of learning theory. It allows me to understand what students know about a habitat before progressing into particular kinds of habitats. The students demonstrate their comprehension through the prediction, and apply that knowledge to create representative sentences and examples (Bloom's Taxonomy: knowledge, comprehension and application). This first level of the lesson also serves as an introduction to Wordsift and its capabilities, as the students observe me navigating and performing tasks within it. The site offers a brief video tour that walks a person through navigation, explaining and demonstrating the different functions. I will have the students watch this video before they get started on the second level.
The second level involves splitting the class, with half of the teams using Wordsift to learn about Grasslands and the other half to learn about Rain Forests. The work associated with this will result in the creation of a PowerPoint presentation, which I will use to assess student learning. To start, the teams will use text from National Geographic's website for their respective habitat to copy into Wordsift. By using this website, it provides a consistent and reliable resource. (http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/habitats/?source=NavEnvHab)
The teams will only copy the text below the habitat's picture on the site and stop at the Environmental Quizzes section. After the teams input the text and sift, they will select five Tag Cloud words they believe are significant and/or unfamiliar words, find a Google Image to represent each word's meaning, and use the Visual Thesaurus to pull word diagrams, noting any root words, synonyms and antonyms. The students will cut and paste this information into a PowerPoint page, and then add their own sentence for each of those words. These pages will be sent to me to review, correct and compile for use in the final project presentation document. This offers me another opportunity to examine what the teams understand. I can use this information to have them further explore Wordsift functionality or other tools to improve understanding for those still grappling with the vocabulary.
Level two continues with the teams using Wordsift functionality and the original text to learn and extract relevant information to create PowerPoint pages that illustrate the habitat studied and provide its key characteristics, seasonal changes, environmental or other threats, and examples of the types of animals and plants that inhabit it. The words they choose may not be in the Tag Cloud; however, they can and will use Google Images within Wordsift to find the images needed. Any words can be typed into the Google Images and Visual Thesaurus search boxes.
All PowerPoint presentations will be sent to me for review, and feedback will be given to the individual teams. I will compile and condense the slides down into one final presentation for each habitat, share the final version with the class and give each student a copy. A Venn diagram will be put on the overhead, and the students will be asked to populate it by collaboratively "shouting out" similarities and differences between the two habitats, incorporating what they learned. The last level is having each student write a brief paragraph stating his/her personal opinion about the need and value of preserving these habitats.
There will be implementation struggles with this lesson, including with the use Wordsift. Wordsift is relatively easy to navigate and straightforward; however, there are a couple areas that would require more thought and understanding. The first is with the Create Worksheet function. The students will need to know how to pull words and images into this area and/or remove them. The second is with with the Make Images Draggable function. For each new word's images, Make Images Draggable must be clicked. This results in a lot of images to the right that can be rather messy to sort through and inadvertently can get into your worksheet and have to be moved. This happened regularly to me. I will specifically mention these two functions and offer a verbal explanation as well as wallk around the room and watch the students doing these tasks so they can easily ask me questions or so I can see them struggle and offer assistance. Keep in mind, the students will have also had the short video which will help, but it does not really address the Make Images Draggable issue, so it'll be important for me to raise and address it. The students will need to know how to copy and paste into PowerPoint, and know how to use PowerPoint sufficiently for the tasks involved with this lesson. My intent is not to introduce Wordsift and PowerPoint at the same time. I would have introduced and had them use PowerPoint in earlier lessons, so they should have an understanding already that's sufficient for this project. Using Wordsift requires the students to have access to a computer for reasonable time periods. There could be system or other technical issues that cause delays. I found that Wordsift ran better on the Mac at school than on my PC using Internet Explorer as my browser. Under tips on the website, the makers suggest using Mozilla Firefox as the browser for a PC. I would want to make sure that student's have access to either of these to get as full a performance as possible.
There are trade-offs with using Wordsift to explore the vocabulary words rather than using a physical dictionary or thesaurus to look them up. First, the definitions within Wordsift may be more condensed, offering less explanation than the traditional resources, which may be less helpful to some students (particularly struggling students). Alternatively, for some students it may be helpful to have the more abbreviated and less formal style of definition. Second, a higher level of monitoring is required for using Wordsift, as students can type any word into the Google Images and Visual Thesaurus search boxes and get results very quickly. They could pull up inappropriate images or related words, which is off task, distracting and just plain wrong. Third, students may use Wordsift in the future for a summarized version without ever reading the full article. Wordsift is not meant to be used in replacement of a text, rather to support the understanding of the text.
A bias with Wordsift is that the video content for a word is not readily displayed. This was done intentionally by the makers of Wordsift because results could produce distracting or offensive videos. A student would have to click on the arrow sign to the left of the word "videos" to have them appear. This video feature cannot be disabled within Wordsift; however, if a school blocks sites such as YouTube, then they won't come up. Another bias to be aware of is that the lists used to generate the sorting are based off lists from other resources that may have bias associated with them. For example, the subject lists (i.e.: math, science, etc) came from Robert Marzano's work, while the academic list came from work of Avril Coxhead. Any biases embedded in those resources would carry over to Wordsift.
In terms of limitations, I will note a few. Wordsift only provides automatic sorting by the categories it has listed (i.e.: Academic Word List, Math, etc.). It also only allows a single sort at a time. For example, you can select Social Studies for those words but cannot have it overlay the Science words on top. That could be both a limitation or a bias of this technology. The makers may have intentionally not allowed overlaying the sort options to keep this a more simple tool to maximize the learning experience, requiring more work on the user end to find and explore those relationships. The Tag Cloud is limited to the top 50 frequently found words in a text, based on the creators' view that frequency is a sound proxy for expected word difficulty. One cannot reduce or increase the number of words generated in the Tag Cloud.
Using pictures/images with vocabulary facilitates making connections, which in turn facilitates the learning process. Wordsift has a nice combination of Google Images and the Visual Thesaurus diagrams to support this, making vocabulary learning more concrete than simple use of a traditional dictionary, thesaurus or oral explanation. Learning is further supported through collaboration in this lesson. The students work in teams of three throughout most of the lesson, and there's class participation in the Venn diagram component.
This lesson meets ISTE Standard 2. The lesson was designed using contemporary tools, Wordsift and PowerPoint, to provide a rich learning experience. The tools within Wordsift provide verbal and pictorial resources to the student with the vocabulary. When used in combination with higher thinking tasks (i.e.: topic prediction, sentence and example creation, opinion paper), it maximizes learning. ISTE Standard 3 was met. There is collaboration between students and the teacher on this project, both in using Wordsift and in preparing and creating the group PowerPoint presentation. As the teacher, I'm modeling use of current technologies (Wordsift and PowerPoint) to students in combination with the lesson to communicate relevant information and ideas, and to give students ways to explore, analyze and synthesize information. ISTE 4 was met. This lesson on habitats recognizes the global societal issue regarding the preservation of such habitats as the rain forests and grasslands. It teaches about what these habitats are like and the animals/plants that live there. The students can learn and explore the threats of those environments, and then synthesize the information to reach their own conclusions about this global environmental issue. This lesson incorporates student tech standards 2, 4 and 6. The team structure provides for communication and collaboration. (2) Critical thinking, problem solving and decision making are present in the opinion piece. The students have to analyze and evaluate the facts and information that they found about the respective habitats, determine what the relevant information is to put into their PowerPoint pages, and draw conclusions to formulate and construct their opinion paper (Bloom Taxonomy: analysis, synthesis and evaluation). (4) This lesson promotes the understanding and use of the Wordsift technology to effectively learn vocabulary and assist with reading comprehension/literacy. The students select and use the different functionality within Wordsift, which exposes them to other technologies. For example, students use and explore Google Images as part of Wordsift. This lesson also requires them to also use their PowerPoint skills, making students use these technologies in combination to enhance learning and work product. (6)
My research paper is entitled eVoc Strategies: 10 Ways to Use Technology to Build Vocabulary by Bridget Dalton and Dana L. Grisham. (The Reading Teacher, 64(5), pp. 306-317, DOI:10:1598/RT.64.5.1.). http://crmsliteracy.wikispaces.com/file/view/10+Ways+to+Use+Technology+to+Build+Vocabulary.pdf
The article discusses the importance of vocabulary, factors contributing to learning vocabulary, and offers 10 strategies that use digital technology to help with vocabulary. Dalton and Grishman note the growing presence of technology and communication tools in the classroom, yet recognize that the successful use of such tools is unclear. They promote the use of technology to improve the learning of vocabulary and offer ten strategies. Please note that according to the authors, the 10 strategies, referred to as eVoc strategies, are not all backed by direct research evidence but are supported by effective vocabulary instruction research. I like that the authors did more than emphasize and support the idea of using technology, they actually provided real, usable suggestions to get teachers started.
I thought the authors did a nice job laying out the importance of vocabulary for reading comprehension and academic language development, providing the components for successful teaching of vocabulary, citing research-based support, then building their case for using technology to assist with vocabulary learning. Vocabulary learning should incorporate morphology, multiple contexts and learning strategies. Creating lively interest in words was highlighted as a key principle, and the ways to do it were through student expression and playing with words. All of these things make sense. What I particularly liked about this article was that the authors highlighted that the research was not new, but rather they encouraged teachers to take the known information and learning strategies and "apply these research-based recommendations in new ways, using digital tools, media, and the Internet" and then gave 10 ideas for teachers to try. I support getting teachers excited about thinking how to teach vocabulary in new and creative ways that are still in line with research; however, I wished they referred to digital technologies as a way of doing it versus implying it is "the" way to do it.
The eVoc in the title is meant to be short for evoking, and the ten strategies are meant to evoke the use of technology for teaching vocabulary. I think there are some interesting digital tools out there, including Wordsift, that can be used meaningfully in well thought out lesson plans that can enhance the learning of vocabulary. The authors did a nice job providing the background need for teaching vocabulary and research-based components/aspects for teaching vocabulary. As said previously, I like that they gave teachers some resources and ideas to use in the classroom to get them started; however, I think they could have done a better job emphasizing that these are merely resources and tools and it's how teachers use them in meaningful ways that matters.
I've created a 5th grade science lesson that uses Wordsift to teach what a habitat is and then specifically about grasslands and rain forests, while building student vocabulary. Please note that this lesson will be over a multi-day time period. The lesson starts with me running a Wordsift on a text that describes the word "habitat" for our topic; however, I will not disclose the topic name. I will display the results of the Tag Cloud for the class, and let them think about what they are seeing. I'll ask some questions to have them tell me why they think some words are bigger than others, how are the words ordered, what words they recognize and which ones are unfamiliar, and what words may go together and why. This initial thinking and exploring will prepare them for the next part, when they are put into teams of three to predict our lesson topic. When a team has its guess ready, I'll come check it to see if their answer is correct. If it is correct, then the next step is to create a definition of a habitat and provide an example. For those teams who are having difficulty, I'll have them select some words within the Tag Cloud they want more detail on. I'll use the Create Worksheet function and pull those words into it and drag images that match the words. More guidance will be offered if necessary. Once the teams are done, I will type the definitions into a PowerPoint presentation along with Google Images and applicable word diagrams from the Visual Thesaurus and we'll go through them as a class. I will finish this part by showing the full text on habitats that was used to create the Tag Cloud and have the students read to themselves. I'll address any remaining questions after they have read it.
The topic prediction followed by the team's sentence and example creation are in line with the prior knowledge component of learning theory. It allows me to understand what students know about a habitat before progressing into particular kinds of habitats. The students demonstrate their comprehension through the prediction, and apply that knowledge to create representative sentences and examples (Bloom's Taxonomy: knowledge, comprehension and application). This first level of the lesson also serves as an introduction to Wordsift and its capabilities, as the students observe me navigating and performing tasks within it. The site offers a brief video tour that walks a person through navigation, explaining and demonstrating the different functions. I will have the students watch this video before they get started on the second level.
The second level involves splitting the class, with half of the teams using Wordsift to learn about Grasslands and the other half to learn about Rain Forests. The work associated with this will result in the creation of a PowerPoint presentation, which I will use to assess student learning. To start, the teams will use text from National Geographic's website for their respective habitat to copy into Wordsift. By using this website, it provides a consistent and reliable resource. (http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/habitats/?source=NavEnvHab)
The teams will only copy the text below the habitat's picture on the site and stop at the Environmental Quizzes section. After the teams input the text and sift, they will select five Tag Cloud words they believe are significant and/or unfamiliar words, find a Google Image to represent each word's meaning, and use the Visual Thesaurus to pull word diagrams, noting any root words, synonyms and antonyms. The students will cut and paste this information into a PowerPoint page, and then add their own sentence for each of those words. These pages will be sent to me to review, correct and compile for use in the final project presentation document. This offers me another opportunity to examine what the teams understand. I can use this information to have them further explore Wordsift functionality or other tools to improve understanding for those still grappling with the vocabulary.
Level two continues with the teams using Wordsift functionality and the original text to learn and extract relevant information to create PowerPoint pages that illustrate the habitat studied and provide its key characteristics, seasonal changes, environmental or other threats, and examples of the types of animals and plants that inhabit it. The words they choose may not be in the Tag Cloud; however, they can and will use Google Images within Wordsift to find the images needed. Any words can be typed into the Google Images and Visual Thesaurus search boxes.
All PowerPoint presentations will be sent to me for review, and feedback will be given to the individual teams. I will compile and condense the slides down into one final presentation for each habitat, share the final version with the class and give each student a copy. A Venn diagram will be put on the overhead, and the students will be asked to populate it by collaboratively "shouting out" similarities and differences between the two habitats, incorporating what they learned. The last level is having each student write a brief paragraph stating his/her personal opinion about the need and value of preserving these habitats.
There will be implementation struggles with this lesson, including with the use Wordsift. Wordsift is relatively easy to navigate and straightforward; however, there are a couple areas that would require more thought and understanding. The first is with the Create Worksheet function. The students will need to know how to pull words and images into this area and/or remove them. The second is with with the Make Images Draggable function. For each new word's images, Make Images Draggable must be clicked. This results in a lot of images to the right that can be rather messy to sort through and inadvertently can get into your worksheet and have to be moved. This happened regularly to me. I will specifically mention these two functions and offer a verbal explanation as well as wallk around the room and watch the students doing these tasks so they can easily ask me questions or so I can see them struggle and offer assistance. Keep in mind, the students will have also had the short video which will help, but it does not really address the Make Images Draggable issue, so it'll be important for me to raise and address it. The students will need to know how to copy and paste into PowerPoint, and know how to use PowerPoint sufficiently for the tasks involved with this lesson. My intent is not to introduce Wordsift and PowerPoint at the same time. I would have introduced and had them use PowerPoint in earlier lessons, so they should have an understanding already that's sufficient for this project. Using Wordsift requires the students to have access to a computer for reasonable time periods. There could be system or other technical issues that cause delays. I found that Wordsift ran better on the Mac at school than on my PC using Internet Explorer as my browser. Under tips on the website, the makers suggest using Mozilla Firefox as the browser for a PC. I would want to make sure that student's have access to either of these to get as full a performance as possible.
There are trade-offs with using Wordsift to explore the vocabulary words rather than using a physical dictionary or thesaurus to look them up. First, the definitions within Wordsift may be more condensed, offering less explanation than the traditional resources, which may be less helpful to some students (particularly struggling students). Alternatively, for some students it may be helpful to have the more abbreviated and less formal style of definition. Second, a higher level of monitoring is required for using Wordsift, as students can type any word into the Google Images and Visual Thesaurus search boxes and get results very quickly. They could pull up inappropriate images or related words, which is off task, distracting and just plain wrong. Third, students may use Wordsift in the future for a summarized version without ever reading the full article. Wordsift is not meant to be used in replacement of a text, rather to support the understanding of the text.
A bias with Wordsift is that the video content for a word is not readily displayed. This was done intentionally by the makers of Wordsift because results could produce distracting or offensive videos. A student would have to click on the arrow sign to the left of the word "videos" to have them appear. This video feature cannot be disabled within Wordsift; however, if a school blocks sites such as YouTube, then they won't come up. Another bias to be aware of is that the lists used to generate the sorting are based off lists from other resources that may have bias associated with them. For example, the subject lists (i.e.: math, science, etc) came from Robert Marzano's work, while the academic list came from work of Avril Coxhead. Any biases embedded in those resources would carry over to Wordsift.
In terms of limitations, I will note a few. Wordsift only provides automatic sorting by the categories it has listed (i.e.: Academic Word List, Math, etc.). It also only allows a single sort at a time. For example, you can select Social Studies for those words but cannot have it overlay the Science words on top. That could be both a limitation or a bias of this technology. The makers may have intentionally not allowed overlaying the sort options to keep this a more simple tool to maximize the learning experience, requiring more work on the user end to find and explore those relationships. The Tag Cloud is limited to the top 50 frequently found words in a text, based on the creators' view that frequency is a sound proxy for expected word difficulty. One cannot reduce or increase the number of words generated in the Tag Cloud.
Using pictures/images with vocabulary facilitates making connections, which in turn facilitates the learning process. Wordsift has a nice combination of Google Images and the Visual Thesaurus diagrams to support this, making vocabulary learning more concrete than simple use of a traditional dictionary, thesaurus or oral explanation. Learning is further supported through collaboration in this lesson. The students work in teams of three throughout most of the lesson, and there's class participation in the Venn diagram component.
This lesson meets ISTE Standard 2. The lesson was designed using contemporary tools, Wordsift and PowerPoint, to provide a rich learning experience. The tools within Wordsift provide verbal and pictorial resources to the student with the vocabulary. When used in combination with higher thinking tasks (i.e.: topic prediction, sentence and example creation, opinion paper), it maximizes learning. ISTE Standard 3 was met. There is collaboration between students and the teacher on this project, both in using Wordsift and in preparing and creating the group PowerPoint presentation. As the teacher, I'm modeling use of current technologies (Wordsift and PowerPoint) to students in combination with the lesson to communicate relevant information and ideas, and to give students ways to explore, analyze and synthesize information. ISTE 4 was met. This lesson on habitats recognizes the global societal issue regarding the preservation of such habitats as the rain forests and grasslands. It teaches about what these habitats are like and the animals/plants that live there. The students can learn and explore the threats of those environments, and then synthesize the information to reach their own conclusions about this global environmental issue. This lesson incorporates student tech standards 2, 4 and 6. The team structure provides for communication and collaboration. (2) Critical thinking, problem solving and decision making are present in the opinion piece. The students have to analyze and evaluate the facts and information that they found about the respective habitats, determine what the relevant information is to put into their PowerPoint pages, and draw conclusions to formulate and construct their opinion paper (Bloom Taxonomy: analysis, synthesis and evaluation). (4) This lesson promotes the understanding and use of the Wordsift technology to effectively learn vocabulary and assist with reading comprehension/literacy. The students select and use the different functionality within Wordsift, which exposes them to other technologies. For example, students use and explore Google Images as part of Wordsift. This lesson also requires them to also use their PowerPoint skills, making students use these technologies in combination to enhance learning and work product. (6)
My research paper is entitled eVoc Strategies: 10 Ways to Use Technology to Build Vocabulary by Bridget Dalton and Dana L. Grisham. (The Reading Teacher, 64(5), pp. 306-317, DOI:10:1598/RT.64.5.1.). http://crmsliteracy.wikispaces.com/file/view/10+Ways+to+Use+Technology+to+Build+Vocabulary.pdf
The article discusses the importance of vocabulary, factors contributing to learning vocabulary, and offers 10 strategies that use digital technology to help with vocabulary. Dalton and Grishman note the growing presence of technology and communication tools in the classroom, yet recognize that the successful use of such tools is unclear. They promote the use of technology to improve the learning of vocabulary and offer ten strategies. Please note that according to the authors, the 10 strategies, referred to as eVoc strategies, are not all backed by direct research evidence but are supported by effective vocabulary instruction research. I like that the authors did more than emphasize and support the idea of using technology, they actually provided real, usable suggestions to get teachers started.
I thought the authors did a nice job laying out the importance of vocabulary for reading comprehension and academic language development, providing the components for successful teaching of vocabulary, citing research-based support, then building their case for using technology to assist with vocabulary learning. Vocabulary learning should incorporate morphology, multiple contexts and learning strategies. Creating lively interest in words was highlighted as a key principle, and the ways to do it were through student expression and playing with words. All of these things make sense. What I particularly liked about this article was that the authors highlighted that the research was not new, but rather they encouraged teachers to take the known information and learning strategies and "apply these research-based recommendations in new ways, using digital tools, media, and the Internet" and then gave 10 ideas for teachers to try. I support getting teachers excited about thinking how to teach vocabulary in new and creative ways that are still in line with research; however, I wished they referred to digital technologies as a way of doing it versus implying it is "the" way to do it.
The eVoc in the title is meant to be short for evoking, and the ten strategies are meant to evoke the use of technology for teaching vocabulary. I think there are some interesting digital tools out there, including Wordsift, that can be used meaningfully in well thought out lesson plans that can enhance the learning of vocabulary. The authors did a nice job providing the background need for teaching vocabulary and research-based components/aspects for teaching vocabulary. As said previously, I like that they gave teachers some resources and ideas to use in the classroom to get them started; however, I think they could have done a better job emphasizing that these are merely resources and tools and it's how teachers use them in meaningful ways that matters.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Flickr Fun with Vocabulary
Flickr is a photo and video sharing website that can be viewed publicly, publicly upon invitation or privately. This website allows users to upload, organize and share photos or videos ("items"). The items can be tagged and titled. A description box allows for additional information to be provided about each photo. Even invitees can submit comments and add to the collection.
My Flickr site has been set up with public access by invitation. An invitation has been sent to Dr. Kruse. For classmates interested in viewing my Flickr site, let me know. For a real classroom lesson, I would have the site set up with private access to be more restrictive. Within settings, I've elected to preview all proposed submissions prior to being added to the site. This censoring option allows me to accept or reject each photo submission, providing control over the photos/images that get on the site. This will prevent inappropriate photos/images being added and will allow me to examine the photos for assessing student learning and understanding before being posted. At the bottom of the blog you will see a page from my Flickr group.
My lesson uses Flickr in a collaborative and creative way for students to learn vocabulary. My Flicker group is called Vocabulary Victors. Within the group, there is a discussion topic labeled Vocab Unit 1. This topic lists 12 vocabulary words the students need to learn. I uploaded photos for two of the vocabulary words to visually illustrate the word's meaning. For example, I added a photo of a mountain to represent the word "Majestic". The photo has the title "Majestic", and within the description box is a sentence using the word. When you pull up the photo, you will see both the word and the sentence with it. The students will replicate this with the other vocabulary words.
The students are paired up and assigned two vocabulary words to find representative photos, upload them into our Flickr group, title them using the vocabulary word and a sentence with that word in the description (photo tag activity). Each pair is also given two other vocabulary words to write only a sentence for using the comment box (sentence contribution activity). This will result in one picture and multiple sentence for each vocabulary word to further assist students with understanding. There are intentionally two vocabulary words assigned within the photo tag activity and sentence contribution activity, so each partner in the pair has an opportunity to do one word in each activity within Flickr. Lastly, the student pairs will create a story using at least seven of the words, of which only of two words can be from the four assigned. However, extra credit will be offered to the pair if they incorporate all the vocabulary words appropriately in their stories. After the stories have been reviewed, feedback provided and incorporated, one party in the pair will read their story to the class.
This vocabulary lesson provides a level of understanding of the student's prior knowledge. I can examine the photo/image selected and the sentences the students wrote to assess whether they accurately or inaccurately depicted a word's meaning. For inaccurate photos/images and related sentences from the photo tag activity, I can reject the submission so it doesn’t appear on the site and work with the pair to improve their understanding of the word. They can then find and use a more representative illustration and/or sentence for the submission. For accurate submissions, it's more difficult to discern whether the students knew the word's meaning previously or learned it in this process. For the sentence contribution activity, I can review the sentences in the comment section for correct usage, delete those sentences that are in error and work with those students who are having difficulty. I will review the draft stories and offer feedback for the students to incorporate prior to finalizing their story. This ongoing assessment helps me understand the comprehension level of the students and make modifications along the way.
Visual representations can make the vocabulary’s meaning more concrete than using written definitions. Examples can help make connections between words and their meaning, but a picture representing that example can make it more clearly understood. For instance, the word “Majestic” can be defined as large and impressively beautiful. To see an the beautiful Rocky Mountains can make those descriptive words more clear to the student. Bringing physical examples into the classroom may not be practical or feasible; therefore, the use of digital photos/images can provide a visual connection that may not be possible otherwise. This lesson structure also involves collaboration. The students interact and communicate with their pair partner to select the photos/images, write the sentences and create their stories. This vocabulary lesson, incorporating the use of Flickr, meets INTASC 8 and ISTE 1. The students use a variety of methods to learn the vocabulary. The students provide and benefit from visual representations to make connections to a word's meaning. Writing sentences and stories helps them further their contextual knowledge of the words, using the words to communicate ideas and be creative. Collaboration throughout the lesson provides active conversation to strengthen student learning. For the reasons just stated, this lesson also meets student standards 1, 2 and 3.
In terms of Bloom's Taxonomy, this lesson allows the students to demonstrate their knowledge, comprehension and application through the pictures/images they select and the sentences they write. The students need to interpret and define each word's meaning in order to select a photo that visually represents the meaning. They apply meaning through the sentences they construct. Student learning is taken to a higher level through the creation of a story that incorporates the vocabulary. The students have to analyze the words and their related meanings and start to brainstorm and outline potential story ideas, critically evaluate the words and respective meanings, decide on the words to use, and create their story. This takes them through analysis, synthesis and evaluation.
There may be implementation struggles with this lesson and with Flickr. The students may or may not have access to computers or other digital devices (i.e. iPad) that can be used to access Flickr or to the devices needed to take or obtain pictures/images for uploading into Flickr. Those devices may not be available or reliable. The students will be provided with photos to choose from, so it may not be an issue unless they want to add their own photos. The Flickr website could go down. A Flickr account or a guest pass will be needed by students to participate. The school would need to approve the use of Flickr in the classroom. School leaders and parents may not be familiar with Flickr and need to understand what it is and how it'll be used. There may be concerns to address with regards to security and privacy issues. Beyond the equipment, the site and approvals, there may be a struggles implementing this lesson if there is insufficient time for the pairs to work together on the collaborative project. I don't want to lose the benefits of collaboration if time constraints prevent the students from actively engaging with one another throughout the lesson. The students may struggle using Flickr. They may have difficulties uploading photos into our group, selecting photos to use, adding tag and description information, and navigating around the site. They may have difficulty trying to come up with photo ideas to use to illustrate their words.
There are limitations to Flickr. Flickr allows group members to upload pictures/images for the group to use and that group can use a set (a way to bundle pictures/images); however, I am unable to pull a submitted photo from a group member into a set. I mention this because using a set can be more organized and efficient way for managing multiple pictures/images for a vocabulary unit within a class. A set allows one to filter out photos that are superfluous. Flickr, however, does not allow one to pull submitted pictures into a set; therefore, a full set cannot be created for a single vocabulary unit. To get around this with the free account, one can create a new group with each vocabulary list, which is an inefficient way to aggregate certain photos for a vocabulary unit. Otherwise, a new discussion topic can be used to hold a new list, but the pictures would be mixed in with the first list. Although there are no limits on the number of photos that can be uploaded into Flickr, the free account users are only allowed to see the most recent 200 photos and only 300MB can be uploaded a month. The size limits for photos are up to 15MB and for videos it's two videos a month equal to 150MB each, and Flickr will compress and resize your photos to defined pixel levels for the free accounts. Comments can be made by all parties in a group and they get posted real time, so although I have the ability to delete a comment, it does not need pre-approved like a photo submission. Deletions would occur after-the-fact. The lesson itself has limits. One, not all vocabulary words can be portrayed pictorially so using this same lesson structure may not be feasible with all the vocabulary words. Two, a photo can create a visual link to that word and help with understanding, but the photo selected may not be the best representation or the only representation for that word. A word may have multiple meanings that one picture cannot convey. Three, although students will add additional sentences to a vocabulary word, the resulting sentences may not provide all of the word's meanings because I've imposed a sentence limit.
There are trade-offs and bias with this lesson. The lesson requires collaboration versus individual work. If one of the partners in the pair does all or most of the work, it may not be as evident as having the students individually work on the lesson. My assessment of the individual partners may be invalid because of the difficulty in discerning the level of understanding for each of the partners. A student may not contribute because they do not want to "share" the grade, or one of the students may want to do it all and take over the project. A bias with this lesson is that it only allows photos and sentences to represent a word's meaning, and no written definitions are permitted.
The article I read in conjunction with this project is called Effective Academic Vocabulary Instruction in the Urban Middle School by Joan G. Kelley, Nonie K. Lesaux, Michael J. Kieffer and S. Elisabeth Faller. This article came from The Reading Teacher, 64(1), pp. 5-14. It can be located online within Cowles Library using the following link:
http://ehis.ebscohost.com.cowles-proxy.drake.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=0f276eec-24d9-40db-8738-1236af023f1c%40sessionmgr110&vid=5&hid=102
The article discussed an 18-week vocabulary program study with 6th graders. The study was to determine if the program could be used in mainstream classrooms to improve reading comprehension. There were three guiding principles for vocabulary that were identified and incorporated in this instruction:
The authors disagree with encouraging the use of a dictionary. They state "research has told us that dictionary definitions are inaccessible to most students." (Marzano, 2004; Scott & Nagy, 1997) and dictionaries have abbreviated definitions which does not meet the need of struggling students who need a lot of examples and explanation. Instead, they recommend having the students listen to and practice using the words in various contexts and grapple with the meaning. I believe hearing and using the words and grappling with the meaning is a good way to facilitate learning vocabulary, but I do think the dictionary has a place in the learning process. To this day, I use it to look up words I don't know or am unsure about their meaning. I think children should be made aware of dictionaries and practice using them as a resource, but the focus in the classroom should be on the learning strategies. In the lesson described above, I would have initial classroom conversations using the vocabulary words before starting the Fickr portion of the lesson. It would be done to indirectly introduce the words so they have something to start their grappling.
The authors were strong proponents of students writing the words and felt that students do not practice writing enough. They went on to recommend establishing writing routines by incorporting writing in weekly lessons. I believe writing is an invaluable tool for learning. It makes you organize your thoughts and pull the information together in a coherent way for others to understand. In the process, you are understanding. I'm a firm believer that writing, reading, and doing are key components in the learning process. Individually they are good but in combination they are great.
Those students who were part of the treatment group in the study had significantly better results than the control group on a multiple choice test. Additionally, student and teacher commentary supported the benefit of this instruction. One student noted that he/she was more comfortable with the word use and understanding after the instruction and was now using them. I think a program incorporating the principles the authors cited makes sense and can be used with all students.
Group Pool 4 items |Add photos
My Flickr site has been set up with public access by invitation. An invitation has been sent to Dr. Kruse. For classmates interested in viewing my Flickr site, let me know. For a real classroom lesson, I would have the site set up with private access to be more restrictive. Within settings, I've elected to preview all proposed submissions prior to being added to the site. This censoring option allows me to accept or reject each photo submission, providing control over the photos/images that get on the site. This will prevent inappropriate photos/images being added and will allow me to examine the photos for assessing student learning and understanding before being posted. At the bottom of the blog you will see a page from my Flickr group.
My lesson uses Flickr in a collaborative and creative way for students to learn vocabulary. My Flicker group is called Vocabulary Victors. Within the group, there is a discussion topic labeled Vocab Unit 1. This topic lists 12 vocabulary words the students need to learn. I uploaded photos for two of the vocabulary words to visually illustrate the word's meaning. For example, I added a photo of a mountain to represent the word "Majestic". The photo has the title "Majestic", and within the description box is a sentence using the word. When you pull up the photo, you will see both the word and the sentence with it. The students will replicate this with the other vocabulary words.
The students are paired up and assigned two vocabulary words to find representative photos, upload them into our Flickr group, title them using the vocabulary word and a sentence with that word in the description (photo tag activity). Each pair is also given two other vocabulary words to write only a sentence for using the comment box (sentence contribution activity). This will result in one picture and multiple sentence for each vocabulary word to further assist students with understanding. There are intentionally two vocabulary words assigned within the photo tag activity and sentence contribution activity, so each partner in the pair has an opportunity to do one word in each activity within Flickr. Lastly, the student pairs will create a story using at least seven of the words, of which only of two words can be from the four assigned. However, extra credit will be offered to the pair if they incorporate all the vocabulary words appropriately in their stories. After the stories have been reviewed, feedback provided and incorporated, one party in the pair will read their story to the class.
This vocabulary lesson provides a level of understanding of the student's prior knowledge. I can examine the photo/image selected and the sentences the students wrote to assess whether they accurately or inaccurately depicted a word's meaning. For inaccurate photos/images and related sentences from the photo tag activity, I can reject the submission so it doesn’t appear on the site and work with the pair to improve their understanding of the word. They can then find and use a more representative illustration and/or sentence for the submission. For accurate submissions, it's more difficult to discern whether the students knew the word's meaning previously or learned it in this process. For the sentence contribution activity, I can review the sentences in the comment section for correct usage, delete those sentences that are in error and work with those students who are having difficulty. I will review the draft stories and offer feedback for the students to incorporate prior to finalizing their story. This ongoing assessment helps me understand the comprehension level of the students and make modifications along the way.
Visual representations can make the vocabulary’s meaning more concrete than using written definitions. Examples can help make connections between words and their meaning, but a picture representing that example can make it more clearly understood. For instance, the word “Majestic” can be defined as large and impressively beautiful. To see an the beautiful Rocky Mountains can make those descriptive words more clear to the student. Bringing physical examples into the classroom may not be practical or feasible; therefore, the use of digital photos/images can provide a visual connection that may not be possible otherwise. This lesson structure also involves collaboration. The students interact and communicate with their pair partner to select the photos/images, write the sentences and create their stories. This vocabulary lesson, incorporating the use of Flickr, meets INTASC 8 and ISTE 1. The students use a variety of methods to learn the vocabulary. The students provide and benefit from visual representations to make connections to a word's meaning. Writing sentences and stories helps them further their contextual knowledge of the words, using the words to communicate ideas and be creative. Collaboration throughout the lesson provides active conversation to strengthen student learning. For the reasons just stated, this lesson also meets student standards 1, 2 and 3.
In terms of Bloom's Taxonomy, this lesson allows the students to demonstrate their knowledge, comprehension and application through the pictures/images they select and the sentences they write. The students need to interpret and define each word's meaning in order to select a photo that visually represents the meaning. They apply meaning through the sentences they construct. Student learning is taken to a higher level through the creation of a story that incorporates the vocabulary. The students have to analyze the words and their related meanings and start to brainstorm and outline potential story ideas, critically evaluate the words and respective meanings, decide on the words to use, and create their story. This takes them through analysis, synthesis and evaluation.
There may be implementation struggles with this lesson and with Flickr. The students may or may not have access to computers or other digital devices (i.e. iPad) that can be used to access Flickr or to the devices needed to take or obtain pictures/images for uploading into Flickr. Those devices may not be available or reliable. The students will be provided with photos to choose from, so it may not be an issue unless they want to add their own photos. The Flickr website could go down. A Flickr account or a guest pass will be needed by students to participate. The school would need to approve the use of Flickr in the classroom. School leaders and parents may not be familiar with Flickr and need to understand what it is and how it'll be used. There may be concerns to address with regards to security and privacy issues. Beyond the equipment, the site and approvals, there may be a struggles implementing this lesson if there is insufficient time for the pairs to work together on the collaborative project. I don't want to lose the benefits of collaboration if time constraints prevent the students from actively engaging with one another throughout the lesson. The students may struggle using Flickr. They may have difficulties uploading photos into our group, selecting photos to use, adding tag and description information, and navigating around the site. They may have difficulty trying to come up with photo ideas to use to illustrate their words.
There are limitations to Flickr. Flickr allows group members to upload pictures/images for the group to use and that group can use a set (a way to bundle pictures/images); however, I am unable to pull a submitted photo from a group member into a set. I mention this because using a set can be more organized and efficient way for managing multiple pictures/images for a vocabulary unit within a class. A set allows one to filter out photos that are superfluous. Flickr, however, does not allow one to pull submitted pictures into a set; therefore, a full set cannot be created for a single vocabulary unit. To get around this with the free account, one can create a new group with each vocabulary list, which is an inefficient way to aggregate certain photos for a vocabulary unit. Otherwise, a new discussion topic can be used to hold a new list, but the pictures would be mixed in with the first list. Although there are no limits on the number of photos that can be uploaded into Flickr, the free account users are only allowed to see the most recent 200 photos and only 300MB can be uploaded a month. The size limits for photos are up to 15MB and for videos it's two videos a month equal to 150MB each, and Flickr will compress and resize your photos to defined pixel levels for the free accounts. Comments can be made by all parties in a group and they get posted real time, so although I have the ability to delete a comment, it does not need pre-approved like a photo submission. Deletions would occur after-the-fact. The lesson itself has limits. One, not all vocabulary words can be portrayed pictorially so using this same lesson structure may not be feasible with all the vocabulary words. Two, a photo can create a visual link to that word and help with understanding, but the photo selected may not be the best representation or the only representation for that word. A word may have multiple meanings that one picture cannot convey. Three, although students will add additional sentences to a vocabulary word, the resulting sentences may not provide all of the word's meanings because I've imposed a sentence limit.
There are trade-offs and bias with this lesson. The lesson requires collaboration versus individual work. If one of the partners in the pair does all or most of the work, it may not be as evident as having the students individually work on the lesson. My assessment of the individual partners may be invalid because of the difficulty in discerning the level of understanding for each of the partners. A student may not contribute because they do not want to "share" the grade, or one of the students may want to do it all and take over the project. A bias with this lesson is that it only allows photos and sentences to represent a word's meaning, and no written definitions are permitted.
The article I read in conjunction with this project is called Effective Academic Vocabulary Instruction in the Urban Middle School by Joan G. Kelley, Nonie K. Lesaux, Michael J. Kieffer and S. Elisabeth Faller. This article came from The Reading Teacher, 64(1), pp. 5-14. It can be located online within Cowles Library using the following link:
http://ehis.ebscohost.com.cowles-proxy.drake.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=0f276eec-24d9-40db-8738-1236af023f1c%40sessionmgr110&vid=5&hid=102
The article discussed an 18-week vocabulary program study with 6th graders. The study was to determine if the program could be used in mainstream classrooms to improve reading comprehension. There were three guiding principles for vocabulary that were identified and incorporated in this instruction:
- use a small number of words with a focus on deep understanding
- choose high utility words
- use word-learning strategies, including contextual cues and word formation skills
The authors disagree with encouraging the use of a dictionary. They state "research has told us that dictionary definitions are inaccessible to most students." (Marzano, 2004; Scott & Nagy, 1997) and dictionaries have abbreviated definitions which does not meet the need of struggling students who need a lot of examples and explanation. Instead, they recommend having the students listen to and practice using the words in various contexts and grapple with the meaning. I believe hearing and using the words and grappling with the meaning is a good way to facilitate learning vocabulary, but I do think the dictionary has a place in the learning process. To this day, I use it to look up words I don't know or am unsure about their meaning. I think children should be made aware of dictionaries and practice using them as a resource, but the focus in the classroom should be on the learning strategies. In the lesson described above, I would have initial classroom conversations using the vocabulary words before starting the Fickr portion of the lesson. It would be done to indirectly introduce the words so they have something to start their grappling.
The authors were strong proponents of students writing the words and felt that students do not practice writing enough. They went on to recommend establishing writing routines by incorporting writing in weekly lessons. I believe writing is an invaluable tool for learning. It makes you organize your thoughts and pull the information together in a coherent way for others to understand. In the process, you are understanding. I'm a firm believer that writing, reading, and doing are key components in the learning process. Individually they are good but in combination they are great.
Those students who were part of the treatment group in the study had significantly better results than the control group on a multiple choice test. Additionally, student and teacher commentary supported the benefit of this instruction. One student noted that he/she was more comfortable with the word use and understanding after the instruction and was now using them. I think a program incorporating the principles the authors cited makes sense and can be used with all students.
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Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Comic Strips for Comprehension
Comic strips are a fun and creative way to foster reading and reading comprehension as well as vocabulary and inference. I have incorporated comic strips into my reading lesson using the Strip Designer app through an IPad. The comic strip designers can use pictures, stickers, drawings, maps, text balloons and text boxes in their creation. Pictures can be taken through the IPad's camera then uploaded into the strip. The app offers its own stickers; however, stickers can also be created.
The lesson involves a 3rd grade classroom reading a book, The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein. The book is a story about the give and take relationship between a boy and an apple tree. The kids are to independently read one-third of the book, then answer questions to assess their understanding of the main ideas. The next third of the book will be read as a class with students taking turns reading aloud. Afterwards, the students will be paired up to create a 6 to 9-cell comic strip summarizing their understanding of that section. One person will create the strip within the app, while the other person takes pictures. Together, they will determine how to portray their understanding of the story in the comic strip. These exercises will provide me with their comprehension level throughout the reading of the book, supporting the prior knowledge component of learning theory. The pairing allows for collaboration with the partner, facilitating understanding of the story. This leads to the higher level step, which is to predict the ending. Each pair will create a 9 to 12-cell comic strip that verbally and visually illustrates their prediction, drawing on experience, background, knowledge and imagination. This time the pair's roles will be reversed, giving each child an opportunity to take pictures with the camera and create the strip within the app.
When the comic strips are completed, the kids will present their comic strip prediction to the class and then I will read the actual ending. On a paper to be turned in, the kids will compare and contrast their predictions to the actual ending, and provide their assessment of the actual ending. I will post the various comic strips up on the wall afterwards so the students can enjoy reading and discussing the various predictions.
Knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation all take place within this comic strip lesson structure. The students tell us what they know from the story by demonstrating it verbally and visually through the comic strip. To prepare the strip, they need to analyze the contents from the book and determine the key parts to illustrate. The creation of the strip itself allows the students to synthesize the information, understanding the actual book events and then using that information to form a prediction. The students will compare their predictions to the actual ending and evaluate the actual ending. This lesson met INTASC standards 5, 6 and 8, ISTE Standards 1 and 2, and met student ISTE Standards 1, 2, and 4. To note, the comic strip app does not make the learning more concrete than a hand-drawn comic strip.
There are implementation struggles. The students need reasonable access to an IPad to take the pictures and access the app. The school may or may not have enough IPads available, or available for sufficient amounts of time for the students to work on their project. The Strip Design app costs $2.99 to download to an iTunes account. The school would need to have an iTunes account and approve the cost of the app. It would be worth looking into whether the school could get a discount on the cost from the app maker. This may not be achievable though. The IPads could have battery or malfunction issues that prevent its use. The Strip Designer app could stop functioning properly or close unexpectedly.
There are limitations to the Strip Designer app. The app limits the number of cells to 12. It also limits the number of combined texts and photos used within a strip. This photo/text limitation "forces" the designer to use such things as balloons, stickers and warp text to preserve memory and/or resolution. Another limitation is that the cells have to be the same size to export as a PDF. There are trade-offs with this app versus a hand-drawn comic strip. The finger drawing is less detailed and precise, and errors may be harder to correct. I was unable to find an undo function to fix drawing issues, rather I just re-drew my design. Cell size also impacts drawing details as well as how much can reasonably be put into a cell before it gets too crowded (i.e. text plus pictures and stickers).
There is bias to using a comic strip, regardless of digital or hand-made form. Comic strips require a pictoral representation of the story with relatively minimal verbal dialogue and make students condense the story down to a limited number of cells. Students have to make decisions about what to include and exclude and encourages the designer to incorporate inference to tell the story given the limited verbal explanation.
The comic strip I made is not based on the book, rather just a silly story about our puppy. It incorporates pictures, stickers (including a self-made one), map, text boxes, balloons, etc. The app offers some nice pre-made things, like the stickers, maps and balloons. It also allows a personal touch through your own sticker creation and drawing pictures. You can find my strip on twitter. There are actually two out there. I didn't realize until after I sent one test one to twitter that when I updated the comic strip, it updated the one previously exported to twitter. The two are:
twitpic.com/6pf7lp
twitpic.com/6pf7td
I read the article Comic Strips as a Text Structure for Learning to Read by Claudia J. McVicker in conjunction with this project. The author argues that visual literacy is necessary for comprehension, particularly with today's technology generation using the Internet for information gathering. The article had few arguments to support why visual literacy is specficially needed or helpful for this tech generation. A reason cited for visual literacy with technology is that it's necessary to have such skills to access good information efficiently, solve problems and communicate. I would agree that this is necessary in your personal and working environment. One needs to discern good from not good information to arrive at well-support conclusions, and visual literacy helps with this. The author then furthered this argument by providing the benefits of visual learning and how comic strips help achieve this type of learning.
When the author discussed the importance of visual learning, she noted that early reading is done through picture books, where pictures and words help the reader to understand the story. She specifically mentions Bloom's taxonomy and the synthesizing that takes place with visual representation. The reader examines the pictures along with the text to see how they match. The visual also offers the reader help with spatial concepts. She went on to provide several arguments in support of using comic strips in visual learning and literacy. Her contention was that comic strips are beneficial for all reader levels (literate, illiterate and alliterate). She specifically mentions struggling readers and how comics help motivate them and "can bridge their literary interests to more conventional text structures." According to an earlier paper McVicker wrote (2005), comic strips are "a quick, concise way to teach, practice and apply reading skills". Inference is a challenging skill to teach and comics help with this. The reader can use the pictures and few texts in a comic strip to infer the meaning. Comics are easy to come by and free, and have been used to motivate young readers. The author believes that comic strips assist with comprehension and offer a useful teaching strategy for developing deductive reasoning, evaluative thinking, and other skills.
Overall, I agree with the author that visual learning contributes to reading comprehension and related skills such as inference, and that comic strips are a creative, motivating and effective visual learning tool.
The article can be found within Cowles Library at http://ehis.ebscohost.com.cowles-proxy.drake.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=7e2cb5bb-9221-4941-82b4-9c4fcdf3042d%40sessionmgr114&vid=3&hid=120. Her article is in The Reading Teacher 61(1), pp. 85-88.
The lesson involves a 3rd grade classroom reading a book, The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein. The book is a story about the give and take relationship between a boy and an apple tree. The kids are to independently read one-third of the book, then answer questions to assess their understanding of the main ideas. The next third of the book will be read as a class with students taking turns reading aloud. Afterwards, the students will be paired up to create a 6 to 9-cell comic strip summarizing their understanding of that section. One person will create the strip within the app, while the other person takes pictures. Together, they will determine how to portray their understanding of the story in the comic strip. These exercises will provide me with their comprehension level throughout the reading of the book, supporting the prior knowledge component of learning theory. The pairing allows for collaboration with the partner, facilitating understanding of the story. This leads to the higher level step, which is to predict the ending. Each pair will create a 9 to 12-cell comic strip that verbally and visually illustrates their prediction, drawing on experience, background, knowledge and imagination. This time the pair's roles will be reversed, giving each child an opportunity to take pictures with the camera and create the strip within the app.
When the comic strips are completed, the kids will present their comic strip prediction to the class and then I will read the actual ending. On a paper to be turned in, the kids will compare and contrast their predictions to the actual ending, and provide their assessment of the actual ending. I will post the various comic strips up on the wall afterwards so the students can enjoy reading and discussing the various predictions.
Knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation all take place within this comic strip lesson structure. The students tell us what they know from the story by demonstrating it verbally and visually through the comic strip. To prepare the strip, they need to analyze the contents from the book and determine the key parts to illustrate. The creation of the strip itself allows the students to synthesize the information, understanding the actual book events and then using that information to form a prediction. The students will compare their predictions to the actual ending and evaluate the actual ending. This lesson met INTASC standards 5, 6 and 8, ISTE Standards 1 and 2, and met student ISTE Standards 1, 2, and 4. To note, the comic strip app does not make the learning more concrete than a hand-drawn comic strip.
There are implementation struggles. The students need reasonable access to an IPad to take the pictures and access the app. The school may or may not have enough IPads available, or available for sufficient amounts of time for the students to work on their project. The Strip Design app costs $2.99 to download to an iTunes account. The school would need to have an iTunes account and approve the cost of the app. It would be worth looking into whether the school could get a discount on the cost from the app maker. This may not be achievable though. The IPads could have battery or malfunction issues that prevent its use. The Strip Designer app could stop functioning properly or close unexpectedly.
There are limitations to the Strip Designer app. The app limits the number of cells to 12. It also limits the number of combined texts and photos used within a strip. This photo/text limitation "forces" the designer to use such things as balloons, stickers and warp text to preserve memory and/or resolution. Another limitation is that the cells have to be the same size to export as a PDF. There are trade-offs with this app versus a hand-drawn comic strip. The finger drawing is less detailed and precise, and errors may be harder to correct. I was unable to find an undo function to fix drawing issues, rather I just re-drew my design. Cell size also impacts drawing details as well as how much can reasonably be put into a cell before it gets too crowded (i.e. text plus pictures and stickers).
There is bias to using a comic strip, regardless of digital or hand-made form. Comic strips require a pictoral representation of the story with relatively minimal verbal dialogue and make students condense the story down to a limited number of cells. Students have to make decisions about what to include and exclude and encourages the designer to incorporate inference to tell the story given the limited verbal explanation.
The comic strip I made is not based on the book, rather just a silly story about our puppy. It incorporates pictures, stickers (including a self-made one), map, text boxes, balloons, etc. The app offers some nice pre-made things, like the stickers, maps and balloons. It also allows a personal touch through your own sticker creation and drawing pictures. You can find my strip on twitter. There are actually two out there. I didn't realize until after I sent one test one to twitter that when I updated the comic strip, it updated the one previously exported to twitter. The two are:
twitpic.com/6pf7lp
twitpic.com/6pf7td
I read the article Comic Strips as a Text Structure for Learning to Read by Claudia J. McVicker in conjunction with this project. The author argues that visual literacy is necessary for comprehension, particularly with today's technology generation using the Internet for information gathering. The article had few arguments to support why visual literacy is specficially needed or helpful for this tech generation. A reason cited for visual literacy with technology is that it's necessary to have such skills to access good information efficiently, solve problems and communicate. I would agree that this is necessary in your personal and working environment. One needs to discern good from not good information to arrive at well-support conclusions, and visual literacy helps with this. The author then furthered this argument by providing the benefits of visual learning and how comic strips help achieve this type of learning.
When the author discussed the importance of visual learning, she noted that early reading is done through picture books, where pictures and words help the reader to understand the story. She specifically mentions Bloom's taxonomy and the synthesizing that takes place with visual representation. The reader examines the pictures along with the text to see how they match. The visual also offers the reader help with spatial concepts. She went on to provide several arguments in support of using comic strips in visual learning and literacy. Her contention was that comic strips are beneficial for all reader levels (literate, illiterate and alliterate). She specifically mentions struggling readers and how comics help motivate them and "can bridge their literary interests to more conventional text structures." According to an earlier paper McVicker wrote (2005), comic strips are "a quick, concise way to teach, practice and apply reading skills". Inference is a challenging skill to teach and comics help with this. The reader can use the pictures and few texts in a comic strip to infer the meaning. Comics are easy to come by and free, and have been used to motivate young readers. The author believes that comic strips assist with comprehension and offer a useful teaching strategy for developing deductive reasoning, evaluative thinking, and other skills.
Overall, I agree with the author that visual learning contributes to reading comprehension and related skills such as inference, and that comic strips are a creative, motivating and effective visual learning tool.
The article can be found within Cowles Library at http://ehis.ebscohost.com.cowles-proxy.drake.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=7e2cb5bb-9221-4941-82b4-9c4fcdf3042d%40sessionmgr114&vid=3&hid=120. Her article is in The Reading Teacher 61(1), pp. 85-88.
Friday, September 9, 2011
Edmodo Tech Project
Edmodo can be a very interesting and useful social networking technology to understand the students prior knowledge, track and assess their progress and encourage collaboration. My Edmodo student site is designed to have 5th grade students use their math skills (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) in a real life application. The students are to determine and calculate the cost factors of a Walt Disney World vacation, analyzing and determining affordability and potential adjustments to enhance affordability.
An important learning theory component is understanding students' existing knowledge and/or experience. In this Disney project, it is important to know the students' familiarity with income, expenses and the net remaining as they will be working with these concepts throughout the project. This is possible within Edmodo through the poll function. I used two poll questions. The first is concerning allowances, to have a sense for their understanding of income. The second is concerning the purchase of items when they have insufficient funds, to have a sense for their understanding of expense and net income (deficit).
Edmodo does not make the learning more concrete. However, it does support collaboration in learning theory. Through posts, questions are posed to students for their collective input. For example, they are asked to generate a list of cost factors that should be taken into consideration. Also, they are asked for input on non-cost items to consider when comparing meal plan options. This is to encourage the students to think about opportunity costs without directly stating it, therefore, taking the comparison and analysis beyond the math calculation. Edmodo facilitates collaboration by allowing the teacher to post questions or comments and have the students reply in an open forum viewed by the whole group. This gives them the opportunity to offer answers/solutions as well as provide comments and questions to items posted, which can facilitate learning.
This is followed by an assignment to calculate the better meal cost option by calculating the cost differential between buying a meal package and paying for meals individually. This type of computation allows the students to apply math skills to a real world price comparison exercise. Students will work in pairs. One person will seek and find the cost information while their partner will perform the calculations. They will then use this information in addition to other cost data to ultimately calculate the all-in cost of this trip. To assist the students in finding the cost data, they can go into the Library and find links and other information I've stored in there.
The earlier activities led them to the key final components of the project, which involves organizing and evaluating the data, drawing an initial affordability conclusion (evaluation) and then providing proposals to improve affordability (i.e.: bring food and eat out less, stay fewer days/nights, have all family members save money towards the trip, etc.). By proposing alternative solutions to enhance affordability, the students are synthesizing as part of the learning process. This project also has the ability to create by changing their perspective on what is meant by affordability and how they will look at future opportunities. Affordability may have only meant having the money to pay a stated or calculated price and now they can see that one may be able to impact various components and affect affordability.
There may be struggles with implementing this project. First, the students may not have access to a computer. They may not all have personal access to a computer outside of school. The school may have a limited number of computers available and for limited time periods for all students to be able to complete assignments within a reasonable time period. Second, the school district may not have approved the use of a social networking technology in the classroom. There may be concerns of privacy, questions and skepticism regarding the benefits, and fears of the issues associated with other social networking sites. Third, parents may object to or have similar concerns with their student using it. Fourth, the school's server may go down and impact student working time. Fifth, Edmodo may go down, which I personally experienced, which impacts student working time.
In addition to managing the implementation struggles, there are trade-offs with Edmodo. One of its great features is the ability for students to collaborate, which can facilitate learning. However, there are pros and cons with this form of collaboration. First, the intended message may be misinterpreted because it's harder to detect the tone of the message, or the word choices draw different understandings and non-verbal helper cues are absent from the communication process. Second, there is less control and more monitoring required to insure appropriate communication/language. For example, in a classroom if there's inappropriate or hurtful language used, the teacher can react right then. If it occurs within Edmodo, the posting may have occurred while the teacher was not within the site and thereby delaying the action taken to resolve the situation and prevent it from escalating. Teachers need to carefully monitor communication on the site and the more dialog that occurs, the more time spent on monitoring. Third, for some students who may be less apt to participate in class, this can create a more comfortable and engaging forum for them, though his may be at the cost of some students retreating. For example, some students may have the mindset that they are doing someone else's work and shouldn't have to "share" the grade, so they limit their contributions. Likewise, a student may feel like he can slack off because there are others who will do the work for him. There are also limitations to Edmodo. The communication is only at a group level. Students are unable to post just to certain parties, like their pair partner. Another limitation is that it doesn't provide face-to-face interaction for continued development of important social skills.
This project, utilizing the respective technology, meets teaching and student standards. It meets INTASC standard 5 for Application of Content, ISTE 2 for Communication and Collaboration and 4 for Critical Thinking, Problem Solving and Decision Making. The collaborative format combined with thoughtful project questions and assignments promoted critical thinking (i.e.: opportunity cost exploration) on real issues (i.e.: option comparisons). The students had to make an initial affordability decision and then re-look at it to determine what other impacts could be made using critical thinking and problem solving skills. It also meets INTASC standard 6 for Assessment. The polls help the teacher gauge initial knowledge base and use that throughout the project to see and monitor the ongoing learning process. She reviews post responses and assignments to understand what her students are thinking. The project was set up in four groups so that a student pair could "open" a new level when they completed the tasks in a particular group, and the only way to get into the new group is for the teacher to provide the access. This control can help the teacher see where students are getting stuck and make modifications along the way.
For viewing my Edmodo site, go to www.Edmodo.com and click on the student sign-up link. Enter one of the following codes: lfzcb8, qkp12i, isr6w5 and 3a83d1. After you enter the one code and get access to that group, you can add yourself to the other groups using the additional codes. I created four groups as a means of the student progressing through each of the parks as they progress their way through the polls, posts and assignment until completing the tasks. The kids would only get access to the next group when I provided them access upon completion of each level. you are getting it all so you can see the various tools used to construct this project.
In conjunction with this Edmodo project, I read the MIT research paper entitled The Instructional Power of digital games social networking simulations and How Teachers Can Leverage Them (http://education.mit.edu/papers/GamesSimsSocNets_EdArcade.pdf). The paper primarily offered reasons for why teachers should use technologies in the classroom, specifically digital games, social networking and simulations, and provided examples of teachers who utilized these technologies with positive outcomes. The authors had a lot of good arguments and I would agree with the reasons they cited for employing such technologies, but I think they could have elaborated more about the importance of utilizing technologies where it is appropriate and beneficial. Not all projects and situations warrant the use of such technologies and teachers should be mindful of the that when they are developing their lessons. Getting teachers on board with using technologies is good but can be detrimental if they aren't using them to raise the level of learning. If learning is not enhanced and test scores and other assessment measures don't show that technology was beneficial, it can create greater reluctance to fund and support technology use going forward. Therefore, I believe teachers need to be careful in their application and am disappointed that this article promoting their usage did not articulate this aspect strongly.
There were some very interesting and informative reasons cited for using technology in the classroom. The current K-12 generation has been "completely normalized by digital technologies - it is a fully integrated part of their lives." (Green & Hannon, 2007) Although there are concerns about social networking such as security, it was their contention that one cannot dismiss it and that schools should give consideration to safe, valuable classroom tools that continue to be developed. This made me think of Edmodo. It is a good example of a social networking tool that worked to address issues like privacy and security. For instance, it requires minimal information to set up a profile, and teachers control who is allowed in the group. Statistics cited from the National School Board Association were that 96% of 9-17 year olds have used social networking with 60% of the surveyed students saying it was for educational topics and 50% was to talk about school work. I would like more details on what particularly was talked about and how it benefited them. That information was not provided. The authors recognize one can still have strong lessons and learning objectives without technologies but argue that there's a significant disconnect with "the way the outside world approaches socialization, meaning-making and accomplishment." and declare it critical to mitigate the gap and leverage the power "for instructional gain." I believe one needs to be cognizant of the disconnect and help bridge the gap as educators are to help children develop the skills and have the knowledge needed for the outside world. However, not all new technologies are the best fit to facilitate learning. The right application matters. Technology can help students with Create, at the top of Bloom's Taxonomy pyramid. According to the authors, many k-12 students are "using new media and technologies to create new things, learn new things, and communicate in new ways". For social networking, the paper places social cognition at the core, with collaboration and the learning from others building on such critical skills as literacy, research, technical skills and critical analysis.
An important learning theory component is understanding students' existing knowledge and/or experience. In this Disney project, it is important to know the students' familiarity with income, expenses and the net remaining as they will be working with these concepts throughout the project. This is possible within Edmodo through the poll function. I used two poll questions. The first is concerning allowances, to have a sense for their understanding of income. The second is concerning the purchase of items when they have insufficient funds, to have a sense for their understanding of expense and net income (deficit).
Edmodo does not make the learning more concrete. However, it does support collaboration in learning theory. Through posts, questions are posed to students for their collective input. For example, they are asked to generate a list of cost factors that should be taken into consideration. Also, they are asked for input on non-cost items to consider when comparing meal plan options. This is to encourage the students to think about opportunity costs without directly stating it, therefore, taking the comparison and analysis beyond the math calculation. Edmodo facilitates collaboration by allowing the teacher to post questions or comments and have the students reply in an open forum viewed by the whole group. This gives them the opportunity to offer answers/solutions as well as provide comments and questions to items posted, which can facilitate learning.
This is followed by an assignment to calculate the better meal cost option by calculating the cost differential between buying a meal package and paying for meals individually. This type of computation allows the students to apply math skills to a real world price comparison exercise. Students will work in pairs. One person will seek and find the cost information while their partner will perform the calculations. They will then use this information in addition to other cost data to ultimately calculate the all-in cost of this trip. To assist the students in finding the cost data, they can go into the Library and find links and other information I've stored in there.
The earlier activities led them to the key final components of the project, which involves organizing and evaluating the data, drawing an initial affordability conclusion (evaluation) and then providing proposals to improve affordability (i.e.: bring food and eat out less, stay fewer days/nights, have all family members save money towards the trip, etc.). By proposing alternative solutions to enhance affordability, the students are synthesizing as part of the learning process. This project also has the ability to create by changing their perspective on what is meant by affordability and how they will look at future opportunities. Affordability may have only meant having the money to pay a stated or calculated price and now they can see that one may be able to impact various components and affect affordability.
There may be struggles with implementing this project. First, the students may not have access to a computer. They may not all have personal access to a computer outside of school. The school may have a limited number of computers available and for limited time periods for all students to be able to complete assignments within a reasonable time period. Second, the school district may not have approved the use of a social networking technology in the classroom. There may be concerns of privacy, questions and skepticism regarding the benefits, and fears of the issues associated with other social networking sites. Third, parents may object to or have similar concerns with their student using it. Fourth, the school's server may go down and impact student working time. Fifth, Edmodo may go down, which I personally experienced, which impacts student working time.
In addition to managing the implementation struggles, there are trade-offs with Edmodo. One of its great features is the ability for students to collaborate, which can facilitate learning. However, there are pros and cons with this form of collaboration. First, the intended message may be misinterpreted because it's harder to detect the tone of the message, or the word choices draw different understandings and non-verbal helper cues are absent from the communication process. Second, there is less control and more monitoring required to insure appropriate communication/language. For example, in a classroom if there's inappropriate or hurtful language used, the teacher can react right then. If it occurs within Edmodo, the posting may have occurred while the teacher was not within the site and thereby delaying the action taken to resolve the situation and prevent it from escalating. Teachers need to carefully monitor communication on the site and the more dialog that occurs, the more time spent on monitoring. Third, for some students who may be less apt to participate in class, this can create a more comfortable and engaging forum for them, though his may be at the cost of some students retreating. For example, some students may have the mindset that they are doing someone else's work and shouldn't have to "share" the grade, so they limit their contributions. Likewise, a student may feel like he can slack off because there are others who will do the work for him. There are also limitations to Edmodo. The communication is only at a group level. Students are unable to post just to certain parties, like their pair partner. Another limitation is that it doesn't provide face-to-face interaction for continued development of important social skills.
This project, utilizing the respective technology, meets teaching and student standards. It meets INTASC standard 5 for Application of Content, ISTE 2 for Communication and Collaboration and 4 for Critical Thinking, Problem Solving and Decision Making. The collaborative format combined with thoughtful project questions and assignments promoted critical thinking (i.e.: opportunity cost exploration) on real issues (i.e.: option comparisons). The students had to make an initial affordability decision and then re-look at it to determine what other impacts could be made using critical thinking and problem solving skills. It also meets INTASC standard 6 for Assessment. The polls help the teacher gauge initial knowledge base and use that throughout the project to see and monitor the ongoing learning process. She reviews post responses and assignments to understand what her students are thinking. The project was set up in four groups so that a student pair could "open" a new level when they completed the tasks in a particular group, and the only way to get into the new group is for the teacher to provide the access. This control can help the teacher see where students are getting stuck and make modifications along the way.
For viewing my Edmodo site, go to www.Edmodo.com and click on the student sign-up link. Enter one of the following codes: lfzcb8, qkp12i, isr6w5 and 3a83d1. After you enter the one code and get access to that group, you can add yourself to the other groups using the additional codes. I created four groups as a means of the student progressing through each of the parks as they progress their way through the polls, posts and assignment until completing the tasks. The kids would only get access to the next group when I provided them access upon completion of each level. you are getting it all so you can see the various tools used to construct this project.
In conjunction with this Edmodo project, I read the MIT research paper entitled The Instructional Power of digital games social networking simulations and How Teachers Can Leverage Them (http://education.mit.edu/papers/GamesSimsSocNets_EdArcade.pdf). The paper primarily offered reasons for why teachers should use technologies in the classroom, specifically digital games, social networking and simulations, and provided examples of teachers who utilized these technologies with positive outcomes. The authors had a lot of good arguments and I would agree with the reasons they cited for employing such technologies, but I think they could have elaborated more about the importance of utilizing technologies where it is appropriate and beneficial. Not all projects and situations warrant the use of such technologies and teachers should be mindful of the that when they are developing their lessons. Getting teachers on board with using technologies is good but can be detrimental if they aren't using them to raise the level of learning. If learning is not enhanced and test scores and other assessment measures don't show that technology was beneficial, it can create greater reluctance to fund and support technology use going forward. Therefore, I believe teachers need to be careful in their application and am disappointed that this article promoting their usage did not articulate this aspect strongly.
There were some very interesting and informative reasons cited for using technology in the classroom. The current K-12 generation has been "completely normalized by digital technologies - it is a fully integrated part of their lives." (Green & Hannon, 2007) Although there are concerns about social networking such as security, it was their contention that one cannot dismiss it and that schools should give consideration to safe, valuable classroom tools that continue to be developed. This made me think of Edmodo. It is a good example of a social networking tool that worked to address issues like privacy and security. For instance, it requires minimal information to set up a profile, and teachers control who is allowed in the group. Statistics cited from the National School Board Association were that 96% of 9-17 year olds have used social networking with 60% of the surveyed students saying it was for educational topics and 50% was to talk about school work. I would like more details on what particularly was talked about and how it benefited them. That information was not provided. The authors recognize one can still have strong lessons and learning objectives without technologies but argue that there's a significant disconnect with "the way the outside world approaches socialization, meaning-making and accomplishment." and declare it critical to mitigate the gap and leverage the power "for instructional gain." I believe one needs to be cognizant of the disconnect and help bridge the gap as educators are to help children develop the skills and have the knowledge needed for the outside world. However, not all new technologies are the best fit to facilitate learning. The right application matters. Technology can help students with Create, at the top of Bloom's Taxonomy pyramid. According to the authors, many k-12 students are "using new media and technologies to create new things, learn new things, and communicate in new ways". For social networking, the paper places social cognition at the core, with collaboration and the learning from others building on such critical skills as literacy, research, technical skills and critical analysis.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
First Day of Class
What a first class! I'm excited about the idea of learning and exploring new technologies that can be used to enhance learning and excitement in the classroom. I'm also trying to keep up with all the new things we are creating for my first time today and expect they are just the beginning of things to be learned that will be quite beneficial. Our instructor is good about walking you through things as well as some very nice, helpful fellow students.
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