Reflection: Unit 1/Introduction

In reviewing this unit’s resources, I found several resources to be quite helpful, while others were somewhat overwhelming in their comprehensiveness.

How to Use Blogs Correctly

Daniel Light’s article “Do Web 2.0 Right” (2011) had many helpful hints for utilizing blogs correctly in the classroom. Many times I have considered using blogs in my courses (I teach senior high English), but have not been able to conceptualize how they would be actually beneficial for my students beyond just completing the occasional assignment on their blog. The way Light advises teachers to consider their classroom audience and assign very specific tasks to classes makes a lot of sense, and I’m glad to see the struggles with blogging addressed in his article. Overall, after reading this selection, I feel more confident in using blogs correctly in the future (should the opportunity arise to incorporate them meaningfully into my curriculum).

Digital Verbs

Another resource that I found to be meaningful was the description of Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy (Churches, 2009). The digital taxonomy verbs are helpful to reference when devising technology-based assignments. I was reminded of the Depth of Knowledge wheel verbage (which our district emphasizes heavily), and how I refer to the verbs used on the wheel to guide my activities, especially when I am attempting to create more rigorous lessons. I will use the digital taxonomy verbs to plan lessons more often since our building will be going 1:1 (finally!) next year. I also found it interesting that advanced and Boolean searching was considered an Understanding - level activity (Churches, 2009, p. 25).

Substitution and Augmentation

While I am excited about going 1:1, there are many in my building who are not as excited. The blog by Jen Roberts -- “Turning SAMR Into TECH: What Good Models are For” (2013) -- contained this quote that stood out to me: “If you work with teachers new to technology, take my advice, don't show them the SAMR model until they are already comfortable doing some substitution and augmentation.” While I am familiar with the stages of the SAMR model, I find myself currently using technology primarily for substitution and augmentation. In fact, my district’s technology director has recommended that in the process of us transitioning to 1:1, we should stick to the S and A stages until we feel comfortable with the apps and technology we are using. I found it interesting that this idea was re-emphasized in Roberts’ blog.

Video Tools

I also found the video “Teaching, Learning, and Creating with Online Tools” to be informational regarding different types of video projects and editing programs that are available (Schrock, 2015). I had taken previous coursework where some of this content was discussed, but this video provided many more options for editing software than I had previously been aware of. It is a great resource to have as a reference for future projects.

References

Churches, A. (2009.) Bloom’s digital taxonomy. Retrieved 4 May 2017 from https://live.wilkes.edu/content/enforced/227585-20148.201720/blooms_digital.pdf?_&d2lSessionVal=2UskWsxeJnLFAX7Jff4SlWBcv&ou=227585

Light, D. (2011.) Do web 2.0 right. Learning & Leading with Technology, Feb. 2011. Retrieved 4 May 2017 from https://live.wilkes.edu/content/enforced/227585-20148.201720/web20_classroom.pdf?_&d2lSessionVal=2UskWsxeJnLFAX7Jff4SlWBcv&ou=227585

Roberts, J. (2013.) Turning SAMR into TECH: What models are good for. In Literacy, Technology, Policy, Etc. ...A Blog. Retrieved 4 May 2017 from http://www.litandtech.com/2013/11/turning-samr-into-tech-what-models-are.html

Schrock, K. (2015.) Teaching, learning and creating with online tools. [Video file]. Retrieved 4 May 2017 from https://vimeo.com/121203978

Pedagogical Models

The current pedagogical model stressed by my district and which I personally use on a regular basis is a combination of the Depth of Knowledge (DOK) Wheel (Webb, 2005) and the Rigor Meter (“Rigor”, n.d.). The DOK Wheel and the Rigor Meter both have four levels of questioning/tasks for students to complete. The DOK Wheel has the appropriate verbs to guide teachers in writing questions/creating assignments, and the Rigor Meter supports the DOK Wheel and the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy, as it aligns to both models and specifies specific outcomes for the teacher to adhere to. The difficulty increases with each level, and tasks that are at a level 4 are often project-based or extended writing assignments. A good instructional approach with the DOK Wheel/Rigor Meter is to incorporate as many Level 2 and 3 techniques into lessons as possible, occasionally reaching into a Level 4 activity or dipping to a Level 1 (Webb, 2005; “Rigor”, n.d.).

The model I especially like, though, specifically because it deals with technology, is the TECH model (Roberts, 2013). It seems more student-centered to me, as opposed to the DOK Wheel/Rigor Meter, which is teacher/task-centered. It also appears as though the TECH model may easily lend itself to learning contracts, which I would like to incorporate into my curriculum as we move to 1:1 programming next year. As I gain experience with using the TECH model, I will be able to see how it benefits students in my classroom.

References

Clayton County Public Schools. (n.d.) Rigor meter. Retrieved 4 May 2017 from http://pcs3rdgrade.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/44431807/RigorMeter%20dok%20rbt.pdf

Roberts, J. (2013.) Turning SAMR into TECH: What models are good for. In Literacy, Technology, Policy, Etc. ...A Blog. Retrieved 4 May 2017 from http://www.litandtech.com/2013/11/turning-samr-into-tech-what-models-are.html

Webb, N. L. and others. (24 July 2005). Web alignment tool. Wisconsin Center of Educational Research. University of Wisconsin-Madison. Retrieved 4 May 2017 from https://static.pdesas.org/content/documents/M1-Slide_19_DOK_Wheel_Slide.pdf

PLN: Assignment

Personal learning networks, or PLNs as they are often called, are excellent tools for gathering and accessing resources and making personal connections with others. Daniel R. Tobin (2017) maintains that in today’s world, PLNs are vital in helping us through the four stages of learning - accessing data, creating information, transforming information into knowledge that we retain, and (eventually) exercising wisdom with the knowledge and experiences we have either personally had or others have shared with us.

PLNs have tremendous value, both in terms of cost-saving to districts (PLNs provide inherent professional development without the bill) and, through technology, by opening doors to teachers that previously never even existed. Today teachers are not limited to getting new ideas from the people working in our buildings, but we can share ideas with teachers across the globe through social media. PLNs play the critical role of sifting through the giant mass of information for the most relevant pieces and show teachers how to make sense of what is available.

I am a part of several PLNs that directly relate to my teaching. Most important is the PLN I have developed among the teachers, administration, and staff in my senior high building. This group is the first network I turn to for help with locating/accessing resources, evaluating those resources for appropriateness in my classroom, and coaching/mentoring. Another PLN of mine involves a group of teachers I worked with in the past, whom I still text on a regular basis and see sometimes at conferences. The final PLN is a passive PLN - it involves social media sites as Pinterest and (newly) Twitter for sharing and locating new teaching resources, and I use these occasionally. I feel that I am at Utecht’s Stage 2: Evaluation (2008). I have immersed myself in numerous groups and now need to take a step back and think about the groups with which I want to dedicate my time. My personal plan is to continue developing friendships with the colleagues in my building that I know well. I will start conversations with new faculty members with the specific goal of learning a skill/technique from their unique experience. I will also begin to more actively use my Pinterest/Twitter PLN to take advantage of broader online communities and grow my list of contacts.

References

Tobin, D.R. (2017.) Building a personal learning network. In Articles. Retrieved 8 May 2017 from http://www.tobincls.com/articles/

Utecht, J. (2008.) Stages of PLN adoption. In The Thinking Stick. Retrieved 8 May 2017 from http://www.thethinkingstick.com/stages-of-pln-adoption/

Twitter Thoughts

So this week I brought back a social media account from the edge of obsoletion: my Twitter account. I had created the account some time ago for an assignment for another grad class, but never kept up with this form of social media. To be completely truthful, I don't keep up with any social media sites, so I spent quite a few hours updating/creating a Twitter profile, adding a profile pic, and finding people to follow. I find posting a tweet and retweeting to be rather simple and easy to do. For me, the site is easier to navigate in a desktop configuration as compared to the mobile version, but I'm still learning. Frustration #1: Seeing tweets from people I don't follow - I've managed to block individuals when this happens to keep from having random/spam-type tweets clogging up my stream. Frustration #2: How Twitter organizes replies to tweets. I am more familiar with seeing replies/comments in a linear fashion, like how Facebook organizes comments below a post, but Twitter does not organize replies this way. If I reply to a tweet, and then someone else replies to the same tweet, it can be difficult to visually follow the "conversation." If the conversation was color-coded, it would be easier for me to follow. Frustration #3: Thinking of things to tweet. Since I am intending to use my Twitter account for professional uses, I am trying to post educational sites, apps, for findings/articles of interest to other teachers or colleagues that I currently work with. Because of this, I feel that I should be posting rather regularly (maybe once per day?), but there were many times I felt I needed to find something of appropriate value to discuss in my tweet. This involved more time and thought than I had originally planned for this week. Overall, I was glad for this assignment, because it forced me to put myself out on social media but in a way that can be used for educational purposes and to grow my own PLN. The frustrations are a small price to pay for stumbling my way around an excellent learning tool. Twitter Handle: @mrs_hhauser

Blog Reading ASsignment

Blogs are unique pieces of writing for students to read, write and analyze. Each blog has its own style as it attempts to reach a specific target audience. I analyzed four blogs for writing similarities, unique features, and audience appeal. The Discovery Educator Network National blog (2017) is well-developed with relevant research, tools, and resources for its target audience - teachers, education professionals, and administrators around the nation. There are some links for parents and students, but they are minimal and hard to find (located on the bottom of the home page). The blog This and That by Jon Castlehano (2017) was a far simpler, text-based layout and was geared more towards leadership and educational administration in its posts. The Aside Blog (2017) is a little different than the other two - it employs high-interest blog posts (the one about the fidget spinners caught my eye immediately!) and focuses more on design. The audience for Aside is teachers and possibly students - there are lots of helpful, practical tools and everyday tips for creating projects or utilizing programs. The Educational Technology and Mobile Learning blog (2017) has a slightly different focus than Aside, although they both provide practical resources for teachers. Ed Tech/Mobile Learning uses tabs that organizes their resources by apps and their appropriate devices, so teachers can easily find the device they use for class (i.e. Chromebooks) and click on that tab to find new resources/programs for their own device.

Reading blogs and writing blogs are different than other types of reading/writing that students typically engage in. As blogger Matt Banner (2017) says, “People know blogging as a casual and honest affair, and that’s because it is. When your students blog, they can write in their own voice, speak their minds, and ultimately express their opinions in a welcoming environment. When the blog goes live, suddenly your students are open to a world of people who may or may not share those same ideals. Still, this experience will connect them in significant and profound ways and teach them the confidence to speak their mind”. Blogging forces students to write in a way where they are chiefly concerned with reaching a global audience, not just having the teacher read and respond to their writing. This shift in audience will often prompt rewriting and proofreading, perhaps on a deeper level than the student would have engaged in for a classroom writing assignment.

Because blogs are written informally and often involve multimedia elements, reading them requires more synthesis than do paragraphs of plain text. Students must understand the purpose of including specific pieces of multimedia, and must evaluate whether the media adds to the meaning of the blog or distracts from its essence. Students must also evaluate whether the comments on a blog are pertinent to its meaning - the comments on one blog may prove very valuable, if they are written well and the author is credible, but often comments on blogs are inappropriate or lack any real substance. Blogs require students to participate in critical thinking and evaluating in a different way than other types of writing might require. They provide a unique experience in student learning due to their inclusion of multimedia, additional links, and forum-like quality in the comments section, fostering collaboration and discussion.

References

Banner, M. (2017.) Get started with classroom blogging. In OnBlastBlog.com [blog post]. Retrieved 16 May 2017 from https://www.onblastblog.com/blogging-in-the-classroom/

Castlehano, J. (2017.) This and That [blog post]. Retrieved 15 May 2017 from http://jcastelhanothisandthat.blogspot.com/

Discovery Education. (2017.) Discovery Educator Network National [blog post]. Retrieved 15 May 2017 from http://blog.discoveryeducation.com/

Hall, M., & Russac, P. (2017.) The Aside Blog: Innovation Design in Education [blog post]. Retrieved 15 May 2017 from http://theasideblog.blogspot.com/

Kharbach, M. (2017.) Educational Technology and Mobile Learning [blog post]. Retrieved 15 May 2017 from http://www.educatorstechnology.com/

PodCast Reflection

To someone who has never created a podcast before, my initial impression of this assignment was that it would be difficult, time-consuming, and not really something I could see myself using in my teaching in the future. While I did have some technical difficulties with the iPadio site (I struggled a bit with getting the site to recognize my attached audio file), overall I found the process to be easier than I thought. I discussed the app VoiceThread, which I have used in the pass, as the subject of my podcast and wrote out a script explaining its features. I then took several takes recording my voice with my cell phone, uploaded the best file onto my computer, and (again, after several tries) was able to upload the file to iPadio. I don’t know how often I will really use podcasts in my own personal teaching, but I am glad that I have created one and have gained a new experience.

iPadio Channel homepage http://www.ipadio.com/channels/hannahhauser

Channel RSS/iTunes feed http://www.ipadio.com/channels/agviyIfJYOcb_kt9-rsfqw/rss

RSS Aggregation

RSS aggregation is a useful tool for the average, everyday Internet user, but can dramatically expand possibilities for students in the classroom. The SlideShare “RSS in Education” (2007) highlights some innovative ways for using aggregation in schools, like syndicating photos from Flickr rather than blog posts or text options. This could be useful in an art class, or in any subject area where the teacher wants to emphasize a different medium of information. Aggregation could be used to enhance traditional researching methods - rather than spend hours searching through Google or database results for scholarly articles on a specific topic, students could gather RSS feeds from credible sites and create a custom syndication based on certain keywords (i.e. Holocaust literature). Aggregation could also be used to introduce a new topic or unit that students do not know much about - the teacher could share specific RSS feed URL links with the class, and students could write a reflection on something interesting about a specific topic posted on those shared sites as a way to begin conversations. Aggregation can also be conducive to differentiation: according to the SlideShare “RSS in Education,” sites like talkr.com or feed2podcast.com can translate text posts to audio files, which would be something that I could use regularly in my classroom, for ESL students or students with learning disabilities who have difficulty with reading comprehension (2007).

Aggregation can also be used within departments in a school building. When looking through the resources for this particular topic, I was struck with the idea that my English department could benefit from establishing individual teacher blogs and setting up RSS feed so that when new ideas arose, the whole department could see and comment. This is similar to the Notes and Highlights features of Feedly’s Teams user option (Veach, 2017). There are so many possibilities for aggregation’s use in the classroom that I feel most teachers are only beginning to tap into its potential. Some educators may find aggregation daunting until they become more familiar with its time-saving and filtering abilities, but that doesn’t mean aggregation should not be used. As I continue to experiment with Feedly, I look forward to being able to confidently use this in my own classroom one day.

References

leonardstern. (15 May 2007.) RSS in education [SlideShare]. Retrieved 23 May 2017 from https://www.slideshare.net/leonardstern/rss-in-education

Veach, E. (4 April 2017.) Introducing boards, notes, and highlights. In Product Updates [Feedly blog]. Retrieved 23 May 2017 from https://blog.feedly.com/boards/

Critical Evaluation Project: Creative Commons

In creating my 10-slide introduction to evaluating online resources, I pulled together a number of various resources, both old and new. I have discussed the topic with my sophomore English classes to some extent in a research skills unit that I teach, and have used various checklists with them in the past to ensure they know how to evaluate sources well (when students find a potential source they'd like to use for a project, they must complete the checklist to verify its reliability and appropriateness). I blended those ideas with some research I found on UC-Berkeley's Library website, and thus had the material for my own slideshow.

Finding the images for my slideshow turned out to be the most time-consuming aspect of this project. I pulled three images from DES and three images from Google, being careful to use only those images that were labeled for reuse. I provided full citations for the images also, just to be on the safe side. Creative Commons licensing is amazing for educators - I know for myself, anything that makes my job easier while still providing excellent options for students is invaluable. When assigning multimedia projects, I can simply require that students use CC images that are "free" to use, and I don't have to spend time teaching them how to cite every single image they use in their PowerPoint slides. It also teaches the students to be more aware of the importance of copyright information and why it is so important that they credit the creators of the online material they are using. Sifting through CC images may be a little more time-consuming, but it is worth the process.

Padlet to introduce Japanese Internment

This Padlet would be used in a general-level 11th-grade English class to garner and promote discussion about Japanese-American internment camps as a topic related to a WWII/POW novel we read (Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand). This would be used as an introductory activity and would be followed with a prediction question or class discussion to see what prior knowledge students have about Japanese-American internment camps.

URL for above Adobe Spark Video: https://spark.adobe.com/video/NdFiSNQthKQrj

Online Presentations Reflection

Go to my blog Innovative English to read my thoughts on two online presentation sites, Padlet and Adobe Spark Video, and how I could use them in a senior high English classroom.

Google Photos Timeline infographic

I created a Google Photos timeline focusing on the 1960s decade. My sophomores read The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, which is set during this time period, so a photo timeline would be good background information for them to preview and discuss prior to reading the novel. Check out the timeline here. I had never even heard of Google Photos prior to this assignment, but (typical of all things Google) it was an easy program to navigate and manipulate the photos and text the way I wanted them. I could have my students create their own Google Photos timeline as an introductory activity to this book. I think Google Photos could be a very useful tool.

Canva Timeline infographic

Social Media Stats Infographic

Innovative english Blog: infographics

Check out my thoughts on infographics and their value in the classroom on my blog, Innovative English.

PSA Assignment: 1

Check out my blog here to see my responses to the videos for PSA Assignment: Part 1.

PSA Assignment: 2

Technology is Global Education

Below is a video I created (from an administrator's stance) about how technology can be used to give students a global education.