This week we finished CEDO 525. Over all I was very happy with how the class turned out. I thought that the focus on the applications in the classroom was just what I needed to learn about. Even though technology initiatives are kind of stalled at the moment at work, I still have a few things like learning management systems, electronic grading and web design that i want to implement in my classroom. CEDO 525 was great to help me toward these goals.
As part of the final project we had to change a lesson that we do into one that utilizes technology more effectively. I changed around a bunch of things that I do in my AP Physics class when we study electricity. I used Blackboard and a host of other technologies to better give the students feedback on their learning. You can view the presentation below:
Friday, April 15, 2011
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Week #5 in CEDO 525
Lesson Evaluation
This week we started to wrap up our work in CEDO 525 by applying the instructional strategies and technology integration into our classrooms. Our first task was to evaluate a current lesson available on the web. I chose the website Amusement Park Physics (http://www.learner.org/interactives/parkphysics/) due to my AP class’ impending trip to Six Flags Great America. Over all the unit is solid and I will try to roll it into what I already do with my students. You can see my full report on it in the Google doc below:
We also finished up our book Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works. The final three chapters were Identifying Similarities and Differences, Homework and Practice, and Generating and Testing Hypotheses.
Identifying Similarities and Differences
When students learn something new they try to connect that something new to what they already know. For some students this connection is easy, for others it is very difficult and they end up learning small packets of information that have no application or reason for existing outside of a very small set of circumstances. A teacher can make great strides in retention of knowledge and student achievement just by recognizing that what their students learn must be connect to what they already know. My identifying the similarities between topics the students have studied a teacher can make great gains in their students’ achievement. Technology can be used to organize these similarities as well a point out crucial differences. I really liked the book’s use of data collection tools such as Vernier digital probes to better get students to visualize the similarities and differences in motion. I do this in my own classroom and it really helps students understand the directionality of motion.
Homework and Practice
Homework is a dirty word to a lot of students. Some of them see it as busy work and if homework is not properly handled it very much is. The authors state that homework should be varied, have a feedback component and be age appropriate. All of these seem like very logical, but I am amazed at how often teachers (myself included) seem to forget these simple tenants. There is nothing that seems to frustrate a student more than having spent time on a homework assignment only to have the teacher not engage the task that the student completed. Last year I started teaching AP Physics. Due to the massive amount of information required by the course my students were given a reading assignment each night to prepare them for the next day’s lesson. They almost never did the assignment and our lessons would have to start from scratch each day. I did not have time to implement reading quizzes, but I did try daily warm up questions to some success. This year I was given access to a learning management system called Blackboard. Now the students have a self graded reading quiz nightly that provides them with the feedback to know that they have done the reading and understand the basics of the material. I love that the system engages the students while they are reading and I can program in what ever questions I want. The quizzes can be taken as many times as the student wishes and I can make the quiz take only 5 minutes so that it is not a burden to my students or to me. The system has made a big impact on my day to day teaching of the material.
Generating and Testing Hypothesis
As a science teacher generating and testing hypotheses are my bread and butter. It came pretty naturally to me when the authors said that students should have the opportunity to test out their own explanations for what is going on around them. I really liked their use of spreadsheets for students to investigate how changing a variable affects something that they observe. In a science classroom all of this seems pretty cut and dry about how to implement, but I was impressed that the authors went on to show how web simulations could bring history alive. It was neat to see that these ideas are not science specific.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Week #4 in CEDO525
It’s a Wild Ride
This week we were asked to view an interdisciplinary unit titled: It’s a Wild Ride available at http://educate.intel.com/en/WildRide. The unit is very similar to one I do with my freshmen except that the scope is much larger in the Intel lesson. I really like the cross disciplinary aspects of the project that get students to use language and researching skills when they are studying roller coasters and the laws of motion. I also thought that the introduction of the unit by having the teachers do a skit was brilliant. What a great way to get the students excited to study a topic. Also, the inclusion of a trip to an amusement park is a great end of the year cap to their studies in middle school. The project looks like a lot of fun.
In my own classroom we study forces and energy in much the same way, but my students do not build a hypothetical roller coaster, they build a marble coaster that uses paper shapes on a plastic scaffold that students can decorate and label much easier than some of the kinex and pipe insulation that are present in the pictures of the lesson. The lesson also only takes about 18 class days from start to finish instead of the 30 outlined by the project. There are advantages to each, but the scope and scale of the Intel project puts it a step above my classroom unit.
An example of one of my student's paper roller coaster and force diagrams
TED Talk: institutions vs. Collaboration
This week we watched a TED talk by Clay Shirky about the difference between collaboration and institutions when it comes to sharing and organizing data. Mr. Shirky detailed the issues with forming professional groups to solve problems, gather information or create new technology. He claims that through centralization we loose a lot of contributions from the fringe. Only by making your system truly collaborative can you gain all of the contributions from every member of a group so that you do not loose a good idea. I agree that ideas can come from anywhere, but there is a certain thing that institutions do that purely collaborative groups can not and that is to compensate their workers. Purely collaborative models such as flicker, wikipedia and del.ico.us do create vast amounts of information that is catalogued very quickly, the work that is done by the members of these sites is not for profit and as such is amateur at best and self destructive at worst. The policing of these sites are left up to the users and depends upon people valuing their digital personas in order to keep people in line. In contrast an institution has multiple “carrots and sticks” to keep their employees or members in line and working toward the common goal. Since we are a society that requires money to live I feel it is disingenuous to not mention this in a talk about institutions vs. collaborative groups.
Cooperative Learning
In chapter 7 of Using Technology with Classroom Instruction That Works the authors have many different suggestions when it comes to forming groups and giving them collaborative tasks to accomplish. The authors outline that groups should be of mixed ability, small in size and be frequently used. All of these suggestions are spot on when it comes to implementing cooperative learning in a classroom. If groups are put together in a way that groups all the high achieving students together and all of the low achieving groups together then of course the high achievers will get a good grade and the low achievers will get a poor one. If groups are too large (more than 4 students in my opinion) then some students will coast on the contributions of their classmates. If groups are done infrequently then you will have to spend a large amount of class time acquainting students with their roles and responsibilities inside of a group. The up side to all of this is that when done properly collaborative learning can foster a sense of community and decentralize the learning so that students can help each other learn and achieve.
Reinforcing Effort
In chapter 8 of Using Technology with Classroom Instruction That Works the authors have outlined numerous ways that technology can be used to reinforce student effort. Aside from the obvious emails home and awards certificates produced in Mircosoft Word the text cites several unique ideas about how to motivate students. I really enjoyed the use of spread sheets for students to chart and evaluate their progress in a task. This idea combines the students’ need to have constant feedback on their performance with a visual reminder about how they are doing. The system is self-directed so that teachers do not have to spend extra time daily evaluating students and students themselves will enjoy seeing their “score” rise daily as they labor on a project or unit. I like how much the system parallels a “Gamer Score” that students can compare with each other and use as a motivation to do more in class. I’m going to evaluate how to implement this in my AP class to further push my students in some electronic assignments that we do.
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