September 7th, 2011 Class - EDUC 504

What has been going on during break to utilize the tools we learned about in the EDUC 504 Summer class?

3 Edubloggers I have been following:


Grade 7 Math Blogorama at Sargent Park - I was looking for ideas that fit my student teacher placement for the next year.  I have been placed in a 7th grade mathematics class.  "This is the home of Sargent Park's grade 7 math course. Four classes, 7-42, 7-43, 7-44 and 7-72 will be using this website as a forum to discuss math problems, help their fellow students and enrich their learning experience. Content is to be kept to math related subjects, yet students should feel free to ask questions and let their voices be heard."  There are a few contributors that answer questions that the students and teachers ask, such as "This fellow teacher is thinking of implementing a blog with her middle year students next year and was wondering how I dealt with students copying one another's work."  The more I read, the more I realize I can put blogging into action with even the 7th graders.

Math Videos On Line - This web site was set up just for me!  It is a blog that collects math videos for students to watch.  It is a place where the videos are archived according to which math subject you are looking for supplemental videos.  There are also many helpful links with problems that people put up for you to use, and helpful comments on the problems to help develop a critical eye on what is a good and bad problem.  There are daily word problems, lesson plans, math games and more.  Much more time can be spent exploring here!  I was also playing around with iGoogle and so that I could view the updated videos without going directly to the blog page.  This is a new exploration for me.

Mathematics Learning... Sharing Strategies - The most recent entry that I read about was a creative way to get your math students to review important terms they learned in the last section.  This was done by creating a word puzzle.  See below for the information from the website.  It gives you a place to go online that is free to generate the word puzzles:

After completing a chapter, we can give word search puzzles to students for recapitulating the important terms related to the chapter. You may use a free online tool  http://www.armoredpenguin.com/wordsearch/ for creating them . You may save the puzzle in various available formats. I have taken it as an image as shown below. This is a word search puzzle on geometry related terms. The words are placed in forward/backward and upward/downward directions. Find as many words as you can. The solution to the puzzle is given below.

Solution

 
Where I have been doing a test run of a wiki page:

As you know from my talking about it so much in class, I am a high school coach.  I decided to put into action  a wiki page for my teammates.  There is a separate page for each player that has video clips for them to study on their skills.  It also has all of the teams game statistics posted.  They love seeing where they are to have healthy competition and beat out teammates for statistics.  There is also a page with archived information from past teams.  There is a list of the top five records for many of the different stats that we take.  The players can see what their current stats are, and it gives them a vision of how many more they will need to break into the records for the school!  There are also motivational quotes about related topics such as what it means to be a teammate.  This wiki page is pretty new, and will be a work in progress, but most of my team has already been on there and they are starting to be their own teachers out side of practice time. 

Hope everyone is enjoying your summer!  See you in class!

July 29th, 2011 Class - EDUC 504

Today in class, we had three former MAC students share with us their experiences.  One was present via Skype.  Appropriate for our education technology class.  I could not have imagined what we learned today.

One of our guests vistorL was a teacher that went to my placement district.  He talked about their new policy on cell phones.  Previously, there was a no cell phone policy.  Next year, they are implementing a red, yellow, green light policy.  The teachers have to post on their door if it is red, yellow or green in their classroom.  Red light, no cell phone use; yellow light, can be used when asked permission; and green light use at will.  I wonder how many teachers will actually let it be a green light.  VisitorL said that he already had a green light policy in general.  He has an open forum class anyway, and the students learned to balance the use of the cell phone themselves.  They figure out if they miss something about a lesson, that they can't use it any more.  This seems like a very practical approach, teaching the balance they will need in every day life anyway.

Another one of our guests, visitorK, had some great tidbits of information.  He pointed out that he turned into the resident expert when experimenting with new technology in the classroom.  If it gained interest in the students, other teachers liked that they kids were generally excited, so they would test it out in their classrooms as well.  At that point, a teacher had any issues in implementation, the questions start coming in.  VisitorK ended up giving conferences on the new technology pieces to catch people up to speed.  We really will be the innovators in the teaching world when we get out there.

VisitorA, when was Skyed in from France, gave some valuable insight on the school she was teaching at.  It is in the Ann Arbor area.  She said they are currently working on a grant to try and get an iPad into the hands of every student.  This is crazy!  And exciting.

When I was poking around the internet, searching for an edublogger that I truly would like to follow, I discovered this: OLPC's mission is to empower the world's poorest children through education.  If I saw this six weeks ago before the exposure to concepts such as achievement gap tied to socioeconomic status, I would not have had the appreciation I have now.  I finally found some edubloggers I can legitimately follow in regards to education technology.

(All right... first video in a blog.  Just keep learning.)

What will happen in a world where how much money you have doesn't stop you from gaining access to technology and learning.  We are living in an amazing time.  Perhaps the best is yet to come.

July 29th, Reading - EDUC 504

Seeking How the brain hard-wires us to love Google, Twitter, and texting. And why that's dangerous.

By Emily YoffeWell, this was an interesting reading... I was thinking that seeking if you apply this concept of seeking for pleasure to non-technology situations, humans already do this all the time.  Why do you think we have slot machines?  Have you ever walked in to a casino and just stopped, listened and wondered?  I love going to Vegas.  It isn't because I gamble.  I'm a cheepie that sometimes plays the penny slots.  I like to go to people watch.  It is quite fascinating to watch people totally hooked at the excitement of possibly winning.  
Teaching Generation M: A Handbook for Librarians and EducatorsI haven't decided on how I feel about this article.  It seems to say that the instant access to technology wirelessly is ok, and very much the same representation for teenagers as it was in the past, just more public.  I agree with that somewhat.  I am someone who is involved with technology, but have a bit of a stand offish approach.  I knew when I was in college and everyone had cell phones, and that they were bothering me about getting one, that I should wait as long as possible to function without them.  I knew that there was no turning back once you had one.  It is always that way.  Then when they no longer had non-color screen models, I was a bit sad too, because I didn't want to be attached to a charging station when battery power wasn't good efficient enough for my standards to power a color screen.  Everything just keeps advancing, so quickly.  And as time goes by, it advances even quicker!  
I am not the only one noticing the down side to the changes.  I was talking to my father, who is a retired engineer for the big three.  He has always been an advocate of making your brain process concepts and learning the "why" behind every step.  Learning was more important than just finding an answer.  Last week, he told me that he noticed he was finally just doing what the GPS was saying.  This was a huge shock to me.  He used to walk with me around state grounds and show me different ways to find north, south, east and west while in the middle of nature.  He would spend road trips driving the wrong way, even if he knew it, because he had me or my siblings navigating a map telling us where to go on our trip.  My father has always pushed to be a thinker, and not just follow along with assistance.  So, hearing him tell me that he found himself just following the GPS and not thinking through the route himself, I almost fell over.  What in the world would happen to everyone if all of technology was lost.  Mother nature still rules.  Then what?
New York Teacher takes students on a virtual trip to learn realities of refugee lifeI will focus on this for our post class blog!

July 22nd, 2011 Class - EDUC 504

     Today's class was split into two halves, love that team teaching!  First I was with teacherK learning and interacting about creating a podcast.  A suggested use of audio files with podcasting was for inclusion of different levels of learners.  Exposure to this tool was suggested to be used with everyone in the classroom as a dictation tool.  If one person can benefit, so can everyone else.  This way it doesn't single anyone out!  For my usual archiving reverence, see the Aviary podcast tutorial for any needed refresher!  We created accounts with Aviary in class today, then teacherK gave us a run through of what to do.  We were off to the races creating our first podcast.  We were supposed to promote an edublogger we have been following.  My focus, of course, was on Randy Pausch edublogging.  I have been inspired by Randy, as you can see from my last post.  I wanted to use him in the edublogger podcast assignment for class, which is a bit difficult because he passed in 2008.  However, his inspiring works are still alive in others blogs that can be viewed at blog.ecollege.com.  It is a good way to keep his works alive by reading other blogs and creating a podcast so people check out his life work!  Thank you teacherK for being flexible.  It is appreciated!

     Next, I used my blog to write out the text of my very first podcast.  I spaced it out to properly so that it would be easy to read while recording the audio file.  See below!

Are you looking to be inspired about education!?!?! This is Amanda suggesting for you to start by following reading blogs on Randy Pausch at blog.ecollege.com!

Randy displays how technology can be an extremely powerful platform for change for students.


His love of virtual reality started with one pilot class, and evolved into an entire program at Carnegie Mellon.  


Learn inspiring tips about creating community, classroom motivation, and how difficult learning can be a byproduct of fun activities!  


Go to "blog.ecollege.com/WordPress/"and search for Randy Pausch "P A U S C H" to get started learning about his life work as an educator.

     It was a bit crazy running out of time to post the podcast on the class wiki and transition over to teacherJ's class for the second half.  I wish I had some more time to go through the audio files before to create a better product.  The short amount of time was actually a blessing in disguise for me though.  If we had more time, I would have stressed more about recording the audio file.  Many people in the class did not want to do the recording.  I just ignored the feelings and got to it!  Nice teacher move there teacherK.  It was probably on purpose.

   As we intermittently wandered into the room down the hallway to interact with TeacherJ, there were some strange hieroglyphic type pictures arranged on the overhead projector.  No one seemed to pay attention to the projected image due to the craziness of moving classrooms and multitasking writing thank you notes to our librarians from last class.  What was this strange projection?  It was a lesson in decoding symbolic language, from icon to understanding.  We had a fun time trying to decode the sentences made from pictures.  It was confusing and there were many different interpretations.  Integrating the thought process of the group helped piece together knowledge to comprehend this strange story.  It would have been preferred to spend more time personally to decode the information, but that was all part of teacherJ's plan for us to formulate reference points from our to be students perspective.

     There were many points that classmates brought up when "unpacking" the situation.  One of the thoughts people had were that the situation was challenging when others comprehend faster in decoding!  Some people found it easy to recognize small pieces or pictures, but the big picture was difficult to comprehend.  Others could figure out what the overall picture of the story was, but didn't comprehend some of the symbols.  It's good to understand that students in your classroom will be at all different levels of problem solving.  A classmate pointed out that this situation parallels when we first started to read.  When you don't have much previous context to comprehend something, you have to dig through your prior knowledge to make any sense of it.  There are different tools one uses to solve the current situation.  Sometimes you can look at the context around confusing words was useful in comprehension.  I took away from the lesson that depicting the thought processes and challenges we went through as students with a foreign topic, would be a similar environment to what our students would have to deal experience.  It would be helpful to use this lesson to be able to create questions that can guide the students to solve the unknowns on their own.

     In the last portion of class with TeacherJ, we depicted the Gee article.  We talked about the importance of creating an environment where it is okay to make mistakes in the learning process.  How does one create a mathematics environment where the end product is not the focus?  How can you cultivate an environment where the students are not stagnant in class?  Some classmates were kind enough to throw out ideas.  Some of the memories they had were to make a golf course on paper and measure out the geometric angles to putt a whole in one try.  This was done in two dimensions.  It could be done in three dimensions and become a physical activity, and the nature of a project isn't focused on just the end product.  Another person pointed out that you could give a student four or five chances as getting the right answer, so that they really focus on the process, not stressing about having the final exact number.  Others suggested making proofs because you can come up with multiple creative ways to solve a problem.  It was also recalled that one of our previous MAC visitors said that she gives her class the answers, posted on line for easy access, and only grades on the process.  An interesting classroom environment that was depicted was to have the students' work rotated through and written out on the whiteboard by the teacher.  The teacher would then talk out loud to the class working through the problem to display their thought process for the learners in the classroom on how they might pick it apart.  I love using white boards in practice, and having my players get involved with the process of drills and score keeping.  It could be a great way for me to reference what I have cultivated in the athletic environment in the classroom.

     I know... enough already in my blog today.  It is interesting to me that I didn't have enough to write on after the first class, and now the thoughts (perhaps incoherent) are flowing much better.  Thank you for the constructive post feedback!  Maybe the goal of my next post will be to create something concise, but useful.

July 22nd, Reading - EDUC 504

    Instead of making today's blog a summary about the readings, I think it would be much more valuable to tell you about the inspiring adventure I went on while going through the material instead.  It was a tangential segue into another idea, that ended up highly relating to lessons we are learning in all of our classes.  I;m sure my writing skills own't do justice for what I experienced, but maybe it will open the door of interest for you to take a peek and do the same.
     I started to watch the TED talk Jane McGonigal:  Gamin can make a better world with my friend around.  He is naturally inquisitive (and a PhD in neuroscience, impressive) and watched with me, and started asking questions like "What do you know about Jane McGonical?"  So I started clicking links to read her bio.  There are links to the games she talked about it the TED talk if you are interested in spreading the work like she suggested.  I was definitely inspired after watching the TED talk.  The last two minutes of the video really pulled together what she was aiming for in solving the worlds issues with gaming.
     While we were watching Jane McGonigal, my friend referenced another uTube video called Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.  It is about an hour and fifteen minutes long, which I admit seemed like too much time for me to invest.  My friend suggested that I just watch some of it because he knows how pressed for time I am with the million assignments we have due.  I started watching this video, and found myself clicking back and forth from the video to this blog post to jot down ideas that I wanted to write on later.  And of course, I watched it in its entirety.
     Below are some thoughts and references that I came up with that highly related to our practice.  Who knew as the video went on that I would be so inspired.  Randy Pausch tells about the "elephant in the room" very early on in the video.  He has cancer and has a small amount of time to live.  This is literally his last lecture, with multiple purposes.  Revealing how deep he is through the lecture, he depicts the development of himself throughout his life.  I infer this is not just because he found out he is going to die, but that he actually developed into this person that was lecturing over time.  He is a humble, down to Earth man giving the lecture, but inadvertently shows that he didn't start out that way as he explains his journey.  It is encouraging to know that people can change for the better if they have good mentors and are guided properly.  I'm sure some of this development occurred because he was open minded and willing to change, not just others guiding him.  The combination of the two is priceless.
     Randy had several comments about the proof of a positive community and the proof of a good project (these sound like they relate to benchmarks on community and taxonomy with producing a product.  Is this thought process wrong?!?).  He said it was easy to tell if the project the group was about to explain was good or not by the body language of the group community before displaying.  He would also advise his students about the importance of community at the beginning of his classes, and that they wouldn't understand it until later, but that they would really appreciate it down the road.  He is a computer science undergrad with an interest in programming games, and in particular virtual reality.  Guided by a mentor to teach others, he teamed up with a drama major at Carnegie Mellon and created a program the directly connected the use of technology in the classroom.  He did virtual reality projects that were dubbed edutainment.  How perfect is that relating to this class!
     One of the random pieces of information that I appreciated was a graph that he displayed.  It was feedback for students in his class to see a visual reflection on how helpful they were compared to the rest of the class in working in their small groups.  He took group reflection data continually to use it to create a competitive environment.  He made this a visual bar chart that he would display in class to create social pressure that each student had to deal with.  Some of them still managed to ignore this slap you in the face feedback, but it sure struck me when I saw it!  What a great way to get students to be metacognitive and evaluate themselves and the actions that they are doing in class (oh Taxonomy...).
     Randy had random quotes that fit into his lecture that struck me as intriguing enough to make note of. One of them was "You might as well be selling something worth while, education."  Another was a statement about how to get students to program and love it. "Millions of kids having fun learning something hard."  It was incredible for him to see that the students had a great byproduct of learning something difficult, programming, by playing or creating a game.  Their willingness to attempt the programming when it was attached to something they found interesting was astounding.  You should watch the video to stumble along some of the other awesome quotes.  I found one particularly useful enough to note the time (58:50 - practicing with notes in observation!).  Talk about it is more important with how you say something than what you say.  He tells about a mentor trying to straighten out his ego with an incredibly positive spin.  If there is ever a student that you are having a difficult time with, it would be a priceless line to use!  Check it out.
     Another statement that pulled on some heart strings was about the importance in helping others recognize their childhood dream.  He talked about the important role of parents, mentors and students acting collaboratively.  He displayed and honored people in his life that were mentors, supporters, students, parents etc.  The impact people can have on your life is incredible.

     Ultimately, what I think relates most in this video to our EDUC 504 class, is that Randy displayed how technology can be an extremely powerful platform for change.  He was able to introduce virtual reality as a learning tool to pilot one class, that turned into a cross listed course with multiple disciplines, and created an entire degree out of it.  It was an appropriate tangent to what our assigned reading focused on.  He also took a shot at wikis by the way, which I found particularly amusing and ironic.
     Perhaps I have convinced you to watch the clip.  If not, I probably reflected so much on it that you feel like you watched it yourself.  Win, win!

July 18th, 2011 Class - EDUC 504

     Today in class we were able to explore the Brandon Center! 

It is a brand new center, soon to be opened.

Talk about a beautiful, functional, technological adventure!

     The center is broken down into several small group areas with power sources readily available.  This is what every coffee shop on campus should be like.  It is a highly functional and cozy space at the same time.
     We were already split into groups by teacherK and teacherJ.  We were grouped by our major and minor to create a lesson plan related to the tsunami in Japan.  We were provided the most useful resource, visitor Addie!  Thank you teacherK and teacherJ for making those connections happen.  She was able to take the big picture ideas we had researched last night and put them into useful context on the previously structured wiki page.  She had fantastic ideas on how to integrate technology usefully with the lesson plan.  We were able to conceptualize small ideas that are priceless, such as creating a resource page that was duel purposed.  First the information that the teacher would utilize to create the lesson plan, and also as a resource for the student to access during the project.
    
     Some random things I learned as an outcome of being in our group were technology tools, book and game resources, and even classroom management ideas.  Below are these separate ideas broken into notes.

Notes on new technology exposure:
     VisitorA talked about using Facebook pages for the week and a half lesson, but also pulled up Google Plus as an alternative option.  I was not aware of Google Plus.  She quickly demonstrated the use of the circles in Google Plus and a few other features.  

Notes on resources:
     While we were finding resources for the tsunami lesson plan, group members showed us Energy Games and suggested some books to read such as Carbon Diary.  Carbon Diary is a book that helps conceptualize what life would be like with limited energy resources.  This could help bring home the struggles that exist in Japan, a way to relate.

Notes on class management:
     Some random classroom management ideas were simple such as cutting tennis balls and putting them under desks so that you can move everything around with less noise and with greater ease.  Take them home and wash them in the summer!  Think of outside of the box ideas to be able to successfully physically transition the work spaces in the classroom.  We also discussed the importance of creating a routine in the classroom.  Not just what you start with each day, and what you conclude with, but also with the tools you utilize.  If in the beginning of the year, you make a resource page in wiki that builds throughout the class duration, you will spend some time created in early on, but it will turn into part of the routine that can be seamlessly utilized.

Notes on group divisions that we discussed:
      It is important to contemplate how you break your students into groups.  There can be many different focus areas depending on what you want to accomplish.  You can group with people next to you, give numbers around the room, set groups ahead of time based on interest areas or ability levels, etc.  Perhaps you group people with different abilities to compliment each other.  Or, you could group people with similar abilities so that high functioning groups can take off on their own and you can concentrate on groups that need more assistance.  One teacher suggested having classmates write down on a piece of paper two people they would like to work with and two people that they would not like to work with.  It was a tool for her to recognize who was causing issues in group work to address and solve what might be going wrong.  She also suggested still pulling random names even after obtaining that information.

Notes on inclusion:
     There was mention of a program on Mac that helps to read the text out loud.  If you can show your entire class the tool, then not just struggling readers can utilize it, so can advanced readers to excel at a an even faster rate.  That way, struggling readers don't feel singled out either.  For reference if you are interested, visitorA told us to go to the settings for Mac, and look for Text for Speech under system preferences in accessibility.  Not only can you use this for your computer, but also for iPads and iPhones.  I am going to check it out for sure.


     All of the details are tidbits that I collected today to assist in the overarching goal of class today, creating lesson plans with backwards planning.  It was evident to me today the importance of first thinking about what you want the student to learn, then back up and figure out details on how you would like to accomplish that.  It is much more difficult then the overall concept.  I wish we had many more hours to interact with our visitor.  The time went by in the blink of an eye.

July 18th, Reading - EDUC 504

Intro To UDB Handout
     Tomorrow in class we will be in groups to create our first lesson plan.  I appreciate this reference for us to use as a starting point and framework.  Which material we will utilize to create this lesson plan is an important decision to make!  It may set the tone for habits in our lesson plan creation for all of time! Reading through the different pages, I gravitate toward the backward design idea.  I greatly appreciate the fact that it gives some structure, but not too much that it is overwhelming to comprehend at first (like the Taxonomy!).  It can be put into action for any teaching scenario.  I am intrigued to see what our group comes up with for our first lesson plan tomorrow!

Teaching Ideas:  The Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan
     By searching through the Tsunami article, I found some useful resources that we may be able to use in our lesson plans for class, or perhaps just for the future in general.  I tried to make this blog be interactive so that we can actually use it during class to create our project.  Also, this is the first time I have created links in a blog.  Learning is fun...

Tsunami Lesson Plan Reference -  Japan's Strict Building Codes Saved Lives
     This was interesting because it talked about all of the modification that they use to make buildings in Japan compared to other countries.  They use base isolation pads and energy dissipation units.  They have hydraulic cylinders that expand and contract to absorb the force of the swaying buildings.  This prevents the amplification in wave frequency, sort of like a damper so that it doesn't get out of control.  It is a "mute" so to speak for the movement.  Everyone accepts these great modifications.  They have 40 foot high sea walls around the city that is creating a false sense of security, and it blocks the beautiful view.  They do all of these evacuation plans and training for Japanese people.  They only need five minutes to get to high ground.  They take it seriously and train everyone so that they can get to high ground in five minutes.

Tsunami Lesson Plan Reference - The Destructive Power of Water
     I could see how this article can be utilized to create realistic story problems for mathematics classes.  Through referencing everyday household items, it gives perspective on the sheer destructive force of tsunamis.  Water doesn't just flow.  It has different properties based on the volume of water being moved and the speed that it is moving.  If water is moving slowly, it can flow around.  If it is moving quickly, it can hit an object like a ton of bricks.  They use visual references such as Smart cars or tanks hitting you to realize the destruction process for the students.  It also talks about how projectiles can add into the destructive factor.  Water up to someones knees can knock them over.  "The power of a tsunami comes from straightforward physics."  When I get to teach a math class, this is a great way to relate the work in the classroom to real world events.  This article talks about the potential and kinetic energy for anyone interested in using it for physics classes.

Tsunami Lesson Plan Reference - Quake Moves Japan Closer to U.S. and Alters Earth's Spin
     Part of Japan moved 13 feet eastward because of the earthquake.  The result made Japan wider, not necessarily just shifted.  The most movement happened near the epicenter of the earthquake.  The earthquake shorted the day and tilted the axis slightly.  They give really good visual references of the shifts that happen related to playing cards to help students visualize. 
    
Math Lesson Plan Reference - By the Billions:  Creating and Comparing Population Growth Projections

Math Lesson Plan Reference - No Taxation Without Calculation:  Filling Out Tax Returns

Math Lesson Plan Reference - Who's No. 1?  Investigating the Mathematics of Rankings
Is it too stereotypical for me to like this lesson plan?  It is right up my alley!

Math Lesson Plan Reference - 12 Ways to Use The Times to Develop Math Literacy
It is so important for the students to understand how to read math books.

     I am excited to get into our groups tomorrow to put our learning into action!