Teach 2 Learn

If you missed the last day of class, please respond to the following four questions in a post on your blog.

1. What has been the best aspect of this learning experience?
2. What has been the most challenging aspect of this learning experience?
3. How has your attitude changed regarding technology and education?
4. What are your top two takeaways from this experience?

As you leave this class there are a few things I hope you remember from this class regarding technology use and integration. I suppose these are my rules of thumb.

1) Technology should enhance the lesson plan.
2) There will be a learning curve when you first teach a technology. Don't be bothered by that if you feel that in the long run that technology will be beneficial.
3) Technology will fail sometimes. Keep backups of files and have backup ideas on what your students can do if the technology is rendered useless at any given time.
4) It's important to keep up to date on technology. Don't be afraid to try new technologies, but make sure you try them out on your own before you bring them into the classroom.

I hope all of you have a wonderful Christmas break.

Background information on Enlightenment ideals:
http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/section/Enlighte_BackgroundandBasicTenets.asp

http://mars.wnec.edu/~grempel/courses/wc2/lectures/enlightenment.html

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/The%20Age%20of%20Enlightenment

Paul Allen, a successful entrepeneur and futurist recently came and spoke about the future of technology in education here at the McKay School of Education. His ideas were quite compelling and have interesting implications for educators.

Rich Culatta has the links to Paul's slides and the video recap of his presentation posted on his blog at: http://www.wideopendoors.net/blog/archives/2004/11/paul_b_allen_to.html

I think it would be worth every educator's while to view and/or read through his presentation and think about the impact that technology will have in classrooms and other educational settings going forward.

Despite learning a lot about copyright, it seems that a lot of people are still confused about teachers' rights to use copyrighted material. I admit, I still feel a little unsure. Copyright.gov is the resource for us in the United States regarding such issues. They put out a downloadable PDF pamphlet for us educators confused about proper use. In it they give the laws and explanations. I haven't finished going through this--I'm not even close, because it's so long! However, I thought I'd let you guys know about this resource.

http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ21.pdf

And a thought on privacy/cheating: I was just thinking that if you keep grades digitally (on Excel or otherwise) on an on-campus computer, you ought to password-protect your computer, or at the least put passwords on those grading files to be safe.

Here's the quote from Nelson Mandela that we discussed in class:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us, it is in everyone. And as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

-Nelson Mandela’s Inaugural Address

Do we really believe this? If so, how should this impact us as educators, leaders, parents, church members, and citizens of the planet?

Here are a few websites that either demonstrate or teach (or both) good design principles:

http://www.lynda.com - an awesome site with all the latest tips and links to training companies and free resources, (tips on color, inspirational web sites (look in lower right hand side for the free resources info)

http://www.mundidesign.com - a site that teaches design principles (with interactive models), shows good examples of Flash interface design, and provides you with a change to try out different color schemes in a web page context

http://www.colorschemer.com/online.html - this online app lets you set colors while automatically generating related color schemes

http://www.webbyawards.com - a site that you can see all kinds of different sites that have won the "webby award" for good design
http://coolhomepages.com - the website that hosts the most effectively designed websites on-line (financial, Flash, educational, fun, corporate, etc.)

http://ucda.com/
http://www.graphic-design.com/
http://webmonkey.wired.com/webmonkey/
http://www.commarts.com/
http://www.lorrainepress.com/QandA.htm
http://www.elementkjournals.com/

Rick West, the other IPT 286 teacher, created a blog posting on the best educational websites for 2004. This article contains links to the top 5 websites for universities and K-12 schools/districts. Later, the article lists the Digital Education Achievement Award Winners, which are more focused on particular categories. These are great educational websites to check out.

Rob Pommering shared a news story (Blogs Abuzz with Gossip in Caustic U.S. Campaign) with me about the way that blogs are impacting the political campaigns this year. Apparently, bloggers from both partisans are rampantly sharing their views about Kerry and Bush in an attempt to sway voters to adopt their "preferred candidate." I thought you might be interested in reading the story about this innovative use of blogs.

Thanks for sharing, Rob!

Hello again from India,

I’m on my last day here in this incredible country. I don't know if I'll ever be able to do this country justice in describing it to you when I return. I’ll do my best.

Sachi and Rick, thanks for your comments on my previous post. Sachi, your experience in China is similar to my experience here with regards to available technology. People living in a one-room cement "shacks" are using cell phones. They emphasize some high tech things, but have no infrastructure to improve the basic living conditions of most people so far. The contrasts are striking!

After having visited a number of rural and urban schools, I can attest that this culture stresses education. In all the schools we’ve seen, the students seem to be very committed to learning all they can. In general, I have found that the students I've met are extremely bright people and very technically capable, when given the opportunity to learn such things. As I've visited more remote schools the past few days, I have witnessed many settings where the educational conditions are not conducive to learning. In fact, in some cases, I’m amazed that they can learn based on the impoverished conditions. It just testifies to the power of the human spirit if it is determined to learn and progress.

The biggest problem that educators have in remote locations is convincing very poor parents that it’s more important for their children to stay in school than to have them working to help provide for the family’s basic needs. As you might expect, their view is quite short-sighted, but when I look at their circumstances, I can see why they would have that perspective. Day-to-day living is a challenge for many of them and they think more about having food on the table for the family today, than having an educated son or daughter who can bring in 20 times the amount of money in a few years. It's hard to break that mindset.

Culture also plays a role, in determining whether or not the parents want their kids in school. They have different expectations about educating boys and girls, have different expectations for them, and place different value on the children, based on their gender. That has been interesting to learn about.

I am teaching nursing instructors and the nursing students’ clinical supervisors about learning theories and instructional methods today. I am interested to see their reaction to recommendations to use a lot of hands-on, interactive, experience-based instructional methods. That’s very different from their traditional fact-based, memorizing teaching style.

I really look forward to seeing you all on Wednesday and Thursday. I know you will hardly believe it, but I am missing my exposure to and interactions with you – truly!

Namascar (an Indian salutation),
Dr. Allen

Hello IPT 286 Students,

I hope you are all well. I am writing to you from India where, as you may remember, I am engaged in some humanitarian work this week. I feel that we’re experiencing a National Geographic expedition first hand here. I’ve seen 20 story buildings being constructed with bamboo scaffolding, men carrying 80 plus pounds up steep hills on their backs with the weight-bearing strap across their foreheads, women sitting in little streetside market stands selling vegetables and freshly killed chickens, roads so narrow, and steep and windy and full of potholes I wonder how our vehicle will make it up and down them, let alone share the one-lane road with oncoming traffic that appears suddenly around sharp corners. I’ve seen wild monkeys, water buffalo, hundreds of stray dogs, goats, and cows, and people of every color, feature set, size, and ethnic background.

In many ways they are very technologically advanced (for example, they have cell phones and cell phone coverage high in the Himalayan mountains where we’d never dream of having cell phone activity. One the other hand, when we went to a school in the high mountain village we visited two days ago, it appeared that we had stepped back in time at least 100 years. The classrooms had traditional rows of desks all connected, one miserable chalkboard at the front of the room, and only lesson booklets and answer booklets (like blue books for taking college tests) for instructional materials. The teachers stand in front of the class and deliver a bit of instruction, then direct the students to complete exercise one and two in their books. I observed no use of creative instructional techniques or attempts to produce higher-order thinking or self generating/producing activities in their children.

I had an opportunity to talk with the teachers about their challenges and to “teach them” about something in a kind-of “in-service training meeting.” Their challenges are much like those experienced in the United States. Many students aren’t motivated and don’t see the connection between what they’re learning to what they will do in their future lives and careers. They don’t understand how the skills and knowledge that they’re learning in their classrooms will help them and apply to their lives in the future (minus the fact that they’re all instruction is taught in English as opposed to their native dialects like Bengali. I think they see the value of learning English to communicate with others in their country and in the world.)

During the mini-teacher-training session I recommended that the teachers try to motivate children to learn better and take more ownership/responsibility for their learning by having the students teach one another, work in groups, become the experts on a subject so that they feel a sense of accomplishment and capability, and generate work that is meaningful to them. For example, they could write stories about their families and draft letters to real people for their English grammar, spelling, punctuation, and writing exercises as opposed to just completing drill after drill exercises and copying correctly formed paragraphs. The children have a great deal of creativity, it seems. When I asked the teachers what the students like to do, they said that they love to sing, tell stories, and dance. I thought it would be great for the teachers to capitalize on their creative juices to enhance, personalize, and increase the meaning of their education. Sadly, when I witnessed current practices in the classroom, I feared that my suggestions were so far away from reality that I don’t have great faith that any different kinds of instructional strategies will ever be utilized. I hope I’m wrong.

This exposure to academic settings here has made me feel much more passionate about caring deeply about our learners, designing meaningful instruction, and utilizing instructional methods that will actually help the learners see the value of and application of the material we’re teaching them. The need for meaningful education is so pronounced around the globe!

I don’t have much online access right now so I have limited opportunities to read your blogs and communicate with Shauna, but keep writing and thinking about large instructional/educational issues as well as completing your assignments and I will look forward to hearing and sharing more when I return home.

A tip for the video assignment reflections: Start off reflecting and analysing the teacher's use of technology, classroom management, etc., then apply those principles to your own life and future teaching career. Be specific rather than speaking in broad terms all the time.

BAD: The teacher effectively managed the classroom. When I'm a teacher I hope I can be as good as this teacher at managing the classroom.

GOOD: The teacher effectively managed the classroom by making sure every student knew what was required of them. She walked around the classroom and involved herself in their projects. When I am a teacher I will try to follow her example by being active in the classroom. I will be a PE teacher so I will have to adapt by...(etc.)

A few items of business:

1) Please read the assignment page before asking for one-on-one help. (You should be reading the assignment page anyway to see what is required because there's simply not enough time in class to go over everything on the rubric.)

2) If you have a 0 under an assignment that means we couldn't find your assignment. If you feel that's a mistake, please feel free to send a pleasant e-mail to either Dr. Allen or myself explaining where your assignment is.

I created a very detailed assignment page for wiki page outlines, which you can access by clicking on Class Assignments or Calendar under IPTA 286 Links on the right side of the screen. The assignment page contains a link directly to our IPT 286 wiki page, a sample wiki outline to follow, and sample completed wiki pages.

I have also updated the wiki significantly so it should be easy to modify and add to.
URL=http://ipt.byu.edu/~wiki/28x/Fall04/HomePage

One important note:
If you have more than four members of your groups, please split your groups into two subgroups and create four wiki page outlines. Five to seven people working on two wiki pages is too many people. It will be frustrating to try to work in that big of groups.

While this is the class blog, I have created my own blog, iptta.blogspot.com, as well. You do not need to go to my blog, but if you'd like to add it to your aggregator, please feel free to do so. I created my blog to keep up to date on blogging and to support all of you as you enter the world of blogging. Like my blog, my email is easy to remember (iptta@hotmail.com) because, well, I'm the IPT TA.

Katy discovered a great way to extend your blogging circle by filling out your complete profile. Check out her post to see how to do this.

One of the other IPT 286 instructors recently posted a good warning abo0ut potential negative blogging issues. Click here to read the warning.

A couple of students have sent me e-mails stating that they're confused about what to do when and one student posted the following comment on my blog:

"The set up of this class is very confusing. It would work much better if I had a hard copy of the syllabus instead of having to spend time on many different pages trying to figure what and when something is due."

Are you confused about the setup of the class, and what websites are good for what? This is how I have set up the class:
All class discussions and announcements are on the weblogs
Turn in homework to Blackboard, unless the assignment sheet tells you to do it as a blog post
Links to the syllabus, calendar, assignments, etc., are on my blog roll (the list of links on the right of my blog).

FYI, I have updated the calendar and assignment page with links explaining a little more clearly WHAT you have to do with your blogs and what I EXPECT you to do to get the blogging and attendance points. (See Class Attendance and Class Participation links off the Assignment page for specific details.)

If you want a paper copy of the class syllabus like this student who I quoted did, you can just print one out from the web. It's always a little confusing to learn a new technology, so you have to give it a couple of weeks to get things going. Hang in there. I also know that there are a few new students who just added the class, so they're a little outside of the loop. Other than that, are there any questions? Post them here, and I'll try to answer them!

Emily asks a couple of good questions about the digital resources assignment. I thought you'd all benefit from hearing the questions and answers:
Question 1. "Can the lesson plan and the resources be unrelated?" The answer is yes. You can have your resources focus on different core curriculum standard and be unrelated, as long as they are related to your teaching emphasis.

Question 2: "To respond to the question 'How would you use this
lesson plan/resource in your classroom?' you don't have to explain your lesson plan step by step or write out a whole lesson plan to base around your resource. However, you should provide enough explanation for how you would integrate your lesson plan or resource so that you convince Shauna (your TA) and I that you have carefully considered its application and usefulness in your classroom context.

I hope you're finding a lot of good resources. I've seen that several of you are sharing your resources with your group members on your blogs. Way to go!

You are not required to post links to your blog site as part of this week's assignment, but I recommend that you at least post your best digital resource online so you can share it with your group members.

Here's how to add a link to a digital resource within your blog: When you create a post about your digital resource you can type or copy the URL(s) for your digital resources directly into the post that others can copy into a browser window and open like this: http://www.uen.org/core/. If you want to be a little more sophisticated, you can hyperlink a word or words in your post to specific URLs by highlighting the word you want to hyperlink, then clicking on the link button along the top formatting bar (it's the fourth button from the left) and typing or copying the destination URL into the "hyperlink" pop-up box that appears. When you're done, your post will look like this: Utah Core Curriculum Standards.

Here is the link to the survey that you need to take ASAP.: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=75365608220 Sorry it took us so long to send the link to you.

The first question of the survey asks whether you want to participate in a research study. Basically, we're researching some methods for improving the IPT 286/287 classes. If you consent to participate, we'll use your data--WITHOUT YOUR NAMES--to help us in our research. It won't be any extra work or anything, because everyone has to do the survey anyway. It just gives us permission to use your data in our research. If you have questions about that, you can email me. Thanks!
Rick West, 1:05 PM link (0) comments