EDTECH 542: Manage the Process

With the complete of the Product and Processes section of the Cold War PBL I am working on with Tim Stark, I am starting to see some change in the original plan.  Like any activity in teaching, the first time around is the test period to see what went well and what needs to be revamped.  Looking ahead I could see my role in the learning process being turned over more to my students.  As a high school teacher, one of the goals is to help your students become independent researchers and creators.  Social studies sometimes revolves around a good amount of lecture to explain people, events, and results.  If done correctly, I would limit what I taught the students and teach them how to find valid information to complete the activities.

My role as a effective facilitator is to design and plan the group process and select the proper tools to help my learners accomplish the instructional objective.  This project has individual and group activities and as the facilitator I will guide and control the group process.  This includes making sure there is participation and that the students take an active role in their group.

The students will develop the competencies and skills needed to be successful during this project.  Students will be using research and critical thinking skills throughout the project.  New technology might be introduced with online blogs and the creation of the infographic.  Depending on the skills of the students there would need to be time prior to the project to go over the steps to properly use these online tools.

The changes that might need to be made to the project based on experience is the timeline.  The goal is to complete the project in two weeks based on the state required content that must be covered.  Depending on the students and their previous learning experiences I may need to review how to do proper research and work on how to write a letter.  This could be done during the earlier part of the year and reviewed before the project.  There are several online blogs the students can create and if they have never used one before there would a training session to ensure all students were able to use the technology required.

EDTECH 513: Coherence Anaylsis

EDTECH 542: Designing Integrated Curriculum

During my research on designing integrated curriculum, I found that there were many advantages to working across contents.  As a secondary social studies teacher in a middle school, there was limited integration of curriculum this past year.  At my previous high school I worked in collaboration with the English teacher on multiple projects to connect history and English.  Our main project was the 9th grade research paper.  Each student chose a history topic to research and they were graded in both classes.  The English teacher worked with the students on grammar and research skills.  As the history teacher I helped the students understand primary and secondary sources and how to chose a topic to research.  The benefit was the overall understand the students had in both contents.  

After watching the video clip on integrated curriculum, I am interested in the challenge of working across more content areas.  Social studies and English tend to go hand-in-hand, but my hope is the possibilities history can have mixed with a science and math based project.  I believe the biggest challenge educators face is how to work together on a single project, yet meet all the standards and curriculum set by the state.  Some teachers are focused on just their content and to pull in social studies into science or math would take extensive planning.  Depending on the grade level of that teacher it could influence what type of project that could work.  Currently as a seventh grade teacher I focus mainly on the Eastern Hemisphere (Asia, Europe, Africa).  The students are divided by math levels, which can also affect which science class they are in.  Due to the variety of levels and courses, it would be important to find a common ground for all the students.  Or, if possible, have varying math skills within the project so depending on the student's level they would complete a different mathematics segment.

I am looking forward to discussing this with my colleagues this fall.  Even with adding in one other subject a year, the students could benefit from the overall understand that learning is across curriculum, not just limited to one subject.  For example, in history class we discuss the impact of the Great Depression on the world and how it lead us into World War II.  During my teachings we talk about inflation and the effects of the stock market crash.  This would be a perfect connection into mathematics.   Through a variety of an assignments and an cumulative project the outcome will impact the students overall understanding across the board.

References

Designing Integrated Curriculum | Project Based Learning | BIE. (n.d.). Retrieved July 25, 2016, from http://bie.org/object/video/designing_integrated_curriculum

EDTECH 542: Designing Integrated Curriculum

During my research on designing integrated curriculum, I found that there were many advantages to working across contents.  As a secondary social studies teacher in a middle school, there was limited integration of curriculum this past year.  At my previous high school I worked in collaboration with the English teacher on multiple projects to connect history and English.  Our main project was the 9th grade research paper.  Each student chose a history topic to research and they were graded in both classes.  The English teacher worked with the students on grammar and research skills.  As the history teacher I helped the students understand primary and secondary sources and how to chose a topic to research.  The benefit was the overall understand the students had in both contents.  

After watching the video clip on integrated curriculum, I am interested in the challenge of working across more content areas.  Social studies and English tend to go hand-in-hand, but my hope is the possibilities history can have mixed with a science and math based project.  I believe the biggest challenge educators face is how to work together on a single project, yet meet all the standards and curriculum set by the state.  Some teachers are focused on just their content and to pull in social studies into science or math would take extensive planning.  Depending on the grade level of that teacher it could influence what type of project that could work.  Currently as a seventh grade teacher I focus mainly on the Eastern Hemisphere (Asia, Europe, Africa).  The students are divided by math levels, which can also affect which science class they are in.  Due to the variety of levels and courses, it would be important to find a common ground for all the students.  Or, if possible, have varying math skills within the project so depending on the student's level they would complete a different mathematics segment.

I am looking forward to discussing this with my colleagues this fall.  Even with adding in one other subject a year, the students could benefit from the overall understand that learning is across curriculum, not just limited to one subject.  For example, in history class we discuss the impact of the Great Depression on the world and how it lead us into World War II.  During my teachings we talk about inflation and the effects of the stock market crash.  This would be a perfect connection into mathematics.   Through a variety of an assignments and an cumulative project the outcome will impact the students overall understanding across the board.

References

Designing Integrated Curriculum | Project Based Learning | BIE. (n.d.). Retrieved July 25, 2016, from http://bie.org/object/video/designing_integrated_curriculum

EDTECH 542: Assessments

During the development of assessments, my partner Tim Stark and I looked for ways to create meaningful connections for our students to the content.  Our summative assessment, which will be a short essay question will allow our students to use all the information they learned and answer the driving questions about how government effects our freedoms and opportunities.  This open ended question allows students to take a personal interest in answering it, not just writing simple facts they learned about causes and effects.

Feedback will be provided early and often to allow our students to grow in their knowledge and feel comfortable with the next assignment.  Each formative assessment will connect to the previous.  By using the book The Wall by Peter Sis students will read a first hand account of what it was like growing up during the Cold War.  Then during their interview process they will get an American perspective of life during the Cold War to make a comparison.

The use of self-assessments will allow our students to work on self-improvement.  Hopefully the assignment rubric and self-assessment will match to ensure the student is under the same impression of expectations.  One way I might adjust during this assignment is allowing the students to set individual goals at the beginning to strive for throughout the project.  Another addition might be to add a pre-test to see where their knowledge is at before and at the conclusion of the project.  I am hoping that during the discussion of the Cold War that the students will be expressing their knowledge verbally in class with various prompts.

Link to Life Under Oppression Assessments

EDTECH 513: "Presently in the Past" Podcast, Episode 1: Emergency Drills

My podcast series is called “Presently in the Past”.  The goal of my podcast is to make a historical connection between the past and the present.  Since I am a secondary education social studies teacher my purpose is to bring meaning to my student and what they are learning in my class.  Many students tend to think of history as dead people and events of the past, but by making the connection to their lives you can spark interest in learning history.  My podcast can work for middle and high school students or anyone interested in a short historical comparison.

In my first podcast I decided to discuss the topic of emergency drills practiced in schools.  I am currently working on a Cold War PBL in my EDTECH 542 course, so I thought this would be a good connection between the two.  During the Cold War, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, there was a high threat of a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union.  To prepare people for atomic air raids the government made films about what to do when a bomb was dropped.  Students were shown a film at school instructing them to “duck and cover” to protect themselves from fallout.  As the Cold War came to an end we no longer see the purpose of such drills. 

Schools continued to practice fire and tornado drills in Michigan where I live.  Other states prepare their students based on what nature disasters are in that area.  After the mass shooting at Columbine High School in 1999, schools started develop a new emergency plan.  This plan as changed as we become more educated on what to do due to the number of mass shooting we have had in the last decade.  Teachers are educated on what to do and the school practices three “lock down” drills with the help of local law enforcement.  This episode looks at the past and then compares it to what threats our students face today.  I inserted a audio clip from the original Bert the Turtle “Duck and Cover” film from 1951.

I feel that this podcast could continue with various topics and could be connected to what is currently in the news.  I am still working on my editing skills and being comfortable talking into a microphone.

The AECT Standards for technology use that are addressed in my podcast revolve around design and integrated technologies.  The design aspect of this podcast is to provide information to the listener.  Using this audio approach to learning can be effective.  To create this podcast I used Audacity, Dropbox, and various plugins to edit and convert my files.
 

Episode 1: Emergency Drills:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/k98rksvdx6hmlxv/Past%20Podcast_LHoyt.wav?dl=0

EDTECH 542: Week 3 Reflection - Driving Questions

During my research this week I worked on learning what a driving question is and how to properly write one.  I found the Formulating Driving Questions sheet to be very helpful to compare what I wrote to what is considered a “good” question.  I also looked at the Craft theDriving Question, which was a great check for understanding based on what I learned.  When learning a new concept I like to have examples I can relate to and this site allowed me to look at examples of good driving history questions.  By seeing examples of various history based questions I had a better idea of how to start writing the driving question and sub questions.

The visual aide I created was on Padlet.com.  This was my first time using this template and when looking at the options I found this to be most visually appealing.  When I design lessons I like to include photos and images to allow my students to have a visual of what they are learning.  I found Padlet easy to use and I was able to insert images on each post.  One aspect I am still trying to figure out was the privacy settings.  I am working with Tim Stark on our PBL and when I initially set it up I wanted to allow him access to edit.  At this point I believe anyone with the link as access to edit (I could not limit it to just one person) so that is the part I do not particularly like.  I would like to have more control and be able to share it with a select group.  I did like the option to scan a QR code to access my tablet or phone.

This week was a time of revision for me personally.  Hopefully what I bring to the table for Tim and I will prove to a well-written question to allow our students to think about the topic in a more in-depth level.

EDTECH 513: Haiku Deck

Here is the link to my Haiku Deck

The presentation I created with Haiku Deck was 5 Tips my students could use to help them be successful in my history class.  I found that this multimedia tool was easy to use and there was a lot of images to search to make it visually appealing without being to "busy".  I believe this type of delivery of information would work best in my classroom at the beginning of the year when going over expectations.  Due to the fact it is designed to be very clean looking with less text on the slides and optional narration on the side it is limiting on what I would like to present.  I decided to list some tips for my students to help them study history since some students feel overwhelmed by the amount of content needing to be memorized.  Haiku Deck allows me to share this in various ways and I am able to add as a link and could easily add it to my class website for both students and parents to review.  Overall, I think this is an effective tool to help communicate tips to students or a limited series of information.

EDTECH 542: Week Two Reflection

There is so much I have been learning this week in EDTEACH 542.  I decided to work with my fellow classmate Tim on the PBL project since he is a 6-12 social studies teacher.  During my time of research this week I was able to find and analyze the 21st Century Skills Standards that we will be using in our project.  I am familiar with state and AECT standards so this was new for me.

I am hoping that PBL will work in my classroom.  I think it works well with my teaching style, but the challenge will come with my time management in my planning.  Since a lot of PBLs are at least two weeks and most chapters I complete in one week, I will need to figure out how to use them in my curriculum.

As for our project we went back and forth on various world history concepts and project ideas.  We settled on the Cold War because of its connection to today's world.  As history teachers we both enjoy literature and feel that our project can also include language arts.  Tim had a great idea for a book he has used as a starter and I had a novel my middle school students have read to give perspective of what it was like growing up in Soviet occupied Berlin.  Another aspect we plan on working into our project is an interview with someone (parents, grandparent, neighbor, etc.) who lived during the Cold War.  Overall, the goal of our project is to have the students understand how growing up in a particular county can affect their lives.

Project #1: Static Multimedia Instruction

Instruction Guide: Click here to see my Clarify-It instructional guide.

Lesson Objective: Using the step-by-step guide, students will be able to embed a YouTube video into a PowerPoint presentation.

Design Notes: 

This is the first time I have used Clarify-It to design an instructional tutorial.  I read over the information on the site and watched the introduction video to become acquainted with the program.  Most of the design was through trial and error.  I used both Clarify-It to take a screenshot and also imported images I screenshot on my own.  The most difficult challenged I faced was the sizing of my images to fit properly with my text.  I started by created all the image slides, and then added in the titles and description.  Once that was complete I added the graphics to help narrate my instruction.  I found it easy to export into a PDF and view my final product.  During the design process I continued to try and crop and resize my images to ensure that the learning aspect of the slide is clear and easy to understand.

Multimedia and Contiguity Principles 

The multimedia principles presented in this project were the text and graphics used to create the tutorial.  Clark and Mayer discuss that multimedia is sometimes best used with novice learners.  This instruction is an example of a novice learner using static multimedia to learn a new skill.  By using both words and graphics allows the learner to be active learners and understand the material they are being taught.

The contiguity principles presented in the project were the appropriate selection and use of text and graphics.  Clark and Mayer discuss in contiguity principle 1 that the designer needs to coordinate the printed text and graphics to be effective.  The text should be near the onscreen graphic to ensure that the learner is clear on the information being taught on that particular screen.  This issue I continued to edit was the separation of the text and graphics on scrolling screens.  I went back and forth from Clarify to my PDFs to ensure that each step was on the screen with the graphic.

Resources

Clark, R. & Mayer, R. (2011). E-Learning and the science of instruction: Proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning. (3rd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Wiley & Sons/Pfeiffer.