Final Synthesis Project

Joe Sobeske

EDT5410 – Summer 1 2008

Final Synthesis Project

Target Learners

The target learners for this learning project are high school juniors and seniors in south-central Michigan. The students are tech savvy and have shown a strong desire to pursue a career in a computer technology related field. They are English speaking and generally come from middle to low income households. Ethnically, the student group is almost entirely Caucasian.

Context

This project will take place within the context of a Career and Technical Education (CTE) center’s Computer Systems Networking and Telecommunications curriculum (Michigan State Classification of Instructional Programs Code 11.0901). This project addresses some of the Information Technology foundation standards as well as several career and employability skills standards. (See http://mccte-fsu.org/csp.php?i=2#cluster_5 )

Learning objectives

The student will be able to use the internet to analyze his/her individual educational and experience requirements for a chosen career goal and create a web page which includes an embedded presentation describing the steps necessary to obtain the goal while earning at least 80% of the points available on the supplied rubric.

Description of Lesson

Online tools to be incorporated.

· Google Page Creator.

· Google Docs.

· Embedded Media.

Lesson description. The goals of this lesson are:

· To encourage students to crystallize a career goal and requisite education requirements that come with their career goal.

· To give students an opportunity to explore online applications.

· To practice presentation skills.

The student will be required to deliver to me a website which he/she has created that includes an embedded slide show presentation. The embedded presentation will state the goal and describe the steps that the student will need to take to accomplish the goal. The website will provide links to pages which describe the education/training requirements of the goal, the schools likely attended and resources which will describe the employment outlook for the chosen career. (See example page at http://jsobeske.googlepages.com/sobeske%27scareergoalexample .

To access prior knowledge, I will start this lesson with a discussion about goals and times students have either set and achieved a goal or heard of someone who has. I will then focus the discussion by asking about their knowledge of anyone who has set a goal to get a certain job and then did whatever it took to get the job they wanted. I will then get specific and share with them the process I went through to become a teacher after having been in a different career for many years. Once I have verbally described my process, I will present the slide show which I have created. Before I present, I will tell the students to notice that I will not simply be reading the slides, but rather will be presenting. I will describe what presenting means and what to look for in a presentation.

With the discussion about career goals and my career goal presentation complete, I will describe the requirements of the assignment. I will begin by telling them that they will be creating a website and I will show them my website. I will walk them through the links and describe why each part is there and what I want to see. At this point, I will be very specific about what is required by passing out the “Career Goal Website Rubric” and going over it in detail.

At this point, I will demonstrate to the students how to get started with Google Docs and Page Creator. I will also demonstrate how to embed the slideshow into a web page. Then I will give the students time to begin researching their career goals and creating their web sites and slide shows. I will make myself available to help any student having difficulty.

Artifact

I have created an example of a website similar to which I am requiring the students to create. The address is http://jsobeske.googlepages.com/sobeske%27scareergoalexample

JUSTIFICATION

The goals of this assignment could be accomplished with a lower-tech approach. I can imagine students could go to the library, look up the information they need about their chosen career, contact colleges and universities and study their bulletins and gather all the information and present it in a folder or portfolio. Having the students use the technology I described above has distinct advantages over lower-tech approaches. Here are some of these advantages:

· Consolidating the career goal and education requirements on one website synthesizes the material in a dynamic and understandable way that a low-tech approach could not do. This website gives the student a map to success and the ability to navigate the various aspects of a career goal.

· The fact that their website is actually published on the internet gives the students the opportunity to share their goals with their families in a way a low-tech approach could not do. The students’ career sites will be available anywhere there is internet connectivity which gives students’ families an opportunity to support and guide the student. Students would not have to wait until they happen to have a portfolio with them to share their plans with their mentor. This is a huge advantage because when a teenager is in the mood to talk about his/her life goals, this approach allows mentors to seize the moment.

· The information can be changed and updated easily thus allowing the potential for this to not only be a class assignment, but a tool to help students achieve a goal. If this was a paper and ink assignment it would be much less likely to be used as a tool to help crystallize their thoughts about their goals and how to achieve them. With this website continually available every time they are logged on, it is more likely to have the desired effect, which is to have students maintain focus.

· The technology allows this assignment to be completed in a much shorter time and allows the students to work on it at home if they desire. A multifaceted assignment such as this would be a huge project if done with traditional low-tech methods. This assignment does cover several state standards; however, there are several hundred more standards which must be addressed in a year. This use of technology allows more standards to be covered in a shorter amount of time, yet in a way that is meaningful to students.

· Using this technology teaches technology. If this assignment were to be completed using a low-tech approach, students may not be exposed to the utility of free services such as Google Docs and Google’s Page Creator. This has the potential auxiliary benefit of saving students money. Also, this project exposes students to Web 2.0 concepts such as cloud- delivered applications and embedding media which is hosted non-locally.

Online Application Review

I will start by saying “Google Docs rocks!” Until this assignment I never spent much time working with this suite of applications because I have Microsoft Office. Google Docs has advantages Office doesn’t. Probably the greatest advantage is that all files are online and can be accessed anywhere. While this is neat, it is pretty much what we Web 2.0 crowd take for advantage. Online storage aside, I’m blown away by the functionality these applications have for free! The spreadsheet application has all the features I use most frequently from Excel like speed fill and formulas. It also has really cool gadgets you can put on your spreadsheet to jazz it up. The word processor has what you would expect but more such as the innate ability to create PDF files and the ability to open PDFs and copy from them. This feature is very cool but you cannot directly edit PDFs yet. They’re working on that. The presentation software can embed video and animations and, the part I like best, can be embedded into websites. Some people would say that a big feature the Google Docs has is the ability to collaborate in real time. I personally do not do a lot of collaborating so it’s not a big deal to me. I did see that it will email you when someone you are collaborating with has made changes. I barely scratched the surface describing all the functionality of Google Docs. If you haven’t tried it out, you need to. If you were, like me, thinking you already have what you need because you have Office, you need to invest an hour or two checking Google Docs out. You just might convert. Oh yeah…for the record, I would recommend Google Docs to my district.

I like photo editing though I really don’t have time to do it much. I went ahead and played with Phixr, FotoFlexer and Picnic. I have a fair amount of experience with Adobe’s Photoshop so I was ready to be under whelmed and in some cases I was. Surprisingly to me, in some cases I was impressed.

Of the three photo editing sites I checked out, I rank Picnik the best followed closely by FotoFlexer. Both had very similar interfaces. So similar, in fact, that at first I thought I was the two were one. Once I started using them the differences became more clear. Both fix red-eye pretty well. I liked the way Picnik gave you a choice between fixing human and animal eyes. Apparently there is a difference however I didn’t happen to have a red-eyed animal photo to check it out with. Picnik worked faster on my machine and had lots of very nice effects. Unlike FotoFlexer, Picnik let you see a preview of the changes before you submitted them thus eliminating the need to find a back button. I was able to create a nice picture of my wife and son with a fuzzy circular mask around their faces that faded to black and white in no time. FotoFlexer has me save the pictures on their site by default where Picnic assumes you want to save on your local machine which I prefer. FotoFlexer is well worth checking out because of the extra artsy effects it allows you to add to your pictures.

I feel like I’m rambling on a bit here so let me cut to the chase about Phixr. It’s slow and doesn’t have near the functionality of the other two. Don’t bother going there. I would recommend FotoFlexer and Picnic to my school district. They’re fun.

Week 7 - R/D 13

The ideas that I thought were the neatest were advanced performance tracking, nanotechnology and cybernetics.

I understand that there is no crystal ball which will help us see what form emerging technologies will take. That being said, in the realm of education and training, advanced performance tracking combined with nanotechnology and artificial intelligence holds enormous promise. I can imagine this technology going far beyond the tennis example the author gives. In the medical field, physicians in training wearing special gloves could perhaps be taught advanced surgical techniques with greater efficiency. Chiropractors in training could be evaluated for their technique. The techniques of savant practitioners could be fed into computers and these techniques could be disseminated with much greater speed. Physical therapy could be enhanced with the use of clothing that could train injury patients how to walk again.

I can only imagine the implications for regular education as artificial intelligence technology matures. Truly individualized instruction could be created in ways not even conceived of yet. I was amazed at the authors’ speculation about automatically matching learning styles and preferences to learners.

Who doesn’t think the idea of cybernetics is cool? The authors talk about “carrying our knowledge with us” and “control computers directly from our nervous system.” Combining these two concepts leads me to wonder how long it will be before we can create and interface into our brain where we can simply plug information in. Perhaps we can all be doctors, or lawyers, or multilingual dependant upon what knowledge bank we have installed. Admittedly, this would be several steps beyond simply controlling computers with our minds but it is what the logical next step would be. I wouldn’t be surprised if these ideas have been around for years but now we find ourselves in an age where it can be realistically imagined, even planned for. Wow.

My favorite activity in this course was the group collaboration PBWiki project. I must say I’m surprised to be saying this because my previous experiences with collaborative projects have not been great. The thing I liked about the activity was that it was an authentic activity and it brought home the functionality of WIKIs . I had learned academically of WIKIs and even created one but I had never actually used one to collaborate. I found it more enjoyable than I anticipated and I felt the three of us, who will probably never meet face-to-face, produced a good product.

Week 7: R/D12

In my opinion, Chapter 30 is the most useful chapter we have read from Reisner and Dempsey and I can easily discuss two ways I can apply the ideas in my classroom.

I have always been fascinated by brain studies so the section titled “How Humans Learn” caught my attention. I remember learning about the concept of activating prior knowledge from my education classes but the importance was never explained to me as well as the authors did on pages 314 and 315. They effectively articulated the importance of activating prior knowledge when they succinctly say “this related prior knowledge must be activate to make it available in working memory for learning.” That word “must” jumped out at me. What a strong word. I can use this imperative statement in my classroom by spending more time introducing lessons. I find myself excited to jump right into the topic of the day and often forget to prime the pump, so to speak, by getting the students thinking about related information or concepts they already know. I will now make an attempt before every lesson to either:
• ask students about prior knowledge of the subject of the day,
• create analogies that relate to what we will be learning.
• review what we have already covered in class.

On page 315 the authors point to recent studies that reinforce what we already know: “Students learn better from words and pictures that from words alone.” The surprising thing the authors point out is that students do not learn any better from animations than they do from a series of still visuals. This is useful to know. I’m all about efficiency when it comes to teaching effectively. The more time saved on creating one effective lesson means more time available making another lesson stronger. Creating and showing animations is time consuming and, according to studies, not necessarily any more effective. In fact, the authors point out that sometimes pictures with words are more effective because the learner can refer back to the still visual more easily. In my classroom I’m not going to sweat that my PowerPoints are not flashy and moving. Pictures, yes; time-consuming animations...well…I guess I can’t bring myself to totally ditch them but I’m going to cut way back.

I know we were supposed to only talk about two “tangible take-aways” but this chapter was so rich I have to mention two more.

Visuals with Audio narration, especially in the context of web delivery, I already knew was more fun but now I know studies show it is more effective…a lot more. I am getting Camtasia for my classroom and I will be doing screencasts with audio for my absent students. In the past, I might have simply gave my notes to the students who were absent.

The last item from this chapter I want to mention (I promise, this is the last) is the idea of seductive information or what I might call, going off on a tangent. The author stated that in six different studies, lessons that omitted “seductive vignettes” (read: didn’t go off on interesting, related, but off focus stories) had significantly increased learning as compared to lessons which included the seductive information. I will use this information in my classroom by remembering that just because I have a related story or information to share, it is not necessarily enhancing learning. I will keep focused more on the narrow topic of the lesson and not succumb to the temptation to beguile students with information which, though perhaps interesting and useful at another time, is off focus on the lesson being taught.

Week 6 : Screencasting

This is actually a screencast that I did originally for a different course and I ended up using it in my classroom. The students liked it so I will probably use it next year. I used the opportunity of this course to enhance the editing a bit. Camtasia does a pretty good job auto zooming on the active window and on your cursor but sometimes it does more zooming than I want. For what I am demonstrating, I felt I needed to be closer so the students can read the code better so I adjusted some of the edit points on the Camtasia timeline and I bodly deleted some of them. I feel the flow is better without all the in and out. I also added a couple more titles into this version. Addin titles is not difficult to do and I feel that it enhances the demonstration quite a bit. I just needed to be careful to get them to come in and go out at the right time. There's a bit of a learning curve for ading titles and call-outs but it is short and worth the effort.

Week 6 Google Page Creator

I have taught HTML and Dreamweaver. I have also used the GooglePages before for a website to teach basics of HTML. I'm no expert but I want you to know I'm not a newbie to web page creation.

The web site I created for this class is a work in progress. As with many projects, my website suffered from mission creep long after the original requirements were met. My idea is to have my students each create a site that will help them as they prepare for the A+ exam. Each week they would add a page to the site which will consist of pictures, notes or whatever they need to keep the information for the week fresh. I got the site roughed in and got a good start to the "connectors" area. The rest of the links are dead for now but it will give you an Idea of what I'm after. Here's the site. http://bacccomputerparts.googlepages.com/

Incase you are really bored, here's a link the site I created that teaches the basics of spreadsheets: http://jsobeske.googlepages.com/

Week 6 R/D 11

“Reflect on what you perceive to be your own areas of strength and what competencies you feel you need to work hardest to develop given your professional goals.”

For me it is much easier to discuss my short comings rather than my strengths. I guess that’s my nature. It is also my nature to do the hardest part first so I will discuss my strengths first.

I was self-employed for over 15 years in sales. Much of what I learned in the selling profession now come second nature to me. The competencies discussed in this chapter which I would consider to be my strengths are the same ones that come naturally to any good sales person. Take for instance, conducting a needs assessment, communicate effectively, effective presentation skills and stimulating and sustaining learner motivation. These are selling skills and these are areas where I feel comfortable. I have no problem presenting my ideas and feeling comfortable in front of other people. Motivating people is how sales people earn their living. Of course you can hardly motivate someone to do something unless it is what they wanted all along which is needs analysis. I would say these competencies are my strengths.

Under the heading of “Instructional Methods & Strategies” on page 275, I would like to work on promoting retention of knowledge and skills. In my program, we learn a very diverse set of skills all year long. Often I find that skills that the students (and sometimes myself) seem to have down pat early in the year are almost gone by Christmas break. If I could learn ways to improve retention this would be a big help.

Under the “Responsibilities to Society” heading under the “Instructor” column on page 277, I would like to develop “Recognize that when encountering a wide diversity of learners, some may come from different cultures and be accustomed to different societies.” My program, so far, has had during my tenure a pretty non-diverse population of students but I suspect that will change. I have a tendency to joke with students and they respond well to it. I fear that some of my humor may need to be adjusted when I get the Hispanic students with developing English language skills or the Arabic students with quite different cultural norms from what I am used to that other programs in my building get routinely. I want to be able to establish the rapport I currently enjoy with my students with any student God sees fit to send through my door.

Several of the competencies use the word “organization.” Professional speaking this is perhaps my greatest weakness. I tend to be the creative leader in a group and sometimes details do not get followed up on. This is a bad thing in any profession and especially bad in a profession where plans need to be monitored and reported upon. Organization is an area which I would like to develop personally because it will make me more effective as an educator as well as someone who hopes to implement educational technology in my district.

Week 6 - R/D10

Throughout the readings of chapters 18, 21 and 22 I have noticed the themes of leadership, team membership, and understanding the stakeholders which I will call listening. All three chapters spoke about the role of Instructional Designers (ID) in differing applications: business, P-12 education and higher education, yet these three themes, leadership and team-membership and listening, came up time and time again.

In Chapter 18 which spoke about the role of ID in Business and industry, the roles of ID was described as either a sole designer, consultant or team member/leader (Page 176). In the first two business roles the book describes, leadership and listening play critical roles The ID first understands what is needed by actively listening and then leads the client to a appropriate solution by taking a leadership role in the design process. Of course none of what the ID does can operate in a vacuum and the design process is iterative, so the ID must work as a member of a team to create the final product which is acceptable to all stake holders.

The trends and issues described in Chapter 21 talk about all three of these themes throughout the chapter. Several school districts’ transformation projects were highlighted and in all of them the ID had to understand, listen to, all interested parties from both within and outside the school building. The book mentions leadership teams on page 216 which, of course requires team work and IDs work with parents, teachers and other stakeholders in developing goals and plans.

Chapter 22 dealt with ID roles in higher education. The unsurprising parts of the chapter described the ID working with faculty improving instruction. These parts inherently had aspects of the themes of leadership, team membership and listening pretty much as described above from Chapters 18 and 21. The surprising parts of Chapter 22 are actually quite different from the prior two in that they describe the IDs role in academia. We read about tenure concerns, “publish or perish” anxiety and job satisfaction. Even through these very practical sections of the role of ID in higher education the three themes are represented. ID’s are called upon to listen as the council graduate students. They are called upon to take leadership of their hectic schedules so that the details of academic advisement doesn’t lead them to loose sight of the importance of research. They are required to think as a team member so their institutions can remain appealing and thus competitive in an competitive environment.

In summary, if I had to choose three significant themes which ran throughout these chapters, the three themes of leadership, team membership and listening are the ones I would choose. They certainly are demonstrated in all three chapters as important aspects of the role of the instructional designer.

Week 5 Map Lesson

My map idea is to have students take me on a virtual tour of colleges or trade schools they are considering attending after High School. My students would be responsible for showing on the map the location of at least three schools via a pin on the map. Each school would need two maps created for it as follows. One map would show where the school is in general, the other map would show points of interest around the school’s campus itself. The main general location map would have at least three locations pins an those pins would need to describe what makes the student interested in that college. The pin would also need a link to the college’s web site and a descriptive picture of the college on the college location pin as well. The more campus map would show the location of the registrar’s office, the building which houses the department(s) they are interested in and some of the dorms. In the description on the pin would have a link to a separate Google map titled “Tour the campus” which would zoom in on the campus itself and have pins inserted for a few stops around campus.

This exercise would help students get a good visceral feel for the college choices they are considering. It will help them in planning a college visit and help their parents visualize the options as well.

Week 5 Map

View Larger Map

Week 5 R/D9

So far I have found the technology-related assignments useful and fun. I like discovering new Web 2.0 capabilities and this course gives me a good chance to actually try them out.

The one assignment so far I found particularly useful is the collaboration WIKI project. I had dipped my toe (so to speak) into the WIKI waters in another course. I understood that it could be used to collaborate but until I actually did this project, I never realized the extent it could be used. I like getting the email notifications of changes. That’s almost like a RSS feed except better because the changes are precisely highlighted. Very useful. I will be attempting some sort of WIKI activity in my classroom in the future.

I haven’t found the activities all that difficult yet although as I write this I have yet to attempt the Google Maps activity for this week. I viewed the examples and it looks like fun. I’m anxious to try it out.

Video, screen-captured demonstrations, and POD casts seem to be powerful tools for Web based instruction. I would have liked to seen some of that in this course. Hearing, or better yet seeing the instructor would go a long way toward giving this inherently impersonal medium a human touch.

I’m excitedly looking forward to the lessons ahead, especially the technology related parts. I can't say that I'm a big fan of the text. I know theory is important but I would like the authors to give more practically useful information. That being said, getting the opportunity to actually try out new technology is really interesting and fun.

Week 5 R/D8

The two issues that struck me in Chapter 21 are the Ecological Systemic Change process and the idea of community forums to help implement changes in the school system.

The Ecological approach to educational reform was interesting to me because of the fact it recognizes that change doesn’t happen in a vacuum. A change in one area is going to affect other areas. It seems like this tries to anticipate the often unanticipated and negative changes which occur when change is put upon a school district. Had the designers of the No Child Left Behind Act or the Michigan Merritt Curriculum took a more ecological view in the planning stages, many problems could have been forecasted and fixed before they became the untenable burdens to districts they are becoming.

Community forums just make sense. After reading the chapter it now seems obvious to me that community forums need to happen every time significant change is considered. The text’s account of the Decature Township’s use of community forums (page 216) demonstrates a well thought out plan of change. All the excellent planning in the world is wasted if all stakeholders don’t feel ownership in the process. I thought it was particularly wise to have community members and the teacher union involved in the planning process from day one. Parents have the potential of being harsh critics of change and tenured teachers have the ability to torpedo the best laid plans because they are on the front-lines of change implementation. Having these two groups involved in the district change planning struck me as particularly wise. Being part of the planning makes these two important groups of stakeholders feel a sense of ownership which would make them more likely to be advocates of the change rather than adversaries to it.

Week 5 R/D7

I found it interesting that high-level evaluation is not simply an end-of-course activity. (text page 180) The concept of "confirmative evaluation" requires that there be a lapse of time between and training and evaluation in order for the evaluation to be to be judged. I can use this in my classroom to help my assessments. I, like most teachers, give my assessments (tests, quizes etc) pretty much immediately following the lesson. This is good but must not be the only assessment. If I really want to confirm that real learning has taken place, I need to give some sort of evaluation after some time has gone by. I suppose this assumes that the training was in a meaningful and reinforced over time. The author describes a continuum of learning which ranges from intent to knowing (I paraphrased a bit here) so I suspect this sort of evaluation is best for skill type activities that get reinforced with practice over time. Fortunately I teach quite a lot of skill based curriculum so this is useful for me.

I liked the discussion on the concept of rapid prototyping methodologies in this chapter as well (page 179). It sort of reminds me of the saying “A good plan now is better than a perfect plan next week.” As described in the chapter, rapid prototyping is an iterative process where design gets roughed in and perfected over time via live feedback from users. I have always said it is a whole lot easier to edit than it is to create so this rings true to me. I can use this in my classroom by getting my good ideas out to students faster without the polish knowing that the best way to get a creative and innovative lesson great is to get it in front of students. Now that I think of it, productivity wise, it is much more efficient to try a slightly unpolished lesson to see if it has potential than it is to spend hours to get every detail of a lesson perfect and then discover it just doesn’t work. Using the concept of rapid prototyping, I can try more ideas and then be more productive spending time polishing the ones with potential.

Week 4 R/D 6

Before reading this chapter I didn’t even know the title “Human Performance Improvement.” If I had I would have assumed it involved merely teaching tasks in more effective ways. There were several ideas brought up in this chapter which I could apply to both my professional work and to my students.

The authors point out early in the chapter that when performance is not as good as expected, many instructional designers assume the cause is poor instruction when it could be several other causes. It is up to the instructional designer to fully analyse the problem from every angle to determine the correct cause of poor performance. This applies well to my professional work. When test scores are low, I have a tendency to jump to the conclusion that my lesson was bad. I can use this chapter to broaden my mind to at minimum entertain the possibility that other factors might be at play. I like the author’s reference several times in this chapter to a possible cause of inadequate performance being be a lack of timely and useful feedback. I can relate to the fact that this could be a factor affecting performance because I see this as a determent to my performance in the majority of online courses I have taken to date. An example of this would be the courses I have taken where the only feedback I receive from my instructor to my writings is a single numerical score. I personally find this lack of timely and useful feedback de-motivating.

I was a bit taken aback by the principles the authors quoted which he attributed to a study done by Gilbert in 1996 (page 137) . All four cited theorems were at first glance surprising but the one that I highlighted is the one that states that “ A system that rewards people for their behavior (e.g. hard work, knowledge, motivation) without accounting for accomplishment encourages incompetence.” The more I think about this the greater it becomes. As a teacher or a boss, I have to remember that I need to encourage a student’s hard work, knowledge and motivation but I need to keep asking the question “what did you accomplish?” To think that we are actually encouraging incompetence by rewarding hard work and motivation that accomplishes little, motivates me. The one thing I want to do the most is discourage incompetence!

Week 4 R/D5

The Internet and the Web have had and will continue to have an impact on all educational levels. As the question “1a” from the text implies, the impact will be different at each of them. The questions asks me to reflect “based on what you know…indicate whether you think the Internet and Web will have …” Here’s what I think:

At grade levels K-12 the Internet will have a smaller impact that in higher education. Young people, I’m including 8-18 yr olds in this, cannot handle much of the self directed nature of internet instruction. Web based activities will continue to play a supporting role but Thomas Edison’s proclamation that books will be obsolete in schools will continue to go unfulfilled. I think that what the author describes on page 24 of our text will continue to hold true in K-12:

“As a new medium enters the educational scene, there is a great deal of initial interest and much enthusiasm about the effects it is likely to have on instructional practices, However, enthusiasm and interest eventually fade, and examination reveals that the medium has had a minimal impact on such practices.”

On the other hand, higher education and adult education will continue to radically be changed and ultimately overtaken by web based instruction. Adults are more mature and motivated to learn whether in class or on their own. Many lecture type college classes can be better delivered on the web through the use of interactive media. Pressure on “traditional” schools to offer more online courses will continue to build due to competition from accredited “virtual universities.” As more studies are done and pedagogies improve, online will continue to improve and change what we think about higher education. As internet connection speed and bandwidth continues to increase, more innovative and rich methods for education delivery will come about.

Week 4 Extra: Screen Recorded Presentation

This is sort of like a podcast except it is a screen recorded lesson. I did this lesson for another class but I never attempted to embed it into a blog before.

The program I used to record with is Camtasia and I was using the free trial. I didn't get really good resolution with this but I suspect if I played with it enough I'm sure I could get better results. Much of the zooming in was done automatically by Camtasia but I did end up adjusting some of the zooming which was not difficult to do. Of course I added all the little notes you see pop in and out. This is an awesome way to demonstrate computer skills and the students I used this with seemed to learn the material. They liked the informal voice and feel of it.

Week 4 Map

"Street View" from GoogleMaps is really cool. If you haven't checked it out yet, click the "street view" button and then double click any street that has a blue line in it. Drag your mouse around the window that opens and look around. To find out more check out http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/index.html

No I'm not fixated on San Francisco, it just happens to have great "Street View" coverage. FYI, so does Anchorage Alaska. Oh yeah, here's the map.

View Larger Map

Week 4 Static Image Post

Yes this is me. This picture happens to have been taken at the end of the second week of class after I had missed a flight out of Reno NV with group of students and had to rent a car and drive to San Francisco. I had to put the finishing touches on my post for the week in the airport and pay $10 for internet access in order to post on time.

Anyway, as long as we had to go to 'Frisco, we thought we might as well see some sights.

Week 4 Video Post

Here's a little video about summers at my place.
The cast is exclusively my family.

Week 3 R/D4

Some of what I teach is simply recognizing a computer part or component. Students are required to be able name the component by sight, tell what it does and discuss its specifications.

One way I could incorporate photo sharing into my curriculum is to have student make computer component tests that their classmates would take. How I could do this is first have students acquire photos of various computer components and organize them on a photo sharing site. Each student could create, as appropriate, groups of pictures and create sort of a visual test by numbering the pictures and creating a worksheet for their classmates to fill out. Students could give the blank, numbered worksheets to their classmates and have them fill in the blanks with the appropriate name of the part pictured. For example, when we are learning memory, students could create a memory group and populate the group with pictures of various types of memory as well as the various types of slots the memory goes into. Other students would have to identify the memory stick or the slot and write the name on the worksheet. This process would be facilitated by having all the students become members of each others photo sharing network.

The benefit using this service is that students would be able to see lots of different types, of parts which have the same name. The process of actually creating the test would be great reinforcement for the students and make them really notice the sometimes subtle differences between components.

My concerns about allowing students to play with these services are:

• Students viewing school inappropriate pictures.


• Getting side-tracked looking at off-subject pictures.


• Students posting pictures of themselves which parents might not approve of.

I see many similarities between the ADDIE model and what I do when I teach. A main difference being that my following the ADDIE model is not really as formal as described int eh text. I appreciate the authors mentioning that this is not necessarily a linear process as textbooks would have you believe. My lessons always have measurable objectives (Design). Need assessment (Analysis) usually takes place automatically because what is needed is usually evident from observing students in the classroom. “Development” and “Implementation” are other parts of ADDIE that always happen though they are usually not labeled as such while they are happening. Like most teaching professionals, I create a lesson and then gather the materials needed for it. I practice it a bit and then give it (implement it) to the class. For me the most important part is the “Evaluation.” Sometimes when a lesson I worked hard on flops its hard to step back, evaluate it, and if necessary throw out big chunks of it and retool. When a lesson works well, it’s important to evaluate what made the lesson a positive experience and try incorporating those aspects into other lessons.

Week 3 R/D3

I have been using social bookmarking in my classroom for several months now. The way in which I use it mainly me sharing with my students to keep them focused. I think Postman would be proud because this is an example of a problem I had that I was able to solve with technology.

I teach within the ever-changing world of technology at a career and technical center. An activity I do with my students weekly is “Tech Current Events” where students find a story on the internet about some new technology and write about it. On Friday we get together in a group and each student shares what they have found. The discussions are great and we all learn much. The problem I had was that students were taking way too much time finding a tech current event and often had to do a rush job on the written work to get it done on time. The writing is one of the my main interests as I am trying to bring more English Language Arts content into my curriculum. The reason the students took so long was that they were either indecisive, wanting to find that perfect story, or they simply got side tracked the way we all do when we are on the internet. What I ended up doing to solve this problem is subscribing to a few good technology news RSS feeds. Now during the week when I see an interesting headline I post it to my Delicious site under an “IT” tag. When I give class to prepare for Tech Current Events, I instruct the students that they can use any story they want as long as it is on my Delicious site and no other student has already called it. It cut the prep time in half!

One other use for social bookmarking I can see is for documenting research. It would be very easy to check sources if students tagged all their sources on a bookmarking site and the teacher had all students in his social bookmarking network. Two clicks and a teacher could tell if the student really read the stuff he or she is reporting about.

I liked the way Chapter 1 in Trends & Issues started the discussion at square one and discussed in depth the concept of what we are studying: Instructional Design and Technology. I must say that my views have been shaped somewhat by Postman in that I read this chapter with his questions in mind (to paraphrase); “what problem is there that technology can fix?” Reisner and Dempsey seem to be pointing out that one problem that can be fixed is simply education can be better. At the heart of both of the definitions of Educational Technology that the authors site (one of which they wrote) is “improving learning and performance.” I can get behind this definition but I think perhaps there’s more. I certainly thought that Ed Tech would help me bring skills to the classroom that would enhance learning but I also thought, and still think, that this study will help me make more learning happen during the same amount of time. I’m not necessarily talking about teaching the same subject better, I’m talking about the possibility of teachers layering subjects on top of a class already taught. For example, could I design a way to teach my more tech savvy students programming when they get ahead in their networking studies? Could a Civics class teach criminal law to accelerated students at the same time? Can a US history class have an American Litrature layer that is formalized, well designed, facilitated by a highly qualified teacher and mapped to applicable state standards? The brightest students crave challenge. This part of Instructional Design and Technology is perhaps alluded to but missing in the authors’ definitions.

Week 3: Del.icio.us and Flickr

Here's my photo sharing and delicious sites.
By the way, feel free to beg me to repost the picture of Tom Seleck on my profile. I won't be offended...much.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jsobeske/
http://del.icio.us/jsobeske

Sobeske's Week 2 Reflection

Blogs impress me as a lot of work, especially if you are the one blogging. My first instinct was to use blogs as a way to get students to write more. My thought process was that if the students’ work was public they would try their best to look smart in front of their parents and peers and thus try harder. I teach at a tech center and we are constantly looking for ways to add English Language Arts (ELA) to our curriculum. Blogs seem like a great fit. I got all excited but then I discovered that our school board had decided some time ago (heavy-handedly) that all blog sites should be blocked. When things slow down for me at school I will begin building my case for unblocking blogs and see if I can get the board to move on this issue. Now that I think of it, blogs can answer the “Postman question” on several levels for me. Here are a few problems that blogs could answer:

• Students don’t have a way to prove publicly and often that they can think and deeply.
• Parents don’t have a easy way to see their students’ work.
• Tech Centers don’t have a way to publicly and often prove they teach ELA within their curriculum.
• Students don’t get a chance to see all other students’ work..

If RSS feeds are not the coolest darn things I have seen in a while, they are certainly the most useful Web 2.0 tool I have seen. I have discovered the hard way that some sites are not really great for feeds due to the fact that I would have to live in front of my computer to keep up with the new content. Examples of bad pages to get fed are weather.com and foxnews.com. My technology current event sites are great for feeds and I love being able to see what’s new on them.

As a tool for teaching, RSS feeds most closely align themselves to Edgar Dale’s “Visual symbols” level of the cone. The stories from the feed are often abstract representations of the point being made. The actual level of the cone involved would be RSS feed dependant due to the fact a feed could be text, pictures, charts or video. The RSS feed could align its self to virtually every cone level.

Some inherent strengths of a Web Log are that the blog is instantly viewable world wide, it allows for comments from readers and it stores past entries chronologically. These strengths inherently answer the problems stated above. There is no other medium that can give stake holders access to student work they way blogs can. Students love recognition and blogs can give a student a stage more consistently than anything else a school has.

RSS feeds/readers can be used to automatically alert students to new material the teacher would like them to experience. For students in remote locations, this would be one way to stay connected. Parents can use RSS feeds to watch their students’ blog and keep apprised of their progress.

Wikis

I wasn’t clear if I was to address the subject of wikis here or on the PBWiki site its self. I’ll do it here and on the wiki. I hope that’s ok.

This was my first time actually using a wiki and I must say, it was quite different than I anticipated it would be. I found that it was actually easier to collaborate than I would have guessed. My group had some very talented members and that made the experience great for me. What surprised me was how helpful having the email notices sent every time there was an edit. The deletions in red and additions in green made noticing the changes easy.

The disappointing thing was that the editing wasn’t as WYSIWYG as I would have liked. Dragging content around involved getting into the code and that’s always a bit worrisome for me. Perhaps I was doing something wrong. I was also surprised that the wiki didn’t look the same at my school as it does at home. I expected a few differences but the text flows around the picture nicely at home and not at school.

I might consider a wiki in my classroom as a prep for future online collaborative efforts my students might find themselves in. I can’t say that I can think of any problems I have that wikis help me solve but I’ll keep thinking.

Week 1 Reflection - Reigeluth v Postman

Week One Reflection
Joe Sobeske

I’m not a fan of reflecting. It’s hard. It makes me think. It requires me to use higher cognitive functions which makes me tired…and better.

Before me today are two articles written by highly educated people. To grossly summarize, in one, the author sees the need of a paradigm shift in educational thinking; where technology is an indispensable part of the implementation of this change. The author of the other article sees no educational problem that can be solved by technology. Here’s what I think:

Reigeluth makes good points when he talks about a learner-focused paradigm. Few today would disagree that the teacher is more effective as the guide on the side rather than the sage on the stage. Or that teaching in meaningful contexts leads to better understanding. Much of this learner-focus sounds good at the theory level. Practically speaking, I take issue with much of what Reigeluth purports. I don’t believe his premise that our current educational system is Darwinistic and I don’t believe it is necessary to teach to a level of mastery before a student progresses. Reigeluth seems to think this learner-focused paradigm will eliminate what he calls “sorting.” I think the level of individualization of instruction he describes will result in even more stratification of students, not less. Let me explain.

WARNING: Here comes my pragmatic side: Most students are not highly motivated. If we let them have all the time they need to achieve mastery before moving to the next skill, many of them will take four years of High School to achieve mastery on the first skill. If students are left to explore only what they are interested in, many will flounder in indecision, not knowing what they want and will take the path of least resistance leaving them farther behind the motivated, goal-oriented students than they would have been under the “old” system. To quote a supervising teacher I had during my student teaching; “ the smart will get smarter and the dumb will get dumber”. A result arguably worse than “sorting.” Students need strong, caring teachers who can gently but firmly push them.

Students don’t gravitate toward exploring new ideas and if we left them to exclusively explore their own interests they would seldom be exposed to concepts outside their sphere of experiences. Here’s a quick example. One of my students is a long haired skateboarder type. He had no interest in joining our youth club Business Professionals of America (BPA). After speaking with his mother during parent-teacher conferences, I decided and she agreed that he should join. I told him he had no choice (a white lie). Prior to his involvement in BPA, this 16 year old student had never joined a school youth club or team of any kind, never competed in any formal academic contests, he had never even wore a tie. I didn’t leave it up to him, I pushed him into BPA regional contests. I forced him to prepare and convinced him to go to Goodwill and buy appropriate attire. I wish I could say he performed well enough to advance to State competition but I can say he was pushed way beyond his comfort zone, exposed to positive influences and he was made aware of a set of norms that were out of his sphere of experience. He would be a lesser person had he not been lead, somewhat reluctantly at first, into this learning experience. His comments to other classmates and his awareness of common business etiquette demonstrates a growth of maturity on his part. The “authenticity” and “self-directed learning” that Reigeluth describes would have left this student out this valuable experience.

I’m beginning to like Neil Postman. He is simple. Technology in the classroom is fine, he seems to say, as long as we know before hand why we need it. I don’t think I’m taking too much liberty by saying he would agree that technology could and should be used to fix educational problems but if some educational piece isn’t broke, don’t try fixing it with technology. I can get behind that type of thinking with one proviso: we define “broke” as not the best teaching practice. In other words, if some learning can happen better with technology, by all means use technology. I think Postman would agree.

What I really like about Postman is his courage to ask the fundamental question. What is the reason for education? I also like the panache he has in answering his own question: “to teach children how to behave in groups.” Simple, pithy and probably more right than wrong. I can’t wait to read the book he quotes by Robert Fulghum: All I Ever Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. Students today do access to all the information in the world. They will flounder if they don’t have the skills needed to physically and appropriately act and react in the world. This key point, which Reigeluth gives a nod to (peer-assisted learning), Postman makes paramount. A motivated student will do what it takes to learn, even when it is hard. Ask any kid who taught his self how to fix his own computer; if they want to learn they will. The basic concept Postman would advocate us instilling into students is this: Do what you are supposed to do. If we teach students that, the teaching will take care of its self and we teachers can step in with technology to facilitate with best practices.

This all leads me back to my brain taxing reflecting. It is a good example of what Postman got me thinking about and perhaps it is a good parallel to what we need to do with students:

• Getting a Masters degree is what I’m supposed to do. It’s no opinion for me, it’s fact. It is a value I have acquired and I am motivated. We need to teach students this sense of responsibility to themselves.
• Left to my own devices I would not do this. I am pushed each time to do it. We need to push students to stretch their minds into areas where they perhaps are reluctant to go.
• When I’m through, my thoughts on the subject at hand are much clearer and I am able to articulate them easily and more intelligently. I feel smarter and more confident when I’m done. When students feel smarter and more confident they are better equipped to be productive in society and we have done our job.
  
  I think it’s time for a nap.