EDTC 6431 - Critical Thinking & Problem Solving (ISTE 4)

ISTE 4 - “Collect and analyze data to identify solutions and/or make informed decisions."

My Module 4 Triggering Question" What digital tools are available for high school students to begin to build a "life curiosities" portfolio and their own personal online repository of essential links and resources? 

As I've continued in this week of chimerical research, I have begun to realize that the tool I am envisioning for my students - and all life-long learners - does not yet exist. This makes for a disappointing end to a summer filled with exciting research discoveries vis-a-vis education technology integration. Nevertheless, what follows is a sketch of my ideas for this app - I am building in my mind - and if some web developer out there reads this and wants to run with this idea... awesome! Just hit me up so I can weigh in on some of the functionality and design ideas.

The gist of this app is a personalized encyclopedia where students could store, share, annotate and journal about ALL the essential web resources, links and personal work that they amass over the years. It could be called encycUpedia. It's not perfect, but it's getting there. I originally thought of APPademic, but that is already the name of a web developer in Australia...nothing new under the sun.

I believe that encycUpedia could exist for three primary functions: 1) a microblogger (think Tumblr/Blogger) - sharing academic and professionally related ideas with the your networks; 2) note-taking, annotating, organizing and journaling (think Evernote); 3) building a library (private) and profile (public) that students could leverage for future academic and/or professional endeavors ambitions (think LinkedIn-ish).

EncycUpedia would offer both public social media integration (for SAVING & ORGANIZING links and resources) as well as for public posting and connecting. Additionally, it would have a private posting and journaling function where people could process their own personal, half-baked thoughts and work through ideas before vomiting them out in their perfunctory, respective echo chambers (*tear - remember when we didn't feel compelled to share our every thought we have online?!).

Students could save personal work digital files and links as well as uploads (pics, video, scans) of analog work as well. Basically, this online repository would become each student's personalized, annotated and integrated encyclopedia. Such a tool could aid in the efficiency of keeping track of past work and valued resources for future work. Students could have a folder with all of their favorite TED Talks and the annotations and notes.

Everything, I mean everything would be tagged with a label - much like the label function with Blogger or a #hastag on social media. The critical difference however is that these labels would all be private and local to your own personal encycUpedia library. How much time do we all waste RE-researching things online!?! This app's ability to search and sort by personal labels could change the way we cross-reference and refer back to previous ideas and relevant work.

I like the on-the-go toolbars that Evernote and Tumblr offer for multimedia microblogging (social) and note-taking or journaling (private).

Tumblr Toolbar (for the social/public functions)

Evernote Toolbar (note-taking/journals private functions)

Criticisms of Tumblr & Evernote
Tumblr has however, become so niche and despite what this article explains about private posts, its primary functionality is sharing and liking and sharing cutesy and frivolous musings.

There are some outstanding functions within Evernote that would be worthwhile teaching and showing to my students. Here are two I especially dig:

Yet, after Evernote changed their business model last year, they've effectively priced themselves out of students being the target audience. I have serious doubts about how accessible Evernote will be for students. It is too expensive ($$$).

A Basic (free) membership limits users to 60MB of data uploaded to their account per month. This is miniscule. For context, 60 seconds of video recorded on your iPhone (before any compression) is roughly 130MB. That effectively restricts a basic user to text and maybe some audio file uploading.

But the "PLUS" membership is not much better. For $35/year you are still limited to 1GB upload/month. This is ridiculous.

And despite my excitement about the WEB CLIPPER tool that Evernote touts as "replacing the need to bookmark websites" (we'll see about that). I just don't think Evernote is quite what I envision encycUpedia could be.

References

Evernote Plus (2017). Membership Details and Functionality. Retrieved from: https://evernote.com/plus

EDTC 6431 - Phase 5: Individual Project Reflection

I am grateful that this individual project offered me the opportunity and the space to reflect on a previously developed student project and consider the intentional augmentations and improvements that thoughtful technology integration could allow. 

Having been a technology and media teacher at the high school level for the first eight years of my career and now transitioning into a new discipline - as I get my MAT and endorsements in history and social studies - I am eager to work with technology integration in the reverse direction. 

That is, I now have the luxury of extant and copious curricula and project ideas that don't require me to digest that day's news and figure out a way to make it meaningful and engaging and technologically relevant for the following day's lesson - as was the case for many years in my online media literacy course - a 12th grade elective. It was exhausting. 

But similarly exhausting was the experience of listening to many colleague from the math, science and English departments solicit my help to try and "incorporate technology" into their regular practice or project based learning assessments. I found thought that their commitment to that integration was often lip service to the "21st century skills" they believed were essential for student growth but were unclear or unwilling to consider how they might actually expand modalities of instruction, independent practice and/or assessment through the thoughtful integration of technology.

I am quite familiar with the ISTE standards and especially the 2007 version that we've operated from in this course. I taught from those along with the early adoption of the social studies and ELA speaking and listening CCSS standards from 2009-16. SAMR however, was new to me and thoughtful and a metered way in which to consider technology integration and applicability within a course, project, unit, warm up, etc. I wish I'd had it to share with my colleagues who instead pined for me to square peg/round hole their existing project and somehow "make it techy."

I think the SAMR framework gave me a deliberate lens to reflect this summer about the 90s POP & POWER Impact trading cards project that Shawn and I designed and allowed me to see the ways we can go further with technology to expand the project, make it more meaningful, create more student ownership and responsibility and promote collaborative research, design and exhibition.  

I believe that a group Google doc for research gathering, references, feedback and the linking and embedding of the trading card Google doc template is critical for organizing evidence. Additionally,  the creation of a group Blogger page to host the final project offers important augmentation to the student deliverables as well as organization of research and the shared digital space where they can work together.

Another major improvement was the intentional design of group roles and working together as a team to differentiate and specialize in the responsibilities and workload. In my personal experience as student and teacher is that group projects are frustrating because there is often opaque instruction of the actual outcome of the work and/or little if any clarity from the teacher about what each person can or should be doing to work together towards that goal.

So although it is not explicitly technology integration, I see the POGIL or Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning framework as interconnected and essential to the success of this project and other group, technology-integrated projects moving forward. Especially as the ease of cloud saved collaborative documents allow for multi-access and real time sharing students are empowered to control for pace and place of their work time and contributions. As such POGIL and other frameworks like it that provide defined roles and responsibilities for group member to build effective, interdependent collaboration and contribution are more necessary.

I am excited for the launch of POGIL at the start of the school year and incorporating it through daily activity as well as the PBL assessments throughout the year. I am eager to share the augmentations and improvements to the 90s Pop & Power Players lesson plan with my mentor teacher. Lastly, I am excited to see how these changes will enhance student learning, engagement within their groups and create a more meaningful opportunity to examine the impacts both then and now of the Pop culture and Political player and events that shaped the world in which they arrived.

EDTC 6431 - Research & Information Fluency (ISTE 3)

ISTE 3 - “Students apply digital tools to gather, evaluate, and use information.” 

My Module 3 Triggering Question: 1) what apps/tools/sites/curricula are the best for learning the skills to determine the veracity of news AND 2) what are the most efficient ways (i.e. I am thinking of aggregating apps like Feedly and Google News/Reader) for students to curate varied and verified news source into their daily media diet?

From my research I feel fortunate to say that the best curricula and engaging tools for helping students determine the validity and veracity of the news (i.e. how to know what to believe) is, in my estimation, the non-profit News Literacy Project and their web-based platform and curriculum called Checkology. Admittedly, I am quite familiar with NLP. I was one of the original pilot teachers to partner with the organization back in 2010. I have spoken on behalf of NLP at a news literacy conference in Chicago in Fall 2014 and am committed to carrying on their mission helping to broaden their reach to the PNW. I was also one of the first teachers and classrooms to pilot Checkology before its formal launch in the Summer 2016. I am featured both in pull quote and in two of the testimonial, talking head videos on their website. I feel honored to be carrying the torch for this organization and completely believe in their mission. Back when I began that work we were in the heyday of Obama's first term and could have never imagined that spin and propaganda machine that the Executive could become (thanks Twitter). We need news literate young people now, more than ever before.

NLP has locked most of their videos to their own page but here is one I found on YouTube from 2014 that is well before the concept of Checkology even existed and that two of my former students and I all contributed talking head interviews for. You can see me briefly at about 1:10.

NLP's work is about teaching healthy skepticism and promoting a balanced media diet considering the deluge that young people (and ALL people) are expected to consume today. It is no wonder that so many of us indulge internet outrage over some headline we barely skimmed - let alone had ANY context for. Sadly, many of us rely on the carefully curated echo chambers we've built for ourselves on Facebook or our Twitter feeds with the expectations that they "bring us the news." Considering a health media diet these sources are the equivalent of McDonalds, that is, we can consume vast amounts, become crazed by it and never feel satisfied or likely ever really challenged.

I am excited to have my own classroom again to pick back up with NLP and the work of incorporate news/media literacy skills into my social studies and history courses. 

Other resources I considered in my research and I am familiar with are similarly tools for discerning sources and promoting critical thinking. SHEG (Stanford History Education Group) which my mentor teacher introduced me to this year which promotes critical thinking by analyzing history lessons both through primary source document AND also learning how to put historians themselves into a context and unearth and critique their biases. Additionally, the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting which I mentioned last week is another source of news that is promoting lesser known stories and longer-form investigative reporting which demands literacy, patience and consideration of detailed information. 

Lastly, the second part of my questions was concerned with finding useful tools for students building and aggregating valid news sources to one single place/app/feed where they could regularly visit and consume and work towards a well-balanced media diet. I am familiar with apps like Feedly and Flipboard and wanted to see what else is out there. I came across this great blog post on the tech blog Techlicious about the 7 Best News Aggregator Apps. I think that the author's conclusion is there isn't just one aggregator app for all healthy news diets but instead that each one serves a speciality and necessary roll. She details AP Mobile, Flipboard and Feedly - all of which I was familiar with.

In the article I learned of a few I'd never heard of as well, including Nuzzel which at first glance seems great. This app seems geared to transition people out of the echo chamber of your own meticulously curated feed but without too much shock. It still has the social media aspect of sharing and user generated reviews and comments that drive stories. Additionally, it connects with other websites like Reddit to help promote deeper detail and understanding of topics.

Also another she highly recommends is Science News and Discoveries. For any of you early adopter of IFLS out there who feel like I do that its content has declined over the years to clickbait, this app might be for us.

Lastly, here's an NPR Story from Dec 2016 that details the curriculum and application of Checkology in a classroom.


References
News Literacy Project (2017). Checkology Virtual Classroom. Retrieved from: http://www.thenewsliteracyproject.org/services/checkology

Stanford History Education Group (2017). Curriculum: Reading Like A Historian. Retrieved from: http://sheg.stanford.edu/rlh

Strokes, N. (2017). Techlicious. The Best News Aggregator Apps. Retrieved from: https://www.techlicious.com/guide/the-best-news-aggregation-sites/

Turner, C. (2016) The Classroom Where Fake News Fails. NPR: All Things Considered. Retrieved from: http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/12/22/505432340/the-classroom-where-fake-news-fails

EDTC 6431 - Cultural Understanding & Global Awareness (ISTE 2)

ISTE 2 - Communication & Collaboration: "Develop cultural understanding and global awareness by engaging with learners of other cultures.”

My Module 2 Trigger Question: "What are the best online resources to introduce global awareness and facilitate community and dialogue between my students and their international peers?"

This week offered an exploration of some exciting resources that will provide the basis for substantial declarative knowledge-building where global perspectives and awareness are concerned. And, additionally, I found some powerful resources for collaboration and community on an international scale for my students to experience just how small and interconnected their world is.

On the declarative knowledge and global perspectives front...As I began to do my investigation, I encountered a resource and organization that played a major role in my online media literacy course in DC: the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Their mission so closely parallels my pursuit of journalism and history helping to give a "voice to the voiceless." They have dedicated resources to teaching journalism, global perspectives and driving experiential learning by bringing in journalists to classrooms all over the United States. Across the 3 years I worked with them in DC, we had on average 3 journalist presenters a semester that came into present and have workshops with my students or my US Government mentor teacher's classes. Our student loved the immediacy and purpose of the detailed and embedded journalism of the Pulitzer Center's journalists.

Also a substantial resource they provide are the CCSS-aligned lesson plans found on their website and the long-form narrative multimedia journalism that their grantees have created. I have used many of these multimedia projects in my class that investigate deep and off the beaten path issues that include: the millennials who live underground in China, the millions of people will live and work in the defunct garbage dump in Dandora, Kenya and the First Nation Residential Schools of Canada. Each of these topics in more in depth journalism and personal narrative storytelling that most students and adults are frankly familiar with. I have often described their work to people as Vice News with heart. Their work will continue to be a stellar resource for powerful global perspective and informing on issues that few people are paying attention to.

I am also intrigued by the focus on global perspective-taking using the resources and lessons produced by National Geographic which explores: The Debate Over Globalization. The National Geographic incorporates its compelling visual media and powerful storytelling to create this focused one hour lesson plan and materials geared toward middle and high school students to investigate the perspectives and arguments with substantial evidence

Lastly, the resource I am most excited about is one completely new to me that the US Department of Education created. They have compiled a list of international lesson plans and collaborative projects with teachers all across the work. Two that really caught my eye and I can already think of important connection to my courses are: "Helping Hands "- about student research to inform and advocate on behalf of homeless and hungry children. Also, the "Learning Democracy through International Collaboration" where students from multiple countries share a collaborative online classroom to teach each other about little known issues of fighting for democracy in their respective home country. This is a resource I am excited to spend some time digging into and developing some connection with international colleagues committed to this work.

My conclusions are that my simultaneous interest in student declarative knowledge about global awareness and perspective can unfold simultaneously with the resources (apps and projects) that enable international student collaboration.


Resources
Hunter, N (2016). National Geographic: Education. The Debate Over Globalization: What are the pros and cons? Retrieved from: https://www.nationalgeographic.org/activity/the-debate-over-globalization/ 

Pulitzer Center (2017). Pulitzer Center Lesson Builder. [Community] & [Model Lessons] Retrieved from: http://pulitzercenter.org/builder/dashboard/0

US Department of Education (2009). Teachers Improve Student Performance: Teacher's Guided to International Collaboration on the Internet - Social Studies Project Examples. Retrieved from: https://www2.ed.gov/teachers/how/tech/international/guide_pg9.html#social

EDTC 6431 - Student Expression, Creativity & Innovation (ISTE 1)

ISTE 1 - “Students demonstrate creative thinking, construct knowledge, and develop innovative products and processes using technology.” 

My Module 1 Triggering Question: Which tools and procedures are best for recording, editing and sharing student-created podcasts? 

My research has helped me discover a gap in my triggering question. I recognize now that I may have been putting the cart before the horse where recording and production are concerned. That is, well before students are ready to record, edit or publish their masterpieces, they need to familiarize themselves with the medium and deliberately work on the pre-production elements of script writing, editing, reading aloud, and generally understanding the medium. Podcasting is not just talking into a microphone and demands deliberate planning and forethought.

Teacher Tony Vincent warns about the pre-production demands that both student and teacher may be unaware of saying "I've found that pre-production takes over three-quarters of the time to produce a podcast" (2008). He offers helpful reminders to students about determining exactly who their intended audience is and to make careful considerations where language and style are concerned.

Vincent also suggests that writing and recording the introduction last ensures that it reflects a concise teaser for the podcast that follows. This not only mirrors the styles of radio and television, it also mirrors the essay writing process. I have often encouraged students when writing a chunked and scaffolded essay with PEE paragraphs (i.e. Point-Evidence-Explain) to write their intro paragraph last. That way, it reflects exactly what the paper is about and that they are not unneededly pigeonholing themselves.

Considering mimicry is the sincerest form of flattery students need to familiarize themselves with the medium and the myriad genres within podcasting as a frame of reference before creating their own. I remember back to my journalism days in high school and college and the assignments where we were given a sample style and asked to write our next piece as if the sample author had written it. I think this could be a necessary first assignment for students to do a short five-minute podcast either autobiographical or a one-on-one interview and practice in the Fresh Air or WTF style of interview or the cliffhanger narrative style of Serial.

My research did yield some detailed resources to guide students to the best tools for recording, editing and publishing. When my students are ready to begin sampling the variety of available apps, I’ll send them to this EdTechTeacher link.

Greg Kulowiec gives a knowledgeable and succinct video tutorial of Spreaker which not only seems the most intuitive for me, especially where editing by clicking and dragging or selecting and cutting are concerned but also its accessibility. It is available for Chromebooks and for both Android and OSX mobile operating systems. I would encourage my students to peruse EdTechTeacher’s full list (pictured below) of sortable by column, free and field-tested recording, editing and podcast productions apps. (Kulowiec, 2016).

I am hopeful about the opportunities for student voice and creativity in production and assessment. I also believe that podcasts lend themselves well to group projects, considering their multi-faceted production elements. 

One intriguing finding from my research connected with my interest in differentiating modes of assessment. That is, what if we encouraged students to create a podcast in lieu of a research paper. I found a US News article that features an Edmonds-Woodway High School 10th grade English teacher Nancy Branum and librarian Karen Rautenburg who did just that. 

Branum noted that the structure of the podcasts paralleled that of conventional deductive style research papers but allowed, even demanded, for more creativity and intentional storytelling, which piqued student interest and engagement. “Just like a paper, a podcast needs a beginning, middle and end, Branom says. ‘You have to have a hook and an introduction with context. You have to introduce your interviews and you have to be able to decide, well, what chunk of this interview I'm going to take so it makes sense – kind of like evidence from a novel that you put in a paper’” (Pannoni, 2016).

I am intrigued that student-created podcasts could drive student expression through storytelling and critical thinking and differentiate assessments as students interview experts or each other and create primary/secondary source evidence, gain media literacy skills and contribute to our growing digital record of contemporary history.

References
Kulowiec, Greg (2017). Podcasting: Using Podcasts in the classroom. EdTechTeacher. Retrieved from: http://edtechteacher.org/tools/multimedia/podcasting/

Pannoni, Alexandra (2016, Feb 29). High School Teachers Tune In Students With Podcasts: Podcast assignments can show teens another way to tell stories. US News. Retrieved from: https://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/high-school-notes/2016/02/29/high-school-teachers-tune-in-students-with-podcasts 

Vincent, Tony (2008). Creating Podcasts with your students. Reading Rockets. Retrieved from: http://www.readingrockets.org/article/creating-podcasts-your-students

ASD & Executive Functioning Accommodations - EDU 6644

This lesson begins with a student-centered discovery and inference activity. It relies on inference making as well as student-generated criteria to evaluate which documents reveal a cohesive truth about an historical event. As such, I considered the cognitive demands that such a student-centered activity would have on my students who struggle with executive functioning. I was intentional about the accommodations that I passed out at the start of the lesson (e.g. the prescribed group member roles as well as the timeline agenda). These provide a framework for these students to prioritize their role and content at hand and lessen their focus on the structure or stresses they may have about their role in the activity. Additionally, by circling one or two of the questions ahead of time, my students with executive functioning issues can have ample time to prepare their answer.

The second half of the lesson is the direct instruction that ties the larger narrative together and reveals to students how their inferences and evaluations of the primary source documents were correct and how they were incorrect. The direct instruction is a short 15-minute lecture and includes a visually stimulating and relevant slideshow that features mostly pictures of the four main characters of the story – this is a helpful focus for students’ attention. Additional resource accommodations during the lecture for my executive functioning students is to give them guided notes. These can be in multiple forms and have differentiated purposes and student tasks associated with them. The bullet point notes offer a summary script of everything I am saying during the lecture and offer a visual connections to tether student focus. These guided notes can be differentiated in two ways: include the slide pictures with lines for annotations or simply be a tangible resource for students whose motor skills or cognitive deficits might prevent them from taking notes during lecture.

As a teacher comfortable with lecture and a proclivity to rely on auditory instructions alone, I have learned that I need to consider both hands-on and written directions to supplement everything I am saying. Additionally, I need to reduce the stress of uncertainty have sign posts and agendas accessible for my students which will provide structure and hopefully create and environment with a few less things for their over-active brains to worry about and/or focus on.

In studying exceptional learners with specific focusing and processing deficits this quarter, I have become aware of the reality that “distracted” learners’ brains are often overwhelmed – not because they don’t pay attention to anything but instead because the are paying attention to everything. Their brains struggle to sort and organize and prioritize. I think the guided agendas, notes, printed questions, circling the questions you’d like those students to answer are all four specific strategies that I will continue to use with my students whose executive functioning deficits disrupt their learning.

Growth Mindset and Reinforcing Effort

EDU 6526 Week 3 Reflection

Chapter 2 of the Classroom Instruction that Works explores some of the best practices and the fine line that teachers walk to reinforce effort of their students and bestow praise upon them. Dean et al. write, “reinforcing effort is a process that involves explicitly teaching students about the relationship between effort and achievement and acknowledging students’ efforts when they work hard to achieve” (21).

Some of these key insights shed light on the importance of the language teachers (AND PARENTS!) use and when and how to use it. Also, the frequency, substance, setting and tone of praise are all variables that determine how a student hears it (i.e. how they internalize it) and actually what behaviors the praise acknowledges. Excessive or repeated praise, especially for basic tasks has diminishing marginal return and students begin to tune it out. Additionally, perceived insincerity – as in the case where a teacher’s non-verbal communication does not match the praise – can have the reverse effect.

One of the most conceptually compelling arguments for teachers focusing on praise of effort, what Dean et al. call mastery-goal orientation, is that such a focus empowers and “encourages students to attribute their performance to causes they can control” (22). This is paramount for all types of learners. The consistently high performer whose aptitude and ability we (societally) often glibly refer to as “the smart kid” needs to have their hard work acknowledge and also have the efficacy of each of their specific strategies evaluated. Similarly, the student who is struggling and “slow” needs to also be reminded that their aptitude is not a fixed or static deficiency by contrast to his “smarter” peers. This kind of comparative praise that can be frequently seen/heard in American public schools is a best inaccurate and at worst psychologically diminishing about each type of student’s potential for growth, challenge and persistence.

These principles parallel the important work of growth-mindset. Growth mindset is a concept that emerged from the psychologist Carol Dweck who found that language used around the discussion of achievement and intelligence can greatly impact the motivation and self-efficacy of young people. The best example is our culture’s proclivity to use the phrase “you’re so smart” as praise for anyone who is successful. Dweck argues, and I agree, that this promotes a static understanding of intelligence and capabilities. That is, a person is either smart or they ain’t. If a student doesn’t believe they have the capacity to change their abilities or aptitude, then why would they realistically try anything new, persevere through difficulty or give any real effort at all? I believe that much of the cultural and social ennui that America is experiencing today is the catastrophic result of a static-growth mindset and has entrenched people into an intellectual caste of which most never break free from. This pernicious force is connected and reinforced by also by stereotype threat.

It is our responsibility, as teachers, as we heed the evidence and strategies of Dean et al. to promote students’ connections and self-evaluation of effort and achievement, that we enforce student commitment with language that reminds them firstly that their brains are not done growing and that their intelligence or capabilities are NOT fixed. And more importantly, a student’s achievement is not determined by their initial aptitude at something. We place so much value on our “bright students” those who are making quick connections or are simply those who are the strongest auditory learners – in the case of a students in lecture or discussion who seem to “get it” the fastest.

Students need to be active participants and OWNERS of their OWN learning. Student should get the opportunities in ALL classes, at all ages, to track their effort in relation to their achievement. Teachers must spend more intentional time with students working on linking their understanding of what it means to put for effort with concrete strategies. The teachers who gave rubrics for “effort in test preparation” offered great meta-cognitive learning opportunities. In the “4 Excellent” category students could see three specific strategies for test preparation 1) reread the text and compare it to notes from class; 2) seek help from other students; and 3) create study groups to practice the materials in different modes. These are not strategies that are known innately. Just like the CCSS ELA standards have made us all “literacy” teachers so too should the CCSS College and Career Readiness standards make all teachers focus on study strategies and self-reflection of effort and persistence.

We can help to shape the values and mindset of the next generation of our society. By qualitatively evaluating effort and adopting the language of growth-mindset teachers promote contemplation, patience, persistence, reflection and most importantly that a student should struggle, should be confused, should troubleshoot and is capable in all of these ways throughout their entire life!