A solution is sometimes perceived as the piece that is missing to complete something, the last few words in a crossword puzzle or perhaps the missing sock from the last load of laundry. We cannot help but feel complete and have a sense of achievement when we finally put it all together. This is the feeling I am experiencing with my WPP. After much planning, trial, error, and countless sessions in front of a computer, I have been able to design, create and deploy a website solution for the health course that required a web presence for students to work on. Along with the help in direction, vision and suggestions of the wonderful teachers and administrators I work with, we were able to create a place where students could not only carry out their research and publish it, but also develop and challenge their technical skills. We approached this solution with focus on students gaining knowledge about their mental health and wellness topics through research compiled within their groups. With collaboration in mind, we saw the web as a great opportunity to further expand their communication skills, to present them a digital canvas on which they could play around with and display their findings.
Implementing this platform was both challenging and inspiring. The first order of business was to find a tool that would be able to support multiple groups of students at various times, and different paces. Once I decided Google Sites would be able to offer us a flexible and reliable platform, we began designing how the site would work, and what it would look like. All the while we maintained a focus on how the students would be able to approach the site with familiarity and intrigue. As we took a look at the hard copy, the traditional form, of their research assignment, we worked on how these prompts would translate onto our digital canvas. Creating the structure from which the students would build upon was very important from the start. I found that creating the table of contents links with the prompts allowed the students to have an easy way to navigate through their sections and find the right place for their information and multimedia. Having this as a standard for each page made it very easy and convenient to work with and for the different groups of students. Even when there were absent students from groups, they could reconvene to where they had left off and follow along their progress with the familiar look and feel of the site. Adding and removing students from the project site was very easy and made it possible for me to efficiently manage who had write permissions. It also gave me the ability to maintain accountability for the work that was being done, and what modifications had been made. This is a feature the teachers really appreciated because they could monitor who had done what, and when they had done it.
As the project progressed, Google Sites offered a great level of scalability by allowing growth to be possible in both content and group rotations. The implementation of this project would have been possible with another web tool, but I found that using Google Sites gave us the ability to manage, deploy, and create with great functionality.
The success of this project can be measured in multiple forms, how engaged the students were with their topic, how well they used the tools provided, and what skills they developed and practiced throughout their work together. While the dynamics of each group vary by personalities and character, each one showed a level of interaction and engagement with each other and the content, that made using this platform a great example as to why , well planned and implemented, web technologies can augment to the importance and success of a well structured lesson. The foundation to a great experience with technology is rooted at the heart of a great lesson plan. Was it not for the great work that the group of teachers put into their lesson, I would not have been able to help transfer their incredible vision onto a digital version of their efforts. As students worked together, asked questions, and maintained a high level on interest in learning about their topics and the technology they were using, we felt that this had become a wonderful alternative and solution. Some students took advantage of the tool outside of class and asked if they could also work on their site from home, of course they could and did!
In our approach to this project we took a look at the lesson first, the objective, and what we wanted the students to walk away with. These were achieved as the project progressed, but one hurtle we met halfway was how to archive these projects or how to roll over with ease and efficiency. At first I had thought that templates would be the best solution, but what about the work created by previous rotations? Copying and transferring sites became a solution for this. If we were to create a similar project for another class, this is something I would need to keep in mind to address it accordingly. The rotations in this course are fairly common, so it would be unusual to see such a quick turn around in other courses, but it is still something that would need to be addressed from the start.
Working with multimedia, embedded or attached, is something that I might need to plan ahead for as well. While we wanted to have students add media to their projects, we also needed to allow them access to sites that are usually filtered by our content filter schedule. This was not a big issue, but it is something I will keep in mind to modify our filter properly to allow students access to YouTube or image hosts for them to access content.
For a different afternoon course I had to add another section that did not have similar structure to the previously created pages. This project is different from the morning course because at this point the teacher wants to allow the students to create brochures and post them instead of in form of a research questionnaire. This presented a great opportunity to use the platform differently, just as Glogster acts as a platform to create digital posters, I plan on using this Google site as a place where the students can upload or embed their brochures. While at this moment the brochures are not yet done, I look forward to blending these multiple technologies, desktop publishing and web technologies, to help create their web-brochures. This is yet another great example of how flexible and scalable this platform has been for this course, something that I will keep in mind the next time a teacher needs to do something similar.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Mobile Learning
Analyzing my use of Poll Everywhere and navigating through the discussions in Classroom 2.0 have offered me more insight into what is possible in a classroom with the use of mobile technologies. In a post at Classroom 2.0, I found a resource that I could use with smart phones to deliver tests. The resource Mobile Study provides a way to create and distribute tests tailored for mobile devices using web technologies. This stood out to me because I have been working with one of the teachers at my school in creating paperless quizzes. We have been using Google Forms to offer students a way to take these quizzes on a computer or on their mobile phones. This method has proved to be a hit with the students. They enjoy taking the quizzes online and being able to utilize their own devices if they want to. As my interest in Mobile Study grows, I want to see how flexible it is and in what other ways it can be used. Perhaps it will only work on certain web browsers, or maybe not work on all phones, I have yet to sift through those issues.
In using Poll Everywhere I found that it is limited in how versatile it can be without paying a premium. Although I can definitely appreciate the ability to use it in a live conversation during class. Engaging students with this audience response type of system can be an effective way to get everyone involved and think about what everyone else is expressing.
In my experience you can never have too many resources, especially in technology. Being able to pick and choose from all the different platforms available makes it easier to provide students an effective and engaging learning experience. With newer mobile technologies coming out one right after the other, it is interesting to see how we in education can take advantage of them without losing focus on the objective of a well structured lesson.
Here is a screen capture of my reply in Classroom 2.0
In using Poll Everywhere I found that it is limited in how versatile it can be without paying a premium. Although I can definitely appreciate the ability to use it in a live conversation during class. Engaging students with this audience response type of system can be an effective way to get everyone involved and think about what everyone else is expressing.
In my experience you can never have too many resources, especially in technology. Being able to pick and choose from all the different platforms available makes it easier to provide students an effective and engaging learning experience. With newer mobile technologies coming out one right after the other, it is interesting to see how we in education can take advantage of them without losing focus on the objective of a well structured lesson.
Here is a screen capture of my reply in Classroom 2.0
Poll Everywhere Experience
I have used this tool in the past with both teachers and some groups of students. With teachers, I have used it during PD sessions to gain some insight on how they feel about technology. It is also a tool that I have presented as a way to engage their students with multiple hardware platforms. With the rise in availability and affordability of various technologies, it has become common for students to own a mobile device that can provide great functionality.
At our school we encourage the use of student owned technology in the classroom. We see this as a positive opportunity to teach students to view the use and responsibility of technology. In order to help them appreciate the power these devices can have, we often suggest that they may use them to do research, create multimedia projects, and at times use it to engage in conversations like Poll Everywhere. In the past few weeks I have been working with a ninth grade English teacher and her class in converting the students in using Google Docs as an alternative to MS Office. I used Poll Everywhere to ask a few students what they liked best about Google Docs. Here's a chart with the results.
At our school we encourage the use of student owned technology in the classroom. We see this as a positive opportunity to teach students to view the use and responsibility of technology. In order to help them appreciate the power these devices can have, we often suggest that they may use them to do research, create multimedia projects, and at times use it to engage in conversations like Poll Everywhere. In the past few weeks I have been working with a ninth grade English teacher and her class in converting the students in using Google Docs as an alternative to MS Office. I used Poll Everywhere to ask a few students what they liked best about Google Docs. Here's a chart with the results.
This tool offers the students to use their mobile devices to answer the question. This is a great use of technology that can come in handy if there is ever a situation where there are not enough computers, but some students have smart phones that can access the poll. It is also a neat way to help them focus on the content being taught, and preferably deter from the distractions the phone might offer form being idle. The only challenge I can foresee is having different phones that work differently. While many phones now have an operating system that is fairly standard in the way that it works and presents functions, it can be time consuming to support different platforms for a single activity.
Here's my brief survey:
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
PART B - Storyboard and Script
Angelica and I have made some serious progress in our Group Leadership Project, with collaborating on a storyboard and script for the video we will be creating. When we first talked about the topic we would be covering, Google Apps Scripts, I knew very little about it and felt unfamiliar with the platform. Throughout research and help from Angelica, I finally came to appreciate our tool. I needed to know what I was facing and how I could suggest and teach it to those I support at my school. In addition to our research, brainstorming what our video would look like in the storyboard and scripting stages helped to further understand not only what we were showcasing, but also how to present it from the learner point of view. This was very valuable because as we were learning, we took into account what worked and how we could improve it when presenting it.
We began the scripting portion on Google Docs, with a shared document that Angelica and I collaborated on to get the ball rolling. In it we sectioned off what areas we would each cover, she would take care of application of the tool, where as I would write the theory and ideas behind the tool. She was practical, I was theoretical, a neat combination. I wrote on what technologies power the tool, and explained them, as well as made an effort to set familiar comparisons for learners. Angelica and I began to go back and forth near the end of our scripting when we got to the practice portion of the lesson. At this point, you can say, we shared the stage in presenting in tandem during the overview of how to get scripting started for first time users.
Once we had a base for our script, we began to story board using a Google Site that Angelica created, which by the way looked great in both aesthetics and function! We had six main storyboard sections. Each covering a different aspect of the video that one of us would cover with our script, slides, and sound effects. It is on this site that we conveyed our intentions for the look and feel of the video, in a static representation of course. The sections were divided like so: Angelica and I both open up the presentation, I take sections two and three, she takes four and five, and we join back up on the sixth section to deliver an example.
Creating a storyboard on Google Sites is a great and creative idea, I owe Angelica all the credit for thinking about that. It not only offers us an easy and familiar platform to collaborate on, but it is also a very flexible vessel to convey our information and ideas through. It could also be used as together with, or as an alternative to the video.
The visual and sound ques are listed and described above each graphic, which represents a slide or section of the video. Where there are transitions, sound effects, and speaking or animations, there are text ques for us to remember what goes where.
Here is a link to our Google Site storyboard:
https://sites.google.com/site/groupleadershipproject2011/home
Sunday, April 17, 2011
PART C - Implementation
Below you will find my update podcast. In it I explain some of my ups and downs in implementing this solution in a real classroom.
Also, here is the link to one of the results of using this solution:
Navigate through the disorders to see the students' work.
https://sites.google.com/a/healthscienceshigh.com/health101-2011-feb/
Here is the link to my podcast, it is also embedded in this post as a SoundCloud clip.
http://msu.edu/~gonza473/WPPPartCPodCastUpdate.mp3
WPPPartCPodCastUpdate by agonzalezojeda
I implemented Feedburner into my blog a few posts ago, here is the link and a screen capture of my Feedburner info:
feeds.feedburner.com/AlejandroGonzalezCepCoursesBlog
Also, here is the link to one of the results of using this solution:
Navigate through the disorders to see the students' work.
https://sites.google.com/a/healthscienceshigh.com/health101-2011-feb/
Here is the link to my podcast, it is also embedded in this post as a SoundCloud clip.
http://msu.edu/~gonza473/WPPPartCPodCastUpdate.mp3
WPPPartCPodCastUpdate by agonzalezojeda
I implemented Feedburner into my blog a few posts ago, here is the link and a screen capture of my Feedburner info:
feeds.feedburner.com/AlejandroGonzalezCepCoursesBlog
Sunday, April 10, 2011
PART B - Application of TPACK
At my school, along with with many others, our teachers are hungry and thrilled to introduce technology into their lessons. The lesson has a strong focus on collaborative group work. To support the teacher's modeling and the disciplinary culture of the course, there is a need for collaboration to be embedded early on in the introduction of the lesson. The teachers carrying out both sides of this course, remember it is split into two rotations, have similarities in that they follow the gradual release of responsibility method of teaching, which includes an emphasis on collaboration. Using Google Sites as the platform enables the teachers to present, model, and deploy both the structure of what the project will be as well as teach students critical web technology skills. Releasing responsibility to the students with this platform will offer the teacher both the flexibility to model and scaffold as needed by their groups, as well as give the students accountability and facilitate their communal learning experience.
A teacher using this technology can present the site as an example of what their research will be structured like by showing the site's template, and how it will already list the questions just like in the handout they receive in a hard copy or a shared Google Doc. Modeling how they will work collaboratively using the site's ability to handle multiple simultaneous logins and edits, will greatly impact how quickly the student groups can work and learn together.
Google Sites, by association and origin, brings with it the ease of web integration. With its multiple connections to widgets and other web 2.0 resources, it allows for a teacher to show students how to integrate their research into their project. As students are working on their laptops, in whatever topic they are assigned, the teacher can bring up an essential point: "How are the tasks you are performing right now, thinking, processing, outputting, designing, planning and compiling onto a website, be different for those with the disability you are researching?" By implementing a mix of both web and physical technologies, the teacher can influence the students to think outside of their norm. Utilizing this web technology, students have the ease to access resources on the web and apply them to their project on the go, or store them for later review. Since the site does not necessarily need to go live just yet, the information stored in their topic's page will not be public to anyone other than those who have edit privileges to the website. Supporting the content covered in this course with the use of laptops, web services like Google and perhaps multimedia hardware to facilitate student created videos will help in both representing some of the essential content covered in class by the instructor, but more so it will inspire students to synthesize the culmination of the content, skills and creativity explored in the course.
The PC connection in this solution is something that I will work out further with the teachers I work with. Since my role as technology coordinator has so far been in suggesting, planning and implementing the technology side of it, I still need to meet with the teachers and understand how they plan on teaching with the technology, and how to address certain issues. My take at this point is that many of their strategies will be applied but modified to accommodate the integration with technology and deep integration of collaborative group work. The content being covered is primarily by lecture, through both slide presentations and videos. At that point the students are being exposed to an overview of what the disabilities are, and are then geared to their research to fully immerse themselves in their topic of interest. Experiencing the content will be different in this course as it revolves quite a bit on their research and collaboration. While they will gain knowledge through the lectures and modeling of sorts, the students will mainly be exposed to content through their research. The teacher's role and pedagogical methods will be in-line with facilitating this. So that the students gain responsibility, individuality and collaboration skills as they make progress.
A teacher using this technology can present the site as an example of what their research will be structured like by showing the site's template, and how it will already list the questions just like in the handout they receive in a hard copy or a shared Google Doc. Modeling how they will work collaboratively using the site's ability to handle multiple simultaneous logins and edits, will greatly impact how quickly the student groups can work and learn together.
Google Sites, by association and origin, brings with it the ease of web integration. With its multiple connections to widgets and other web 2.0 resources, it allows for a teacher to show students how to integrate their research into their project. As students are working on their laptops, in whatever topic they are assigned, the teacher can bring up an essential point: "How are the tasks you are performing right now, thinking, processing, outputting, designing, planning and compiling onto a website, be different for those with the disability you are researching?" By implementing a mix of both web and physical technologies, the teacher can influence the students to think outside of their norm. Utilizing this web technology, students have the ease to access resources on the web and apply them to their project on the go, or store them for later review. Since the site does not necessarily need to go live just yet, the information stored in their topic's page will not be public to anyone other than those who have edit privileges to the website. Supporting the content covered in this course with the use of laptops, web services like Google and perhaps multimedia hardware to facilitate student created videos will help in both representing some of the essential content covered in class by the instructor, but more so it will inspire students to synthesize the culmination of the content, skills and creativity explored in the course.
The PC connection in this solution is something that I will work out further with the teachers I work with. Since my role as technology coordinator has so far been in suggesting, planning and implementing the technology side of it, I still need to meet with the teachers and understand how they plan on teaching with the technology, and how to address certain issues. My take at this point is that many of their strategies will be applied but modified to accommodate the integration with technology and deep integration of collaborative group work. The content being covered is primarily by lecture, through both slide presentations and videos. At that point the students are being exposed to an overview of what the disabilities are, and are then geared to their research to fully immerse themselves in their topic of interest. Experiencing the content will be different in this course as it revolves quite a bit on their research and collaboration. While they will gain knowledge through the lectures and modeling of sorts, the students will mainly be exposed to content through their research. The teacher's role and pedagogical methods will be in-line with facilitating this. So that the students gain responsibility, individuality and collaboration skills as they make progress.
PART A - Brainstorm Session
Untitled from Alex Gonzalez on Vimeo.
The video clip above is a recording of my group's web-conferencing brainstorming session. As mentioned in my previous blog post, it was a neat experience and the platform we used is something I will keep in mind when thinking of suggestions for educators I support.
We went with Vyew as the platform and had our ups and downs during the conference. The advantages of this platform were plenty. It is a free service, it offers a fairly straightforward interface, and allowed us to use audio and video to communicate, as well as some basic collaboration features including the shared canvas. I would say that these are essential to achieving progress in a web-conference when collaborating on a project. The neat thing about this service is that it is all in one. While we could have used Skype, we wouldn't necessarily be sharing a screen, unless we were sharing a Google Doc at the time of the session.
One of the disadvantages was, perhaps just for us, the inability to find how to record our session to be able to share it. Since we were not able to find how to record it, we used ScreenFlow to capture and edit our session, and then published it to the web with Vimeo. Since our session exceeded the YouTube time limitations, Vimeo allowed us to upload a longer clip. We adjusted to the situation and were still able to capture our session, but it would be nice to figure it out, perhaps next time we use Vyew we will come across that feature.
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Web-Conferencing
This week my Group Leadership Project partner, Angelica Rocha, and I participated in a web-conferencing session using the Vyew online service. Angelica initiated the session and shared the link with me so that I could join in. This initial session was focused on what our GLP would be based on. We discussed a few tools and Angelica suggested we take a look at Google Apps Scripts, a resource that could help educators using Google services automate some of the more repetitive and mundane tasks of some Google services.
This was the first time I had experienced Vyew's service, and I found it fairly easy to use and functional. The interface seemed familiar and simple. Though I couldn't find where to initiate the recording feature to be able to save our session's activities. Perhaps it was on Angelica's interface since she initiated it, but I don't think it was an easy find. That is part of the learning process though, next time we use this service, we can dig deeper and try to figure it out together. For the time being, I used ScreenFlow on my laptop to capture the activities onscreen.
The audio quality was fair, and I could hear Angelica just fine. There were some moments throughout our session where she couldn't hear me too well, but that didn't happen too much. Near the end we finally turned our webcams on and faced each other. It was nice to meet the person on the other side of the keyboard, miles away.
This experience was a great reminder of how great these tools can be in collaborating and communicating with peers, no matter where they are. In a classroom environment, I could suggest some of the teachers I support to utilize this as one of their collaborative group work activities. Vyew offered a basic yet functional platform that fit our needs. It will be interesting to see if it is a suitable platform as we progress with our project. As I mentioned earlier, the next time we take part in a session, I would like to find out more about the recording capabilities.
This was the first time I had experienced Vyew's service, and I found it fairly easy to use and functional. The interface seemed familiar and simple. Though I couldn't find where to initiate the recording feature to be able to save our session's activities. Perhaps it was on Angelica's interface since she initiated it, but I don't think it was an easy find. That is part of the learning process though, next time we use this service, we can dig deeper and try to figure it out together. For the time being, I used ScreenFlow on my laptop to capture the activities onscreen.
The audio quality was fair, and I could hear Angelica just fine. There were some moments throughout our session where she couldn't hear me too well, but that didn't happen too much. Near the end we finally turned our webcams on and faced each other. It was nice to meet the person on the other side of the keyboard, miles away.
This experience was a great reminder of how great these tools can be in collaborating and communicating with peers, no matter where they are. In a classroom environment, I could suggest some of the teachers I support to utilize this as one of their collaborative group work activities. Vyew offered a basic yet functional platform that fit our needs. It will be interesting to see if it is a suitable platform as we progress with our project. As I mentioned earlier, the next time we take part in a session, I would like to find out more about the recording capabilities.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)