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

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.

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.

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.

PART A - Description of Need or Opportunity

Background:
Currently we teach one course that is split into two, developmental disabilities and mental wellness. In this course the two swap students every four weeks. Each will have about 20-30 students. These students are then split into research groups, in which they will compile information about their assigned physical disability or mental health issue. After the four weeks, the groups will swap, be assigned to new research groups on a new topic covered in their new rotation, and again compile their research data and findings. The research project is based on a questionnaire that will cover FAQ's, daily living information, and information on advocacy groups for the disability.

The issue:

How can the projects be compiled in a collaborative group setting, published in a single place (platform), archived for later review once the groups swap, and be rebooted for the next course rotation?

This issue is more commonly expected at the end of a normal course semester, when the instructor or an admin archives and re-establishes course templates in an LMS or CMS type of environment. Our situation is different as we don't currently use an LMS or CMS due to budget, though we do have access to Google Apps for Education, and the student rotations are fairly often in this course.

The solution(s):

With cost, available resources, and time in mind, I plan on using Google Docs, Video and Sites as the platforms on which students can collaborate to collect their research, store notes, and publish their findings. Docs will be used as place where they can access a questionnaire shared by their teacher with their group. In Docs, the students can also store resources such as links, and other notes regarding their research. Docs allows group members to work on a document simultaneously, from different computers. Google Video will allow those students that wish to use videos they have found or they have edited themselves and uploaded to the school's Google Video account. Finally, Sites will be the final compilation of their efforts, showcasing what they have learned, and their skills in using various technologies.
The supporting technologies would be a laptop cart to enable student research, flip cams to allow students to film if they decide so, iLife software to edit the videos, and the student's school assigned Google accounts to enable access to the online tools.

The Sites tool will host a site created and designed by the teacher. It will contain three main sections, a home page with a description of the site's purpose, developmental disabilities, and mental wellness. The latter two are the two that will swap student groups. These two main categories will contain sub pages listing their appropriate disabilities. It is here where the students will publish their work. Enabling the site to become a central resource containing all of the information regarding any topic covered in the course.

The students will be granted edit rights to the site, that way their group can make edits to corresponding page. Sites will allow multiple users to make edits simultaneously, this is optimal for this type of project, where there are different groups, in different classes, at different paces. The course will run every four weeks. The way to reset the website would be to create site and page templates that can be applied to the site to start fresh. In order to keep an archive of the work from a previous rotation, the site can be copied entirely onto another with a different URL, thus enabling the work to still be accessible via a descriptive URL. The main site that will be rebooted every four weeks will maintain the original URL. To provide students an easier to remember URL, a URL shortening service, such as Bit.ly, will be used.

Every four weeks, this process will be repeated, using the Google Apps for Education platform. The plan is to provide training during the second week of their research on how to edit the site, this will provide students some knowledge as to what to expect once they are ready to publish. I should be able to implement the project within the duration of this course, CEP812. As the course will rotate at least twice during this time.

As the project is implemented, I will analyze how the students collaborate in assigning roles and infuse creativity into their topic page using different types of media.

Thoughts and expectations:

While I have some experience with Google Apps at our school, this will most likely be the more intensive project because of the time restraint, and the number of different student groups that will need to be supported. The success of this plan will be measured in the interaction that the students experience with both each other and their research content. I have piloted individual portfolio websites for our ninth grade class, and that has shown promise as they have added their own content. Though this will be a true test as many different content from different perspectives will be housed under a single site.


Resources:

Here are some links regarding Google Apps for Education, and some examples of Sites in use.
http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/edu/
http://edu.googleapps.com/
http://www.google.com/support/sites/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=153055
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRYRbPCHTck

Funny Thing Happened With Technology

Technology in the classroom is a great way to support student learning. In my funny moment, shared in the link below, I like to think it helped focus a student's attention to be more productive :)




Podcast link: https://www.msu.edu/~gonza473/funnymomentcast.mp3

Here it is embedded, to play from this site.

FunnyMomentCast by agonzalezojeda


You may also subscribe to my podcasts via iTunes. Copy the following link into your iTunes, or other podcatcher:

feeds.feedburner.com/AlejandroGonzalezCepCoursesBlog

Short Biocast

In this first week of session one of course 812, we were exposed to the many different types of casting. Here is a link to my short bio in form of a video cast. I used a mix between Garageband for audio recording and editing, ScreenFlow to record my cast, and Mozilla Firefox for the webclips.
I went a little overboard with the transitions, but only to show some that are available in ScreenFlow.

Here is my clip, enjoy.


http://msu.edu/~gonza473/ScreenCastSession1.mov