Major Digital Project Update #7 - Completed WebQuest

I have finished my WebQuest on perspective in Colonial America! You can view my final product here. 

A few ideas shifted between my last post and the actual completion of the project. I realized in the development phase of my WebQuest that instead of having my students research multiple perspectives within the course of the week, I would prefer them to fully grasp and develop a single perspective. I also wanted to incorporate a different form of expression into my WebQuest, so instead of having students complete two different RAFT writing exercises, I had them complete one comic strip and one RAFT writing activity. Both the digital comic and the RAFT writing activity focus on developing an understanding of Colonial American perspective leading up to the Revolution. I ultimately wanted students to understand the frustrations that Colonial Americans faced during the lead up to the Revolution, and I wanted them to be able to express and defend those positions thoughtfully and in their own words.

Additionally, I was able to find more video resources for my students to access, so that they had a combination of picture, written and video media to learn from when conducting their resource. Ultimately, I think that this combination of material will best suit my students as they guide their own research on the topics provided.

Since I incorporated the Comic into my WebQuest, I was able to access another form of technology as well! I decided to use the Make Beliefs Comic creator that I wrote about in my Cool Tool Review section a couple weeks ago. I was glad that I was able to use a resource that I learned about during class into my final project!

At the end of the day, I was able to utilize multiple technologies to create a unique learning experiece for my students. I was able to utilize:

• Internet
• Social Media: Twitter
• YouTube 
• Make Beliefs Comic Creator
• Google Docs
• Google Slides
• Email

I am proud of the final product I was able to come up with throughout the duration of this course, and I hope that my WebQuest will be a useful resource in other classrooms as well! Thanks for reading!

Major Project Update #6 Incorporating Tech

Now that I have hammered out the direction of my WebQuest and shown how it aligns to various 8th grade content standards, I would like to try and incorporate more technologies into my students WebQuest assignment.

I thought that it might be a good idea to have my students use Google Docs as their word processor for the WebQuest. Google Docs is an essential resource for many professionals, myself included, and I think it would be a wonderful resource for my students to become acquainted with.

There is an excellent how-to guide located here for Google Docs. Throughout the course of the WebQuest, I will make sure to direct my students to this guide in order to get them started with their own Google Docs account incase they don't already have one. Once my students become familiar with Google Docs, they will be able to store their writing in Google Docs so that they can work on it across multiple days until they complete their work.

So far, that means that they will be using the computer to perform research on the internet, and Google Docs to process and save their writing.

Finally, I would like my students to share their writing when they are finished on social media via Twitter. I will show them this guide on how to create and use a Twitter account if they do not already have one. The point of sharing on Twitter is so that my students can read and respond to other students work! There is an excellent piece on the importance of students publishing and sharing their work online here.

Major Project Update #5 - Incorporating Standards

I have decided that my project will be developed for an 8th grade classroom and incorporate 8th grade US History content standards into the lessons. I actually decided this much longer ago mentally, but I am finally committing it to writing in order to show my process in developing the WebQuest. In order to view the 8th grade Ohio content standards, I headed to the ODE website here.

As you can see, the study of colonial America fits in perfectly with the 8th grade US History course description as seen below.

"The historical focus continues in the eighth grade with the study of European exploration and the early years of the United States. This study incorporates all four social studies strands into a chronologic view of the development of the United States. Students examine how historic events are shaped by geographic, social, cultural, economic and political factors."

There are at least 4 8th Grade US History content standards that will relate directly to my WebQuest. 

1. Primary and secondary sources are used to examine events from multiple perspectives and to present and defend a position. 
2. The ideas of the Enlightenment and dissatisfaction with colonial rule led English colonist to write the Declaration of Independence and launch the American Revolution. 
3. Informed citizens understand how media and communication technology influence public opinion. 
4. Americans began to develop a common national identity among its diverse regional and cultural populations based on democratic ideals. 

Since my students will be writing during their WebQuest, the WebQuest also touches on 8th grade Language Arts standards for writing narratives, which can be found here. I've written the narrative content standard for 8th grade language arts below. 

W.8.3 Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, relevant descriptive details, and well- structured event sequences.

• Engage and orient the reader by establishing a context and point of view and introducing a narrator and/or characters; organize an event sequence that unfolds naturally and logically.
• Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, pacing, description, and reflection, to develop experiences, events, and/or characters.
• Use a variety of transition words, phrases, and clauses to convey sequence, signal shifts from one time frame or setting to another, and show the relationships among experiences and events.
• Use precise words and phrases, relevant descriptive details, and sensory language to capture the action and convey experiences and events. 
• Provide a conclusion that follows from and reflects on the narrated experiences or events. 

There is even an 8th grade language arts content standard for using the internet to produce writing!

W.8.6 Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and present the relationships between information and ideas efficiently, as well as to interact and collaborate with others

And finally, this WebQuest supports the 8th grade language arts content standard that asks students to draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis and reflection. 

W.8.9 Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research. 

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Major Project Update #4 - RAFT Writing

Hello again! Finally back from Thanksgiving break and ready to turn the corner for the final stretch of the semester. Picking up where I left off earlier in November, I would like to narrow down the focus of the WebQuest I am developing. The potential avenues I listed last time included:

1. Choose a historical figure and complete a character study
2. Raft writing activity - Students put themselves in the shoes of a historical figure and write from their perspective
3. Analyze historical cause and effect relationships
4. Compare and contrast the perspective of the British with the perspective of the American Colonists
5. Assess the validity of various resources
6. Analyze primary source documents such as posters, newspaper clippings and letters.

Going forward, I will be focusing the development of the WebQuest on exploring the differences in perspective in colonial America, focusing primarily on the differences between the British and the Americans. In order for students to display their understanding of colonial perspective, they will be completing two raft writing exercises, one from the perspective of the British, and the other from the Perspective of the Americans. 

Raft writing, as described here, is a "writing strategy that helps students understand their role as a writer and how to communicate their ideas so that the audience understands what is written. 
By using this strategy, teachers encourage students to write creatively, to consider a topic from multiple perspectives, and to gain the ability to write for different audiences.RAFT assignments encourage students to uncover their own voices and formats for presenting their ideas about content information they are studying."

Raft Writing stands for: 

• Role of the Writer: Who are you as the writer? A movie star? The President? A plant?

• Audience: To whom are you writing? A senator?  Yourself? A company?

• Format: In what format are you writing? A diary entry? A newspaper?  A love letter?

• Topic: What are you writing about?

The students that I work with at the YMCA Phoenix program do not usually love writing assignments, but they do respond fairly well to RAFT writing. They enjoy thinking creatively and making up their own narratives, so I think that the RAFT writing activity will work well in the context of developing historical colonial perspectives for my WebQuest. 

Week 12 Reflection - Blended Learning

According to the Blended Learning Toolkit, an open source resource for educators, blended learning is "where a portion of the traditional face-to-face instruction is replaced by web-based online learning." I have taken a few classes at the University of Akron that utilized blended learning as a part of their curriculum, so I have some personal experience with blended learning to reflect on.

I, personally, have never been a fan of blended learning. I get much more out of a classroom setting with a professor and classmates to feed off of. Simply put, when no one is watching me, I have an extremely difficult time staying on task and doing things the way I am supposed to do them. It is pretty funny for a teacher to have this personality quality, but I do. I don't operate well by myself in front of a computer. I do much better when I am surrounded by people in a real life social scenario. 

I also work in the field of special education, where most of my students will need one to one attention, and few will be able to navigate an online learning scenario independently. That being said, I do think that blended learning does offer some more independent students with disabilities increased access to learning environments - which is great. All in all, I am very skeptical of blended learning.  I think it can be useful for some people in some scenarios, but I am going to stick to my guns here and say that I think most of the time, face to face learning, when possible, is a superior option to learning online. 

This article on eschool news does a great job of illustrating why some blended learning situations don't work out very well. I think it is true that sometimes the staff doesn't feel invested in a blended learning situation, so it falls through. Likewise, students may not feel invested in a blending learning situation, which can also cause it to fall through. In addition to motivation issues, sometimes technology just gets in the way and causes problems for the whole thing, halting learning in the process. 

Honestly, I have not enjoyed any of the blending learning class situations I have been a part of so far, so it is hard for me to imagine a scenario where I would feel invested in one. I have also had an extraordinarily difficult time investing myself fully into the online classes I have been required to take for my major here at the University of Akron. Whenever I think of blended learning or online classes, I think of my students that have conditions like ADD or ADHD and try to imagine them applying themselves to a blended learning environment. I think that one of my biggest issues is that attending class within the realm of a computer screen feels extremely limiting to me. I hate having to stare into a computer screen to learn. I am much more of an experiential learner myself, and I know that many of my children are as well. Perhaps my feelings on blended learning will change when one day blended learning classes can be attended using virtual reality, so that the online sessions feel more immersive. I could actually imagine that being pretty cool, but for now, I am simply not a fan. 

Major Project Update #3 - Historical Thinking

I am still the process of developing my WebQuest for my major digital project. I have collected a multitude of online resources for my WebQuest and have now started brainstorming various activities that I can have my students complete to direct their own learning. I am planning the WebQuest to last a week, and I have a lot of ideas for potential assignments, so it has occurred to me that I will need to pair down my ideas into a more concise task that students can realistically work through in a weeks time. According to WebQuest.org, "a real WebQuest....

• is wrapped around a doable and interesting task that is ideally a scaled down version of things that adults do as citizens or workers.

• requires higher level thinking, not simply summarizing. This includes synthesis, analysis, problem-solving, creativity and judgment. 

• makes good use of the web. A WebQuest that isn't based on real resources from the web is probably just a traditional lesson in disguise. (Of course, books and other media can be used within a WebQuest, but if the web isn't at the heart of the lesson, it's not a WebQuest.) 

• isn't a research report or a step-by-step science or math procedure. Having learners simply distilling web sites and making a presentation about them isn't enough. 

• isn't just a series of web-based experiences. Having learners go look at this page, then go play this game, then go here and turn your name into hieroglyphs doesn't require higher level thinking skills and so, by definition, isn't a WebQuest."

I think that it is important that I take these qualifications into consideration when crafting my own WebQuest. I liked the emphasis that WebQuest.org places on developing "realistic tasks" or scaled down versions of adult tasks for students to complete. So I asked myself, what kind of tasks should I be preparing for my students in order for them to emulate the thinking of a historian? This got me researching the idea of developing students to be historical thinkers. Hitsory.org states that, "Historical thinking is complex and multi-faceted; we focus on five key aspects particularly relevant to the K-12 classroom." These are, understanding multiple accounts &perspectives, analyzing primary sources, sourcing, understanding historical context, and connecting claim and evidence. Using these foundations of historical thinking as a springboard, I have brainstormed various assignments that could be a good fit for my WebQuest. 

1. Choose a historical figure and complete a character study
2. Raft writing activity - Students put themselves in the shoes of a historical figure and write from their perspective
3. Analyze historical cause and effect relationships
4. Compare and contrast the perspective of the British with the perspective of the American Colonists
5. Assess the validity of various resources
6. Analyze primary source documents such as posters, newspaper clippings and letters.

Week 11 Blog Post - Assessment

As a special educator, assessment is a part of what I do every day. Simply put, assessment allows teachers to figure out what students are learning or have learned from their lessons. There are two major types of assessments that teachers utilize in the classroom. Formative assessment refers to assessment procedures conducted by teachers during the learning process in order to modify teaching and learning activities to improve student outcomes. As Rick Wormeli points out here, formative assessment is arguably the most important kind of assessment for teachers, as it allows opportunities for differentiated instruction and descriptive feedback. The other type of assessment is summative assessment. The goal of summative assessment is to evaluate student learning at the end of an instructional period. As Wormeli shows us, there is usually little chance to go back and edit results of a summative assessment. Summative assessments are fairly anti climatic in that regard, they take place after the learning is over to assess student knowledge of unit information. 

As far as my own philosophy of assessment goes, I find myself agreeing with Wormeli in most circumstances. Formative assessment is a founding principle of the educational process. Students can learn without receiving grades. Students can't, however, learn without the kind of descriptive feedback provided by quality formative assessment. 

In his presentation, Scott Kinkoph used two digital tools to assess learning throughout his presentation, PearDeck and EduCanon. I am familiar with PearDeck and actually utilized the software in conjunction with Google Classroom just last week during a professional development activity for my school. PearDeck is nice because it allows students to respond anonymously to teacher inquiries as the teacher presents. The teacher can then see that information provided by the students and direct their instruction accordingly. I do this almost every day in my own classroom without PearDeck. It is essentially the same as asking the class, "Raise your hand if you believe X to be true, now raise your hand if you believe Y to be true," or, "Who can tell me something about Z?" The cool thing about PearDeck, however, is that the responding is anonymous so that even students who might be too shy to raise their hand can participate without actually saying anything out loud! I think there is something to be said for face to face interaction, however. I think students get more out of expressing their opinions and ideas out into the classroom verbally. Also, since I work in a behavior / special education setting, I cannot trust most of my students to follow along appropriately on a computer while I lead a lesson. Many times, for me, these tools end up being a distraction rather than a class enhancement. I do like what PearDeck brings to some classrooms, I am just not sure that it would necessarily enhance mine all that well. 

Cool Tool #5 - SimpleMind

Hello hello again! For my final Cool Tool Review, I have chosen the mind mapping application, SimpleMind. The site claims that SimpleMind, "is a tool for the brain that captures the thinking that goes on inside your head.... mapping helps you think, collect knowledge, remember and create ideas. Most likely it will make you a better thinker." Better thinker?! Bold claims from a mind mapping application, but I'm willing to bite. When I think of mind mapping, I think of brainstorming activities and concept maps, very useful activities for any classroom environment. Many times, these things can be done easily using paper, posters, markers, or as a group together on the wipe board / chalk board. I do think that there is some intrinsic value in brainstorming with physical, tactile materials. I've seen that many TV shows, musicians and creative teams use tactile materials and spaces for their brainstorming before bringing their ideas to digital media. 

That being said, I do think that there is unique potential in bringing mind maps to the digital realm. Digitizing the brainstorming process increases the potential for ideas to be shared and collaborated on across large distances via the internet, which is super cool. To accomplish my goals as an educator, I am looking for a brainstorming application that is free, accessible, easy to use and easy to port onto other devices. I want an application that can easily associate words, pictures, colors titles and phrases in a map like diagram that is simple to navigate. So let's see how SimpleMind lives up to my expectations! 

Unfortunately, this thing is not free. I understand people gotta make money for their creations, but from a practicality standpoint, I'm gonna need something that my students can download and use on their own devices. The version of SimpleMind for iPad and iPhone, which has limited functionality, is free, but the full versions for PC and Mac will cost money to register for. I am a little disappointed because this means that my students will not be able to easily access the application from home. I am also discouraged because it looks as if SimpleMind will cost a good amount of money if I want to have this program installed on all of the computers in my school's computer lab.

Fortunately for the sake of this review, there is a 30 day free trial for the PC version, so I boot it up and see what the program is all about.

Things are looking very plain upon start up, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. As an artist, I love a blank canvas! They start you off with a bubble that will be your "central idea," while all other ideas are supposed to sprout off from there. For the sake of my example, I will attempt to make a mind map about healthy athletic practices. After a few minutes of playing around, I was able to successfully create a mind map with colors, pictures and hyperlinks that can easily be exported and shared.  

I was pleased with the program's ability to simply integrate colors and pictures into a coherent mind map. There are some restrictions as to where each bubble can move while creating the map, which is simultaneously frustrating and helpful. No drag and drop functionality means that the map is less less likely to get disoriented by a student playing around. On the other hand, I don't like the constraint on student creativity. At the end of the day, I'm at peace with the way that this works out. 

I am a little discouraged by the fact that each option for the bubbles needs to be accessed with a small pop-out menu. Because of this, the program does not feel easy to use for younger children, but could be something that older, high school aged, students could learn and create with. 

What we have here is a mind map tool that is functional, but not spectacular. For a subscription price, I would hope that the editing tools would be more user friendly, and that there would be more options available for people to be creative with their mind maps. This tool does work, however, and I could see it being a useful tool for any teacher looking to create meaningful and practical visuals for brainstorming or sequencing activities! 

Week #10 - Learning Spaces

Learning spaces have a huge impact on student learning. Education and technology have evolved considerably over the last 50 years, but it seems as if our classroom layouts are often stuck in the past. The days of 30 desks facing a chalk board should be left in the dust, but unfortunately, many of our classrooms still resemble this rigid and outdated model of a learning environment. Larry Rosenstock, CEO of High Tech High School, does an excellent job of showing how essential a considered environment is to an educational setting here. By creating classrooms where collaboration and displaying student work are the primary focus, students become more motivated to succeed. Rosenstock doesn't just talk about physical spaces, however. He also talks about the social environment at his school, and how peer motivation is an incredibly empowering tool that High Tech High utilizes to keep students motivated and focused on their goals.

Now, of course, not every school has the finances and know-how to pull off a learning space as stunning as High Tech High, however, there are many things that any teacher should take into consideration when organizing an effective learning space. I thought that Briget McCrea did an excellent job of hi lighting a few techniques in her blog post here. Below, I will discuss a few points that I thought were particularly important from her post.

Classroom furniture should be able to be configured in a fashion that supports both collaborative learning as well as independent activities such as testing. Ideally, furniture should be able to be moved easily so that desk configuration can alter easily from class to class depending on what sort of activity the educator has planned.

Many classrooms are supported by technological devices such as iPads and Chromebooks, and we can't always assume that children are going to have their devices charged before class. Ample electrical outlets are a must have for a modern, connected classroom. Charge stations help keep classrooms moving and productive, even when batteries are low.

Classrooms should be technologically integrated in a way that is easy for teachers to access. Computers should be hooked up to smart boards or projectors and have easy ways for teachers to share content from the computer with the classroom.

Throughout my time at the University of Akron, I have been impressed with the accessibility of the learning spaces and consider them to be an ideal model for my own classrooms. Of course, every classroom's needs are different, and what may work well for collegiate and graduate students may not work well for children with various needs and disabilities, however, I do admire the flexibility and connectivity of the classrooms on Akron's campus and have found them to be effective places to study and learn.