Innovative Learning Blog
What has been or now is your experience with Google Forms? Is it intuitive? What challenges did you encounter when building your form? Do you think this tool would be beneficial for your teaching practice?
My only experience with Google Forms was with a homework assignment we did for this master's program. I created a basic quiz. I definitely think that it's intuitive. I enjoyed using the simplicity of it and I think I will use it in the future. I think that I could see Google Forms being very beneficial in creating authentic assessments. Instead of relying on a textbook to provide me an assessment, I can create my own based on the standards and content that I deem most important. Since it is easy to access, easy to learn how to use, and efficient at creating a document quickly, I think that this service should not be overlooked by educators. I also think that it can be incorporated into the Capstone very easily by formulating a questionnaire for the audience. It would provide an interactive feature to the Capstone as well create meaningful and useful data gathered from the users that participate in the Google Forms questionnaire. The pitfall I run into in using Google Forms is access to technology. I teach 2nd grade, and not every student in my classroom has a computer device. At my school, second grade teachers are given onlty three Chromebooks for their classroom. In today's world, even at 2nd grade, we need more than three laptops per classroom, especially if we are expected to incorporate 21st century technological programs such as Google Forms into our teaching. The one time a day we can bring our students to the school computer lab the students are forced to use a phonics based program, which means having them take tests using Google Forms during their computer lab time takes time away from their required education. My main goal of this master's program is to become better at incorporating technology into the classroom, learn new technological tools to improve my teaching and better prepare students for the 3D/4G/social media world that we live in.
I look at the Capstone as the final project where I will be able to incorporate everything that I have learned and apply it to a meaningful, informative, and originally created website. I don't look at the Capstone as a final project needed for graduation, although, without the completion of it I don't graduate. For me, this program is much more than a certificate of completion. This program, and this Capstone, is about broadening my technological horizons not only as a professional educator but also as a curious individual with interests in learning new technological tools. I am very excited to create my own website and to learn how to make the website interactive, stimulating, and useful. I look forward to the Cohort support this semester. This is the first semester that we have had "study buddies", and I think that there is power in having colleagues collaborate and offer feedback. I already have two study buddies in this cohort, although, I feel I can rely on anyone in this cohort to offer assistance and support. This cohort is a positive and strong cohort. I feel that this cohort understands the difference between constructive critique and destructive critique. I think it is vital for the study buddies to maintain the positive culture that we have created and established in the first two semesters of this program. My only group norm is to maintain contact with each other. We need to give timely feedback and stay connected within a reasonable time frame. For example, it is important that we respond to each other's e-mails and texts within a reasonable time period, such as 24-48 hours, and that we don't virtually disappear for weeks on end. This last semester is going to go quickly and the homework assignments need to be finished quickly as well so that we can give timely feedback. Share any thinking, new design steps, progress, challenges, and/or successes you have experienced during this course. How have you evolved as an innovative thinker?
I have learned a lot about design in this course, how it applies to my teaching and to my Capstone. For example, recently I have been doing one pagers with my students. A one pager is (AVID based) like a poster that depicts something that you want to teach or represent using drawings and text. The feedback I have been giving the students on their one pagers is based on design and not information. This course has opened my eyes to the fact that every student is putting down about the same information (in their one pagers), because they are all pulling the same information from the same source. The difference in their one pagers is the design of them. Below are some of design concepts that I have learned from this course, that I am applying to my teaching and to the creation of my Capstone. 1.) LESS IS MORE: I've taught students that to capture the audience they should put as much information onto their posters (one pagers) with the least amount of text. I've taught them that the audience will turn away from a poster loaded with text, but will stay connected to a poster that has stimulating visuals aided with simple one word or short phrased text. 2.) Connecting Visuals with Text: I have taught the students that all the visual images and colors should connect with the main topic. In addition, I have taught that the text should be located next to the visuals to serve as an aide/support. I have realized (based on the students' one pagers) that students have been engrained to present a topic via information with visuals as an aide/support. It has been difficult for many students to transform their thinking from informational to design, but they are starting to conceptualize the importance of design plus information. 3.) Looking through the Audiences Eyes: I have taught the students to create the one pagers as if they were teaching someone the key ideas and main details of the main topic. I've told them to imagine that someone will come up to their one pager and either be connected or disconnected based off of the design. I've told the students that the design has to be simple, appealing, informative, and creative. I have steered away from evaluating solely the information of student's one pagers and I am now grading them on the simplicity, appeal, and creativity of their design. Even their information is being graded differently. Instead of grading content and conventions I am grading the ability to pack the most amount of information with the least amount of text. Focusing on design instead of information has flipped my evaluation process. There are other areas of design that I've learned from this course that I am exploring but I am not teaching to my second graders such as the positioning hierarchy of visuals and web based applications used to enhance a project. I feel that this course and the other courses have helped to me to progress with my Capstone and my teaching. I am thrilled to be learning technical tools that I can use in my teaching and in my personal free time. For instance, I look forward to learning more about WeVideo so I can teach my students and so that I can create innovative videos outside of school. These courses have given me the confidence to explore on my own and it has also opened my eyes to the amazing different web based applications that exist to make learning captivating, stimulating, cutting edge, and applicable to real life situations. The main challenge that I find with the courses that I have taken for this master's program is the time to complete the projects/assignments. It is in the nature of every good teacher, which applies to everyone connected to this Cohort, to do your best effort and learn as much as you can. We are all working professionals and despite our desire to soak as much knowledge as we can from this program we realize there must be time for family, friends, work, relaxation, eating,e.t.c. The most distinctive success that I have experienced during this course and the other ones that I have completed is that I am trying technologically, innovative products to inspire personal hobbies and to inspire my teaching. I am excited to be on a never ending path of technological exploration and I am fortunate to be able to inspire others to jump aboard. Someone once told me that the important things learned in life glue to you in small but powerful quantities. That's how I feel about this course and this master's program. Despite, the bounty of things I have learned, down the road I will only remember and apply a cart load of them, which is parallel to how we learn in life. For example, you may read a great book that changes your life, but for the rest of your life you may only remember a few details from the book that not only stood out but that you apply to your idealogical life. Life is too short, and there is too much information, to be bogged down with the burden of trying to know everything. Let the mind soak in the information holistically, being influenced and driven by your interests but being mindful that with concentration nuggets of life changing ideas may pop out of even the most mundane sources of information (Dervin). How have I evolved as an innovative thinker? One way I have evolved as an innovative thinker is to question design. Prior to this course, I would have looked at the question "How have you evolved as an innovative thinker?" and answered it without ever questioning the design. Now, I question the design of everything, it's purpose, motivation, inspiration, and creativity. The question, "How have you evolved as an innovative thinker"?, implies that the person responding to the question is already an innovative thinker. The person who designed this question (Curtis) intentionally created an open ended question that at the same time instills confidence in the writer knowing that they were innovative thinkers before the program. To summarize the evolution of my innovative thinking, I have evolved from left brain to right brain, from informational to design, from rote to spontaneous, from linear to unpredictable, from sequential to holistic, from understanding the speech of people to interpreting emotions and nonverbal expressions, from decoding to inferencing, from accurate to innovative. This week you are asked to blog about how you incorporate gaming, gamification, game thinking, or design thinking into your class. How? What are your objectives?
Prior to entering this master's program, I used gaming with my second graders. However, I have incorporated gaming tools, game thinking, and design thinking into my lessons that I've learned from the master's courses. I use gaming as a tool to flip the learning. As the students play the games, they learn, but independently, and at their own pace. Many games also offer student choice. In addition, many programs differentiate the instruction so that the student is always challenged but not overly challenged. For example, IREADs, which is a phonics based gaming program, has each student start out by taking a pretest that determines where they start in the program. As they master a phonetic concept they move on, and if they don't master it than the program cycles them through the same concept with different games until they do become proficient. I prefer to use gaming as a learning station. Too much gaming takes away from valuable human interaction, but touches of gaming has numerous benefits. Some of the objectives/benefits of gaming/game thinking in an educational setting include engaging the student, enhancing their digital skills/literacy, fostering student learning, broadening student choice and voice, and introducing them to real world concepts/applications. Gaming also allows groups of students to work independently while the teacher can work one on one or in a small group setting with student's who need more scaffolding. Gaming allows the students who are ready to work independently to work at their own pace. The gaming is what attracts the student, however, it is the notion of passing levels, receiving points/gaming rewards that motivate the students. Gaming empowers students who are ready to be explorers of their own education. Gaming allows teachers to focus on right brain instruction instead of left brain instruction. Instead of focusing on rote, informational, computational facts, which a computer software program can do, gaming allows teachers to focus on group discussion, feedback, and empathy. Gaming also connects teacher to student because gaming is so prevalent in the lives of youth today. We often associate gaming with youth, however, the games that the youth play were created by the same age group that is teaching them. Hollywood used to be the ultimate entertainment in people's lives. Today, gaming is the ultimate entertainment utopia. Worldwide box-office revenue for the film industry in 2013 was $35.9 billion. Not bad! However, Worldwide revenue for the video game industry in 2013 was $70.4 billion. Design thinking and design in general has been deeply shaped by these master's courses and the recent book I just read by Daniel Pink entitled "A Whole New Mind". Almost everywhere I turn, I now hear people talking about design. I have also realized that design is correlated to the person in charge. Whomever is designing, is the person in charge. Everybody else is doing rote, informational, computational work that the designer has no time for. Do you see yourself as the designer or the informationalist? Daniel Pink says that the informationalists ruled the world from about 1970 to present time, but that the world now belongs to designers. I agree. That is why I am going to take everything I've learned about design and apply it to my teaching and to my Capstone. The value of information has been diluted by the internet and overseas informational intelligence that can compute data just as well as I any westerner and at a tenth of the cost. What is not diluted in the market place is the right brain, creative, innovative, design that is original in idea and concept. Nowadays, people aren't' looking for someone with information, they are looking for someone with design. What is gaming & gamification? According to Daniel Pink, a recent survey indicated that 100% of college students have played at least one video game in their life. Gaming, is what youngsters do. However, I am part of a generation that was once a youngster that got hooked on gaming. Gaming can look like your Grand Theft Auto, or Quizlet, to online poker. Gaming engages, and it is increasingly becoming an everyday part of our lives. Games our accessed everywhere including computers, tablets, t.v.'s, and smart phones. The video game industry made twice as much money in 2013 than did the film industry. Worldwide box-office revenue for the film industry in 2013 was $35.9 billion. Worldwide revenue for the video game industry in 2013 was $70.4 billion. Gaming is the new big Entertainment! Gamification is immersing Education with Gaming. The "Gami" in Gamification represents Gaming. "Fictation" literally translates to uniting nouns (in this case 'gaming and education'), and the "Ca" in Gamification represents the eduCation.
Right now, I am currently playing no games. For a long time I considered playing games a waste of time, however, my perception of gaming has changed after attending theses courses. I am now interested in designing games. I am interested in reconnecting with my youthful love for gaming, however I do not envision myself playing Grand Theft Auto in the near future.
ED 702-Class 7-Blog -"Analyze"-How resources in this class will help with EDUC 791 prototype4/18/2017 After reviewing the content and resources in the Content area, which of these would you consider using to either support your students’ learning or to teach other professionals about your research project in this program?
After reviewing the content and resources in the Content area, I definitely felt that Quizlet is the one tool that I would consider using to support my student's learning. It's an incredibly engaging tool to build spelling, vocabulary, and computer skills such as typing. This tool would be an excellent classroom station for students' to use to practice words of the week or vocabulary linked to the unit of study. What I love, is that everything created can be done in multiple languages. Since I teach 80% of my instruction in Spanish, it is awesome to find a tool that is Spanish compatible. Draw upon your answer to the question above AND the resource page you have been building as part of your Weebly portfolio to map out how you might use the tools and resources explored in this course in the development of your EDUC 791 prototype projects. Consider both how you will share your research and how you will teach others about your work. I see myself incorporating Quizlet, Edpuzzle, and Screencast-o-matic into my Prototype. All three applications will allow me to flip the learning. Students and educators will be able to access the videos/applications at their own convenience. They will be able to rewind and pause the videos in order to take detailed notes and use Quizlet to enhance their literacy and digital literacy skills in an engaging gaming atmosphere. I see there are three ways to share this information with fellow educators: small group, whole group, and via social media. Some teachers may prefer a one on one or small group instruction where they are guided on mastering the tools. Others may prefer a whole group professional development course. I think the best way is to create instructional videos/websites and showcase them using social media so that fellow educators from the school and all over the world can access them. Choose from the tools to create a document that you will be able to upload to your Weebly page, the homework page and you might use in your final capstone web site to share your thinking about the alignment of games/gaming and learning about your research. Below is a link to a quiz (Created in Spanish) I created using Quizlet. I plan on using this document to use in my final capstone web site to share my thinking about the alignment of games/gaming and learning about my research. One of things I have learned about in my research is that tools for educators need to be easy to learn, accessible, cheap and preferably free. Quizlet meets all three of those requirements. In addition, Quizlet transforms terms and definitions into interactive games that foster student learning (vocabulary, spelling, and digital skills). The book that I read for EDUC 791, A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink, reiterated what I have learned from this master's program, which is that gaming is a bountiful and booming industry that will only expand and grow deeper into everybody's lives including the field of education. One can resist it or embrace it, but I believe it is best to embrace it and start being proactive on how to best utilize it to educate our youth today to prepare them for the ever changing future of tomorrow. Link to Quizlet Video: quizlet.com/203282454/ortografia-palabras-con-m-n-n-flash-cards/ In your blog, reflect on the following:
One reason I chose Screencast-o-matic was because I wanted to learn how to make short and simple videos that I can use to teach my students. In the future, I would like to use it as a way to record videos and music that students can access and practice at home as well as at school. I also would like to teach students how to use it so they can demonstrate content knowledge with an authentic 21 century assessment tool as well as use it as a tool to differentiate instruction for advanced students in need of an academic challenge. I chose WeVideo because I needed a tool that could compile all the Animoto videos that my students have created into a series of related projects. I also needed a tool that enabled me to add voice, graphics, text, and manipulate the videos.
One thing that didn't work was that Screencast-o-matic had a limited camera range. For example, my computer was recording the screencast and I could not move around because my computer was stationary. I couldn't display a lot of graphics and information into the screencast because the camera was positioned not to move around.
With WeVideo I was able to compile my students' Animoto videos into related projects. For example, I took Animoto videos that students created about personal narratives and compiled them into one WeVideo that had an introduction, music and graphics. I was able to download the WeVideo into a mp4 format and upload it to my school's Facebook page.
Blog: Reflect on how you might use Google Forms 1)in your practice and 2) for your Touro action research/capstone project. What might be the best uses for your particular situation?
If you already have been using Google Forms in your practice, explain how you currently use them and what you might do to extend your knowledge to new applications/situations. Comment on at least 3 other peoples’ blogs. I am very interested in using Google Forms with my second grade students. I would like to create tests for my students, such as pre and post tests. Google Forms is a great way to expose students to 21st century test taking as well as an efficient way of administering a test, collecting, and analyzing data. The only way for my second graders to access Google Forms is by bringing them to the computer lab. In my classroom, there are only three Chrome Books available for students to use, so when I want all my students on a computer I have to reserve time in the computer lab. I could also use Google Forms with my colleagues in order to get some feedback. I am interested in forming a "Garden Committee" at my school, and to quicken the process of implementing ideas created by the committee I could use Google Forms to get feedback from other teachers and staff members from the school. I have thought about incorporating Google Forms into my research/capstone project. For example, I can use Google Forms to formulate a questionnaire for my students regarding their interest in digital storytelling. I can also formulate a questionnaire for my Capstone audience (educators). I can embed a link on my website for educators to access, which will lead them to a questionnaire (created by Google Forms) regarding my research. In my presentation, I can have my audience placed with a device accessible to internet and have them interactively participate in my presentation via Google Forms. So far, I have never used Google Forms other than the homework assignment for this class. However, over the past three years I have received numerous survey's from my administrators and from Professional Development courses and it wasn't until this class that I realized that the professional looking questionnaires were created easily using Google Forms. Thanks to this class I know how to access Google Forms. It was really easy to create a test and I look forward to incorporating it into my practice.
Creating digital videos inspires me. I love learning new programs such as Animoto and Powtoons. I like that those programs provide background and music to help create a video that is entertaining and professional. I also appreciate that it's easy to access and available for free. I've been able to use Animoto with my students, however, I haven't tried to use Powtoons with them. I've had a lot of connections with the what I have been learning and how it applies to my practice and action research. For example, Baggio stated that when presenting information "Less is More". In regards to my practice, when teaching my students how to create digital videos using a program like Animoto I must be cognizant that the content must be delivered with the least amount of text as possible. That doesn't mean to strip away academic language or content. As Baggio wrote, "The more facts you cram onto a screen, the less likely it is that those facts will be remembered". Baggio illustrated that graphic excellence is "That which gives the viewer the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time, with the least ink, in the smallest space." In regards to my action research, there is misbelief (according to Baggio) that a final project should be filled to the brim with text. I have already decided to deliver my action research project with a succinct design. An observation that I have made is that people are interested in how second grade students create digital videos and how much time does it take to create them? When teaching procedures, whether teaching second graders how to create digital videos or teaching adults how they do it, both what I have learned from Baggio and Clark apply to my practice and my action research. Baggio explained that we learn reading from left to right (and top to bottom). He went on to say that content should be placed on the left and visuals on the right. Of course, he failed to highlight that in certain cultures (Ex: Hebrew) they learn right to left and that solving addition and subtraction problems in our own culture is done from right. However, I agree with his generalized statement that we learn from left to right. That is good to know because when I present my website and poster as well as present information to my students I will make sure to be intentional about where I place content and visuals. I saw a connection between Baggio and Clark in regards to putting content on the left and graphics on the right. Clark wrote that "when (an audience) is learning procedures (they) need a clear display of the steps that make up the procedure, with illustrations as appropriate". This is important to know if regards to constructing manuals/instructions for my students as well as manuals/instructions used to present information from my action research project. The steps of the procedure should be written on the left and the illustrations on the right. From Baggio, I also learned about mirroring content and graphics to grab the audience's attention. When I partnered with Kelley she practiced with mirroring graphics. At one point, when analyzing our graphics, I questioned why one graphic (created by Kelley) kept grabbing my attention as if I needed to fix it. The reason why it grabbed my attention was because it was a mirrored graphic in comparison to the previous one and I thought that it was bothering me but in reality it was just grabbing my attention. I thought dang," I just got mirrored by my own presentation!" (Good job Kelley!). What is innovative that I will be doing this semester is learning how to create digital videos from scratch using WeVideo. Using WeVideo will enable me to use whatever background song I want and it will easily allow me to incorporate video. These are significant limitations from previously used programs such as Animoto and Powtoons. Whereas Animoto and Powtoons offers pre-packaged aesthetics, WeVideo allows the user to create a more organic product. As we know, ORGANIC is BETTER! Well, not always, but that's for another blog! Dilemmaa for me is time. I want to eat more slices of new technology than my life schedule allows me to consume. I know what carts I want to create, it's just that I don't have many horses lined up waiting to drive the creation. In time, the horses will arrive and so will the creation of the carts. I take solace in that when the horses arrive I will have a good base of how to design the carts effectively and efficiently. |
AuthorMy name is Joe Hall. I am an elementary bilingual teacher in Napa, CA. Archives
July 2017
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