The Finale

Justine,

It was a pleasure to take EDIT 2000: Technology in Education this semester. I thoroughly enjoyed the projects, in-class discussions, guest lectures, and blog posts. Each one of the activities challenged me to think and learn more about applying new applications and technologies in the classroom. Before this class, I knew that we lived in an age of advancement and various nuances but I had no idea how they impacted schools and classrooms across the nation. I didn’t think about smart boards, augmented reality, 3D printing, cloud-based storage systems, stop-animation, and many other digital platforms.

More than that, I didn’t know how this software played an important role in schools. I think the most interesting part about this course is learning how new technologies engage kids and help them to learn more effectively.

 As a college student, I think about how technology affects me and my peers’ lifestyle. For us, mobile devices, tablets, high definition video – online, TV, video games, etc. – online streaming sites like Netflix and Hulu, and social media networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter are significant innovations.

Fascinating enough, some of these same applications are also very helpful in teaching kids. Social networks can provide as great online communities for students to stay in contact with one another for school assignments, network and learn more about professional opportunities, and to promote their causes or events for clubs and organizations. The improved quality of video recording applications can be beneficial for young students who want to produce their own short videos or report on current topics. Mobile devices and tablets also make researching, completing assignments, and communicating easier and more efficient.

I really appreciate this class for allowing me to learn about digital applications and for helping me to apply them within the project-based assignments. I would like to continue to learn more about new technologies and stay abreast of what’s going on in this realm.

Thank you for everything.

– Jordan Thomas

Final Thoughts of LAD

We had more information and content than I thought. Before we presented, I was concerned about meeting the minimum requirement of 20 minutes. However, this was not a problem at all. I should have been more concerned about synthesizing our information and distributing equally between Mike, Morgan, and I. It also wasn’t as smooth or as fluid as it could have been. We could have used more practice presenting our website.

Outside of the presentation, this was an awesome project. We had the opportunity to teach students about an interesting topic, in our case prospective career paths for high school student-athletes. We also used cool technologies and applications to do this such as Vimeo, Flipgrid, and YouTube. So, I think the project conceptually is pretty cool. However from a more practical perspective, it can be quite difficult to actually put it all together within a website. First of all, it would help if students have experience designing a website. Secondly if not, then they would benefit from researching or playing around with the different website creators – Weebly, Google site, WordPress, etc. – before designing their site. So, the project is very creative and interesting, but students have to learn what it takes to execute it before just thinking of ideas.

Great project. We had some time commitment issues meeting, but we pulled it together and made it work. I think going forward you should emphasize using an intuitive and very user friendly website creator.  Maybe Weebly is the best option, but I think you should definitely see what else is out there that may be even more practical and easy to use. Brainstorming the ideas and making the content for the site was not difficult. Actually putting the text, images, and information into the website was another story.

 

It’s Coming Along…

Our group is almost finished with the website, just putting the finishing touches on it. All in all, the project hasn’t been too difficult and we’ve enjoyed exploring some of the digital applications for our in-class assignment that requires a technology. Cameo, Blipfoto, See. Touch. Learn., MOOKLET, and Flipgrid, the application that we decided to use, have all been very interesting and great tools to help students learn. Each of the applications have their own unique aspects whether it be video-recording, document-sharing, or chronological organization of visuals, that make them neat to learn about, and it’s probably been one of my favorite parts of the project.

On the flipside, I’ve had my fair share of struggles trying to put the website together. As great as Weebly’s been as a template for our site, it’s been very difficult to edit text, change text format, such as size and font, add bullet points, align selected text, and so on and so forth. I just wish the input was more user friendly and similar to the Microsoft Office suite, which makes aligning, formatting, and inputting visuals and text very easy.

Surprisingly enough, the actual project has been pretty easy for us to do. The toughest challenge being the selection of our target audience and developing assignments for them. General professional development and counseling is pretty common and information can be found about it in a variety of places. However, creating work specifically for student-athletes has been a little more difficult, specifically to teach transferable skills. It’s not very hard to teach students why professional athletes should go pro in a sport or not because there’s research already out there for it – statistics, graphs and various data charts. What’s more difficult, is trying to take what’s learned from that topic and teaching applicable skills and knowledge for students’ futures. They need to learn what decision is best for them and the factors that make that so.

Smart Boards — Technology in Education

I think interactive smart boards, just like many other classroom technologies, can be very helpful in supplementing learning. However, if just used by itself, with no discussion or actual teaching of a concept, subject, or assignment, then they will not be very effective.

These devices are very beneficial for congregating student opinions or answers to questions, making presentations more appealing and aesthetically pleasing, getting students involved and moving around, and editing charts, data, and other documents. So, they have quite a few uses for teachers and can make the learning experience easier and more exciting for students.

However, students will only learn so much from visuals, flipcharts, and videos without the appropriate teaching and guiding of in-class discussion. Educators must still use effective and proper teaching techniques to help students learn and grasp new concepts and the curriculum. They must explain why the students need to learn what is being taught and how it can be applicable moving forward in the class or even later in life. Teachers must also be able to analyze the material being covered and use the interactive smart boards or other technologies to help students learn it via in-class activities, presentations, and discussions.

As the Educational Leadership article explains, teachers must explain concepts within subjects and answers to specific questions before using the interactive smart board applications. For example, before the teacher flips through the flipcharts, reveals the answer to electronic voting or uses the virtual applause, they need to make sure the students understand what’s being taught in each activity and why their answers are right or wrong. It’s not enough for students just to know that they got the question right or knew the correct answer, they need to know why so they can use the information going forward. Good teachers first. Supplemental learning devices second.

The Obstacles and Deterrents of this Adventure

The transition to Weebly has been fairly smooth. It is definitely more user-friendly than Google site. For instance, moving images and inserting videos onto the site is not nearly as difficult. We can also add pages to the site more fluidly. I have not had too much trouble creating the website using Weebly. The one area where I think the website software could use improvement is with implementing text on the webpages. I don’t like their formatting/editing software toolbar. It’s kind of difficult to increase font size as well as to change fonts and to insert bullet points and numbered lists. The toolbar is not very responsive to clicks. You have to click the “increase font size” button a lot to increase the size of the font. I think it would be easier if they used a toolbar similar to Microsoft Word where you just utilize a drop bar to increase the size and manually type in the font size as well as the actual font.

We also found flipgrid to be very helpful for our assignment. It is a very simple and fairly easy to use application. The teacher/administrator creates short, concise questions on a grid. Then, after the questions are created for the grid, the teacher sends the students the grid through email, e-learning commons, or other forms of communication. The cool part about this app, is that students get to answer through video which be shared and viewed. After the students post their video responses to the questions on the grid, they can share them through their social networking sites – Twitter, Facebook, etc. and they can also “like” their classmates’ videos through flipgrid. We will use this application as an interactive tool for our assignments

LAD Reflection

Working with our group, we were very overwhelmed when we first received and viewed the rubric. We were thinking, how are we going to get this done. The first thing we did as a group wAs we sat down and come up with a plan on how we were going to get this done on time and with the correct information. we came up with an outline and started our website. we hope to get a lot of work done this weekend in order to get the project finished on time. this is one of the most stressful projects that we have ever done.  it is a lot of new things that we are trying to learn. a lot of preparation and a lot of stressful research. we are on the right track with everything so it should end up very well.

It has been quite challenging to develop site with no prior computer design experience. I have been experimenting with Google site and Weebly trying to figure out which one will be more applicable for our project and time constraints. I started using Google site and I worked off of their “family” template. At first, it wasn’t to bad. I was able to add and delete pictures relatively easy as well as change the sidebar subheads. However as i tried to change the headers and features near the bottom of the page. with that, I experienced some obstacles. I think the overall construct of Google site is not a very user- friendly and does not allow for much personalization. With that said, I believe that we are going to make the transition to Weebly. So I am going to play around with it the next couple days and see if it is a litter easier for individuals who haven’t had much experience with computer software.

Economics is the study of the production, consumption, and transfer of wealth. As a group we decided that economics is not simply a class from high school or college that you can leave in the dust upon the collection of a diploma. It turns out that the ideals learned in those tedious classes were, in fact, a guide to your financial success as an adult. Contemplating a way to convey the principles embodied by the rules of economics through interactive learning is a difficult thing to illustrate to students however. This is mainly because the hardest part about teaching these principles is that everyone’s economic tendencies vary based on an infinite number circumstances and conditions. However, the benefit of teaching such a financially and quantitative subject is that it deals with exact numbers. This is how we came up with the idea that professional athletes’ careers are based on one thing: money. Sure, occupational happiness is by far the most important factor in holding a job, but in the end, happiness doesn’t pay bills. By analyzing the cost-benefit relationships between opportunity costs, or choices, we can determine whether or not a potential professional athlete will be more successful in the long-run by taking a detour route through college or signing a contract out of high school. The hardest part about this project will be determining which variables are most important, but we will most likely stick to GPA, degrees taken, years played , and many other school/sport related numbers.

Project-based Learning

I really like the concept of project-based learning because it allows students to get involved and work in a very practical sense on real-world problems. I always think it’s beneficial and often more effective when students have the opportunity to contribute to their learning.

All too often, classes facilitate a one-way communicative teaching style and in response, the interest and excitement stays with that one person, which happens to be the teacher. There is little to no enthusiasm or response reciprocated by the students. They are just told what they’ll be learning and what their expectations are for learning it – via tests, papers, homework assignments, etc.

However, with project-based learning, student receive the opportunity to create, innovate, and design their own work. There are still essential concepts and course material that must be covered, and that is implemented into the project.

So, the students are still tasked with learning the respective material, but the way they go about it is totally different. Instead of the teacher talking for 50 minutes and allowing the students to ask questions for 10 minutes, the students are getting in groups and discussing what they want to do for their project, how they want to go about doing it, and distributing the work amongst them as such.

So, in essence, the students would be using the majority of the time to teach themselves and now the teacher would get about 10-15 minutes to explain the concept and the parameters of the assignment. Within this format, the teacher is simply providing sidelines for the kids to stay within – basic guidelines and criteria. This is in opposition to the standard style of teaching where teachers tell students how they will be learning certain subject material. Most teachers, say “You will have to read pages 5-37 tonight, and there will be a quiz on that tomorrow.”

Well now, we are advocating for more liberty in learning. Yes, we could read a book and get some good insight out of it, but, why not let the students see what they can come up with. What can they bring to the table? Maybe, it’s something that we haven’t seen before. Maybe, it’s not so good and they’ve gone down a different track. Either way, it’s an opportunity to learn in real time

Here are some of my biggest takeaways:

Project-based learning…

• Aids itself to the realistic, practical types who like to see what they’re learning
• Increases retention of information
• Builds teambuilding and collaboration skills
• Improves communication skills
• Allows for creativity and open-mindedness

From the text…

I thought the projects were really awesome, especially at Mount Terrace High School where they got the chance to design the architecture of a new school. However, I really didn’t like how most of the projects were for competitions and fairs. I want to see more cover basic course material like learning how to do mathematical equations or how to create a flyer or pamphlet. Of course, there were only 3 reading materials, so they can’t possibly cover all of the things that you can do with project-based learning, but I just want to see more variance in the type of assignments and tasks.

Stop-Animation

        I really enjoyed creating the stop-animation with Morgan and Mike. Before this class, I had no prior experience creating a stop-animation or really any video for that matter. However, I learned that it takes a lot of time, patience, and pictures to create the video. It also enhances the dramatization and it makes it appear significantly slower.

        I think these projects are great for teaching, illustrating concepts or step-by-step processes, and completing “how to…” assignments. They allow the user to slow down and speed up the frames as necessary which is really important in showing the progression of a task from start to finish. For instance, for cooking, many individuals will go online to look for recipes and they’ll see the directions, the ingredients, and a variety of still-image photos of the food/recipe in its finished state. However, they really won’t get a true idea of how the ingredients were mixed or prepared to make the final product. However, with stop-animation, people can take the pictures, arrange them in a video editing software like iMovie, and have a fluid visual of how to make the recipe step-by-step. With this medium, viewers will be able to see how the ingredients were mixed and used to make the food. This is just one of the many ways that stop animation can be used to educate individuals.

One challenge of this software is the process of creating the video. First, you’ll probably need more than one person to do it. While someone is actually doing the task, you’ll need someone else to take the pictures. Secondly, it would be good to invest in a high-quality camera that can take pictures very quickly to capture all of the distinct movements of the person being recorded. If you don’t have a good camera, it will probably take a while to capture all of the actions and moves of the participant, and the person will have to re-do the pictures many times. Finally, you need to find a video editing software like iMovie or Final Cut Pro to actually produce the video and put it together. It also may take you sometime to learn how to slow down the video, speed it up, add sound, and arrange the photos as necessary. However, it shouldn’t take too long because a lot of the editing software programs are pretty user-friendly.

All in all, I learned quite a bit from this project and I would like to use stop-animation in the future to teach others how to solve homework problems, use applications like Vine and Dropbox, and how to make a good batch of homemade chocolate chip cookies. (Not in that order)

Augmented Reality – The Virtual World

Augmented Reality breaks down so many barriers of acquiring a quality education and learning – location, time, cost, etc. With digital training seminars, design software applications, and other virtual settings, students can replicate almost any environment and work at any time.

Students can work in virtual laboratories and re-create atmospheres from locales across the world. They can design logos, decals, artwork, toys, and promotional materials from their computers. Students can tour the world with Google street view, see their local weather transform in front of their eyes with iPhone and Android weather apps, and can learn more about their bodily organs with 3D illustrations of surgeries and medical procedures.

These new innovations also makes life easier.

Google Glass – allows individuals to surf the web, check their email, browse social media networks, and read the latest news from their glasses. This is useful and very efficient for so many different reasons. First of all, it takes the place of many other Wi-Fi-based devices – smartphones, tablets, laptops, etc. So, it would not be necessary to pull out a smartphone or carry around a tablet. Secondly, the convenience goes unmatched. Why would you read 10 different newspapers, wait for your local weather on the news or travel to the mall to shop, when you could do it all with the movement of your eyes?

Finally, augmented reality does a very effective job of immersing individuals into different environments and blending our virtual and physical worlds blend. Our daily lives are altered. From eating breakfast, to walking down the street to working out, augmented reality changes the way we live. When watch TV, we constantly see digital ads, sponsorship elements, a variety of green screens (i.e. weather, commercials, movies, etc.). When we walk down the street, we can pull up apps that will translate language in front of our eyes. If we’re hungry, we can see a virtual display of the nearest restaurant as well as their menu options and how many calories they have in them. If we want to work out, we can use cardio machines that replicate environmental settings of hills, rough terrains, flat land, and stairs.

The virtual world is now the real world.

Visual Literacy — Art in the Classroom

How does visual literacy affect the way children learn? What’s its impact?

In this day and age, images, videos, and other visuals are vital to education. They are everywhere in our world – on TV, on the Internet, on advertisements, etc. Now, visual literacy tools – learning applications through art and visual symbols and images – are becoming very important in the classroom.

By teaching visual literacy, we can stimulate the right hemisphere of children’s’ brains. The left lobe is responsible for logic, numerical figures, and processes information in the form of numbers and words. The right side of the brain contributes to spatial learning, the understanding of emotion, facial expressions, and body language. Commonly in school, kids learn numbers, statistics, graphs, and other data/figures. This has been effective in classrooms and will continue, but there needs to be more focus on the other side of the brain – the thinking, cognitive reasoning, creative frontal lobe side. Staff and faculty within school systems need to consider ways to get students thinking more, thinking outside of the box and utilizing creative methods to allow kids to express their creative side. This is an imaginative, more intuitive type of learning that will have a key impact on the future of learning in our world.

It provides as a mechanism of engagement. It’s a tool to get kids thinking, learning, and creating. For those kids who space out during lectures and hate coming into class just to sit at a desk and listen to the teacher every day, art serves as an alternative and more often than not a more exciting form of learning. Students feel like they can participate and play a pivotal role in the classroom through art and free expression. Students still have to learn the required curriculum, attend their classes, and do homework. However, with visual literacy applications, they have the opportunity to design their own projects and run with their teacher’s assignments to create whatever they want. There’s an autonomous aspect that’s been added with the arrival of digital graphics and other artistic tools.

Its a form of expression as well. Through visual literacy, children can show who they are through their work and assigned tasks. If they’re really artistic and creative, they can use graphic design software and new media to share their artwork and other illustrations. If they love to play sports, they can design and create their own highlight videos and add digital images in them to display their name and statistics. Art is a form of expression and today’s technology really allows kids to demonstrate that through visual literacy tools.