When I began this Master’s program, I was not entirely sure what the focus of my project would be, and even less sure about my audience. As I progressed through the program, my interests and knowledge changed. The more I learned, the more I changed my driving question, and so too my audience.
Early on, I had envisioned creating a product that could be equally advantageous and accessible to teachers and students alike. I loved the idea of a website that was pedagogically beneficial to educators, while be accessible enough that my own students could navigate and enjoy. Unfortunately, as my project has moved from theory to reality, I have come to the conclusion that my audience will be much more narrow than anticipated. My capstone project focuses on the strategic leveraging of technology as a means of facilitating and more so, enhancing, student collaboration in order to develop critical their thinking skills. While I find this topic highly fascinating, I must be honest with myself and question how well students would approach such a topic. I do see the irony that students collaborate digitally everyday, but I am unsure of my ability at this time to communicate my research and ideas in student friendly language. I am actually more comfortable with an all teacher audience. I think in order to be interested in what I will be discussing, one would need not only some background knowledge on the topic, but a potential application as well. My goal for my capstone project is that teachers will be able to visit my sight, consider my findings, and apply them with their own students. In that sense, it is as if their students are still benefiting from my project, without needing to visit my site for themselves. I honestly expect that the majority of my audience will consist of educators who are pursuing Master’s degrees of their own. Which brings me to my Learn More pages. I think in order to provide my audience with sufficient background information, I will include information ranging from relevant definitions to resources that they can visit for themselves.
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Am I Trans-illiterate??
After conducting some light research and engaging in a lively conversation with my cohort members, I finally feel like I have a decent understanding of Transliteracy. The general consensus seems to be that Transliteracy is the ability to understand information that may be communicated across a range of modes or platforms. For example, some people may have very strong speaking or listening skills, but may struggle with reading. Or a more common example that many teachers may be familiar with, is how many students are more proficient at typing then they are at writing by hand. While they both require the author to speak and understand the English language, the way they are interacting with the content has varied. This is, I believe, the core of Transliteracy. Being transliterate requires that a person be proficient across multiple modes of communication. This includes, but is not limited to communicating through words (spoken, written, even signed) as well as through technology such as tv, radio, film and of course, the internet. So what is the role Transliteracy in education? If my understanding of transliteracy is correct, then it has a pivotal role to play in the modern classroom. According to work done by Marshall Mcluhan, media has greatly impacted the way we think and interact. The invention of the telephone made it possible for people to communicate almost instantly across long distances. However, the invention of the phone did more than just allow long distance communication, it actually changed the way we greet other humans, changed the way we ended conversations, gave way to new euphemisms and expressions. These are what Mcluhan refers to as “Unforeseen consequences”. These Unforeseen consequences have certainly made their way into the the classroom. Many teachers are undoubtedly familiar with students’ growing obsession with technology. Physically speaking, they are curious and engaged by the tangible devices such as smart phones, tablets and even smart watches. Virtually speaking, students are even more interested with the “places” these devices “take them”. Their technology allows them to communicate with an even larger audience from even greater distances, across different platforms. We may have had pen pals back in elementary, but now your average student essentially owns their own virtual bill board where they can broadcast any message they want. This also means, on the reciprocal end, that the very same children can witness the “billboards” of every other online user. As you can imagine, this too has “Unforeseen Consequences” . Like what?? The shift towards transliteracy has lead to children becoming more comfortable with multimedia from a young age. Most children can no longer be sufficiently satisfied by one or two modes of communication. Imagine a modern child sitting by a radio, and merely listening to a teleplay. I doubt many of my students would settle for such a thing. Today’s youth demand more. They want to SEE and to HEAR and to READ and to TOUCH and INTERACT with their content. And why shouldn't they? Why should we deprive our students of these modalities? The only challenge is properly preparing students to navigate a transliterate world. When I was first asked to create a driving question for this program, I was encouraged to focus on something I was genuinely passionate about. At the time, I was most passionate about developing my students' ability to think critically. Therefore my initial driving question was:
"How might we utilize technology to develop students critical thinking skills?" Not very flashy I know, but genuine nonetheless. My initial research lead me on a journey of discovery. I was especially interested in the concept of visual literacy and visual critical thinking. I learned a great deal about this topic, but perhaps my greatest lesson was how much work and research had already been successfully accomplished around this topic. Therefore, I decided to rethink my driving question. While progressing through the program, my skills and knowledge have grown, but my passion still seemed to remain the same: Developing my students' abilities to think critically. Fortunately, I acquired some new insights behind my passion. I started to ask myself a powerful question: WHY?
After considering these questions, I began to reshape my driving question, resulting in: "How might we leverage collaboration via technology to develop students' critical thinking skills for the 21st century? At the start of this Masters program I was so excited about developing my digital skills that I forgot technology is a means to an ends, and not the end itself. That is to say, technology should not be the star of the show. It is merely a tool, perhaps an incredible one, but still just a tool. I realized what I wanted to investigate was how this tool might be used differently in a collaborative group setting, as opposed to independently. And ultimately, how using tech collaboratively would impact students' critical thinking skills. Ironically, the inspiration for this change actually came directly from interfacing digitally with my cohort peers. I find it interesting how every week I meet and learn with different people of different skills, backgrounds, and insights, all to work on a common goal. Specifically, we are meeting and collaborating digitally. We use wonderful tools such as Zoom, Padlet, AdobeSpark and the list goes on and on. What I find curious, is how our ability and collaborate is enhanced by the tools we use. This is my goal for my capstone. I want to understand the roll technology can play in facilitating collaboration, as a means of enhancing critical thinking. Then I can share this with other educators. Other teachers could ultimately encourage other students to digitally collaborate and so on. To begin with, I find the idea behind my project very exciting. That being said, prototyping is a messy affair. I found it challenging to focus my interests. I knew from the start that I wanted to support students’ critical thinking. As a teacher, I simply believe this to be one of the most essential skills for students to acquire in order to become truly prepared for their futures. Thus, I decided to explore methods of supporting critical thinking. Once my ED 702 course introduced me to digital video creation, I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to find a way for students to take advantage of video recording to document their own thought process and reflections. First, I would need to convince other teachers that this was worth doing. This helped me realize the importance of including an evidence component. This would consist of articles and blogs that I researched as well as my own personal action research which I conducted last semester. Once I reflected on this concept further, I determined there was a potential for genuine collaboration. If my plan is for students to record their explanations and ideas, what better next step then to have students publish and exchange their recordings. This would allow students to give and receive feedback from a larger audience of other students and professionals. After all of this consideration, I concluded on my Driving Question: Driving Question: How might we leverage technology to develop students’ collaborative and critical thinking skills? When I considered my own question, what stood out to me were three key elements:
I used a digital mind mapping resource called Bubbl.us in order to create a visual representation of my concept. The resource was certainly beneficial as it allowed me to rearrange my components and see the different ways they connect. While I feel I have made some strong head way in designing my capstone project, I know I still hhave fine tuning to do. I am excited though, to see how my work will turn out as my goal is to help not only my students, but other teachers and their students as well. Tool Box:
The ED 702 course on digital tools has completely changed my perception of this coming school year. Thanks to all that I have learned over this summer, I have begun to rethink and redesign how I my classroom will operate. This course has primarily provided me with two things:
Driving Question: How might we leverage technology to provide students opportunities to develop their metacognitive and critical thinking skills? Creating videos: At the start of this course, I was asked to consider which specific skills and tools I would like to explore. I knew immediately, making better videos! For so many reasons, I knew I needed to become better at creating, editing and uploading my own videos. I think this is a highly valuable skill with unlimited potential. As a teacher, I could create videos and tutorials to introduce and review information. Students could watch these for homework, or on their own time simply to study. As for my capstone, I intend to teach my students how to create their own videos. I will introduce my students to several digital resources for creating videos: ScreenCast-O-Matic ScreenCast O Matic is a resource with a free version and a premium upgrade. I have a premium upgrade thus I have full access and have explored the website thoroughly. I think it is a great tool and as a teacher, I see a great deal of potential. The website allows the user to record their own desktop, with the option of including the their face. One way I could use this tool as a teacher is to record myself reading through the instructions of an assignment or recording my voice of a Google slideshow introducing a new project. However, for my capstone, I will be focusing on teaching my students to utilize this resource as a means of recording themselves as they explain their work. For example, a student working on a rough draft essay on a Google Doc could create a metacognitive journal entry regarding their progress on the essay. Students could answer specific questions such as what they did well or what they found challenging. adobe spark Adobe spark was completely new to me this summer, but within hours I became hooked on it. It is a very user friendly site that allows users to create original videos complete with voice over and theme music. Users simply upload a series of images, text, or videos, in whichever order they desire. Users can choose to speak over any portion of the video, as well as select background music from a free library or upload your own personal music. Students could be tasked with creating original videos in a series of scenarios. I would like to have students work collaboratively to create videos in order to present proposed solutions to real world problems. EdPuzzle Ed puzzle is yet another great free resource for creating and editing videos. What is so unique about EdPuzzle though, is that users can add audio or text based comments throughout the video. For example, as a teacher, I could insert review questions throughout a video. With respect to my driving question, I could have all students watch the same video. Then, make a copy of that video, and insert their questions or comments either via audio or text. This would provide teachers with insight to the students’ comprehension of the material. Also, it would provide the students with a potentially valuable recording which they could revisit. As my summer courses come to an end, I can look back on all that I have learned, and filter it down to one simple notion: Put the student first!
It sounds simple, I know. But this simple idea has been grossly overlooked throughout our educational system. But if this course has taught me anything, it’s that being an innovative educator is about finding the best and most effective way of reaching your students. Teachers must take a step back and carefully consider their audience. While a teacher’s mastery of a skill is of course a resource, it is not necessarily the only thing to help a student acquire their own skills. It is important to allow students to learn however they learn best, and to demonstrate their mastery of skills in a variety of mediums. I have thoroughly enjoyed this course. Initially, I was a unsure of the topic but was interested nonetheless. After some not so light reading, I started to gain a better understanding of what it means to make sense of something. Then I started to realize how fundamental the concept sense making is to teaching. How could anyone claim to be interested in education, without emphasizing the student(s)? It is more important to understand the student(s) and their perception of the given subject. This concept assisted me in the planning of my prototype design. I started focusing on how students think and rationalize their work. I decided that I would like to have students explore their own metacognition. For example, I would like to explore student blogging and video making. Specifically, encouraging students to record their thoughts, questions, interests, in order to develop their metacognitive skills. I also saw the potential for collaboration, via technology. If students are creating videos of themselves explaining argumentative essays or how to solve math equations, then why not have students share those videos with their peers, and exchange informative feedback. Students could not only develop their metacognitive skills, but also their collaborative skills. All while gaining technological experience! While I still have a lot to work out, I would consider these small steps an accomplishment. Ones that I could not have reached without the outside-of-the-box thinking that 791 is all about. What is Gamification?
Okay so what exactly is gamification? Well, it's nothing all that new actually. It's the process of taking something that already exists, and improving it by integrating common game elements, such as rewarding players points for accomplishing desired tasks and challenges, thereby motivating participation, engagement, and learning. To clarify, digital games don’t do the teaching, but rather reinforce the concepts that have already been taught. Teachers should really think of digital games as classroom management tools. Strategically implemented digital games can provide students with engaging practice, while providing teachers the time and opportunity to work with other students, one on one. By incorporating gaming, teachers can provide more personalized, face-to-face instruction while making differentiated instruction easier and more efficient. Resources: Kahoot: Kahoot! Is one popular digital platform that turns learning into gaming. Kahoot is free for teachers and students. It allows teachers to create fun surveys and quizzes that students can play in order to study and review material. Teachers can create original quizzes and them share them with one another to create a library of resources. I know that my students really enjoy playing, and evening creating Kahoots. Class Dojo: ClassDojo is another great digital resource. ClassDojo is a management and communication app for the classroom. It connects teachers, parents, and students who use it to share photos, videos, and messages through the school day. Teachers can utilize ClassDojo to encourage students to work together as a team. As a teacher, I have relied heavily on ClassDojo in each of my classes. It is a great tool for rewarding desired behaviors and addressing undesired ones. Class Craft: Class Craft is a new game based approach to teaching. Class Craft is very similar to Class Dojo but with some serious upgrades. While ClasDojo allows each student to have their own avatar, they are not customizable. However, in Class Craft, students not only get to completely design their own avatars, but the avatars come with unique benefits for the students. Students are able to earn and use special “powers” to support their own academic learning, as well as help their teammates when they need it. They get some other cool perks, too, for their hard work. I have not personally implemented this resource yet, but I am very excited to try it out with students! Rewards: Interactivity: Genuine learning requires students to think for themselves and to generate their own answers. Similarly, most games require players to find solutions in order to progress. Games also require players to think critically and collaborate with others, allowing them to truly own their learning and growth. Informative feedback: Students are more likely to excel when they are provided informative feedback. More specifically, students can do even better when they are provided explanations about why an answer is right or wrong. Many gaming applications will show a player why their attempts are incorrect and require new approaches. Especially educational gaming applications such as ST Math, Class Dojo and Class Craft. There is transparency in order to help students quickly learn what works and what does not. Intrinsic motivation: Finding ways to motivate each and every student can be a challenge at times. The real goal of course is for students to become intrinsically motivated to learn. Gaming techniques are very effective at motivating players to persist over and over, despite failure. Players receive digital rewards such as new titles, badges, changes to their avatars. The sensation of success and reward becomes its own motivation for the student. Remove Fear of Failure: When students become players, they become comfortable with failing. In many games, players must fail repeatedly before they can move forward. As a player, students must learn, through trial and error, which responses are most effective, efficient, and most likely to provide the desired result. In this process, students becomes increasingly familiar with the system, until they understand it comprehensively, mastering various skills along the way. Content in Context: Game-based learning is a great classroom tool because it allows for interdisciplinary learning through contextualized critical thinking and problem solving. Gaming allows for teaching content in context, playing the game involves systems literacy. That is to say, students learn the relations between the things, and removes the question, “Why am I learning this?” Flexibility: “Sandbox Gaming” is a style of gaming in which there is more than one way to win. Players can make choices that affect the outcome of the game. Educational gaming allows for multiple paths to success. By gamifying a class, teachers can offer a "main quest" or storyline that leads students through a class’s main content, while also offering plenty of "side-quests" so students can choose to investigate other paths more deeply on their own. Think of it as how universities and high schools allow students to take electives as they progress through school. While not every graduate has taken the same courses, yet they have mastered enough of the skills to earn a degree. Scaffolded Progression: Most modern games have tutorial levels in order to scaffold the gamer's progress, usually by setting up a series of simple levels, each designed to teach one new skill, and each building on previous levels. This allows gamers to build new skills within the context of game levels. This should sound very universal to the idea of learning in general. Students can and should learn in a series of steps and lessons, working their way to more difficult tasks at their own pace. New Toys
If I am to become an innovative educator, I must be willing and able to adapt and learn new technologies. As part of my course on digital tools, I recently explored some websites in search for services that might fit my needs as teacher! I chose to explore: www.Vibby.com www.Techsmith.com I was curious about these specific tools as they appeared to offer services similar to EdPuzzle, which I am a fan of. Essentially, both these tools enable users to highlight and share the most important moments of any video. Vibby: Strengths & Weaknesses First, I explored Vibby. Vibby seems to have been specifically designed for the singule purpose of highlighting segments of larger videos that you want to capture and then share out. What makes Vibby unique from other sites that offer similar editing and cropping of videos, is that Vibby will cite your sources, thus ensuring protection of intellectual property. This would be very useful for teachers who are constantly pulling videos from a variety of resources. While we teach our students about plagiarism, we often forget to protect ourselves in our search for digital materials. While Vibby did not meet my immediate needs, I can certainly see how this could be a great tool for teaching. By Highlighting and showing portions of video, students could focus on the significant moments of an otherwise lengthy video. Also, students could watch and rewatch the highlight as it is shorter and would not require much time. Finally, it would certainly make content more engaging and accessible for students. My only issue with Vibby is that is rather limited. While it is similar to EdPuzzle, Vibby does not offer any other features. While EdPuzzle allows users to record their voice and insert questions, Vibby will merely crop a video down, and allow you save and share your shortened video. Techsmith: Snagit : Strengths & Weaknesses Next, I explore Snagit through the TechSmith site. Right away I liked Snagit more than Vibby. Of course, everything depends on context and what your needs are. That being said, Snagit offers a variety of functions. Where Vibby is great for capturing moments of video, Snagit can do that and more. Users are enabled to capture and edit an image. You can insert captions in engaging ways. You can build things from scratch or import/export existing images. Very versatile. Finally, everything you capture will be saved in the built in library! video as an assessment tool? I am currently investigating how video might be used to increase students’ metacognitive process. I would like to have students record their thoughts during their work time as well as their reflections afterwards. Additionally, I would like to explore having students utilize video as a means of exchanging feedback and support with their academic peers. So, in a sense, I do think that video could be used as an assessment tool. However, I think it would be tricky with certain contents and more so with what you are assessing. I could easily imagine students creating a video to demonstrate their understanding of variety of concepts. For example, my students create videos to demonstrate their ability to conduct interviews as well as their understanding of the elements of plot. If I were a math teacher however, I am not sure just yet how I would utilize a video as an assessment. Perhaps students could create a screencast recording of themselves while they apply formulas to determine how many materials would be necessary for a specific job. Okay. The more I think it through, the more I think my answer is YES. Video can indeed be utilized as a form of assessment, or rather a medium for response to assessment. I think it ultimately comes down to the creativity and imagination of the teacher. An innovative teacher could find many ways to allow students to demonstrate their abilities and mastery of skills. New Driving Question:
"How can we leverage collaboration and technology in order to develop students’ metacognitive processes and critical thinking skills?" Scenario: Imagine my students and I are working on a project that focuses on argumentative writing. Normally, students would write a rough draft of their argumentative essays, and ideally exchange papers their with peers for feedback and revisions. In order to investigate my driving question, I would strategically expand on this practice. This would involve integrating more technology, and emphasizing students’ metacognition and collaboration. Here is how I might synthesize each of these components: Integrate Technology: Once students had typed up their rough drafts on Google Docs, they would be tasked with creating a video reflection. Students would use a digital recording tool, such as Screen-o-matic. Screen-O-matic is a resource that would enable students to record their faces and their voices while displaying their rough drafts via Google Docs. Metacognition: The recording device is of course just a tool, to provide students an opportunity to expand on their creative process. Metacognition is a very interesting concept, in which a person thinks about their own thinking. It is a highly valuable skill to practice and can support critical thinking skills. Therefor, I would challenge students to record their thoughts on their work. Students would be required to identify specific elements of their essay, such as their Hook or Thesis statement. They could verbally explain their decisions and intentions behind their writing. For instance, rationalizing why they selected specific pieces of evidence over others. Ideally, by having students rationalize and explain their own work, it would help develop their metacognitive process. Collaboration: Once students had completed their rough drafts and video reflections, they could begin exchanging their work with others. Normally, students would read a rough draft, and provide feedback. However, now when a student exchanges their work, they are also providing the video reflection. By including a video reflection, students can gain better insight to the work they are reviewing because they are hearing rationales directly from the author. This better understanding will allow the editor to provide better feedback and responses. Once a student has viewed another’s rough draft and video reflection, they would create a response video of their own, providing their feedback. This second component of the activity serves two purposes: First, it provides students another opportunity to practice their metacognitive process when critiquing a piece of text. Second, I am interested to see how students will respond to feedback in this platform. Typically students receive feedback in the form of short comments in the margins. This however will present feedback as a visual. Visuals are by far the superior method for communicating information to another. Thus, I am hopeful that this approach would have positive effects on the student's interpretation and understanding of their feedback. Develop Critical Thinking Skills: Ultimately, I want to help students become better critical thinkers. I believe that by supporting metacognitive practices as well as emphasizing collaboration and appropriate digital resources, teachers can positively impact students’ critical thinking skills. Thinking critically is how people solve problems. We can not foresee the types of problems our students will need to solve in the future, but we must prepare them as best we can. |
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December 2017
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