Webinars

In my Webinar review, I had a hard time stopping the discussion of the content to address the format itself. Therefore, I will address this in a separate post... Right now!

First let me start off by saying that I think Webinars have a neat concept. The ability for experts to give presentations to fellow professionals regardless of where they are in the world is a powerful concept. In the number of webinars I have participated in, people have logged on from every area of the world. That is amazing, and very cool. What's more is that those people can engage through asking questions - even better!

I think where my attitude towards webinars starts to decline is when the presenters do not have everything together. Some people, it seems, just jump online and start talking without the due amount of preparation. I have seen everything from duplicate slides on their presentation to a complete loss of voices because the presenter is not familiar with their own technology. I have jumped onto presentations of supposed "experts," and the person is merely reading off the screen. If we are going to leverage this tool properly, I believe people should have a bit more respect for the medium and realize that just because you aren't in front of us doesn't mean there is little to no accountability for your presentation.

That said, I still support webinars and I will continue to engage in them. I enjoy being able to ask questions should I have one (despite having to listen to some people ask less-than-informed and common sense questions). I also enjoy the fact that most presenters allow you to access and print off their presentation, allowing you to take notes and have that resource forever. It is and will continue to be a valuable and simple form of professional development.

Digital Citizenship Presentation

In the above Prezi, I present on digital citizenship to parents, teachers, and administrators alike. In it, I highlight several articles and videos; everything from a discussion by administrators about what 21st century skills are and why they're important, to the internet myth about 1 in every 5 students being sexually solicited via social media by predators. These are important topics to discuss when it relates to teaching our youth about Digital Citizenship, as all schools should. Everyone should teach our youth about digital citizenship, and it should be taught to them as soon as they have the capacity to interface with the digital world. As soon as they understand how to create and contribute to the online community, they should be informed about the implications of those actions and guided through the mess.

I can't remember when my parents gave me the talk about my digital footprint - primarily because it didn't happen! In school, I remember going through programs and computer games teaching me where to place my fingers on the keyboard, but never do I remember a lesson on where to put my thoughts on the internet - or whether or not I should. By the time a good friend tipped me off about "Googling" myself, my digital dossier was already well underway, and littered with things I didn't even know were out there about me.

Enlightened Digital Citizenship from Vicki Davis

I believe the discussion should start early. Exactly how early I don't quite know, although based on this articulation by a third grader, I would say that it should probably happen by then, if not sooner. By middle school, students should be knowledgeable about how to create and contribute to the online community and should be discussing  the implications of their actions. In an earlier blog post on my personal Blogger account, I discussed how rapidly our children are being forced to grow up and the paradox it creates. Students need to understand the future they are creating in the present. By high school, students should be collaborating and forming their digital identities with great intentionality, both in terms of their own presence as well as their greater cultural and global community through technology.

Below is a Voki I created to begin the discussion with students. Check it out, and begin the conversation for yourself.

Should the video not load, please try this link:
http://www.voki.com/pickup.php?scid=8115106&height=267&width=200

Cell Phone Webinar

I recently watched a webinar titled "Teaching Generation Text: Harnessing the Power of Cell Phones in Education."With students all across the nation texting in class and policies banning students from their digital life-line, the topic is very timely. I chose this webinar because all practitioners in our field from elementary on up to college deal with this issue daily. With a claim of harnessing the power of cells for the classroom, I had high hopes for this Webinar. The two facilitators were Lisa Nielsen and Willyn Webb, and they went on to divide the discussion into 5 separate aspects.

1. Teacher Use of Cell Phones for Professional Purposes
2. Teacher Models Appropriate Use for Learning
3. Strengthen the Home-School Connection
4. Students Use Cell Phone for Homework
5. Students Use Cell Phones for Classwork

Throughout the webinar, Nielsen and Webb consistently list applications and tool suggestions for educational use. Some of these include:

A sample Wiffiti screen

• Poll Everywhere, a mobile response application where facilitators can create a question, generate several multiple choice options, and  watch live responses on a web address,
• Wiffiti, an online discussion board that displays anonymous text responses from students,
• Voki, a recording application that allows a person to record audio from their cell phone and save the file digitally online,
• and ChaCha, a cell phone text service that answers any question you ask.

The webinar made some great points about cell phone uses in schools. From the admin side of the house, group text messages can be used in emergency response situations, and perhaps to parents or guardians when their child is absent from school. Poll Everywhere could be fun for students to text in their answers and watch the live feed come in from peers, and Wiffiti could be used in interesting applications since the feedback is unfiltered and anonymous. An example was given for history students to Tweet in character something an important historical figure might have tweeted had it been an option. I love the creativity in that, and I could seriously see myself using this technique.

Abe's Tweet

However, sadly, not all their recommendations hit home. The webinar facilitators site a principal who was out of budget and had not implemented any emergency policies or procedures and elected to use mass texts as their only solution. I cannot say that this is a prime example of leveraging cell phones in schools. And yes, using a cell phone in the place of a stopwatch is certainly convenient and appropriate. But using your cell phone as a platform for displaying relevant photos for students seems ill-advised in the middle of a lesson plan. Using a camera to snap shots of a brainstorm makes sense, but texting parents about individual successes and areas of concern seems cumbersome and distracting on a regular basis.

Other articles, like "How to Use Cell Phones as Learning Tools," echo similar remarks in reference to Poll Everywhere and Wiffiti. Author Meg Ormiston also adds that teachers can record their lectures via audio or video for flipping the classroom. Both Ormiston and the facilitators of the webinar also speak to delivering classroom material through text messages to students who missed the day because of sickness.

I think this webinar has taught me about understanding how different technologies can [at least semi-]effectively promote student learning. By learning the basics of how to engage a cell phone for academic purposes, we are exploring the tools and technology students use on a daily basis, and that is a step in the right direction. I think this also helped me to evaluate a current technology to enhance content instruction and enhance technology literacy, especially a tool students take for granted and do not necessarily independently explore its academic potential.

source

That said, I remain unconvinced. The webinar, itself a tool produced by technology, was quite ineffective. The moderators tried to offer examples of how to effectively use cell phones by engaging the audience in Poll Everywhere text messages (as well as other polling applications), by accepting pictures of those participating by using their cell cameras, and several other types of cell services. However, the whole process came off, at least to me, as messy, confusing, and just a little hokey.

This leads me to my conclusion - are we coming up with these ideas because they are genuinely useful and innovative, or are we trying to apply techniques and applications to the wrong platform? Are we revolutionizing education, or just plain forcing it? In some cases, I think we can be creative and productive with this technology, like using Twitter for history lessons. In other cases, like using your cell phone to record your entire lecture, I believe we may be forcing it. Let's realistically look at what we're trying to accomplish and apply the correct tools.

Exploring the Edge

Week 1, Assessment: Should we integrate technology into the classroom?

Much like many videos using production quality akin to 90s soap operas prompting the same notion, this question is far out of date. We have moved past the question of "should" to "how." How do we integrate technology is a far more relevant and critical question to be asked.

At the risk of looking completely ridiculous and verging on pompous, I would like to reference one of my own past blogs on the subject, found here. In this blog I answer the same question above by speaking to what I call "technology staples," including blogging, videos, and digital presentations. These three tools are the most common and easy-to-use aspects of technology in the classroom that any teacher can integrate into any subject. I have found personal success with each of these in my time as an instructor.

So instead of repeating what I have already explored in another blog post, I will attempt to use this one to give concrete examples of what creative and cutting-edge teachers are doing for their students!

We can start with a two-part series called "Cutting Edge Classroom." In Part I, an employee of the Kant and Tahoma's school district's information technology department says,

"We feel it is our responsibility to match what is going on in our society. Our society is becoming more technological and digital, meaning we need these same tools in our classroom so that our students can graduate and be successful in the real world."

Granted, this article reports from a district streets ahead of many other districts nationwide. However, this unique perspective offers us examples of - you guessed it - cutting edge technology. Take for example the tool DyKnow. This software is used by teachers to control their students' laptop screens, directing them all to one site, blocking everything else, and even at times shutting the screens off completely. This seems like a very useful tool for guiding a WebQuest session or watching a video, while at the same time solving what some consider to be the greatest challenge of technology in the classroom - students freely surfing the web.

The article goes on to discuss Activboards, and the myriad of uses for Apple iPads, so check it out if you get the chance.

The next tool that is greatly impacting schools is Khan Academy. In an article about Khan Academy and it's uses, Wired Magazine interviews a teacher using the free online videos ranging from math to history to flip the classroom. Students will watch the videos and perform equations at home (watching/listening to a lecture, basically), and then do interactive learning (or what was homework before) in the classroom.

The website also offers teachers a dashboard of all their students, collecting data on what videos students watch, how many they're watching, how much time they spend on certain subjects, and even exactly where students are struggling or spending extra time. This allows time in class to be spent one-on-one with students going over precisely what they struggle with, or more time to do creative activities that explore the fun side of subjects instead of falling asleep at their desks.

Lastly, I will just touch on one last technology, less as an explanation of the tool, and more to the point of it's practical use. In the Article 6 Expert Tips for Flipping the Classroom, one instructor named Mazor uses NB,  an online reader developed by MIT that allows the user(s) to create annotations and create dialogue with one another. Mazor has this to say about his experience:

"Their discussions were incredibly thorough, exciting, and in-depth. Yet, every time I participated in the NB annotations, I killed the discussion among the students, because I was seen as the authority. It stopped them from working it out on their own and finding the solution. [Now] I participate only if there is a situation where they are completely and utterly stuck."

I wanted to point this out to close my first real blog post because I think the message is poignant: Students want to learn. The technology used in Tahoma's school district makes learning fun inside the classroom, but more importantly, the technology products of Khan Academy and NB make learning itself fun, anywhere at any time. The Wired article sites students excelling from basic math to geometry in a single semester, and students that stay up until 2 in the morning because they're having fun. The article above from CampusTechnology.com painted the picture of a vibrant community of peers, only governed by an authority figure to provide guidance when they really need it, and not a second earlier.

These examples, and many more, indicate that learning does not have to be painful, and technology gives us the tools to avoid that. The tools and techniques outlined in this blog don't even scratch the surface of what technology has to offer education. Again, the question is not "should," but rather "how."

So tell me, how do you use technology in the classroom? Let's learn together.

Introductory Post

How has technology changed my life?

Hard to say. Most of my life I have been surrounded by digital technology. In elementary school, my mom worked in the computer lab. Granted I didn't get my first cell phone until after I graduated high school, but they were always around me.

I suppose I would have to say technology has changed my life in that it makes day-to-day activities easier (communicating with friends/family, keeping up on current shows/movies, locating an archived journal I wrote four years ago, accessing articles and books, etc.). Nothing revolutionary; but then again I guess I was born after said revolution, so perhaps that's a tad privileged. :)

What types of technology do you currently use daily/weekly?

I use a smart phone, iPad, laptop, and desktop daily. Ideally, I also use a washing machine weekly.

What is one technology you could not live without?

Blenders - I love smoothies. (Haha)
Seriously, I would have to say that I could survive without any of my devices on a daily basis. However, as a person who lives 3000 miles from what I consider home, I don't think I could survive long term without a speedy and reliable way to contact friends and family long distance. I wouldn't say it has to be Skype or FaceTime, but something a little more modern than the US Postal Service and less silly than SnapChat.

Source for Image