Salman Khan: Let's Use Video to Reinvent Education

http://www.hulu.com/watch/223158/tedtalks-salman-khan-lets-use-video-to-reinvent-education

Reflection #8 - My Aha's!

My biggest aha's were more like oooooooh, coooooool!  My gadget junkie-ness extends to software tech gadgets, so learning about Jing, Google sites, and Blogger.com was very cool.  My technology to-do list was already packed before, and while I've knocked a couple of things off as projects for this class, the potential in the tools caused me to add on three times as many things as I finished.

From here there are lots of things I want to do...write some grants to get some much-needed equipment, take a class in Java, finish digesting all the stuff I wrote down at TCEA but haven't had time to explore, and the list goes on.  For me it's not a matter of being afraid of technology and not diving in.  It's more a matter of finding enough time to do everything I want to do with it.

Reflection #7 - Do you Google?

This week you had a chance to think about delivering instruction through a technological lens. Why did you develop the learning objective you developed and what was your rationale for selecting the technologies you selected for integration? What are your expectations for the learning outcome?

Education has always been about empowerment. Learning to read means you can read things that will stretch your mind and teach you. Learning how to use online tools is yet another way to stretch your mind. I learned how to use Jing, and I’m going to use that to teach the students how to independently use iBistro, the online library catalog. Using iBistro is a skill that will empower the students.

I selected Jing because it can record what I’m doing on the screen without recording images of me. If I had to be on camera myself, I would be deterred from using technology. This way it’s a win-win-win: I’m freed up to check in books, the students get a lesson showing exactly how to independently use our library system, and the lesson is reusable for students enrolling mid-year.

How are you viewing your instruction differently now?

We have a fairly transient population, and I keep thinking of more ways to archive lessons for students who come to Pillow late in the year and miss critical skills. I also keep thinking of tech tutorials I need to record for teachers. I think empowering students and teachers to access lessons independently will free me up from having to do a bunch of independent tutorials, and also better serve those I help by providing knowledge when the students and teachers want and need it without them being dependent on my schedule.

Keep in mind when I say learning, I don't just mean k12 - we ALL learn. So if you developed an objective to show your mother how to send an email, it's still teaching and it's still learning!

AMEN! I think I’m going to do a tutorial of iGoogle for the teachers. It was very cool. I’m a bit of a gadget junkie, and it’s a cool tech gadget that I’m sure I will use. Now I just need a computer I can keep strapped to my left arm – or I could just buy an iPhone 4. Dr. W, is it okay if I show them your video?

Speaking of us all learning, check out: http://www.ted.com/. TED is Technology, Entertainment, Design – ideas worth spreading. I’m going to show some of the ones that have appropriate content for an elementary level audience to my library kiddos. The content is all pretty clean, but some mention more mature subjects like war crimes in more detail than I can go into with 3rd graders.

Blog #6 - Can you hear me now?

This week we explored tools for creating podcasts and discussed ways to build learning communities to facilitate interaction and critical thinking. With all these tools available, what are the implications for changing the way we work, teach and learn?

I think the way we work, teach, and learn can become a much more “at your own pace” and “as needed” environment. It would be nice for my teachers to be able to access tutorials to do what they need, when they need it. Anything from adding a printer to using the Pillow wiki would be cool.

Here's my first attempt at a podcast on how to access the Pillow wiki:  http://screencast.com/t/BatOk6dI

What is preventing us from such changes?

All kinds of things play into why we can’t do all the cool things we want to do when teaching. For my teachers, I would say the biggest factors are: time, funding, and fear of the unknown or anything new. For me, it’s lack of sleep, curriculum people trying to justify their jobs by coming to our campus and criticizing everything we do, having to attend school board meetings just to make sure they don’t cut librarians, having 43 computers donated without an OS, serving 670 students every week, and lack of the full time library clerk I’m supposed to have according to the state elementary library standards.

If you could wave a magic wand, what would you change and why?

First, I would want my full time library clerk that I’m supposed to have. Then I wouldn’t have to spend all weekend shelving books and could do the cool tech stuff I love.

Blog #5 – Information Literacy

After completing the MAPping information activity, what are your reactions to your findings? What will you do differently while searching on the Internet for information now? How confident are you with the information you've used in the past (as part of your college career and/or in your profession)?

I was only moderately savvy on the Information Literacy Quiz. It’s been a while since I used Whois, but I should probably start using it more often. Usually the only sites I visit that aren’t my usual haunts are new shopping sites that have something I was looking for. I should start to use Whois so I can keep from getting scammed. I think most of the information I’ve used in the past has been good because I usually use the district’s online databases when looking for information.

What are some implications for the future of our students if we fail to teach them these skills in school? After all, the schools may block access to sites, but students still have access at home.

Students (and teachers) could be terribly mis-informed or led astray. I need to do a workshop with all the teachers ASAP. I have some teachers who still do Google image searches even after I told them to use http://yahooligans.com/! Hopefully they will all be more aware when they see the Information Literacy Quiz site.

Do you see any advantages for organizing your information via Delicious? What else did you find when exploring the other bookmarking applications? What are some ways you think you could use tools like these in the future?

I originally signed up for Delicious to set up a baby registry so I could list things from multiple sources. It’s a great way to store bookmarks online. I could have a set of bookmarks for every class that comes to the library based on the class’s favorite authors and types of books. I could also create a Web Quest and have a list of links for the Web Quest right in Delicious so that the students don’t wander around the internet.

Blinklist takes a snapshot of the website on that date. This would be good for saving news articles and any sites that change often.

Diigo lets you create student accounts for a whole class. Just click “Educator”. It looks like Diigo will let you highlight certain information and add sticky notes to a webpage.

Del.icio.us is good for organizing bookmarks, but I wish it would remove links for items that no longer exist. The bookmark took me to the store just to find a page saying the item was no-longer available.

Stumble Upon is going to have to wait until summer. It looks like it was made for bored people who have time to aimlessly look at sites for just about everything they’re interested in. I’ll see if I can check it out this summer.

Toobla seems like the perfect thing for a pack-rat. You can save a ton of videos and other things, but not take up any additional space. This would be good for if I created video instructions for various tech troubleshooting and then teachers could access the videos as needed.

Blog #4 - Assessment for Learning

Which tenent did you most relate to and why?

I most relate to the assessment for learning tenent that assessment for learning develops the learners' capacity for self-assessment so that they can become reflective and self-managing.  When I teach students, I teach them so that they will have the skills they need to learn independently.  At some point students leave school, and I don't want them to stop learning just because no one is making them learn. 
 
What potential if, if any, do you see for portfolio assessment?
 
In elementary school, portfolio assessment could be a way to unify learning.  Right now we are teaching each subject indepently.  It may be beneficial to teach subjects in context, such as incorporating math and language arts into science and social studies so that they are taught at the same time in a project based portfolio.
 
A portfolio could also show the student's progress over time. Perhaps students who wrote an essay at the beginning of the year could include revisions to show their progress, an revise as they see fit throughout the year as new skills are acquired.
 
What do you think the creation and development of your portfolio will do for your learning?
 
My portfolio will serve as a chronicle of my work and show others my capabilities.  I am finding more and more that I need to prove my worth with regard to helping students and promoting student achievement.  Having something to show for my work such as a student book club wiki and student reading blogs could go a long way as evidence of assisting with student achievement.
 
With the budget cuts and having to go to board meetings to fight for having full time librarians in each library, it couldn't hurt to stay prepared and keep a portfolio and my resume up to date.  Here's a sign I made to take to the board tomorrow:

Blog #3 - Reflection

This week, you explored the concept of wikis and created a wiki for a specific purpose. What purpose did you have in mind when developing your wiki and have you started to implement your ideas yet?

Earlier this year I started working on putting the Pillow Elementary Teacher's Manual in a pbworks.com wiki. I liked that the wiki is searchable, so that if a teacher is looking for the field trip form, they just have to search "field trip" and can get the necessary information.  I started puting up information, but still need to get a lot of the documents from Mrs. King and have a long way to go.  Slow and steady wins the race... 

What advantages do you see in utilizing wikis?

The idea later expanded when I was on the literacy night committee, because no one had the forms and fliers from the previous year. We needed a place that all the teachers could use to pass information on from year to year without losing a ton of information just because someone retired or had to resign.  That's why I made like 5 different people administrators on the school wiki.  I would hate for all that work to be lost just because of a freak accident.

What disadvantages do you see?

I'm still just setting up the wiki. Earlier this year I told the teachers about it, and a few were interested enough to check it out, but overall the response was "We need training on this thing!" Most of our teachers are digital imigrants. Mrs. King, our principal, wants me to get it as fleshed out and user friendly as possible before training everyone on it at the begnning of the 2011-2012 school year.

Think back to the digital natives reading. Do wikis have the potential for engaging them? Provide examples.

I would like to start up some wiki book clubs. This would be a great way to encourage students to read and to discuss what they think about what they're reading. Before starting student wikis, I would probably upgrade to the $99 a year version of pbworks.com that allows you to control who has what priveliges, page by page.

A wiki would also be a good way for our GT kiddos to communicate across the grade levels on their Panther Paws projects. This year they researched panthers (our school mascot), made scale dioramas of a panther habitat, and then made a life-size habitat in one of the hallways. In the students' research, they found that "panther" is more slang than scientific, and refers to black leopards or black jaguars. The project I would like for them to do next year is to hypothetically campaign for a new mascot, researching the new mascot, designing a T-shirt, and writing a persuasive letter to the editor explaining why their mascot should replace the panther. A wiki would help the students show off their work to the other students and hopefully raise the bar to challenge our highest level students.

If we had a computer in front of every student, physical classes could be made up of age peers, and online "classes" in wikis could be made up of academic peers. For example, if you have a student who is reading on a 4th grade level but in 2nd grade, perhaps they could try out the 3rd grade curriculum for a week or two, and if that's still not high level enough, then try the 4th grade curriculum. In a school such as mine with a high mobility rate, people jumping in and out of groups all the time would hopefully keep students from getting "stuck" the way traditional ability grouping did. One problem would be constantly training incoming students in wiki use.

Blog #2 - Reflection

New, concise educational technology philosophy:
"Educational technology is fundamentally education, enabling students to use technology responsibly to direct their own learning."
I think this still stays true to my philosophy of educational technology and education in general.

I need to play this first video for the legislators when we are protesting the education funding cuts on the Capitol steps on March 14th.




I need to play this second video for the teachers at my school.

Blog #2 - Notes

My notes are in green.

1. educational technology (your definition developed based upon exploring the following resources and via your on research. Please note, do not just copy someone else's definition and stop there, the idea is to explore several concepts comparing and contrasting these definitions). The following are just a few listings of educational technology related organizations and a website listing of educational technology organizations worldwide.

o I really like Januszewski’s definition, “Educational technology is the study and ethical practice of facilitating learning and improving performance by creating, using, and managing appropriate technological processes and resources,” as cited in Trends and issues in instructional design and technology, 2nd ed, by Reiser and Dempsey.

o AECT - Association for Educational Communications & Technology

· Site was a chaotic mess. Searched for “educational technology” and came up with nothing. Searched for “search” and got several hits on research, but nothing I could use. There was a general statement about improving education through technology on the “About AECT” page.

o AACE - Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education

· educational technology is a continuous process of discovery and development involving knowledge, experience, and critical thinking http://www.aace.org/conf/site/sessions/index.cfm/fuseaction/PaperDetails?presentation_id=22329

· educational technology is not a set of devices, but is in practice the relationship between devices, programs, and a learning psychology, forged by an ideology of control http://www.aace.org/conf/site/sessions/index.cfm/fuseaction/PaperDetails?presentation_id=22630

o SITE - Society for Technology & Teacher Education

· "For instance, one of the most frequent criticisms of educational technology is that it is driven more by the imperatives of the technology than by sound pedagogical reasons. Our framework argues that, though this can often be problematic, it is not necessarily a bad thing. Newer tools and technologies often offer possibilities that could not have been envisaged earlier. Teachers and educational technology scholars who understand that there is a relationship between technology and content (TCK in our framework) understand that, for example, there is no simple relationship between content and technology." http://site.aace.org/pubs/sigs/sig-Mishra-Koehler-TCR.pdf

o ASTD - American Society for Training and Development

· found something about educational technology for sales trainers, but nothing I could use

o http://www.educational-software-directory.net/organizations

· Other organizations came up, such as ISTE. I printed an article from the ISTE site to read later, but nothing useful for my definition of educational technology surfaced.

2. today's learner (based upon the information presented in these two articles and your experiences):

o http://www.taylorprograms.org/images/Marc_Prensky_Digital_natives_1.pdf and

o http://www.taylorprograms.org/images/Marc_Prensky_Digital_natives_2.pdf),

· According to the definitions for digital natives and digital immigrants, I would be a digital native. I was programming in BASIC and Turtle in 3rd grade, have difficulty reading anything without pictures or that isn’t in a bulleted list straight to the point, and use the net for everything. The teachers call me the tech whisperer.


· Legacy content: reading, writing, math, logic, writings and ideas of the past


· Future content: software, hardware, robotics, ethics, politics, sociology, languages


· Neuroplasticity is life-long but requires increased, sustained effort at higher ages. I would argue that a brain that is constantly challenged to change would change faster.


· Where’s my “sugar coating” on this assignment or this article? I still have to sit here and try to force myself to read an article that isn’t skim-friendly. This article was so written for digital immigrants! I feel like I’ve taken an hour to learn 30 seconds worth of information. Here I am having to sit and do tedious assignments that aren’t particularly challenging or intellectually stimulating. For those of you who think putting it in a video helps. Tedious is tedious in text or video. I’d take a checklist I can skim in 10 seconds as needed over a 5-minute YouTube of criteria or instructions any day. Even my productivity at school is hindered by the digital immigrant who decided that my computer should have one monitor. Multiple monitors are so much more efficient than having to minimize windows all the time!

3. the reality of education/training today, and

o constant budget cuts


o huge digital divide


o 80% of the AISD budget is salaries


o cut the salaries or number of people earning salaries, and the budget could be slashed tremendously


o Most inner city students don’t touch a computer before they are school age, and most don’t touch a computer outside of school hours after they are school age.

4. the potential impact technology can have on education/training (based upon your journal article for the journal article presentation and discussion assignment).

o Technology has the potential to misinform students if they do not know what to look for in a credible source. This occurs today with science misconceptions propagated by television and is more likely to occur with online sources as internet use by students increases.

Blog #2 - Technology Project

Educational technology is fundamentally education, enabling students to use technology responsibly to direct their own learning.

Blog #1 - Educational Technology Philosophy (my notes)

Automate vs. Informate
I feel that I am actively helping “informate” my campus. I started a pbworks.com wiki earlier this year for the school that will soon have our teacher handbook, resources for committees, school schedules, etc. All the staff are editors, and there are 4 administrators besides myself.

In this era of budget cuts, I want to make sure that knowledge isn’t lost just because personnel is lost. It looks like elementary librarians in Austin ISD will be 1 librarian to 3 elementaries, and I don’t know if I’ll be staying. I don’t want the school (and my replacement) to suffer due to the state’s funding issues.

Educational Philosophies
Constructivism – This sounds like the Montessori education method, but the district’s new “curriculum roadmap” doesn’t leave time for students self-guided education. We get bad notes from the district visitors if every class isn’t working on the same stuff (their stuff). http://www.montessori.edu/

Existentialism – I think this could be explored during Art class, but would be difficult to implement realistically elsewhere in an elementary school.  http://www.cas.sc.edu/engl/emerson/images/Eyeball4.gif  I remember this picture from my “Intro to Philosophy” course!  I couldn't reproduce it without permission, but you are more than welcome to follow the link to check it out.

Idealism – This sounds like the “Great Books” curriculum, where you read a series of great books and learn vicariously through them. I think this is a great way to supplement the curriculum for GT kiddos. There are “Great Books” for youngsters listed on the website http://www.greatbooks.org/.

Pragmatism – This is where I usually go with my teaching. When I teach math, I teach that you need math to be able to go to the grocery store, get a job, and pay taxes. When I teach science, I teach what happens when an iron skillet is washed and not seasoned with oil or what happens when warm water is thrown on a frozen windshield. When I teach library skills, I teach them so that students can check out books they can learn skills from.

I think the education system needs more of this type of curriculum, social and life skills, because more and more parents can’t or don’t seem to teach their child basic skills needed to function in the world. I am starting to realize that things I think are common sense because my parents taught them to me are not so common for my husband, who was left at home alone from 3 on up because his parents split up and his mother had to work 2 jobs. There was no one to teach him common sense, and although very “book smart”, my husband was never taught very basic things.

Realism – This is where modern education seems to be stuck. Teachers talking, students memorizing facts, some experiments, lots of tests.

Reconstructivism – Students becoming social activists does not always go over well with parents. We have already had issues with parents complaining that we tell the kiddos that smoking is bad for their health. The child goes home and asks their parent to quit. The parent gets mad at the school, the kiddo ends up in tears because they have to face the reality that their parent knows there are negative consequences to smoking and chooses to continue anyway.

Blog #1 - Educational Technology Philosophy (blog reflection)

What makes a great teacher? 

http://www.greatschools.org/improvement/quality-teaching/what-makes-a-great-teacher.gs?content=79

How is having a written philosophy helpful?

Having my philosophy in writing will help me think about it actively, critically, and continually. Up until now, I just tried to use technology wherever I could to enhance education, but I think my philosophy is way too wordy. I think I need a slogan more than a philosophy. Growing through technology?

What are some potential uses for blogging?

I want to start a “what I’m reading” blog so my students know that I’m reading just like they are. Unfortunately, most of my students don’t have computers at home and don’t get free time on the computer at school, so it will have to be a “print” blog (bulletin board).

We could also have a PTA blog or Facebook page. We just need to be cautious. We had one teacher have to resign this year already for what she posted online. She was our “Teacher of the Year” last year…

I’ve been thinking for some time of starting a “parents” forum for our school, where parents can get ideas from other parents. Perhaps the staff can also suggest support materials for parents. This may be a can of privacy worms we don’t want to open, but I’ll try to work out the kinks.

In November’s article, I would welcome videocameras in every classroom. Then we wouldn’t need visitors from downtown to come disrupt class. They could just watch from their offices and criticize us from afar. We have issues with students believing everything on the internet is true just like my mom believes every hoax e-mail she gets about everything from Obama being a Muslim born in the middle east to spiders nesting under the toilet seat. The good thing is that I think the students will listen. It doesn’t matter how many times I tell my mom about http://www.snopes.com/, she never listens!

Mr. Downes article about 5th graders blogging reflectively is wonderful. I would love for our 5th graders to be able to do that. It would be great if we could have a computer teacher who could explain AUP’s or get the students to learn how to type by 5th grade so they would be able to blog without it taking up an hour of instructional time. It would be nice if all the computers worked. That would require a campus tech. Show me the money… Then there’s the matter of the district allowing time for anything that isn’t exactly what they have listed in their curriculum roadmap (that they could compare us to constantly via the cameras).

What are my expectations for this class?
Lots of work to try and keep a job that is probably going to be cut at 10 pm on Monday night. Do I keep going? Do I go back to working in special ed? Do I go back to being a software engineer? I expect a lot of questions out of this class, and some cool new skills that I will probably be using in a different job next year.

Blog #1 - Educational Technology Philosophy (rough draft)

 I’ve had many great teachers, Bertucci, Simonelli, Creider, and the common thread was that they gave me the tools necessary to not only succeed in class but to succeed in life.  That is what I would like to do for my students.

I am very pragmatic in my teaching style.  When I teach math, I relate it to the grocery store, budgeting, probability and games of chance, employment, and taxes.   When I teach science, I relate it to iron skillets oxidizing after being washed, frosty windshields cracking under warm water, or momentum and braking distance.  When I teach social studies, I relate it to geography and reading maps to go where you want to go or get “unlost”, history so as not to repeat it, or cultures and being sensitive to differences.  When I teach language arts I emphasize effective communication and accurate self-expression, forms of communication such as thank-you letters, and using persuasion to accomplish a goal.  When I teach library skills, I teach students what resources are available, how those resources can be used, and where to look for what they seek.  I also teach social skills such as manners, when and how to apologize, and conflict resolution.  Computer skills are much the same.  How to use a mouse, type, create a PowerPoint, decipher the symbols of technology, these are all skills that will help students not only in class, but the real world. 

I am constantly guiding teachers and students to new knowledge and methods.  I am planting seeds by providing technology resources to students and teachers, and leading by example by growing in knowledge acquisition and sharing through technology.  I share knowledge through the school wiki as generously as I share knowledge in my physical library.  I want to empower students and teachers to succeed in the world of technology and use it independently to help themselves.  The ability to read is a great equalizer because through reading a person can teach himself or herself.  With technology tools, a reader has almost limitless access to knowledge and the ability to improve oneself.  I still believe that technology can be a great equalizer.