This is my last official blog post for CEP-812. The course seemed to fly by. There are two major topics to be discussed: personal growth and goals.
Growth
I think that I grew the most on the assignment requiring the production of a podcast. I learned several new applications: Audacity, GarageBand, Lame, and FeedBurner. I enjoyed experimenting with Audacity and GarageBand (although I sounded pretty stiff voicing my script). I found the assignment frustrating when it came to getting the podcast linked to my blog; the tutorials didn’t seem to cover my particular hardware-software combinations. I think that I would have given up trying to link my podcast to my blog if it wasn’t for the support offered by Sue and Emily through the Q&A discussion board.
One of the things that limited my growth was a general lack of time. Things were coming due in rapid succession and I didn’t have time to go back and master what I had just learned, like the podcast. I would like to spend more time playing with Delicious. I don’t think I am using it very effectively. I was really excited about the SIG and had a great group. I think it turned out OK but we were envisioning something grander. We ran out of time due to fighting the Weebly interface and had to recreate several sections that disappeared during editing.
Goals Met and New Goals
I think that I have met many of my personal goals: learning to use my interactive whiteboard, my document camera, my sound system, and Jing. I have learned to use them but have not fully integrated them into my teaching. My students find it entertaining that I keep switching between my traditional white board, my interactive white board, and the document camera as I try to find the best way to present, and capture, content. I’m sure that these things will become second nature with practice.
I have set some new goals. For example, I need to discipline myself to work more with podcasts and Jing. I need to set aside time for these “productions” but not be too much of a perfectionist or I will end up spending too much time on bells and whistles and not enough time on developing good lessons. I won’t rehash the rest of my hardware, applications, and professional development goals here but direct the interested reader to the “Personal Technology Plan” portion of my website.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
TechQuest Project Evaluation
I would have to say that my TechQuest project was a bittersweet experience. At first, I was optimistic that my absent students would benefit from me posting daily content online. On the “bitter” side, I didn’t notice any change in student behavior/achievement for my efforts. On the “sweet” side I learned how to use my classroom hardware more effectively and discovered some excellent online tools for capturing content. As part of this blog entry, I have to respond to the following prompts:
How would I would approach a project of this type differently in the future?
I think that expectations of absent students and procedures for accessing missed content need to be established at the beginning of a course, not mid-stream. Including this information in the course syllabus and posting it on the class website would make students, and watchdog parents, more aware of the options available. Too many students resorted to the ingrained method of asking for missed work during bell time on the day they returned to class. I feel that a project of this nature would be more successful if it was implemented by a group of teachers (preferably the whole staff) and if it was initiated at lower grade levels where academic habits are being formed.
Another thing that I would do differently for a project of this nature is to do a better job of quantifying the results. I should have kept a running log of attendance data and the reported reasons for student absences. My informal observations showed me that more students were absent on assessment days or for review sessions preceding assessment days. I get the sense that these students are not coincidentally ill on assessment dates but rather they are working the system to gain extra study time and to ask their peers what is on the assessment. With no attendance penalties, and little motivation, it makes sense to only study exactly what you need to get by and avoid school as much as possible. This strategy can be especially effective when grades are heavily weighted toward assessment results and not daily work. Getting back to the topic of quantifying results, if I had used a counter on the class website, or implemented a learning management system (e.g. Moodle), I could have tracked how many students were actively accessing the posted resources.
What are some lessons that I learned?
One of the things that I learned is that the research in scholarly journals runs several years behind the implementation of the technology being studied. I suspect that this is due to the amount of time required for writing research grants, developing protocols, collecting data, and going through the peer review process. While this is sound scientific practice, it is less than useful for teachers exploring cutting edge interventions.
Another thing that I learned is that it valuable to have a peer group to bounce ideas off of and to have a group to hold you accountable for completing the project objectives in a timely manner. Given the work load of a typical teacher, it is extremely unlikely that one would undertake a project of this nature without an incentive (e.g. course credit) and without the support of peers in a similar situation as well as instructors with experience in providing guidance, resources, and insights.
What is the future of the project?
Even though I have not observed overwhelming changes in student performance, I feel that continuing the project is the right thing to do. All students, not just the absent ones, can benefit from having class content available outside the traditional classroom environment. Continuing the project will enhance my skills in using technologies like podcasting and screencasting and eventually help me build a “library” of content that can be used to create a blended or fully online course. As outlined earlier in the post, I will also look into tracking reasons for absences and the number of times online content is accessed.
If I really want to help students who are skipping or are absent due to disciplinary issues then I need to look beyond providing online content. No amount of content will be useful if the student isn’t motivated to access it. The key to helping these students is to work on making the content more relevant to their lives so they become engaged in the educational process.
How would I would approach a project of this type differently in the future?
I think that expectations of absent students and procedures for accessing missed content need to be established at the beginning of a course, not mid-stream. Including this information in the course syllabus and posting it on the class website would make students, and watchdog parents, more aware of the options available. Too many students resorted to the ingrained method of asking for missed work during bell time on the day they returned to class. I feel that a project of this nature would be more successful if it was implemented by a group of teachers (preferably the whole staff) and if it was initiated at lower grade levels where academic habits are being formed.
Another thing that I would do differently for a project of this nature is to do a better job of quantifying the results. I should have kept a running log of attendance data and the reported reasons for student absences. My informal observations showed me that more students were absent on assessment days or for review sessions preceding assessment days. I get the sense that these students are not coincidentally ill on assessment dates but rather they are working the system to gain extra study time and to ask their peers what is on the assessment. With no attendance penalties, and little motivation, it makes sense to only study exactly what you need to get by and avoid school as much as possible. This strategy can be especially effective when grades are heavily weighted toward assessment results and not daily work. Getting back to the topic of quantifying results, if I had used a counter on the class website, or implemented a learning management system (e.g. Moodle), I could have tracked how many students were actively accessing the posted resources.
What are some lessons that I learned?
One of the things that I learned is that the research in scholarly journals runs several years behind the implementation of the technology being studied. I suspect that this is due to the amount of time required for writing research grants, developing protocols, collecting data, and going through the peer review process. While this is sound scientific practice, it is less than useful for teachers exploring cutting edge interventions.
Another thing that I learned is that it valuable to have a peer group to bounce ideas off of and to have a group to hold you accountable for completing the project objectives in a timely manner. Given the work load of a typical teacher, it is extremely unlikely that one would undertake a project of this nature without an incentive (e.g. course credit) and without the support of peers in a similar situation as well as instructors with experience in providing guidance, resources, and insights.
What is the future of the project?
Even though I have not observed overwhelming changes in student performance, I feel that continuing the project is the right thing to do. All students, not just the absent ones, can benefit from having class content available outside the traditional classroom environment. Continuing the project will enhance my skills in using technologies like podcasting and screencasting and eventually help me build a “library” of content that can be used to create a blended or fully online course. As outlined earlier in the post, I will also look into tracking reasons for absences and the number of times online content is accessed.
If I really want to help students who are skipping or are absent due to disciplinary issues then I need to look beyond providing online content. No amount of content will be useful if the student isn’t motivated to access it. The key to helping these students is to work on making the content more relevant to their lives so they become engaged in the educational process.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Internet Research for TechQuest Project
What I Learned
Performing research for my TechQuest Project was frustrating. I spent way too much time trying to find scholarly articles relating absenteeism to reduced academic achievement/student performance. I did this thinking that I had to justify the premise of my project to the CEP-812 instructors and the academic community in general. What I found is that there is a general lack of research in this area. Most of the research is anecdotal and dates back to the 1980’s and 1990’s. I also spent too much time looking through research proposing solutions to attendance issues. After spending several hours spinning my wheels searching Google Scholar and MSU’s educational databases, I finally realized that while I would like to see attendance improved, that is not really the goal of my project and that improving attendance is largely beyond my control as a classroom teacher. The goal of my project is to make resources available to absent students and students in general. Therefore, I shifted the focus of my research to finding tools for making classroom content available to students. This proved more fruitful. In the “Tips and Tricks” forums in MSU’s EdTech courses I had read about “Jing” (a free screencasting resource). Google searches on “Jing” and “screencasting” yielded results. From there, I moved into exploring other tools for capturing and posting content.
Before discussing the results of my research, I would like to offer a side note on search engines and databases. Straight Google searches on absenteeism yielded the lowest quality hits - generally blog entries or unsubstantiated comments on organizational websites. Google Scholar was fairly helpful for locating information but it had the significant disadvantage of requiring subscriptions to access full articles. Being a MSU student gave me access to MSU Library search engines and subscriptions. Therefore, I could actually retrieve full articles, not just abstracts, for the better quality hits I was getting. This is something I will share with my students as we perform classroom research. I should better inform myself as to what subscriptions the district has and make sure that they are easily accessible to students from school and home.
Results of My Research - Absenteeism and Student Achievement
Research into absenteeism and student achievement/performance was, for the most part, fruitless. Rather than post a bunch of low quality, outdated references, I will provide a few sites that offer a snapshot of the current state of the problem.
The mission of the National Dropout Prevention Center is “to increase high school graduation rates through research and evidence-based solutions”. The NDPC recognizes 15 broad based strategies for increasing graduation rates. These strategies are presented in a 9 minute video. The site offers research and model programs and is useful for districts looking to reduce chronic absenteeism due to truancy. The downside is that the NDPC doesn’t address ways of helping absent students recover which is the goal of my TechQuest.
This Scholastic survey and a search on “absent students” on the National Education Association’s homepage reveals the typical methods teachers use to help absent students catch up. A quick scan of teacher responses shows that methods have not changed with the times and that technological solutions are the exception rather than the rule. I believe that this largely because
1) many teachers are not technologically literate and
2) that technologically literate teachers may be concerned about widening the digital divide. Chronically absent students often have limited access to technology; which is one of the reasons they may be disaffected enough to be truant. In any event, most teachers either set aside worksheets in folders for the missing student or have another student copy down the assignments for the day. The assignments are sent home with a sibling, friend, or parent or set aside until the absent student returns. Technological solutions are usually limited to posting a calendar of assignments online or maintaining a class website that outlines class activities without providing actual content.
Results of My Research - Technologies for Creating Content
The rest of my research has been dedicated to finding technologies that allow teachers to capture content for students, whether absent or present, as my underlying assumption is that all students benefit from multiple exposures to content and alternative delivery methods. A second assumption (one that is harder to rationalize) of my TechQuest is that students have access to technology while absent or when they return to school. It is worth noting that the technologies described here can be viewed both as a way of delivering content to absent students and as a way for absent students to deliver content to the teacher.
My research into technologies was two pronged: finding technologies that cover the range of content teachers might want to create and finding tools that are freeware, open source, and cross platform to make content more accessible to educators and students.
documents
Office suites include basic word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software. Several freeware choices include: Open Office, Google Docs, and Zoho but often lack the high end features of commercial applications like Microsoft Office. Office suites allow saving documents in PDF format; which prevents documents from being altered by the recipient and overcomes translation issues between different computing platforms. PDF readers are necessary for reading the files but also offer ways to annotate the document being viewed. The best overall summary of PDF tools that I found was in Wikipedia. For my TechQuest project, I will be using the iWork suite and Preview applications that came with my district provided MacBook and using PDF files as appropriate.
video
Video can be used in any number of ways to capture teacher or student presentations or demonstrations. Educators will be especially interested in “20+ Ways to Use Flip Cameras in the Classroom” and “Forty-Three Interesting Ways to Use Your Pocket Video Camera in the Classroom”. There are a wide variety of options for capturing video, from built-in cameras, to inexpensive Flip cameras, to high end video cameras. Technical manuals come with cameras or can be downloaded online from camera manufacturer sites. Searching YouTube and TeacherTube yields lots of tutorials on video hardware, shooting techniques, and editing options. Video content can be posted to YouTube, TeacherTube, embedded in websites and online learning systems, or e-mailed to students. I don’t foresee creating video content during the implementation phase of my TechQuest as I currently have limited access to video technology. I will revisit this issue when writing my personal tech plan.
screen capture/screencasting
Screencasting is used to record what is occurring on a computer monitor. WebResourcesDepot’s “10 Free Screen Recording Softwares for Creating Attractive Screencasts” offers screencasting applications for the Mac, PC, and Linux operating systems. It is worth reading the followup posts by users of the various applications to determine which system is right for you. Jing is the only option listed for both Mac and PC operating systems. For my TechQuest, I plan on using the free version of Jing. It is limited to 5 minute recordings so I will need to plan the lecture portions of my instruction differently or record a separate series of vignettes on key points.
podcasting
Podcasting can be used to post audio content as well as images in a format suitable for MP3 players. TopTenReviews summarizes the features and costs of the most popular commercial and freeware podcasting applications. For my TechQuest project, I will be experimenting with Audacity coupled with Lame. My MacBook has a built in microphone and I own a headset with a built in microphone for experimenting with scripted recordings. My classroom is equipped with a sound system which should allow me to capture classroom content live with appropriate computer cabling. A commercial product, GarageBand, came with my district issued laptop and will be explored as time permits.
text to speech conversion
Speech conversion is useful for students who benefit from having content read to them. This is an area that currently lacks applications that are cross platform, free, or flexible enough to accommodate a variety of document types. You can get a free demonstration of this technology at iSpeech but continued use is fee based. Additional resources and information on this evolving technology are available at: thefreecountry.com and Wikipedia. I consider this technology beyond the scope of my TechQuest but will continue to monitor the technology as it develops.
resources specific to my situation
I am including links to these resources because they affect the content that I create for my TechQuest although they will likely be of little use to the general reader. My classroom recently received a AVerVision CP355 document camera and an eno PolyVision whiteboard which includes Easiteach software.
Final Comment
I had an “aha” moment while writing up my research. Essentially what I have been doing is describing how to put together content for an online course; which could be viewed as educating a perpetually absent student. This connection reinforces the value of the work being done by my Special Interest Group (SIG) on Online Learning.
Performing research for my TechQuest Project was frustrating. I spent way too much time trying to find scholarly articles relating absenteeism to reduced academic achievement/student performance. I did this thinking that I had to justify the premise of my project to the CEP-812 instructors and the academic community in general. What I found is that there is a general lack of research in this area. Most of the research is anecdotal and dates back to the 1980’s and 1990’s. I also spent too much time looking through research proposing solutions to attendance issues. After spending several hours spinning my wheels searching Google Scholar and MSU’s educational databases, I finally realized that while I would like to see attendance improved, that is not really the goal of my project and that improving attendance is largely beyond my control as a classroom teacher. The goal of my project is to make resources available to absent students and students in general. Therefore, I shifted the focus of my research to finding tools for making classroom content available to students. This proved more fruitful. In the “Tips and Tricks” forums in MSU’s EdTech courses I had read about “Jing” (a free screencasting resource). Google searches on “Jing” and “screencasting” yielded results. From there, I moved into exploring other tools for capturing and posting content.
Before discussing the results of my research, I would like to offer a side note on search engines and databases. Straight Google searches on absenteeism yielded the lowest quality hits - generally blog entries or unsubstantiated comments on organizational websites. Google Scholar was fairly helpful for locating information but it had the significant disadvantage of requiring subscriptions to access full articles. Being a MSU student gave me access to MSU Library search engines and subscriptions. Therefore, I could actually retrieve full articles, not just abstracts, for the better quality hits I was getting. This is something I will share with my students as we perform classroom research. I should better inform myself as to what subscriptions the district has and make sure that they are easily accessible to students from school and home.
Results of My Research - Absenteeism and Student Achievement
Research into absenteeism and student achievement/performance was, for the most part, fruitless. Rather than post a bunch of low quality, outdated references, I will provide a few sites that offer a snapshot of the current state of the problem.
The mission of the National Dropout Prevention Center is “to increase high school graduation rates through research and evidence-based solutions”. The NDPC recognizes 15 broad based strategies for increasing graduation rates. These strategies are presented in a 9 minute video. The site offers research and model programs and is useful for districts looking to reduce chronic absenteeism due to truancy. The downside is that the NDPC doesn’t address ways of helping absent students recover which is the goal of my TechQuest.
This Scholastic survey and a search on “absent students” on the National Education Association’s homepage reveals the typical methods teachers use to help absent students catch up. A quick scan of teacher responses shows that methods have not changed with the times and that technological solutions are the exception rather than the rule. I believe that this largely because
1) many teachers are not technologically literate and
2) that technologically literate teachers may be concerned about widening the digital divide. Chronically absent students often have limited access to technology; which is one of the reasons they may be disaffected enough to be truant. In any event, most teachers either set aside worksheets in folders for the missing student or have another student copy down the assignments for the day. The assignments are sent home with a sibling, friend, or parent or set aside until the absent student returns. Technological solutions are usually limited to posting a calendar of assignments online or maintaining a class website that outlines class activities without providing actual content.
Results of My Research - Technologies for Creating Content
The rest of my research has been dedicated to finding technologies that allow teachers to capture content for students, whether absent or present, as my underlying assumption is that all students benefit from multiple exposures to content and alternative delivery methods. A second assumption (one that is harder to rationalize) of my TechQuest is that students have access to technology while absent or when they return to school. It is worth noting that the technologies described here can be viewed both as a way of delivering content to absent students and as a way for absent students to deliver content to the teacher.
My research into technologies was two pronged: finding technologies that cover the range of content teachers might want to create and finding tools that are freeware, open source, and cross platform to make content more accessible to educators and students.
documents
Office suites include basic word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software. Several freeware choices include: Open Office, Google Docs, and Zoho but often lack the high end features of commercial applications like Microsoft Office. Office suites allow saving documents in PDF format; which prevents documents from being altered by the recipient and overcomes translation issues between different computing platforms. PDF readers are necessary for reading the files but also offer ways to annotate the document being viewed. The best overall summary of PDF tools that I found was in Wikipedia. For my TechQuest project, I will be using the iWork suite and Preview applications that came with my district provided MacBook and using PDF files as appropriate.
video
Video can be used in any number of ways to capture teacher or student presentations or demonstrations. Educators will be especially interested in “20+ Ways to Use Flip Cameras in the Classroom” and “Forty-Three Interesting Ways to Use Your Pocket Video Camera in the Classroom”. There are a wide variety of options for capturing video, from built-in cameras, to inexpensive Flip cameras, to high end video cameras. Technical manuals come with cameras or can be downloaded online from camera manufacturer sites. Searching YouTube and TeacherTube yields lots of tutorials on video hardware, shooting techniques, and editing options. Video content can be posted to YouTube, TeacherTube, embedded in websites and online learning systems, or e-mailed to students. I don’t foresee creating video content during the implementation phase of my TechQuest as I currently have limited access to video technology. I will revisit this issue when writing my personal tech plan.
screen capture/screencasting
Screencasting is used to record what is occurring on a computer monitor. WebResourcesDepot’s “10 Free Screen Recording Softwares for Creating Attractive Screencasts” offers screencasting applications for the Mac, PC, and Linux operating systems. It is worth reading the followup posts by users of the various applications to determine which system is right for you. Jing is the only option listed for both Mac and PC operating systems. For my TechQuest, I plan on using the free version of Jing. It is limited to 5 minute recordings so I will need to plan the lecture portions of my instruction differently or record a separate series of vignettes on key points.
podcasting
Podcasting can be used to post audio content as well as images in a format suitable for MP3 players. TopTenReviews summarizes the features and costs of the most popular commercial and freeware podcasting applications. For my TechQuest project, I will be experimenting with Audacity coupled with Lame. My MacBook has a built in microphone and I own a headset with a built in microphone for experimenting with scripted recordings. My classroom is equipped with a sound system which should allow me to capture classroom content live with appropriate computer cabling. A commercial product, GarageBand, came with my district issued laptop and will be explored as time permits.
text to speech conversion
Speech conversion is useful for students who benefit from having content read to them. This is an area that currently lacks applications that are cross platform, free, or flexible enough to accommodate a variety of document types. You can get a free demonstration of this technology at iSpeech but continued use is fee based. Additional resources and information on this evolving technology are available at: thefreecountry.com and Wikipedia. I consider this technology beyond the scope of my TechQuest but will continue to monitor the technology as it develops.
resources specific to my situation
I am including links to these resources because they affect the content that I create for my TechQuest although they will likely be of little use to the general reader. My classroom recently received a AVerVision CP355 document camera and an eno PolyVision whiteboard which includes Easiteach software.
Final Comment
I had an “aha” moment while writing up my research. Essentially what I have been doing is describing how to put together content for an online course; which could be viewed as educating a perpetually absent student. This connection reinforces the value of the work being done by my Special Interest Group (SIG) on Online Learning.
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