Thoughts about teaching apps

Some thought resulting from reading through the blogs http://www.stumpteacher.com/2015/11/im-not-resigning.html and http://www.stumpteacher.com/2011/02/i-resign-from-teaching.html by Josh Stumpenhorst 


So, curriculum requirements for BTA3O specify familiarity and functionality with spreadsheets and databases. But, seeing as how BTA3O is an open course, it comes with a mix of student abilities, 24 of them, and in a way an inflexible curriculum.
Traditionally, I used to teach the students from the front of the room, the teachers computer connected to the projector and project the demo work I was doing with explanations, and have the students replicate the work. This can work well if the students follow along, but it doesn't take long before individual help is required, and then the lesson needs to break, and so does the attention of the rest of the students. It becomes a constant battle to keep focus, because if instructions are missed ... or a student misses a day of lessons, it becomes increasingly hard to keep the class going.

So I ran across the http://www.gcflearnfree.org/ site: Tutorials that enable users to teach themselves how to use the software. Instructions in word/diagram form as well as video tutorials are available to meet the various audio / visual learner requirements, and now I can really help students when they have problems. Students can be help individually accountable for lessons and learning, and can even look at or watch at home. A much better but still not perfect scenario.

Are online tutorials better?
So a few days back I had an EdCom visit. -- We are a private school and our board's Education Committee visits us in our rooms once in a while to gauge teaching, classroom atmosphere and just see what is going on. (I have no problem with this.) -- Anyway, I went with a more traditional approach, teaching the students how to use the if statement in a spreadsheet. I thought the lesson went well, and so did the observers. However, the next day when I quizzed the students, it was like the previous day never happened. So I spent more time on it: 3 more days. Next time I think I'll give them homework like going to another tutorial site with a related question on Google forms.

So now it's database time, and this time I quickly introduced the Access program, more like a tour, and switched into online tutorial mode. I am wondering how setting up queries is going to go. . .
And I am still working on encouraging learners to understand that at the end they are accountable for their own learning.

Of Learning and Social Media

I would like to publically thank Dave Mulder from Dordt College, as well as my Social Media classmate for the learning opportunities, past, present and hopefully future. I am going to leave #DCSM4T on one of my tweet deck columns for a while yet. I think that I can continue to grow as a professional through mass of material or connections to material  in the twitter postings that I am privileged to be part of.

Once upon a time, in the not so recent past (some shame here) my impression of social media was generally "fluff". I have now come to see it as useful tools in a professional's learning network, will definite possibilities for classroom implementation. How I am going to make the learning implementation work, I am not sure, but it is definitely something I will keep in mind. I think it will be another set of tools to be used to help improve the learning in my classrooms.

I had previously spoken with my students about social media and permanent footprints, but now have something more positive to put in the puzzle: purposeful creation of positive prints.

I am very impressed with my experiences with tweet deck, what a wonderful way of keeping track of ongoing conversation.

I think over time I would like to involve myself more in the video broadcast area as I think that will become something more needful in my future career. I work in a privately funded school in Ontario and I think parents are beginning to think more about dollars in paying for Christian education than about the value of the Christian education in and of itself. I have a feeling that it's going to be necessary to send the classroom home once in a while, if only in short segments.

I do wonder about copyright stuff in connection with this. If I broadcast portions of an assembly that include production of copyright material (songs, skits etc) how is that handled?

Connectivism as a learning model.

In watching Connectivism by Erin Jonesrebrandt (video clip) I am not sure I am seeing anything really new. Or maybe it was something already talked about in education during my degree years: the ideas of mental hooks, places to put infomation on that related to other information. Also there is the problem of trying to learn isolated facts or skill with no context. It seems that the social media tools are providing the context for the information. But I guess I need to point out that they do offer something a bit unique, the differing perspectives of the authors of that information. 
Perhaps one thing we need to keep in mind is that somehow we are going to have to teach students how to evaluate the credibility of the resources they encounter.
In reading George Siemens, Connectivism:A Learning Theory for the Digital Age, "Knowledge is growing exponentially. In many fields the life of knowledge is now measured in months and years." I wonder about that. What is knowledge? How much of what is posted is really brand new. After all Proverbs mentions that there is nothing new under the Sun. Or is it that it is just so much more convenient to redistribute and access our knowledge. But then again we also have the creation mandate of stewardship and development of the earth, implying that there are things we need to learn about or develop knowledge about. 
I disagree with "The “half-life of knowledge” is the time span from when knowledge is gained to when it becomes obsolete." (Siemens) If the "knowledge" was misinformed then yes -- round vs flat earth for instance, but real knowledge no, it may not be on the surface or forefront anymore, but it will still be part of a foundation or hook. 
I also wonder about the conclusion that "The pipe is more important than the content within the pipe." I think there are exceptions to this, especially in a Christian's life. "True faith is a sure knowledge, whereby I except everything as true which God has revealed in His word . . . " (Heidelberg Catechism). From a secular viewpoint, there is no foundation to knowledge, but from a Christian viewpoint we always have a starting point and context, God's creation and His word. 
Given all that, I think the the more experiences one has, the more viewpoints one examines, or the more connections one gets, the more a person can learn. And our ability to learn is going to depend not only on the connections we have formed, but also on the springboard of the prior learning we have made that help to make sense of the new materials. I also think you might find a pretty strong link between the idea of Connectivism and the idea of Cooperative Learning in classrooms, one on a digital level, the other on a face to face interactive level.
Downe's blog offers, to me, a very different version of Connectivism: 'learning is the formation of connections in a network', "A connection exists between two entities when a change of state in one entity can cause or result in a change of state in the second entity.", "networks 'learn' by automatically adjusting the set of connections between individual neurons or nodes."
We had a series of lectures on Brain based learning a couple of years ago, the upshot which was how connections are formed between concepts. The more frequently the concepts are associated, the better the connection. I wonder how that all fits together.   

Of Digital Footprints and Other

Wow, talk about eye opening and the big difference between knowing about and actually considering and using. Its been an interesting and thought provoking 2 weeks so far in my Social Media course.

Be careful, be wise, be far sighted, consider before you post: are watch thoughts I've encountered a lot in the readings for this past week.
Its tough interacting with an entity that has a longer memory than you do, and may someday misuse or misrepresent your communications. I guess that is also the pessimistic manner of looking at interactions with social media.
I have never spent so much time and effort googling or Pipling or yahooing myself in my life and I am almost starting to feel narcissistic. I didn't find much, and thankfully I can say what I found does not reflect poorly on me or on my Christian walk of life. But the fact that I didn't find much also puts me in the dim bulb category I think. I am beginning to come to terms with the idea that I should have a "Lampstand" presence in all the parts of my life, physical and electronic. One of these days I guess I will "hatch" on twitter, and post a pic of me as well as update the profile information. I admire some of the descriptions I have seen other use and will unabashedly beg, (silently), borrow (without returning) or face it, (outright steal) use some of their ideas.

I like the way that Richardson (Footprints in the Digital Age) puts this "....and communicate, collaborate, and work collectively with these networks.  And we must do this not simply as a unit built around "Information and Web Literacy." Instead, we must make these new ways of collaborating and connecting a transparent part of the way we deliver curriculum from kindergarten to graduation."
I can think of two instances in my experience that relate to this.

1. Can you remember typing class taught through the business department in high school? (Perhaps I am dating myself a bit). We more general students got to use the old electronic IBM typewriters while the business students used the new Xerox (I think) machines that had a 1 line memory. But the point is that typing was taught as a course in an of itself. Today, I teach grade nine students and typing is still a curriculum part, but now it is a skill taught as part of something else. I guess there still needs to be time given to teach the specific skill but now it has a context and a purpose in the school setting.
2. Can anyone remember giving instructions in a lesson that amount to: "go and search for something on the internet"? As an IT guy at my school, I get to see how other instructors use technology resources to help teach the students. One point of contention on my part is that instructors need to make sure that students can both use the technology tool and also have a plan for how to use the tool and more than that, how to use it well. I was surprised by my grade 11 class, who it seems had not before seen the advanced search function on Google (under Options after beginning a Google Search).

Now I teach typing in order to help my students survive in a digital input world (though I hear that windows 10 has some good speech recognition apps built in) and before I gave out the research assignment, I spent time instructing on how to search and use that advanced function. I am starting to think about the day that I might instruct students in how to use blogging or tweets to journal and share their learning with others in the classroom and outside.
 

Reflections on Module 1

• What are three things you learned in this week's work?

The idea of a personal learning network was not foreign to me, but the title certainly was. I have networks with purposes, but they need to grow and in order to make that happen, it looks like I am going to have to learn how to use new to me tools.

 

Sometimes you don't know all the answers because you didn't know you had the question in the first place. Its good to know what is out there and good to expand horizons.

 

Reflecting on how we learn to use new tools should give more insight into how to support the other learners we are in contact with.

 

• What are two things that were confirmed/affirmed for you?

Networking is important. It was good to meet with local Ontario TICers on the past Friday. Its good to share concerns and solutions.

• What is one question that remains for you after week 1?

Looks like it will be answered in Module 2. How to contain the out there in being out there in social media and how to make sure my out there is definitively and recognizably Christian.

Shooting me

Well, completed my intro video for my course and will shortly post it. I always find this a bit of a humbling experience: I sound different, and I look different than what I see in my mind's eye. I also have a few mannerisms that I was not aware of, and maybe a few bad habits. Nice to know a video editing program can crop some of them out.
I think I made some progress since I put together some tutorials: no big uhms or ahs this time. Maybe using tools will help us become better communicators as we see and hear what we really sound and look like.
Wonder what my students think sometimes though . . .

Can "unconnected" teachers still teach?

Can we prepare students to be modern learners if we are not connected, computer-literate learners ourselves?

(Transforming Education : Will Richardson at (co)lab summit 2013, accessed Oct 28, 2015 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TZfWqao6uA)

According to Will, no. Not if we think of people and computer resources as new and different sources of information.
But I wonder: if one looks at things on a larger scale, are we still not accessing and evaluating and using information just like we always did. While it may be easier to find resources, we still need to interact with them on a personal level in order to make use of them. I wonder if sometimes the sheer volume of information sources can prevent us from really using good resources well the same as too much noise in a classroom can prevent concentration necessary for learning.
Or are we teaching new tune out skills?
Will is right, connections and computing are not going to go away. But I think is going to be another tool, not the only tool, nor do I think it should be.


And I wonder too sometimes how much of this might be selfish, I will get my message out, and it doesn't matter if someone is really listening. And I can interact on my own time with a lot of the social media, no sacrifice necessary on my part.

I am really glad that Will does not discount face to face personal interactions. I think humans will loose a lot if all of our interactions become machine interfaced, even if they are real time communications.

Welcome to my blog about leaning about using social media as instructional tools for a high school educational environment.

Today was introduction and orientation day. Looks like the course will be interesting.