Worked Example Screencast

This project was an adventure for me to create.  I wanted to try Captivate, mainly because I've heard so many good things about it and was available through my district.  I hope you enjoy it!

EDTECH513 Learnings

513 Reflection

It would be very difficult to narrow down three things I've learned in this course, because I feel I've learned so much.  EDTECH501 and this course have been my favorite courses so far in the MET program.  I love to create usable instructional materials, and this course has provided me with the opportunity to take what I have learned back to my students.  My students are the reason I'm enrolled in this program, so any time I can bring back what I've learned for their benefit, it an awesome thing. 

I'm going to lump my learning into three categories: tools, principles, and course design.  The digital tools I was able to learn this semester were tools that I can use directly in my classroom.  Creating on PowerPoint, recording on Audacity, uploading to YouTube, discovering podcasting, and struggling through Adobe Captivate are all lessons I can say I've had fun with and had to overcome.  I will be adding these tools to my educational technology tool belt for years to come. The multimedia, contiguity, modality, redundancy, coherence, and personalization principles have transformed how I put together a digital project.  I especially feel these principles are important because they are backed up by solid research. Not a presentation goes by without my critical eye.  I've been able to take three unit presentations to new heights by eliminating extraneous text, and adding graphics that truly support learning.  In the future, I would like to add narration to my presentations as well.  Finally, I really felt this course was laid out well.  I'm working on my k-12 online certificate and feel that the way this course was delivered was seamless.  Every topic had great supporting educational materials, the text was easy to read and follow, and the course itself was easily navigated.  I can thank Dr. Dianne for that! 

Module Five

Course Reflection

EDTECH 504 was a very rewarding experience for me.  Not only did I learn about theories of learning and how educational technology plays into those theories, I especially learned how humanism and technology can be used in the classroom to complement each other.  Each and every day,  we think about and discuss with peers why students do what they do. When it comes right down to it, people do what they do because they are humans, and the relationships we have with others determines how we are going to behave.  If our relationships are positive, we are most likely going to be positive.  The same is true about negativity.  Our kids come from all different places, some from wonderfully supportive places and others from places I don't even like to think about, but one this is true, those kids come to us with the expectation that we are going to provide the best education possible.  Technology, when implemented correctly with thought, research, and proper planning can help all of our students get to a place where they are on equal ground. 

My teaching practice has only been strengthened with respect to the fact that students need to feel a certain way before they can learn to their fullest potential.  I say fullest potential because I feel that is crucial to the humanistic learning theory.  I've been a more compassionate teacher since the beginning of this course, and have been working very hard to address how technology plays into that.  For example, my students and I enjoy using technology based quiz games for review.  I realize now how important those games are, not just because they support content, but because they support student need of esteem and belonging.  Many other technology based activities can fulfill the hierarchy of needs as well such as immediate feedback on digital assignments or working collaboratively on projects to name a few. I plan to evaluate every use of technology in my classroom on a humanistic level.  It's crucial that we evaluate what we are doing because our students are counting on us. 

There are three assignments in which I felt had the biggest impact on me.  First, reading the text.  While I don't feel the text was quite at my level (it was way, did I say way, over my head at times), I also felt challenged.  After reading the text, we needed to discuss our interpretation of the readings which I found very difficult.  Next, I really enjoyed writing the annotated bibliography and learning theories paper.  Reading and researching is beginning to excite me.  I had to write an annotated bibliography as well for EDTECH501, which was the first time I've done that since my undergraduate degree fifteen years ago.  It was a struggle then, but this time I had the confidence I needed to write it well.  I thoroughly enjoyed working with my peers to edit our rough drafts.  While the feedback that I received wasn't very detailed, I edited a paper with a great deal of detail.  It was awesome to work collaboratively on a Google doc with her, we were literally working simultaneously.  She typed her thoughts, and I fixed the grammar, looked for any obvious APA mistakes, and gave suggestions when she needed.  This collaborative effort was good for both of us. 

All in all, this course (actually this semester), has been extremely rewarding for me. 



Digital Story

Triumph over Tragedy

For my digital story, I decided to focus on a tragic event that happened in my life, and how I finally overcame.  This tragic event was the death of my father to drunk driving.  I tried not to make the story too overwhelmingly emotional, because I wanted to portray my story as one of triumph as opposed to one of tragedy. I decided not to use music simply because I couldn't find any that I liked. I guess I'm picky that way.  I have to admit, I cried many tears putting this together! 

My biggest struggles were the narrations and the timings.  I also live in the country and uploading the video to YouTube took quite a while.  I hope you enjoy my digital story.

Module Four Reflection

Ed. Tech as a Change Agent?

Aside from learning about my own stamina and patience when writing this week, I realized how collaborating with peers caused change in their thinking. 

As our district moved from the third into the fourth marking period and with no grades due until the end of the school year,  a couple of our senior English teachers were open to reviewing the draft to my paper.  I always feel bad asking my peers to review papers for me mainly because at my district we are all considerably strapped for time, and I don't want to take away those few precious moments we have during the day to refuel.  I know, as well as anybody else, that writing isn't my strongest point, but I really have been working very hard to get back into the swing of things in that area of academics. 

One of our senior teachers is particularly good at writing, in fact he has lead our eleventh graders to outperform even the most affluent school districts in the PSSA (Pennsylvania System of School Assessment). I am also his daughter's teacher.   After reviewing my paper, he not only said my paper wasn't bad, (this is good, really good), we had a conversation about how his mind has been changed as a result of what I've been doing with technology at our district.  He was moved by some of the things I said in my paper about humanism and technology. He was also grateful that I had  written about a topic that he thinks about when the words "technology in education" are mentioned.  It's really important to me that the person, the human being, does not get lost when implementing technology.  We sometimes forget that even though many of use have the title: "teacher" that it simply means someone who delivers information to students.  "Teacher" means so much more than that, and we should never forget the impact that we can have on students by our relationships with them.  Students should not sit in front of a computer without social interaction with peers and teachers; I believe that is fundamentally wrong.  Educating a child is not just the transfer of knowledge it's teaching them right from wrong, social skills, how to get along, how to disagree respectfully, how to respect themselves and those around them, and a thousand other things too numerous to describe.  Technology should be used as a tool to facilitate learning, and should be used with much thought and research.  The students should control the technology, not the technology controlling the student.

Very often though, I feel as if many of our older staff members are resistant to using technology simply because they don't understand how learning can be affected by its use.  They don't see the positive impact it can have, not only in learning, but on motivation and engagement to name a few.  They also don't see the value in how technology can literally make their lives easier; instead, they continue to do things the same way as was done when they first started teaching.  If they used technology to make the everyday tasks simpler, it would leave them time to do the important things, like create meaningful lessons utilizing technology. 



Chapter 9: Applying the Personalization Principle

In responding to my instructional design team, one of which is an English major and a stickler for proper English and grammar, I would use the personalization principle itself to win him/her over. Just because you are personalizing instruction, doesn't mean proper English is not being used. It's vital to understand your audience before you decide how personalized you want to get, and since one member of the design team is a "stickler", it would be important not to get too personalized.  However, when working with less experienced learners, such as teens or younger kids, you may want to consider personalizing even further. Clark and Mayer, (2008) explain that there are several reasons why a personalized approach is more effective than a formal tone, in particular "according to cognitive theories of learning, humans strive to make sense of presented material by applying appropriate cognitive processes" (pg. 184).  When delivering instruction it is important to get the brain ready for learning, and it appears that a personalized approach causes the learner to think more deeply about the information being presented.  In addition, students learn better when the speakers voice is human and polite.  I'm sure even the English teacher would agree that kindness wins out over directness, especially with inexperienced learners.  Finally, using an online coach, better known as a pedagogical agent, "produced up to 48% more solutions in transfer tests".  (Clark and Mayer, 2008, p. 194).  Imagine your students performing up to 48% better just by incorporating an on-screen coach.  Of course, the coach will need to use personalization, talk in a human voice, and use polite speech.  All-in-all, we must consider the fact that human are social beings, and how we communicate with them is crucial to understanding. 

Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R. E. (2008). E-learning and the science of instruction, 2nd edition. Pfeiffer: San Francisco, CA