EDLD 5364 Week 1 Teaching with Technology Reflectio

In week one of Teaching with Technology I learned about constructivism.  This is what is considered to be a learning and personal experience. Learners bring their prior knowledge, experience and beliefs to a learning situation. Our learning experiences are the basic foundation that we bring to the situation. It enhances and enforces how and what we learn. Constructivism shows how learning is internally controlled. It also discusses that our knowledge is constructed through tools, resources, experiences and contexts.

When we think about using technology in the classroom and how a learner brings their internal experiences then I think this is a great tool for students and why as we go through the century why students are learning earlier and earlier.  If you put a cell phone in a 8 year olds hand for any length of time, they begin to gain knowledge and experience of using technology.  Now send them to school and the teacher has an iPad for them to use, then this new tool already fits in with the learners existing understanding and they can process and move forward without much help.  This is discussed in Learning as a Personal Event A Brief Introduction to Constructivism. Southwest Educational Development Laboratory, (1999).

In the book, How People Learn, Brain, Mind, Experience and School, Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (2000), it provides information about bringing real-world problems into the classroom by connecting student with working scientists. In these partnerships, students collect data used to understand global issues.  Some companies support student researchers and use the internet to interact.  The technology advances we have in our classrooms today is making a huge impact on what we are able to do with not only society but also the knowledge our learners are able to gain from these experiences. 

EDLD 5364 Week 1 Web Conference Reflection

I think participating in the web conferences are very beneficial.  Unfortunately with my schedule of work and kids, I usually have to listen to the recorded version.  It’s still beneficial because there are sometimes things mentioned, that we wouldn’t otherwise know.  I also think it’s a place to collaborate and learn about others.  Because I do the recorded ones, I don’t work with too many other than those in my group, but I have learned about others by listening to the recorded version and it’s good to know that others are thinking the same questions that I am thinking. 

EDLD 5366 Group Website

EDLD 5366 Group Website

This is a link to our group website for EDLD 5366. I did the Empower Yourself page. I did tutorials for using Scratch to create an animation, Animoto to create a video with images/text and Audioboo to create and share music/audio/talk.

It was a fun project and I enjoyed working with a great team.

Reflection from June 29 Web Conference

This conference had a lot of questions and some confusion as to the week 4 and 5 assignments and due dates. The professor made sure everyone understood that all assignments were due for week 5. She mentioned that we could make comments on others videos as they post so they could get feedback. She also stated that points were doubled and that they must be done under week 4 because week 5 doesn't have a discussion place.

She also made sure that we understood the need to place our reflections in our google sites/blogs and that our week assignments must be place in TK20 as well as in the discussion board.

Those that went to the ISTE conference talked about this for awhile and talked about all the workshops they attended and how great they were.

The professor talked to the group about the how the principal program was built into the degree program and that we could test after we finished up our internship program. She said all hours must be finished before we could take the test. The final class is 5398 and that is where we would complete our final plan.

Lastly, she recommended some professional groups such as Texas Computer Education Assocation (tcea.org) and International Society for Technology on Education.(iste.org).

Reflecting on Campus-Supervised Internship Activities

My action research internship hours are moving along, but not quite as quickly as planned.  I have spent time with the special education coordinator formulating a plan and will spend many more hours researching to come up with the items that I feel are going to work the best for the kids.

My goal is to make it is as successful for these students and teachers so they can move forward and make progress each year. If we start out with our pilot group at our high school and can move to middle school and some of our elementaries gradually, hopefully we can be successful in helping our special education students go further each year.

I have completed 18 hours of my 150 so far.  I have 132 hours left, which I will get more than enough in the next 5-6 months and probably a lot more than that.  I am excited to work with the teachers and help them progress not only with technology but with their teaching abilities as well.

I have learned a lot of tips and techniques already in the past few courses that I think will help me make it ever more successful.  Because I don't have a teaching background I have enjoyed working in groups and also collaborating with those in my class. This is especially helpful for understanding things from a teacher's perspective so I can think more like they do and then conclude if something is going to work with them or not.

Working in groups brings out the best of all worlds and helps you figure out each others strengths to utilize each persons maximum potential. It helps to be able to meet the deadlines as well.

I am looking forward to all of the future work I have with this action plan and know that it's going to be successful for myself, the teachers, the students and my school district.

Action Research Plan Reflection

Reflecting on Action Research Plan

I was not very successful in getting this off the ground before the end of the school year. A lot of things happened including losing our Director of Special Education.  With that said, I have total buy in from the Special Education Coordinator and she is ready to move forward as soon as school starts.  My timelines will need to be revised some, but it's totally workable.

I think with the start of the 2013-14 school year, I will have all of the teachers on board and have at least used their technology some.  Over the summer I plan to do the research on the applications I want to be able to test and with the extra time to do that, I can find the apps that are going to work the best.  Before school starts I will meet with the Coordinator and get her approval on the apps I choose.  The great thing will be that hopefully I can work in some time during the in-service before school starts and it will be multi-functional for the teachers.

Action Research Project

In what ways can iPads be utilized by special education teachers and students to increase their learning knowledge on all 4 core subject areas.

Steps to making this happen:

• Survey teachers to see what their knowledge is with using technology devices in the classroom. 
• Research what teachers are actually doing currently to increase learning of special education students.
• Train teachers on downloading and using apps to help special education students be more successful.
• Research studies on the use of iPads for increased learning potential in special education students.
• In what ways can using the iPads increase the students’ potential for learning.
• Evaluate the direct effects that using the iPads have in meeting or exceeding the students’ educational needs.

Activities designed to achieve the objectives

• Research iPad apps for special education students to find apps that are appropriate for learning. 
• We will download apps to use on the iPads in each of the 4 core subject areas. We will also download apps to work with autism, adhd and speech correction.

Resources and research tools needed for data gathering

• We will need 10 iPads(one for each teacher/student to use, applications to download to the iPads and reporting on each of the subject applications to retrieve data usage statistics.

  
Draft timeline for completion or implementation of activities

• August – September 2013 – Download apps and train teachers
• October 2013 – Students begin using iPads for instructional learning
• March-April 2014 – Collect reports and begin analyzing data to determine if students are more successful in learning.

 Assessment instrument(s) to evaluate the effectiveness of the action research study

• We will survey the special education teachers on the effectiveness of using the iPads in the classroom.
• We will look at test results for the students’ to see if achievement is higher.

EDLD 5363 Final Video

The Purpose of Life Multi-Media and Video Technology EDLD 5363 Final Video

We worked in a group of 4 for several weeks to come up with a concept and make a video.  We had to figure out what tools to use and write the script.  We had a great group and we all worked together to come up with the final project.  It was a long process, but team work persevered and here is our our final product.

Link to the video: The Purpose of Life

Here is the cartoon clips we based the project on: