Fun With Technology Integration in Schools

Can I use the Windows XP operating system disk at home, please?

As long as you work for FCPS you are allowed to install one copy of Windows XP and a copy of Microsoft office professional (complete version) on your home computer.

I bought a music cd from Best Buy. Can I maker 10 copies of it for my friend?

I guess when we analyze the acronym “CAN I?” the last letter is IMPACT – which is what will be the impact that my use has on the market value of the item- in other words if I make ten copies of a music CD for my friend how is it going to impact the sales of that particular CD in the market? Ten less CDs will be bought in the market which is not fair on the part of the person who created the CD.

Summary: The speakers Kevin Hodgson and Bonnie Kaplan talked about the ways to integrate technology in the form of digital story telling.  They talked about what it means to create a digital story and what techniques one need to adapt into a collaborative story telling project.  They sent out word saying that they are interested in developing a digital ABC book project and asked if anyone was interested.  They had a good response from several people around the world.  Everyone was given a couple of random letters which were linked to their real life experiences and wrote a little paragraph describing the letter in a digital form which will not extend more than two minutes.  They received different themes with different accents representing different hometown settings. After all the stories were dropped in the digital box they had to spend a lot of time in sorting out the themes and figuring out different ways to connect these stories to blend together as one collaborative story.  They made the whole thing into four little stories and one big story.  They embedded videos into each story to support the theme.   The speakers used blog as their launching space for sharing all these short stories.  They also used Cycle Jump Cut as their editing tool.  This part of the project had its own limitations and frustrations.  Since it was an online project they had no chance of meeting the participants personally.  They tried to connect with them and kept in touch through the blog posts and video conferencing to understand the ideas and the opinions of their participants.Everyone’s goal here was to complete the project successfully and informatively.  The speakers concluded their speech by saying that the technology is the new frontier of the modern world.  It is the essence of the 21^st century which is ever changing. 

My Ideas:  Doing this kind of a project takes up a lot of time.  I am not sure how feasible this is to do between the schools across the world.  It needs a lot of organization and co ordination on the organizers side.  However, if this is a class project or even a grade level project we can overcome several hurdles mentioned by the speakers.  It can even be extended between two classes from different schools.  The teacher needs to know how much work is involved in this and be mentally ready to face the challenge.

Brian Crosby is a 5^th grade teacher who talks about the hurdles and obstacles he faces everyday in his classroom.  He says times have changed in education and everyone is expected to use the modern technology tools to enhance teaching.  Then he talks about the realities in life.  Not many students have access to technology in their homes. 

Available technology including laptops (at school) need to be used in new engaging ways rather than using for math reinforcement, for internet browsing and online typing programs.  The speaker talks about the issues he faces often in his classroom and the technology he uses to overcome these obstacles. 

 Online Journal Postings on blogs: Motivating our students to write is one of the biggest challenges we face as teachers all the time. Using blogs can help solve this problem.  The subject of authentic audience motivates most of the students. 
Reading and writing comments back and forth will help improve their writing skills. The comments help them question their thinking, and help them sharpen their thought process.

 Digital Videos:  After teaching the required content we should encourage our students’ higher level thinking (blooms taxonomy levels) through digital photo stories. Creating digital videos involves creativity.  We as teachers need to help them think about sets, dialogues, and how to explore new techniques to make appropriate props.  We also should guide them in deciding how to put their ideas together and convey them clearly to everyone.   Publishing their work online will help them improve their work by getting more ideas, suggestions and criticisms from others.  He gives a couple of examples of his foreign language student and about a student with attention deficit who got motivated by digital photo story project.At the end the speakers asks whether we have crossed any obstacles in our schools by using web 2.0 tools. 

My Observations:  I liked the way Brian Crosby has analyzed different scenarios’ and tried to find different tools to motivate his students to get them to do what he wanted them to.  One of my third grade students last year was diagnosed with leukemia and was asked to stay at home for the whole school year.  We used Skype to connect his classroom to his home computer.  This helped him to listen to his teacher and participate remotely along with his classmates.  Yes, web 2.0 tools are great but the teacher has to spend a lot of time learning and exploring these tools before using them in the class.  How many teachers have that kind time and interest? 

The speaker, Sylvia Tolisano who teachers Spanish talks about the new program her school decided to experiment in promoting global awareness.  This according to her is not only playing with the boundaries but daring to cross them.  Stretching the traditional boundaries of the schools to encourage the teachers and students to become critical thinkers is one of the goals of this project.  The students then will have the ability to communicate across the borders and cultures to experience the wide spectrum of cultural diversity of the world.  She says that exposing the students to the inter connectedness to other counties is imperative and not optional.  So her school decided to create, grow and embrace the global studies curriculum by committing themselves to a non traditional approach.            Her school sent a couple of teachers to the country they were studying using the grant money they obtained to get the first hand information to share with their students. The experience transformed their traditional classrooms through blogs, pod casts, photos and videos blurring the boundaries of space, time and closed walls.  Opening these dimensions created the opportunities for the teachers and students of being co learners.           By creating and feeling a direct connection to the content studied the teachers became connecters and learners.  The students became guides and co learners creating a unique collaborative learning environment.  In this example the speaker talks about the travel experience the lower grades had and how the upper grades physically and mentally were challenged during this incredible journey of new technology by trial and errors.            Stories bring the language we are teaching alive. Listening to a story connects the listener to someone, something or somewhere far way.  It’s that kind of a connection we as teachers are looking for our students.            While teaching a language the teacher also needs to expand the horizons to its different cultures.  We have to provide the opportunity for our students to see beyond the walls of their classroom, school and town and have the global awareness.            The speaker talks about the global studies program at her school.  In this program, she says that the students must become the citizens of each country they study.  They introduce a new country each year graduating with working knowledge of seven countries after the 6^th grade.  There are three components in the global studies program.      Travel: The school sends two faculty members to the focused country to get data and visual aids of the country.    Connection: allowing the students to establish connections with the traveling faculty by taking a virtual journey to the designated country with their school mascot using the new technology tools and special guests.    Interdisciplinary instruction: interdisciplinary units are designed to teach conceptual and procedural information such as perception, parts to hold, sequencing or diversity.  The intent is to bring all the subjects together under one concept to show the connectedness among the disciplines. To have this kind of connection with the world the students need to establish:    Link: in the form or books, stories, life experiences, from other people, pictures etc    Engage & Educate: by creating a picture or writing their thoughts     Active Learning:  individual or group working    Reflect: Student discussion or sharing    Now and then or next: Establish the connection to the future global goal          They decided to follow the rules of Amazing Race – game show to get the students excited.  So they divided the students in groups to explore the designated country by reading blogs, looking for pictures, knowing the culture, learning the geography etc.  The teachers created some exciting stops and challenges during the journey to make learning more fun. 

The speaker, Liz Kolb talked about “Cell Phones as Classroom Learning Tools”:  She said that a very high percentage of middle and high school students own cell phones.  Instead of considering these as a distraction device, she wants us; the teachers to turn them into a knowledge construction tool.   The speaker shared several project ideas to connect cell phones and classroom curricula, and the future of cell phones in learning situations.  She used Web 2.0 resources to create mobile learning opportunities for the students.  A few of her projects are:

Audio Recording (using Gabcast.com), free conferencing (using freeconferencepro.com), creating private voice mail box (teachers setting up a private voice mail box to share with the parents and students), mobile note taking (the students can take notes on the go during their field trips), cell podcasting (the recorded material can be converted into mp3s and can be podcasted), radio feeder (the radio programs can be downloaded to revisit - ESOL kids), photo blogging, (once the students create a photo blog, they can take pictures from their cell phones and post them instantly on their blogs to share with their friends), slide shows (slide shows can be created from using a cell which can be shared with classmates), video taping (the students can video tape their favorite presentations and use tools like Youtube, Ispot and jumpcut to edit and post on the web to share with others), data collection (in science they can take pictures of rocks and write about it on the go and compile their data after retuning to the class room), audio interviews (the students can tape their interviews and take pictures of the person they are interviewing and use for their presentations), digital story telling (students can take pictures and use bubbleshare.com and tape the audio and make into digital photo story), ring tone reminders (different ring tones related to the topic they are studying in the class can be created to remind a test etc), and using GPS (navigation system on the cell phones can be used during geography classes and in drivers Ed).        

Comments:  The speaker sounded very excited and genuine while sharing her great ideas about using cell phones in the class rooms.  In a perfect world all these projects sound great.  I agree that the cell phones can be used in many ways to enhance teaching in the classrooms.  However, once we let the students use them in the classes there is a great chance of losing control over the class.  It becomes very difficult to monitor.  Our students being digital natives know more about the cell phones than the teachers, which puts the teachers in the gray area. Besides, each phone has its own set of features which makes the teacher’s life more difficult.  What if there is no service at the time and place where the students need to use their cell phones?  Most of the web 2.0 tools she talked about require accounts to be created by the users.  In this case the students are required to give their personal information like their names, cell numbers and email addresses which is bait for the internet predators.  We still can use some of her ideas like audio recording and the use Audacity to edit and share in the class. 

Rubric - for technology project Subject: Social Studies

Grade: 5^th

Project Groups:  the class will be divided into groups of FOUR students.

By the end of this project the students will: have a good understanding about the Indian culture, geography of
India, climatic conditions, natural boundaries, customs and the life style.

During the project the students will: read books about
India, do online research about the facts, collect relevant pictures, interview an Indian family if they know someone and make a power point presentation to share with their classmates.

Materials:  Digital cameras will be provided to each group to take pictures of Indian artifacts around the school and outside the school.

Objective: Exploring a variety of cultures found in the
United States to have better understanding to appreciate our multicultural and diverse communities.  Study of world cultures will enable our students to identify the similarities and differences among the various cultures.

Guide Lines for the project: 

      The power point presentation should have at least 8-16 slides

      Inspiration will be used to mind map the initial planning of the project

      Relevancy

      visual aids

      accurate information

      @ least one hyperlink for further research

Rubric - for technology project 

hw3_rubric_revised.doc

“Its not often we start from scratch to build background knowledge about a topic.  But when we do, sharing information and encouraging student questions is the simplest route to teaching content” – by Stepanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis.  This sounds very simple, yet it is a very powerful tool to be used in the classroom.Making connections is the best way to build the background knowledge.  It can be the connection from new to the already known knowledge and experiences or it can be from known to the new.  

Reading beyond the bold print (nonfiction), characters (fiction) and white space (poetry) is very important.  We as teachers need to help our young readers to make connections while using different literary elements.Different strategies need to be used while teaching different contents.  Technology to use during this process: 

• SMART Board – for labeling the thoughts, ideas and questions.
• Word processing – to write a story or experience, to express ideas·       
• On line research – to connect text to the world events·       
• Pixie – to illustrate what is written·       
• SMART Board – again to share with the class and add to ones thoughts 

Connections can be made in two different forms:

1.  Content Based Connection: (Knowledge – who, what, define, relate)·   

• • Between snippets and Real Life    
  •  Text-to-Self     
  • Text-to-Text 
  • Text-to-World

2.  Connections to the nature of the text and the literary features: (Comprehension – compare, contrast, demonstrate, interpret, explain, show, classify – how, what, which etc)· 

• • Genre (variety, kind) – familiarity with the special characteristics and conventions of each genre·       
  • Format – differences among the format of the books (picture books, novels, nonfictions etc)·       
  •  Form - distinguishing among essays, manuals, articles, editorials etc·       
  • Author -  understanding each author’s style, issues, topics and themes.·       
  • Text Structure -  Understanding the differences between narratives and expository.·       
  • Cue words -  Learning to identify cue words that alert the readers about what to come. (Ex: ‘but’ – suggests a coming change, ‘in other words’ – means a definition is being followed)·       
  • Writing Style -  Recognizing, understanding and identifying different writing styles of the authors to make connections between different works of the authors.
  • Literary Features - The students make Literacy Connections when they look for themes and settings.  They also identify and discuss the problems while they read.

Building background knowledge by making connections is a collaborative learning process between the teacher and the student/students.  It’s the responsibility of a teacher to lead the student’s thought process from thinking in a tangential way to a more sophisticated way.  Active learning time (in the LEARN model) will enable the teacher to have individual conference time with each student to initiate and help explore the advanced thinking skills. This can happen during the differentiated learning process.  Connection making process is followed by descriptive, relational and casual questioning.  Questioning is yet another new world to explore!!!  

Instructional Technology is a very powerful tool which enhances, and visualizes teaching to its fullest extent.  Unlike yester years, our children these days are exposed to media, digital images, video games and computers from day one.  When a child starts school he/she might not know how to write ones own name but can click on the keyboard and go to game sites or to operate a digital camera.  It’s the responsibility of the teachers to be well prepared to face the technical world of their students. Teachers need to learn their students’ terminology to communicate efficiently with them.  In other words the teachers have to think technologically and integrate technology in their daily classroom instruction.   

Examples: 

• Visual Learning: Digital images accommodate different learning abilities, preferences and styles of each student. It also helps to ignite their creative thinking. Photo Story, Image blender etc.
• Collaborative Learning Environment: Interactive white Boards,  online research and sharing information in small or in bigger groups
•  Co operative Learning : encouraging social skills, accepting diversity and promoting academic achievement  -  various software programs and online resources     
• Distance Learning: Online courses to accommodate various learning styles and  needs of individual students   
• Diversity in Classrooms:  Multi cultural student population – demands prior knowledge of each individual’s culture, ethnicity, race which impacts their learning styles.  Technology comes handy here.     
• Bringing the world together: Exchanging information with a group of students from another country via email or thorugh instant messaging.  wikis and blogs will help them get first hand information about other countries   
• Global Communication: Wikis,  Blogs, webcam, and voice over IP keep the widely spread families together and make the international students feel “at home” while the students are away from their home country.        
• Virtual classrooms: Will enable students with severe disabilities or health conditions to experience a classroom and learn almost like a regular student   
• Pod casting and web casting:  These tools help students with  special needs  

Welcome to my page of Technology integration in K-12 curriculum.  I will keep adding my thoughts, views and ideas to share with everyone.  (Posted on: 09-25-07)