Online Application Reviews

Google Documents gets the Most Exciting Surprise Award. There is a word processor online, and I never knew it. Being the first application I looked at, I eagerly clicked on the application to see what it had to offer. I guess when you are used to one type of word processing program, I use Microsoft Word, it can be difficult to adjust to the new language and positions of buttons of a different application. I liked the ability when clicking “Create New,” to have the option of creating a document, spreadsheet, presentation, form or drawing. In Microsoft, you would have to open each application separately. The menu choices are pretty standard, and for the types of documents, I and/or my students would prepare, it offers enough choices. This application has a Share feature, which allows others to access and edit your document, a nice feature if you have collaborative writing assignments or would like students to do peer editing of one another’s papers. Google Documents also has publishing capability and has a feature that allows for choices on how you would like your documents viewed (public/private access). Like any application, consistency in use would give a more reliable assessment of whether it is more or less preferred over other more commonly used programs, such as Microsoft's applications.


Fotoflexr was GREAT! The site was easily accessible and user friendly. There are many effects to choose from. I uploaded a photo of myself, which I did not particularly like. I was pleasantly surprised to see how effective, this FREE application was in fixing this picture. I also liked the ability to work with major services, such as Picasa and Facebook, to import your photos for editing. I would recommend this application. It offers a lot of variety for editing your pictures, and most of all, it is FREE.

Entrepreneurial Education - SOCACT Project

This site is dedicated to an action research project that I am working with, SOCACT, that operates in South Bend, IN; Durban, South Africa; and four sites in east Africa (one each in Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania). The SOCACT has a core team of students, other professionals, and community residents who develop interventions in
collaboration with members of marginalized groups. The project director responds to calls for assistance by sending in teams of trainers and scientists. The teams talk with people in the community to understand the problem, decide together on the best approach to bring about change, and work with residents to make it all happen.

In the process, the SOCACT conducts social science research to close the gap between what we teach in the classroom and what happens in real life. Ultimately, this knowledge will be used to change university curricula, social policy, and public perceptions.

My project involves work with the Bernelli Educational Model, a model which describes how cognitive maps develop in children and then serve as guides for their entrepreneurial behavior. I will be working, on a case study of the five skills learned over five stages of growth, and five steps of experiences to reinforce entrepreneurial and leadership potential.

The model creates a framework for producing entrepreneurial leaders who may start businesses or use their skills to grow organizations, educational institutions, social service agencies, corporations, non profits, and government.

ENTREPRENEURIAL EDUCATION - SOCACT PROJECT

A Lesson in Organizing to Learn: Creating a Concept Map using Bubble.us

In my Reading Strategies class, we cover the topic of recognizing patterns of organization and using patterns to organize what is read into concept maps, outlines, summaries and other forms to aid comprehension and retention. Bubble.us is user friendly and is an excellent application to use to create the concept maps required for completion of this lesson on Organizing to Learn.

The Lesson: A process is composed of well defined steps. For instance, a numbered list is one of the ways to organize ideas so that you can understand them. A concept map is another way to organize ideas. A concept map can show sequence or directions. For example, we recently read about The Gentrification Process. The stages of the gentrification process could be represented using a concept map. (See Example)



Students are then given opportunity to create a concept map from an passage. Students are to watch for stages, as they read the passage, and then will create a concept map. The reading the students will use is on Chain Migration.

A Community of Readers: A Thematic Approach To Reading
Roberta Alexander with Jan Jarrell
Chapter 5: Patterns of Organization

Jing - A Visual Lesson: Mapping

In addition to outlining, another way to organize information for learning is to create a visual pattern that diagrams information, such as a map. Students can show how information in a paragraph or in a longer passage can be organized visually so that you immediately understand the relationships between the main idea, the major supporting details, and the minor supporting details. Recognizing main ideas and major and minor supporting details is an essential skill to master. In this exercise, students will practice organizing information by drawing maps, using Microsoft SmartArt.
Text: Alexander, Roberta. 2008 Joining A Community of Readers: A Thematic Approach to Reading, Wadswork Cengage Learning
Mapping_ENGL_031

Google Maps - A Lesson Idea

Webpals - e-change of learning and understanding

Back in the 60’s I use to subscribe to a pen-pal newsletter. You could pick pen pals from within the country and/or around the world. I remember one pen pal who I started writing to in sixth grade, from California, that I still remained in correspondence with on into college. This lesson plan, using Google Maps, brings innovation and a number of wonderful things a class can do in communicating with other students around the world. A twist on Google Maps for Educator's suggestion for use of Google Maps would be Webpals, instead of an exchange, and e-change of learning and understanding, on the web, using email, Skype, a blog, or other mediums of correspondence. The lesson plan would have students develop topics (i.e., environment, culture, life). Students discuss these questions with their Webpals. As a class, students review questions and responses posted by their pen pals and then post them within the description boxes on Google Maps. Google Maps would also be used to pinpoint the locations of students involved in Webpals.

This activity is a class project and would incorporate the use of a map that would be edited and monitored by the students. The teacher would act as facilitator for the project.



View Webpals: e-change of learning and understanding in a larger map

Podcasts

I am just waking up from a podcasting nightmare; it took me several days to figure out how to use it, much less post it. I attempted to create my own. I thought it would be interesting to video myself reading out of an African American Literature book. I used Books on Tape for some of my students with learning disabilities. I see podcast as a way to provide access to literature for a broader audience.

Although I was unable to produce my own podcast, I did pick one at www.podbean.com which is on GRE/SAT vocabulary. I will be taking the GRE in November, and I can use all the help I can get!

Human Performance Improvement

HPI, is as a professional field of enterprise, centered on the efforts and results of people operating in work settings. However, according to Robert A. Reiser and John V. Dempsey, in Chapter 14 of Trends and Issues In Instructional Design and Technology, principles of HPI, have been applied to educational situations (p.135). HPI is about “lowering the behavioral (activity) cost and markedly increasing the valued result or benefit.” (p.136)

I was thinking about a problem that our community college has of students dropping from courses prior to the semester ending. The behavior being, dropping out of class, the cost is loss revenue by the college because of the dropout rates. So if I understand the HPI concept correctly, the college needs to work on solutions to decrease the behavior of dropping classes and work on retention of students, the valued result being, (i.e., retained or increased revenues), as well as other benefits, such as increased student enrollments, and higher graduation rates. Concentration on retaining students would result in an increase in value for all stakeholders, with all benefiting from this achievement.

Another thought I had was about a card I received, as a teacher, of a group of children holding hands together in front of the world, and it said, “children, our most precious natural resource.” HPI adopts as its heart the idea of maximizing “human capital achievements.” This saying on the card I received, years ago, parallels this idea, which I believe has been a core value of education, from conception. To any educator, these words sound familiar, “performance outcomes”, “clear expectations,” “timely and specific feedback, “access to required information, “adequate resources,” etc. (p. 136) Isn’t this what making AYP (Annual Yearly Progress) is all about? I certainly would be interested to see whether the “PC toolkit,” which HPI has is useful in tackling the problem with failing schools. The public schools' systems could use an injection of HPI Botox, “human performance improvement”, using “human performance technology.”

According to the chapter, HPI is applicable in use to any population or subject matter, and is commonly applied to “social improvement settings. (p. 137) of which schools are a natural fit. The idea of closing the gaps in student performance and designing “cost-effective,” and “efficient interventions,” in areas, such as special education, would be phenomenal.

Instructional Technology - "The Borg" of the Future

In Trends and Issues In Instructional Design and Technology, by Robert A. Reiser and John V. Dempsey, we are posed a question, to whether the Internet and Web have had a major influence in Educational programs at grades K-12; Higher education (community colleges, colleges, and universities) and/or Adult education (in businesses, government and/or the military)(p. 29)? The answer appears to be obvious, of course. One need not look further than their daily habits to realize how the evolution of technology has changed our lives. As a professor in a community college, teaching reading and writing, the bulk of my classroom instruction and testing is not out of a book, but presented through the use of technology. I use hardware (i.e., computers, digital cameras, overheads, document projectors) and software applications (i.e., Blackboard, MyCompLab, email, websites, Ebrarys, plagiarism scanners, PowerPoint). I personally have replaced my newspaper, magazines and books with a Nook. I rarely feel the need to read anything in paper print form, anymore. I felt my age, when my daughter started texting, and tweeting and announced that email had gone out of style 3-4 years ago. Until this class, I did not read blogs or create them for that matter. However, all these technologies are out there and advancing and developing at an ever increasing rate. All of them, as quickly as they arrive, are being incorporated into all the above-referenced educational settings. The appetite for technology, within the field of education, appears to never be satisfied, and there is an ever increasing menu of choices (i.e., blogs, Flickr, feeds, Delicious) to feast upon. The better question is, when do you say, enough? Perhaps one day brick and mortar schools will become obsolete and schools of the future will be driven by technology and a technologist’s type of culture. Is this good or bad, you choose? Look at social networks that have evolved such as MySpace and Facebook to get a feel for how education might look like, in the future, with these technologies. All schools will be connected in one big educational network.

Flickr: A Lesson In Values – Dare to Allow Your Class to Share?

A few years ago, I worked with elementary age students on a project that required them to take cameras (disposable) home with them, and take pictures. The lesson was about Values. Students were to spend a week, taking pictures of what was important to them. After bringing the cameras back, at the end of the week, the pictures once developed, were given to the students, who in turn created collages on poster board of their pictures, which they titled themselves. Flickr, could be used to create the same lesson on values. Students can still use disposable cameras. However, technology now allows those pictures to be put on CD or even transferred directly to your media sharing accounts. Students can view other student's pictures and add comments. The activity involves students in their learning. Sharing pictures is an activity that produces non-linguistic representations (imagery), by generating mental pictures. By using non linguistic representations, students have the opportunity to elaborate on his/her knowledge of what they see in the pictures. Students posting the pictures can respond back, and the power of elaboration, students explaining and communicating back and forth, is a good model of how a lesson on values can appear in a concrete form through the use of pictures, in an application like Flickr.

A concern I would have with this type of sharing, is protection against comments that would hurt or harm anyone, based on what they saw. Rules would have to be put in place, to guide responsible, ethical behavior. One of the benefits of an application like Flickr, would be the ability to open up participation of lessons, by connecting with classes around the world.

Thoughts - Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology by R. Reiser and J. Dempsey

Robert A. Reiser and John V. Dempsey, Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology, 2nd Edition, breaks the definitions of Instructional Technology into a time line which spans from the 1920s until now. My thoughts about instructional technology have always revolved around its use, at the time I have been introduced to it. For instance, my earliest memories of technology were in the banking industry, working as a word processor. We had IBM computers and used telex machines and dedicated word processors. Having recently graduated from high school (1976), the term used was computer technology. It wasn’t for instruction; it was a tool of work. We worked in computer labs. Programming languages I learned, in college, 1976-1979, were FORTRAN and ITRAN and we were working towards becoming Computer Scientist. My earlier years in high school, we had media centers, located in the libraries. There wasn’t any cross-over between these media centers and departments which ran the main frame computers which the school districts, I assumed housed in some secret lab somewhere. Students did not have computer labs in school, as we have today.

I am not impressed with inner-profession squabbles over how best to name the field. I can suffice satisfaction that its practical use and applications have broadened over time. I see how terminology has evolved and changed with the introduction of new technologies and their uses. Technology is evolving so fast, naming the field, would seem to be a trivial event.

A few other tidbits of interest to me include the fact that the inclusion of a standard of ethics, “the AECT Code of Ethics (Welliver, 2001),” had not been introduced earlier within the field. Another thing I did not know was that the study of the field of technology went as far back as the early 20’s.

Social Bookmarking - Tart or Tastee "Delicious"

Social book marking is another technology tool that allows for the creation of tags, and gives you the ability to save web pages within a centralized source. There are a few features that I would find useful as both a teacher and a student. To have the accessibility of your bookmarks from any computer, would be helpful to anyone who has experienced the frustration of sitting down at a computer and suddenly realizing when going into favorites that what you are looking for is not there. It has happened to me both as a teacher and a student. I can also see using the feature of bookmarks that allows the sharing of the information that you bookmark. In my Reading Strategies class I teach, I always group students and these groups are responsible for the exchange of information and documents in preparation for presentations. Being able to share resources, it appears to be similar to the wiki in this regard, can be an advantage to students working on collaborative efforts, as they decide on resources that can be used for their presentations. Being able to find your collaborators and others that have bookmarks on the same topics, to be able to rapidly gather pertinent information through others bookmarks are beneficial to teachers preparing lessons as well as students who are preparing their lessons. I am still learning what “Delicious,” does and can probably come up with other apropos things to say about its usefulness to the educational field, but I am still working at it, (i.e., tagging, book marking, networking, subscriptions, searching, navigating). My fear is that once I learn and become familiar with its uses, Delicious will have changed.

Understanding Web 2.0 Technologies

Tim O’Reilly in his article What Is Web 2.0, Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software, speaks about the transition of emerging technologies. He starts this article with commentary on the era of the “dot-com,” making the point that these web applications had their time and have been replaced by new technologies and applications. These new technologies through a process of thought, development, marketing and distribution, emerge and integrate into an every changing competitive system that is driven by the consumer market. O’Reilly uses the term “shakeouts,” defined as “the point at which an ascendant technology is ready to take its place at center stage.”

As the frenzy for space and place in the industry continued, a niche in the market emerged. This niche consisted of companies who could provide web services. Program Models discussed in the article include, RSS, which has emerged as one of the most viable in the area of “highly reliable programming environments for distributed applications,” and Amazon.com web service of which their “REST,” application is most widely used. Google Map’s simplicity of use is presented as an example of how pirating can occur. Their concept was “remixed,” by hackers and their data was redistributed “into new services.” Google Maps also is an example of a free application, which others took inspiration from and created their own web-services. The article outlines several lessons learned that can be derived from these models.

The article presents the “competencies,” of Web 2.0, and breaks them down into what O’Reilly identifies as “seven principles.” These competencies are considered a litmus test whereby other company’s features can be compared. Web 2.0 is considered to be the future of emerging technologies and provide these competencies for our consideration if we want to be cutting edge. It purports to be the future of the internet.

[Wiki Site]

The Blogging Experience- Reflections on Dale & Siegal - My Own Blog Creation

My first thought after creating my blog was, about publishing. I wondered if the blog was considered a published work. Does anyone know? I then thought as I looked at the blog, that the challenge is to get people to subscribe. How do you get others to subscribe to your blog? The RSS Reader was phenomenal. I started searching for websites that I frequent, such as The Chronicle of Higher Education and Education Week. The Google Reader took me right to the feeds and put it into the Google Reader, where I was queried to subscribe. This cut out the step of having to hit subscribe and cut and paste the link. I’m not sure about the Wiki yet. The fact that this is a whole new world for me to explore is exciting and I’m anxious to become proficient at using these tools.

I believe the base of the Cone is where our experience with the Blog and RSS begin. As stated in the reading, “the base of the Cone represents the concrete, direct, firsthand experiences that make up the foundation of our learning.” (p.111) here is where the excitement of discovering the new Blog and RSS tool comes to play. As I described earlier, my eagerness to explore the blogs and feeds I subscribed to correlate with Dale’s description of this phase, where we as participants in the process are engaged in “the exploration of the world,” which Dale feels “helps to build up our wealth of meaningful information and ides.” The Blog, RSS could be part of the Contrived Experiences part of the cone, as we look at the “models,” or examples given on how to make and/or utilize the Blog, RSS. Without a model, we would feel limited in our capacity to move towards a finished product, without the examples, video directions, making the process easy to understand. The Blog, RSS can also lend itself to Demonstration, in that the Google website provided “visualizations, facts, ideas and process” in the form of “guided motions,” to engage us in creating the Blog and RSS. My choice of what lends itself best to each tool; overlap in that what part of the Cone is being used during the experience of working with the Blog, RSS is not concrete. One could be doing a combination of parts of the Cone. For the learning of the concepts involved in creating the Blog, RSS to be rooted, all parts of the Cone are experienced, to various degrees.

The Cone is just one way of thinking, presenting a variety of methods of classification about ways in which we think. At the time the article was written (1969), it probably was considered cutting-edge information about the evolving world of technology in education at its time. Dale, in creating the Cone of Experience reminds me that we do not use one medium of communication in isolation. Rather, we use many instructional materials to help the student conceptualize his or her experience so that they can deal with it effectively. (p.133) As with the Blog, incorporated with the RSS, integrating not only our class blogs, but other feeds showed me, the more variety of applications we use in learning technology, the retention of concepts will be more likely to be sustained.

Siegal in his article Falling Asleep at Your Keyboard, The Case for Computer Imagination (2003) talks about the need for "computer imagination, "to achieve some desired end." At least one "imaginative" educational use of the blog is a single location for easy viewing of blog moods, and the effect the blog has on people, and rating of value added for creating answers to problems that, effect people. At least one "imaginative" educational use of RSS is to be able to check your research sites and blogs for new content, feeding relevant information needed for research topics. The ease of control of the RSS is there; you can limit or broaden sharing of information with your colleagues, educational community or with whomever you wish to share with the built-in public page. The RSS could be an excellent forum for research.

Beyond or Before Technology - Education

I teach a Reading Strategies class, which I have typically taught in a classroom with computers. The textbook, as written, requires students to utilize the computer to traverse the numerous exercises, quizzes, test and examples given in the textbook. The class itself is set up in Blackboard, which is the same classroom setup that we use for this class. I stood in front of my class the first evening, without computers and heard myself say, “I have not conducted this class, without computers before,” “this should be interesting.” The class meets for two hours and 40 minutes. All the materials I brought to the class, instructed students to go to perform various tasks on the computer. I never factored in the possibility that I would not have a classroom with computers. As I read Neil Postman’s article, Of Luddites, Learning, and Life, my Reading Strategies class came to mind. I had no idea I would be reading this article, and it would pose such a question as: “What is the problem to which the new technologies is a solution?” So in my case, did I really have a problem, not having computer technology in my Reading Strategies Class? I guess not, I defaulted back to what I knew to do prior to having computers. I taught the lessons, right from the book, utilizing the overhead I had, the bulletin board (white board) and engaged my students to participate in the learning process. There were a lot of interaction and two hours and 40 minutes later, we were all surprised how quickly the time had gone by. I see how as an educator, we can become dependent on technology as the tool for instruction and learning, and should stay mindful that it is not the sole vehicle of which learning should depend.

I am an advocate of Mastery Learning. Being a special education teacher and having written numerous individual education plans, I am in agreement with the concept of “a learning-focused paradigm of education, ” as outlined In Charles M. Reigeluth and Roberto Joseph’s article Beyond Technology Integration: The Case for Technology Transformation.

Both articles point out that the correlation between purpose of education and the methods of instruction are misaligned with the possibilities that technology offers. I do not want to give in to the cynicism of Postman in prescribing a revisit to the roots of the practical application of knowledge minus technology. However, what a powerful question he asks, again, “What is the problem to which the new technologies are a solution?” What problem does technology integration vs. technology transformation fix? C. Reigeluth and R. Joseph suggest that, “technology might allow us to transform our teaching methods in ways that could result in a quantum improvement in learning.” (p.9) I certainly understand Postman’s point of view, but as our society continues to evolve, I believe we should learn from the past but embrace the new paradigms, with hope that we rectify some of our mistakes, but advance in embracing a technologically integrated future for learners.