A Final Reflection on Online Learning

As mentioned in my design project tour, the inspiration for my online unit was born out of our 2^nd design experiment; a comparison of Edmodo to Google Classroom.  I have used Edmodo for a couple of units as an online collaborative tool that afforded students opportunities to develop thoughts and contribute to discussions as a reflection of learning.  I found Google Classroom to have many similar features, but still lacked a few that I find useful in Edmodo such as allowing parents to participate as viewers.  However, I do feel that Google Classroom is an evolving tool with a higher likelihood of sustainability and the affordance of many more connected apps to choose from. 

Furthermore, I think each student in this course added a great deal to my knowledge of these and other tools.  It seems that no matter how well I knew any one tool, I found at least one new affordance each week in someone else’s blog post.  Being connected to a community of learners while exploring new knowledge has been an experience like none other.  It makes me wish my graduate program wasn’t nearing the end.  Although, I am sure I will not miss the deadlines and responsibilities of weekly assignments, I will truly miss the shared collaborative experiences of reviewing technology tools and discussing their potential impact on learning both in and out of the classroom.  In the past, I have mostly explored new tech tools on my own, not even realizing what I was missing out on by not being connected to a community of learners in the process.  This course brought to light the power of distributed learning and the potential for cognition that exists in within this learning environment.  While I have had some mixed feelings on the effects of peer ratings on my design experiment grades, I have seen the value in these as they have pushed me to reevaluate my thinking and see where I might have been lacking some development in my thoughts and reflections.  Overall, I am grateful for the opportunities this course has afforded and the online community it has built.  It truly reflects well planned learning experiences for a learning community with a wide range of backgrounds and current roles.  While we all may have varying needs and prior experiences, we were given the freedom to construct knowledge in a meaningful way that was relevant to our current work, no matter the age of our students.

My final learning product demonstrates my ability to design an online blended learning experience for a class of gifted 5^th grade students.  Just as in the design experiment peer reviews, my peers didn’t fall short of helping to challenge me by pointing out areas where my design project could use some adjustments.  Their advice, encouragement, compliments and suggestions made this project one to be proud of as I wouldn’t have seen its shortcomings on my own. 

ETEC 591 Design Project: Conflict and Change through the Civil War

Design Experiment 4: Making Use of Wikis

PBWorks FAQ

This week I decided my exploration in PBworks and subsequent discoveries best warranted a FAQ style blog post. With such a vast resource and a plethora of uses and affordances to look at, I thought breaking it down into an easy-to read version would be best suited for disaggregating the material.

What is a wiki and what are its affordances?

Wiki’s are the extension of the blogging concept as they afford groups of people a chance to build a blog or website together for sharing and organizing information. “Like blogs, wikis support images, hyperlinks and other webpage features” (McHaney, 2011). Wikis can be accessed by anyone and everyone or limited to specific groups or users. Wikis provide a higher level of accountability for accuracy that individual blogs don’t afford. Within this group dynamic, utilizing a checks and balances type system allows all users to contribute, but also ensure the information is reliable. Another affordance is the potential of a wiki to evolve and grow over time, such as Wikipedia, which textbooks and even some online sources struggle to keep up with. One source describes wikis as “primary examples of the cumulative effect of many people making order out of chaos” (McHaney, 2011). In his book, The New Digital Shoreline: How Web 2.0 and Millennials are revolutionizing higher education, McHaney explains that his experiences with Wikipedia make it seem like “an intelligent machine, except in this case, humans provide the computing power.” While humans might be providing this power, it is done so through the process of distributed cognition utilizing a variety of tools and a high level of collaboration among humans.

How does PBWorks compare to other wikis?

While Wikipedia might be the most well-known wiki, PBWorks claims to be the largest provider of hosted business and educational wikis. PBWorks is built on the concept of user-friendliness as incorporated into its name. The PB stands for peanut butter, and insinuates that building a wiki site should be as easy as a peanut butter sandwich (McHaney, 2011).

My only experiences thus far with developing a wiki have been in another graduate course that utilized PBWorks. However, I did find some information on Wikispaces, another wiki hosting site. Wikispaces does seem to have a few classroom LMS features and a built in calendar feature that PBWorks doesn’t seem to offer. However, I found a few benefits to using PBWorks in education including the availability of signing up without an email address which is nice for the elementary level as well as plans to add-on plagiarism tools; a great feature at any educational level. Below are a few more features of PBworks that would be beneficial to specifically elementary and secondary educators.

What are the benefits to using PBWorks in elementary and secondary education?

Teachers can:

• Register students without email addresses

• Automatically generate classroom accounts including access to usernames and passwords

• Develop multiple wikis under the same user account

• Control access to edit and “view” the wiki

• Have access to a free online hosting site that doesn’t include advertisements

• Track changes to the wiki (great for checking on students work and identifying any vandalism)

• Be notified when changes are made

• Download work as a slideshow portfolio or PDF, which can be handy when grading wiki work offline

• Access online (human monitored) support

• Choose from several categories of widgets or “plug ins”

• Afford students with opportunities to make meaningful contributions using distributed learning practices

How it relates to me…

Content Application

Content that comes to mind when thinking of how to utilize a wiki in my classroom for purposes of modification or redefinition of the learning according the SAMR model for technology integration is the extensive work my 6th grade gifted students engage in as part of their study of immigration in the early twentieth century. There is an extraordinary amount of information on the internet relating to this content and I often find myself sifting through it to find appropriate resources for my students. However, at this level, my students are becoming better equipped to identify reliable and accurate online resources that relate to our topic of study, so why not allow them to help contribute. Many of them also come into class with varying levels of understanding, personal experiences, and a multitude of stories that relate to the topic of immigration both past and current. Some instructional activities students might engage in on an Immigration wiki site include:

• Adding online resources (text and video) with accurate information relating to immigration in the early twentieth century

• Creating a page that compares immigration issues of the early twentieth century to those of today

• Developing a class rubric for our “Immigrant’s Journey” scrapbook/website final project

• Students can work in smaller groups to create a page on the class wiki site that describes immigrant experiences from a specific country

• A teacher created page with some potential myths surrounding immigration practices in the early twentieth century, and then students are tasked with proving or disproving the myths

• Posing a question related to a current immigration issue and allow the class to debate the issue (providing evidence on the wiki page). This would make for a great lesson on digital citizenship, and will surely keep the conversation going throughout the year.

• Pair up with immigrants both past and present to engage in a question and answer session type page

Here is a great resource I found for integrating wikis into the classroom.

Using Wikis in the Classroom

Pedagogical Application

These activities align with several constructivist based learning theories including the discovery learning method, social development theory, and even connectivism as presented in our class research this week. The discovery learning method is employed as students seek to discover information on their own and then use their personal discoveries to help shape their discussions on the wiki and even in the development of the class grading rubric for the final product. In addition, the social development theory comes into play as students use these discoveries to play an active role in learning as experts on the content. They use their expertise to respond to other’s questions, compare and contrast issues of immigration from then and now, and in arguing their beliefs on controversial questions discussed on the wiki site. In return, they also become receivers of expertise through some of these same activities. Finally, the theory of connectivism is utilized as students are afforded new experiences using technology that enhance the learning process and availability of resources in a shared, collaborative learning environment.



Resources: 

McHaney, R. (2011). The new digital shoreline: how Web 2.0 and Millennials are revolutionizing higher education. Sterling, Va: Stylus Publishing.

Teachers First - Thinking Teachers Teaching Thinkers. (n.d.). Retrieved June 28, 2017, from http://www.teachersfirst.com/content/wiki/wikitool-PBwiki.php

Design Experiment 3: Flipping the Classroom

Experiences with Khan Academy

Khan Academy is not a new resource to me, although this design experiment uncovered some valuable features and affordances I wasn’t previously aware of.  The basic premise of the tool is simple in that it provides prerecorded videos that provide explanations to both basic and advanced math concepts as well as an array of other topics I haven’t ventured into yet.  I have found this resource to be beneficial in both the tutoring environment and as a differentiation resource for students off abilities; specifically, the gifted and talented students I serve in my current position. 

Why Khan?

There are many advantages to using Khan academy which benefit both teachers and students.  A few of these affordances I was already familiar with while I was surprised by some new discoveries as well. 

Khan academy affords teachers:

• Prerecorded content to allow for easy flipping of classroom content
• Upbeat and motivational explanations
• Videos that mimic one-on-one instruction versus lecture formats (you never see Khan’s face)
• Frees up classroom time for practice, creative experiences and collaboration
• A dashboard with feedback on videos watched by students, attempted problems and resulting successes or failures
• An automated system for staying up to date with individual student progress

Khan academy affords students:

• Differentiated instruction that automatically levels up as students master content
• Video explanations students can access at their own pace by fast forwarding through parts they already understand while also reviewing parts they are struggling with
• Private remediation and the comfort of being able to develop the skill at their own pace without someone standing over them
• Control over various aspects of learning including pace, revisiting weaker skills or moving on to more advanced topics
• Step-by-step explanations as opposed to on-level instruction that assumed previously mastered skills that grade level based teachers often deliver

Criticism to Consider:

Overall, I have been a consumer of and advocate for Khan academy as an online, differentiated learning resource.  I can see the benefits it offers both as a component of a flipped classroom and a supplemental resource.  In my research and further exploration of Khan Academy for this design experiment, I also found criticism I hadn’t considered that in fact contradicts the learning theory, constructionism, that I identify most closely with.  Critics of Khan Academy claim it merely provides a replacement to the classroom drill and kill delivery method.  By this description, Khan Academy would fall in the substitution or possibly augmentation levels of the SAMR model of technology integration (Ruben, n.d.).  Another important aspect I discovered is how well the design of Khan Academy aligned with learning theories associated with behaviorism.  In this approach, students are lectured or shown an explanation (in video form on Khan Academy), given rote practice and rewarded (with badges on Khan Academy) for desired behaviors or right answers based on convergent thinking practices, which ultimately demonstrates mastery of a skill.  I found this to be quite an interesting connection, and really challenged my thinking and stance on this relevant, useful tool.  However, to counter the critics, I noted that Khan describes his site based videos as a way to free up time for “creative activities during the school day, like arts, games, or collectively brainstorming more abstract stuff” (Thompson, 2011). 

He claims this approach, in fact is “actually liberating the classroom” (Thompson, 2011).  From a constructivist standpoint, Khan believes his videos provide the information students need to manipulate the content into constructive learning experiences.  On that note, and a bit of uncertainty, I will leave you with a thought from Salman Khan for you to ponder in determining where you stand on the value of Khan Academy as a resource for learning.

“Isaac Newton would not have invented calculus had he not had textbooks on algebra.” 

-Salman Khan

Ruben R. Puentedura's Weblog. (n.d.). Retrieved June 25, 2017, from http://www.hippasus.com/rrpweblog/

Thompson, C. (2011, July 15). How Khan Academy Is Changing the Rules of Education. Retrieved June 25, 2017, from https://www.wired.com/2011/07/ff_khan/

Design Experiment 2: Learning Management Systems

A look at Learning Management Systems

Experiencing Edmodo

While this week’s tech tool is not new to me, the way we were asked to evaluate it provided a new learning experience for me.  I have used Edmodo before in my classroom, but not necessarily as a course management system.  Edmodo does afford opportunities in online interaction, which I discussed in my post this week as having both the benefit of anonymity and familiarity considering that our young learners are so digitally advanced.  Some might argue that anonymity doesn’t exist when using this tool in the physical classroom, and I might have joined in on this criticism as well if I had not experienced this first hand.  I found that even though students interact online through Edmodo, yet know each other personally due to their physical presence in a classroom together day in and day out, the online nature and environment provides a sense of comfort and allows them to engage in conversation in ways they wouldn’t in the traditional classroom.  I discovered that students who were often quiet in classroom discussion had quite hefty, elaborate opinions when placed in online discussion environments.  They were able to become more vulnerable as they hid behind the computer screen even though their classmates knew them personally.  In a way, Edmodo and other collaborative tools level the playing field a little by forcing the vocal students to listen to the ideas of others and the more timid students to participate in the conversation.  A few more affordances Edmodo offers in accordance with online collaboration is the feature of adding or attaching links, videos, and images to posts as well as a way for the instructor to stay connected and up-to-date with the discussion. 

On another note, in evaluating Edmodo as a tool that offers more than peer interaction opportunities, I decided to compare it to Google Classroom that we explored last week.  None of the classes I teach are exclusively online, and thus my experience with Edmodo doesn’t demonstrate such.  I wanted to compare Edmodo to a similar tool for a better understanding of how it functioned as a course management system.

Edmodo vs. Google Classroom

At first glance, these products seem to fall in the same category serving as avenue for online instruction delivery, interaction with other learners, and a one-stop-shop for instructors to assign and monitor progress.  However, the features that exist within these tools actually separate the purposes they both serve.  I found that Google Classroom as mentioned in another comparison (“Google Classroom,” 2017) enriches the learning experiences of the physical classroom, while Edmodo can deliver a complete course.  After researching the similarities and differences as outlined in the chart below, I still couldn’t decide which I would rather use in my classroom as an online learning management system.  I think selecting media based on the context and intended purpose would need to be evaluate before selecting either one.  However, I do find that Google Classroom seems to be a tad bit more involved and might require more of an “all-in” attitude rather than using it as a tool for one project or assignment.  On the other hand, I have easily integrated Edmodo as  tool for a selected project or lesson without having to make a long term commitment to it.

Schoology vs Edmodo vs Google Classroom - Education LMS Roundup. (2017, February 01). Retrieved June 18, 2017, from https://myelearningworld.com/schoology-vs-edmodo-vs-google-classroom-3-education-lms-comparison/

Google Classroom vs. Edmodo: Key Features and Services Comparison. (2017, April 17). Retrieved June 18, 2017, from https://www.betterbuys.com/lms/google-classroom-vs-edmodo/

Design Experiment 1: The Google Suite

google: redefining the classroom environment

The Google Suite is sweeping through the educational arena both online and in classrooms bringing a level of competition that Apple won’t be able to ignore.  In my professional opinion, there just hasn’t been an educational technology company that can match all that Apple has to offer; until now.  Google as a search engine has monopolized the online search market for a while now, and began to expand its capabilities for online learning with the introduction of Google Docs in 2010.  This was just the beginning for Google’s prominent entrance into the world of apps and extensions that make the Google Suite (and recent introduction of Google classroom) a one-stop shop for mobile learning.  Why mobile learning versus online learning?  The Google Suite of tools are used beyond online learning environments allowing students to take learning outside the classroom walls.  Google Classroom, specifically, allows students access to assignments, gives them the ability to ask questions in real time, and collaborate with peers without having to be physically present.  Along with these features, I found a few unique affordances specific to Google Classroom including the ability to:

1. Create a list of approved research sources organized by student, group, reading level, and more.
2. Share anonymous writing samples with students.
3. Capture the Middle of the Process: An important shift in the teacher student relationship is to get away from evaluator and focus on being a coach to your students. Google Classroom places all of the students work into a folder that is easily accessible from your Google Drive. While students are in the middle of working on their assignment you are able to go in and insert comments and guide them through the process.
4. Assignment Q&A: When an assignment is posted to Google Classroom the students have the ability to comment on it. No longer do students have to wait to be called on to ask a question. This transcends the walls of the classroom to allow students to ask questions outside of class. When the teacher posts the response it is available to all of the students.

On a personal note, I have found the basic tools of the Google Suite (Docs, Slides, Sites, and Sheets) to be useful in the classroom based on three affordances that the traditional Microsoft equivalencies just can’t match.  Google Suite allows my students to:

1. Access assignments and learning experiences from anywhere
2. Work on a collaborative assignment on multiple computers at the same time
3. Communicate with both myself and their peers using comments and chats

In the past two years, I have switched several of our research projects from journal/notecard based to be completed using the tools in the Google Drive.  Along with the affordances mentioned above, I also find that using Google Drive allows me as a teacher to see each students progress at any time, and offer feedback without having to be present.  Google Classroom brings these unique affordances and ease of management to a new level using the features mentioned earlier as well as a few you might not know about.  I found the tips at the link below to be particularly helpful when deciding to set up classes in Google Classroom.

10 Things You Might Not Know About Google Classroom

While evaluating Google Classroom, there are a few disadvantages, which may just be the result of its infancy at this point.  I found that Google Classroom has a few downfalls that might limit the learning environment or create some confusion for learners.  In his 2015 online article, Christopher Papas describes the pros and cons of using Google Classroom.  Although his article is two years old, there are still a few things that may be underdeveloped in utilizing Google Classroom as a learning environment.  These disadvantages include Google’s inability to provide automated quizzes, issues with students becoming owners of content allowing them to make edits, sharing of content between students when they are not designated as owners, and a few other integration issues across other Google products.  While these should not completely rule out all Google has to offer, they are definitely something to consider.  Google Classroom seems to be a good fit for classroom teachers looking to offer students the affordances I found helpful with Google Docs, Slides, Sites, and Sheets while also building in the opportunity to easily share assignments, research and guidance with student groups and classes created within the tool.  Overall, it seems Google Classroom alone (without considering Google Suite) fits more into the Augmentation level of the SAMR technology integration levels as it substitutes existing functions in the classroom, but also provides functional improvements by allowing teachers to more easily manage classes, student groups, and assignments.  When you add in the plethora of apps, or extensions as Google calls them, that are offered in the Google Chrome Web Store, the possibility for higher level technology integration increases. 

After a quick shopping trip to the Google Chrome store, it didn’t take long for me to find a few apps that honestly blew my mind.  I have been using Google Drive for a while and had absolutely no idea that it had so much more to offer.  Here are a few extensions I will be spending some time in before school starts in August.

Coding with Chrome allows students to learn to code both on and offline.  This app extension provides various learning opportunities through multiple coding languages ranging from beginner to advanced.  It also affords students the opportunity to check their code in real time by displaying the visual results of their code or allowing them to upload it to a codable tech device such as a Lego Mindstorms or Sphero robot; both of which I have in my classroom.  This extension will change the way I teach robotics using our new Chromebooks this year as well as give my students the ability to utilize coding practice from home.  The relevance of coding will only continue to become more common place in the future workplace, and therefore necessary to the students we are training to go into this workforce.

Typing Scout is exactly what it sounds like; a typing practice app extension.   While this seems simple, typing is a current skill all students need practice with and this app provides fun, competitive ways to learn and practice this skill.  I honestly found this interesting for my own two boys as I notice that our school’s instruction in typing has not prepared them for the digital learning environments they are inundated with.

EdPuzzle provides teachers with the ability to turn online videos into personalized instructional lessons.  In order to use videos effectively in instruction, it is usually necessary to only show portions of them in the lesson.  EdPuzzle provides the affordance of utilizing only what you need from online videos, voice over the videos you insert and even quiz students during the video.  However, this tool needs some enhancements in the areas of combining multiple videos or showing multiple clips from the same video.  Another important thing to note is the requirement for students to log in versus just providing a link to the teacher edited video lesson.

Project Ignite brings together various electronic and 3D project opportunities into one platform allowing students to select projects to complete using step by step directions as they learn to create and design physical fabrications of digital products.  It offers projects geared around 3D design, 3D printing, programming and other electronics.  Project Ignite brings Tinkercad (a popular program for 3D printing used in Elementary schools) and 123D Circuits together in one online platform for project development.  I plan to do some more tinkering with this tool for sure.

References:

Heick, T. (2016, March 20). 60 Smarter Ways To Use Google Classroom. Retrieved June 11, 2017, from http://www.teachthought.com/the-future-of-learning/technology/60-smarter-ways-to-use-google-classroom/

Keeler, Alice (2014, September 7). 20 Things You Can Do With Google Classroom. (2017, January 01). Retrieved June 11, 2017, from http://alicekeeler.com/2014/09/07/20-things-google-classroom/

Pappas, C. (2017, March 22). Google Classroom Review: Pros And Cons Of Using Google Classroom In eLearning. Retrieved June 11, 2017, from https://elearningindustry.com/google-classroom-review-pros-and-cons-of-using-google-classroom-in-elearning