I cannot believe that I am writing this blog – I find it difficult to imagine that I will no longer be meeting with my cohort and the faculty at Touro! This year I have learnt a lot, met some incredible people and have grown as a teacher. It has been wonderful to experience seeing my students’ attitudes somewhat change toward learning and see their enthusiasm when using tech tools and music in the classroom. They so much enjoyed working on their karaoke projects together and were really engaged in what they were doing. This enthusiasm has prompted me to want to teach more using the flipped classroom method and continue to incorporate music and tech tools into my lessons.
As we come to the end here, I’m hoping in a way that it just a beginning of something new. I would like to rewrite a lot of my courses so that the methodologies and tech tools that we have been taught and shown can be put to use in my classroom – it is just a question of having time to do this! I need to take a breath now and enjoy the rest of the summer as I know before long that we will be starting the new school year. Since my invitation to lead the Ed Tech Committee, I’ve also been thinking of ideas to get other faculty more involved in using tech tools in their classroom. I think they need to see some kind of short video containing information about apps that are out there, so they could say choose two or three and then we could provide training for them. Also I’m thinking of making screencasts of how to use those apps and posting them on the faculty page of our schoology website for teachers to use. I will miss my cohort and the camaraderie that has grown amongst us, but I’m hoping we can still get together once in a while and share stories on how our classes have improved through the ideas that we have gained here. Thanks Jane for all your help and input in this wonderful class!
1 Comment
The values that Touro University were founded upon can clearly be related to my personal experiences of my Masters course and through my capstone project. The type of learning that we have experienced has been very personalized in that we have had some individual instruction from lecturers, we have been able to work on our course during times that are convenient to ourselves. Our cohort has been studying the same course yet our capstone projects are all very different which show that students’ individual needs have been addressed and respected. We have been given lots of encouragement as part of this course, which I believe has given us as students the ability and motivation to develop our passions within the teaching world, which will last long beyond when this course ends. We have enjoyed working together collaboratively as a cohort and have engaged in many different projects and smaller assignments in pairs or small groups. There seems to be a real sense of community within our cohort, and this can be shown in the ways that individuals reach out and work with others, when at times they don’t necessarily need to. We have really developed friendships with each other that I hope continue.
The capstone projects that we have produced clearly will help future students. This course has shown as that personalized approach to learning helps students learn better. To that end, we as educators, have begun designing these kinds of activities, so that engagement and motivation in the classroom will grow. When introducing a more flipped-classroom type of learning at first my students were unsure, but then they really started to thrive within that environment. When listening to music and trying to learn new vocabulary, they were really focused as they endeavored to put together their Adobe Spark presentation of 15 new words for the class and a karaoke video. In their surveys they confirmed their love of the use of tech tools and music in the classroom and how they believed it enhanced their learning. They felt that it made their lessons more fun and a better experience for them in their day to day school lives. Once I have finished this course I will continue to develop more resources for the use of music in the classroom and will use tech tools daily together with google forms for short quizzes. I will be encouraging members of my Department to use these tools and will show them how I have used them. Already I have given a workshop on the app Quizizz and its uses to fellow colleagues at school. I have been invited to chair the Ed Tech Committee which is involved in training teachers in the using of technology in the classroom and the student technology needs as a whole. At this point in time I am not totally aware of what this entails, but am looking forward to a new challenge, where I can put some of the tools and teaching methodologies that we learned in this class to good use. Blog: In the Reflect section of I-care 3 you were asked to begin reflecting on your TPACK journey by looking at the TPACK site. For this week’s blog, please draft your TPACK reflection which will go on the ABOUT THE AUTHOR page of your capstone website. This should describe your thinking as you developed your capstone and your journey getting to where you are now. Teachers across the globe are endeavoring to be more innovative, since technology now is much more at the forefront of our lives than ever before. Throughout this last year TPACK’s framework has been instrumental in guiding me to become a better educator. This learning model was developed in 2006 by Punya Mishra and helps define the knowledge that we as teachers need to teach technology in our classrooms. It is important that we use it as a vehicle for teaching, and don’t just use technology for the sake of it. This framework shows us how technology changes not just how we teach, but also what we teach. Technical knowledge, content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge all are dependent on one another, and TPACK is the sweet spot where they all overlap with each other.
My journey this year has been fruitful for both me and my students where technology is concerned. I took baby steps incorporating it at first into my classroom, but my students were so encouraging that it gave me confidence to try and integrate more. Initially I would use Quizlet at the beginning of class to review new vocabulary, and then I used Quizlet Live to quiz the students in teams on what they knew. Quizizz became another favorite; when working with this app, students were able to work individually at their own pace, and sometimes this was favorable as opposed to working in teams, or working for a fixed time on each question. From Quizizz came Google Forms, as I found that I could take questions and answers from Quizizz, and then make them into a quiz using Google Forms. The use of technology in my classroom just morphed, and before I knew it I was incorporating more and more apps to enhance my students’ learning. I was already very familiar with the content I needed to cover, so that made it easier to look for the best tech tools out there to help me deliver my content more effectively. In a foreign language classroom, activities can be quite short and succinct, so having a choice of apps to use to enable students to review and learn new material was a life saver. Music then became another focus in my classroom through the medium of technology. Music I have found has always been a good hook to get students interested and engaged. I showed examples of songs in the target language, then students researched and found songs that they enjoyed listening to and whose vocabulary they felt that they could readily learn. Students were able to use great technological tools to demonstrate their learning, including making an Adobe Spark presentation of their song’s most important vocabulary words. I worked with students on making QR codes for their poster board to represent their karaoke videos and their original songs. More and more I felt as if I was working alongside my students as opposed to being the teacher imparting information at the front of the room. This was transformational for me as an educator. The use of technology in the classroom has given me more time and energy to focus on working with individuals or small groups of students, and students themselves are becoming much more in charge of their own learning. It has been a win- win situation all round. I work at Justin-Siena High School and with regard to technology our mission statement declares that we aim to “prepare students to serve and leave in an ever changing world.” Our Technology Department has certainly grown from what it was and much more attention is now paid to how technology is being used in the classroom with our students. Students are issued with an iPad by the school, which is for academic use only, and they waive their rights to privacy with regards to email, photos, texts, video and other applications and need to comply with school rules. They all sign an acceptable use policy at the beginning of the year, pledging that they will use their iPads in an appropriate and fitting way. We also have a social media policy and students must adhere to the Conduct and Discipline Policies and Procedures, the Acceptable Use Policy, and the Harassment and Bullying Policy if they choose to participate in activities on social media. The policy states that “students must state and assume full responsibility and liability for the content contained on all social media.” The school can ask for content to be removed from a students’ media account and students are not allowed to use representations of the faculty, staff, students, other individuals at any time without permission. What is interesting is that all of these rules apply even if a student is off campus. The policy states that “a student represents Justin-Siena at all times, even off campus or on the weekends.” Also that “conduct away from campus can and often does reflect on and affect the school community” and so therefore the student needs to follow school policy for social media and internet use at all times. Justin-Siena’s policy also says that “the school reserves the right to inspect any and all computer devices that contain data pertinent to a student’s conduct.”
I feel as if our school policy does have most things covered. The issue we have at our school I believe is that some teachers just do not have the confidence to use technology in our classrooms. In the past we had very little tech support and some faculty members are older and less-experienced with using technology. However, now have two great tech guys who always do their utmost to help the teachers, literally at the drop of a hat, so I’m hoping things may improve. We too, are very fortunate in that our Vice Principal is a Doctor of Education in Catholic Educational Leadership and she has specialized knowledge in the area of technology - she is very familiar with the ISTE standards and so forth. Due to her expertise, those standards are clearly published in our faculty folder within google and Justin-Siena also has a Framework for teaching document containing expected teaching standards. It states that teachers should promote and model digital citizenship and responsibility, that they should design and develop digital age learning experiences and assessments, facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity and that they should also model digital work and learning. These policies all refer directly back to the ISTE standards. I didn’t have any real knowledge about the school’s policy regarding taking pictures of students and posting them on twitter or on our website, so I decided to investigate. I know that in NVUSD that students have to return a form at the beginning of the year if they don’t wish to have their son or daughter’s picture used for school purposes. At the end of our student parent handbook, there is an agreement which both students and parents have to sign. It states that upon enrollment in Justin-Siena that “all students and parents give implicit permission and authorization to Justin-Siena to use any still photograph or motion imagery of themselves that is taken or is authorized by a Justin-Siena staff member for instructional or promotional purposes. By granting permission, students release any and all claims for damages for libel, slander, or invasion of privacy and violation of the right of publicity for the duration of their time as a student at Justin-Siena.” For me this is vital information, so I now know that I can use pictures that I take on field trips or within my classroom which contain student pictures and post them on my Schoology page, or within twitter or other social media accounts. I just need to start by encouraging members of my own Department to start using technology in their classroom. Some will use Quizlet or perhaps Kahoot, but certainly they don’t use tech tools every day. Hopefully by starting small, enthusiasm may grow if other faculty members are seen to be successful. I encouraged my Department to set a technology goal for this upcoming school year so that everybody might try and use some apps in their classroom. I am really interested in helping students absorb language faster and more successfully and also be more engaged and in control of their learning. Initially I investigated just using Quizlet in the classroom to see if that made a difference in how much students learned, and if it caught their attention more. Students were given a survey and also tested on vocabulary that they had learned using the app, and tested on vocabulary that they had been taught using traditional teaching methods. The study was interesting but it soon became apparent to me that it was quite limited. The survey that students were given indicated that they certainly were more motivated by using Quizlet, but the test results weren’t so convincing. The students on the lower end of the spectrum had better test scores having used Quizlet, but the more able students got high scores with both. I began to think about what else would engage, motivate students and enhance their learning. I decided to broaden my study to include the general use of educational technology for learning but also the use of music. When I was a student I remember using songs and mnemonics to help me learn facts and information in my foreign language classroom and also in history. It really helped me remember information, and in fact I still remember those facts to this day. I talked to Dr Redmond and she also talked about having had a similar experience with music and song, and so this solidified my decision to include music. The idea of getting students to make their own Karaoke videos came from Lisa Gottfried, and it seemed to work out really well in my classroom. Students seemed motivated and excited to work on their projects, which was great. What is next with regards to me research after my Masters has been completed – that’s a really interesting question! This course has really opened my eyes to the tech tools that are out there and available to students, and mostly for free too. I intend to endeavor to continue what I have started in that I will include more educational technology in my classes to help engage students and assist their learning. With regard to music, I fully intend to carry on introducing songs in the target language and having students analyze the song or gap-fill with vocabulary words. When implementing my study, I found that the songs really helped my students with their pronunciation – when they were producing their vocabulary presentations they listened over and over to the words in the song so that they could pronounce the words perfectly – I was really inspired by that. I would love to do some workshops with my colleagues, to introduce co-workers who are not in my Department to some of the fabulous tech tools that we have discovered. Just his last week I did a presentation to some of our faculty about Quizizz and they seemed genuinely interested in what it had to offer. Hopefully they will use it too! I also thought it could be really interesting to contact tech companies to see if they are interested in discussing tech tools from an educators’ perspective so that they could develop new apps that would better fit teachers’ needs.
In my quest to enhance language acquisition and improve student engagement, my capstone project has evolved from that of the first semester. Initially being unfamiliar with the different methods of research available, I proposed something simple and specific that I thought could be measured in a mathematical type of way. I was interested in the Quizlet app and chose to make that the focus of my research, to see if it helped students learn better and more easily. I opted to teach students one set of new vocabulary using only traditional teaching methods and then teach them another set, this time using the Quizlet app and Quizlet Live as well, to see if there was any difference in their test scores. My thinking was that students might enjoy playing the games and so therefore might play them in their own time to help reinforce their vocabulary learning. When surveyed, students did say that they used the Quizlet app in their own time, but most only used it the night before a test, as opposed to on a regular daily/weekly basis. It was only as I got more involved in my project & realized that I could measure how students were feeling about their learning through a survey that I decided that it would be better to broaden the depth of my research.
For my capstone my focus is now on educational technology and music and how it aids language acquisition and enhances learning by engaging & motivating students more. Over the course of several weeks, students were introduced to a variety of different apps to see if this would help them acquire new vocabulary. They continued to use Quizlet but also used Quizizz, Educreations, Flipgrid to upload videos, iMovie to make videos and Adobe Spark and Screencast-o-matic for presentations. In addition, for the music portion, students listened to several songs in the target language and were given the lyrics with missing words for them to fill in. I was hoping that through listening to music that students’ pronunciation of words might improve and that they might remember some of the song words as they were associated with music. This culminated in them choosing their own song, selecting 15 of its key vocabulary words, presenting them using Adobe Spark and making a karaoke video of their song. Throughout my research I have talked things through with my Department chair, and I really feel that the audience for my capstone project is mainly going to be fellow teachers & educators, as I am hoping that they will use the results of my research to enhance the experience that they give to their own students in the classroom. I have talked in depth to my Department chair about what she would need from me, to help her implement more tech tools into her classroom. Our Department as a whole also has discussed making a tech goal for next year, although some seemed a little reluctant, so I think that I still have to win them over! Small steps. It is so important for us to show our colleagues the difference that flipping the classroom, individualizing learning and using more tech tools to engage our students can make. Society is changing so much and education needs to evolve with it if we are to meet our students’ needs. Studying for a Masters in Innovative Learning has truly been a voyage of discovery for me, especially with regard to the educational technology tools out there for educators. Initially my goal was to add some tech tools to my tool box, but since starting the course, my goals have increased and become more concrete. I feel that having studied this course it is my job to impart some of the knowledge I have learned to my colleagues in the hope that they and their students can also benefit from it. My school is currently looking to educate teachers in how they might deal better with ‘digital days’ which occur because of circumstances beyond our control; therefore, I am going to show my video detailing the best tech tools from EDU702 and try and inform my peers how to best use some of the technology. In the course requirements it states that “The intent of this course is the discovery of knowledge and the cultivation of insight as the foundation for the design of a significant instructional module / web presence and the research plan to reinforce that design.” I am excited to commence this final part of our Masters but also find it a little daunting too. I am worried about whether I have enough data, or if I have everything that I need to be able to work on this project effectively. Over the course of these past 2 semesters, I have found my fellow cohort members to be great people to work with. I always feel supported and love the fact that I can reach out and bounce ideas off of them, because it always helps so much! I am hoping that this will continue over the summer and that we will also have more opportunities to meet with each other face to face so that we can work more cohesively and help each other reach our goals together.
|