Learning Online

Learning Online is such a HUGE topic and one that could span an entire semester (in fact it does in EDTEC 448!). However, we're going to take a couple of ours tonight to discuss this topic and all that we need to think about in order to make it a success. First, I have a short video clip for you to view just to get you thinking! Go to this blog and click play on the short video at the top. Then, scroll down to read the comments that people posted. How does this video clip shift your thinking about using WebQuests/NetQuests or other types of learning experiences on the Internet? What about multimedia in general? Does being able to "click" on text change things for students? As quoted in our Jonassen text, Morrison &Morgan (1999), state, "'We do not learn much from looking at a model - we learn a lot more from building the model and from manipulating it'". Does being able to click on something qualify as manipulating it? How?

In addition, we also need to think about how we will get our students online (conveniently) and what our students need to know in order to be successful with the online learning experience. There are many ways to do this, but I'd like to focus on three different methods of organizing online learning experiences. Tonight, we'll look at the following: a Word document, www.weebly.com, and www.wikispaces.com. Depending on your students and the type of learning experience, you could choose one of these tools.

Here are a few questions I want you to think about when planning online learning experiences:

1. What do your students need to know before going online?
   2. How will you get your students to "dig deeper" for online content?
   3. How do we get the students to further than, "But I found it on the Internet"?
   4. How do you teach them to search for information online? Visit here first.
   5. How do you teach them to evaluate the information they find online? Visit here first. Then, visit here.

Finally, to really get you thinking, here's what's coming with technology...Talk about being "clickable"!!

Symposium for Teaching and Learning With Technology at PSU

I’ve been thinking about this blog post since I left the Symposium for Teaching and Learning With Technology at PSU on Saturday afternoon. I am so excited about the community I’m part of at Penn State. Being an adjunct with Penn State Great Valley is very rewarding. I enjoy teaching classes there and have support from the Technology Department, Education Divison, and Library Services. However, I do feel a bit disconnected since I am not on campus everyday. I do a lot on my own to further my own professional development; twitter, blogs, online conferences, etc. I feel that I do have a very strong personal learning network. It still just isn’t the same as connecting with people who also teach at the University level. I’m used to attending conferences focusing on educational technology. Usually, those conferences are directed toward K-12 teachers. I’m always looking for a way to connect with those who teach higher level ed.

The Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology was a gathering of PSU professionals discussing teaching and learning at the University level (just what I’ve been looking for!). Every single presentation that I attended was about effective ways to use technology to enhance the teaching and learning process. More importantly, I feel as though I’ve made new “connections” with professionals at the University level. I added quite a few people to my learning network and noticed that a few others added me to their network. Since Saturday, I have been following them on Twitter and reading their blogs and I’ve already learned so much from them. I also read a very interesting blog post by Kyle Peck, which mirrors my thoughts about the PSU community. He invites us to work together to facilitate meaningful, higher level learning.

Specifically about the symposium, I enjoyed the presentation titled, “Engaging students with program learning outcomes using blogs” and will be implementing a few of the strategies they shared. Specifically, I will be teaching my students how to link the course learning outcomes to their blog tags. This will really help my students stay focused on their learning throughout the course.

I have many other ideas for how I will enhance my courses at PSGV. I will blog about them as I implement them into my teaching. I begin teaching EDTEC448 Using the Internet in the Classroom on May 5 so I’m excited to implement many of the new ideas that I have and also a lot of the strategies I spoke about in my presentation. For now, here is a link to my presentation from the TLT Symposium. It was entitled: University 2.0: Digital Innovations in the University Classroom. In addition, here is a link to the audio of my presentation.

I hope there are more learning opportunities in the near future so that I can continue to grow with these awesome educators! And, to all of those involved with the TLT Symposium, thanks for the opportunity!

(**I just noticed that they posted my video interview. I'm not liking it very much. I have to get better at "thinking on the fly"...it was my first interview in this format. Now that it's over, I have other ideas, things I wish I would have said, things I would have said differently, etc. I'm still learning, too!)

Meaningful Use of Technology in Kindergarten

Using technology with young students has always been an interest of mine. Particularly because of the challenges it presents and because I hear many people say, “They can’t read, how can they be successful on the computer?”. Often times, the primary grades are allotted less time in the computer lab weekly and don’t have access to computers in their classrooms like the older students do. Usually, the younger students are allowed to use software such as Millie’s Math House and websites such as Brain Pop. There is so much more available (for free) that will allow students to be creative, use problem-solving skills, think on a much higher level; and work toward meeting the updated National Educational Technology Standards for Students! Here is a study that proves that if used correctly, primary students can use technology to enhance their learning, learn collaboratively, and do creative work.

Now….on to my story which reignited the fire I have for meaningful technology integration at a young age….

My 5 (turning 6 in April) year old daughter wanted to make a list of the books she has so that when she goes to the book fair with her Ammy tomorrow, she knows which ones not to buy. She asked me if she could type the list on the computer, my Macbook, and I said, “Yes”!

Of course, I saw this as a learning opportunity. Learning that any kindergartener can handle (with scaffolding of course)…because it was totally necessary for the task. She needed to know how to use the technology to make capital letters, spaces between words, punctuation, save the document, print the document, and of course, make it look “prettier”. These are all the things they’ve been learning in kindergarten.

All too often, students (especially the younger students) aren’t given the opportunity to use technology as a learning tool. They enter the computer lab and have the opportunity to go on different software/websites (Caillou, Millie’s Math House). Of course, they’re using this software to reinforce skills that kindergarteners need to have (the drill and kill way). However, couldn’t they be using the technology they have to enhance their learning and engage them in real world learning opportunities?

Why not use the technology to perform skills they’re going to need in the future? Why not pull out a 100 chart spreadsheet and have the students highlight all the numbers counting by 10’s? Challenge the students who already know how to count by tens (and can recognize/write the numbers) to count/highlight by 5’s! The following are some questions that could also be addressed (higher level thinking/discovery!): What are the patterns you see? Can you find a pattern on your neighbor’s spreadsheet? Use the highlighter tool to count by 2’s. Make a pattern with the highlighter and have your neighbor tell you in “math words” what the number pattern is. Let’s save our spreadsheets and print them out so we can share them with out teacher and parents.

We could also upload the spreadsheet to voicethread and talk about the patterns we found!

What about voicethread? All kindergarteners can talk! They could use voicethread to talk about a story they’re writing and then have buddies respond to their story within their voicethread. Now, there’s real world collaboration, which encourages students to write! Here is a sample Voicethread published by my kindergartener.

Now, I’m not saying that we should be teaching our students how to save, print, highlight text, make a capital letter, and use a spreadsheet “just because”. What I am saying is that we should be teaching the students how to write a sentence properly, use appropriate pictures to illustrate our text, how to count to 100, look for patterns in a 100’s chart, talk about words, create a story, write a sentence related to the topic of a book, etc. These are all skills the students are learning from their teacher. Let’s reinforce those content area skills once a week in the computer lab by using technology!

So, back to the booklist…she is really into the “Rainbow Magic” book series by Daisy Meadows. We have just about every “color fairy” and “weather fairy” book. Thanks to Ammy and the bookfair, we’re now reading the “flower fairy” books. So, we opened a Word document. She began typing the names of each of the fairies (from the titles). Then, she wanted to make each name the color that it was on the cover of the book. I showed her how to use bullets to make it an organized list. Integrated technology: open a Word doc; Shift for capital letters; change font, size, and color; bullets; save; print; space between words; delete; highlight.

It just made sense…

To me

And to her…
My question is, how do we get it to make sense to the technology leaders?