Final Project-Professional Website & Course Reflection

Link to Website

http://laurenaragon12.wix.com/love2teach

Reflection

This course overall was a great one because of the practical use that it shows not only in where education is going in the future, but technologies that are already in use today. Having my professional website set up is truly exciting to me because I can edit it to use this year in my classroom. I plan to create a page over the next few weeks that will be dedicated to my classroom. On this page I will include sections for both students and parents and general information about our new personalized learning program. My hope is that both my students and parents will find it very informative. I also plan to work with my team to create a website specifically designed for our program especially since Wix Sites is so user friendly to create.

Another thing that I plan to continue after this course is reflecting in my blog on what I am working on throughout my graduate studies. I have already had comments from friends and coworkers regarding some of my posts that I am really excited about. Several people have mentioned that some of the things I posted about have really been a help and one person even shared my blog on academic search engines with a friend of his. I can definitely see how blogging can help share information about education and if implemented carefully in the classroom, could help students communicate ideas with each other. A huge takeaway from this class for me this year is becoming more creative in ways that students are sharing class information. Why not allow them to create a website, blog, digital image publishing, video presentation or use social media to communicate their final product? In our world of technology, it seems wrong to not encourage our students to learn how to use it educationally.

There is not much that I would change about this class. Although at first it was difficult to understand what was expected, communication between teacher and students was great. I think that after a week or so everyone was pretty much on the same page. At first I was worried about not having a lot of time between units and juggling everything, but found everything we were studying so interesting that it did not seem like much once getting into it. The only suggestion I would have in the future is allowing a little more time at the beginning to get the final project proposal submitted. Maybe by having that due along with the unit 1 deliverables, it would not have made that first week of getting everything set up so stressful. Looking back, however, this was such a small thing that I do not think it matters greatly in the end. Because I would not change much if anything about this course, I cannot think of any real weaknesses. It would be nice to have been able to have class video discussions, but with there being so many people in the class and it being a 100% online class, I am not sure how to go about doing that. Overall this was a great class!

As I already mentioned, the key strengths of this class are the realistic ways in which you can implement the information from the course immediately in the classroom. Sure there was a lot of technology in our readings and discussions that is years in the future, but there is so much that we looked at that can be implemented relatively easily right now. I look forward to experimenting with these technologies throughout this next school year and the rest of my teaching career. The other thing that I really enjoyed with this course was looking into the future of education. While there are many technologies that are still in the beginning stages of understanding how to use them in the classroom, there are so many that are being studied to improve our current teaching methods and benefit our students’ education. As a teacher, it is truly encouraging to know that there are so many great things coming soon to education and I look forward to implementing them with my own students in the fu

Academic Search Engines

Knowing how to search the internet for information is a very important skill that we should be teaching students from a young age. I remember in elementary school taking trips to the library and learning how to look up books using the computers or the card catalogs. Now, of course, you can find so much information simply through the internet, but it is important to know what information is true and what is not. People can post anything they want to the internet, so there is a lot of false research out there that others who do not know how to research on the internet begin to believe as truth. Because of this, we need to be teaching our students how to find reliable information via the internet and academic search engines are a way to do that.

Honestly, I knew very little about academic search engines before this assignment. While I do understand how to decide if a source is reliable or not, no one ever told me that you could use a different search engine to weed out all the non-reliable information that is out there. I can definitely see how using academic search engines can not only benefit my students, but also myself and many of my colleagues that are currently working on graduate degrees. In the classroom, I can see this really cutting down on students getting distracted from all the extra information that they can get when using normal search engines.

I started my quest of search engines with iSeek (picture below). What I really liked about this option for research was that on the left hand side you can select targets for what you want your search to be on. Some targets I was using included subject and grade level, but there are many more. I did not like the visual look of the site because I became overwhelmed by the descriptions of the resources that it found.

WolframAlpha (picture below) is a site that I have used in the past with my students when they are having trouble with math vocabulary. It is very helpful with the students because they know how to use it and can navigate it fairly easily. I will continue to use this site in my classroom with students.

Infotopia, AcademicIndex and Google Scholar (pictures below) are all powered by Google. I really liked what pulled up on all three of these when I searched for information on personalized learning. It was much better at recognizing exactly what I wanted to search for than iSeek was. Similar to these search engines, but not powered by Google is Microsoft Academic. 

The difference between Microsoft Academic (pictured below) and the Google powered options is that it also has the ability to select specific targets to your research like iSeek. I really enjoyed searching through these last few, but think that in the end I will probably stick with Google Scholar or Microsoft Academic because of ease of access and familiarity.

Zoom Conference #6

For the final unit readings on the Horizon Reports, my team was split between the 2014 Higher Education and 2014 European Edition. The link to our video is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgoS12YuxP8&feature=youtu.be.

Personally, I chose the Higher Education mainly because my goal for my students is that they all at least have the option to go to college. Some may chose a different path after high school, but I think every child should have the chance at higher education if they put the effort in. I found this reading very interesting mainly because it was not that long ago (3 years) since I was completing my bachelor’s degree and also because right now I am obviously working on my master’s degree. I enjoyed reading and discussing the trends that are coming for higher education.

The short term trend that I was most excited about was the Integration of Online, Hybrid and Collaborative Learning. It is no secret that colleges and universities all over the world have been integrating online and hybrid classes for many years now, but with those types of classes you can tend to lose the collaborative environment that many face-to-face classes have. While it is important, in my opinion, to make sure that students in higher education experience online and hybrid classes, I think it should not be at the expense of collaborative learning. Through collaboration, students may be exposed to ideas that they themselves never would have had. Even many traditional classrooms at the higher education level forget about this. I have truly loved this class this summer because I had to collaborate with my peers in a way that I had not in other online classes. Collaborative learning goes beyond answering questions and responding to other questions on a discussion board, but unfortunately, that is where many online classes end. Discussing the readings with my team via video conferencing was much more educational, in my opinion. This also allowed me to have a relationship with my team members and a sense of comradrey with us helping each other out.

Shift from Students as Consumers to Students as Creators is one of the mid-term trends discussed in this report. While I think many universities around the world already are practicing this concept, it could be more widely implemented. It is no secret that students learn better from doing than anything else. Why, then, do we constantly make students sit in a chair and take notes from a PowerPoint rather than have them discover the answers themselves? Granted, most classes require some form of lecture, but I remember taking many classes where my grade was determined not on hands-on projects and collaboration, but three to four tests throughout the semester. I also remember classes where I was required to do projects or work with a group to develop a presentation. The later classes were much more enjoyable and left more of an impact on my education. University libraries are at the forefront of encouraging students to become creators. They have stocked themselves with equipment such as 3D printers, video equipment, publishing software and much more that students are free to use at any time. This, I hope, will encourage professors to allow more options for students to create rather than consume information.

As I discussed in the short term trends, online learning is already being implemented all over the world in higher education. Many schools allow you to complete your whole degree online while others offer online as an option as well as traditional styles of learning. A long-term trend involves the Evolution of Online Learning. Currently, online learning consists of simply taking a traditional class and putting it online so students can access the class information at any time. Due dates are the same, products are the same and, most of the time, the syllabus is exactly the same as any face-to-face class would be. The evolution of online learning deals with making online classes and hybrid classes personalized to meet the needs of all students. There are a few universities who are already using adaptive learning technologies to create personal tutors for students who are taking intro level classes in college. These classes allow students to work at their own pace and have a way of tracking exactly how they are doing in the course. Of course, there are many things to work out with this technology. I do think that students should be held to the same expectations of their peers regarding how long it takes to finish a class, but I also think it would be great to take the tests when you are ready instead of when someone who does not know you at all says you should be ready. Another plus to these personalized classes is that universities will be able to accept more students into these classes because the content is online. One thing the report mentioned that I loved was creating the opportunity for students to really make a choice about how they learn best and pick that option.

Digital Image Manipulation

Final digital image manipulation product.

I was extremely excited about this unit’s technology implementation. In high school, I took a class called Video Technology and part of the class had to deal with digital image manipulation. We focused in that class on using Photoshop, and the full version too. Since then, I have not used this technology because I thought it was only available for a pretty large cost. I was glad to see that there are free options out there for digital image manipulation. In the classroom, I could see this being used by students when doing projects and they need to create an image of some sort to go with their topic. I could also see this used in education simply to make professional looking posters for classrooms and schools.

The first thing that I had to be sure of was that the free software worked on Windows. For example, Seashore is a software that is optimized to run on Mac. The next thing I did was look for options that seemed user-friendly mainly because I would like to implement this by having students create things with it. Having used Photoshop in the past, I was very interested to look at the free version. While I found it very easy to use and convenient because it was available on any device, including my iPhone and Surface tablet, I found that really it was just a nice photo editor. This is great, but I was interested in doing more with digital manipulation for school. Gimp, Pixia, PaintTool SAI and CorelDraw all seemed a little more advanced than what I wanted for my students. Also, CorelDraw has a free trial but does cost money if you want to use it more than a few times. While Paint.net also seemed interesting at first due to how much it looked like the old Paint that I grew up using on PCs, it was comparable to Gimp and Photoshop Express so I also nixed this one. I was really excited about PicMonkey until I saw that it was a 30 free trial and mandated a credit card to continue. Finally I decided to use Ribbet. While some of their features are only available for a cost, you do not even have to set up an account to use their free features. I was able start working immediately on their site and create a collage of upcoming technologies in the classroom.

After creating my product (shown above), I was asked if I wanted to create a free account and it would save my product, but I was also able to save it to my computer. When I created the account I saw that Ribbet also has many other products that you can create and order such as pillows, phone cases, coffee mugs and so much more. I love this site and can see it being of great use in both the classroom and my personal life!

Zoom Conference #5

For our video this unit, my team members read the Horizon Report for K-12 2015 and I read the K-12 2014. Many of the trends were very similar for these two readings as well as being similar to what we have been reading a lot for this class. The section of the 2014 report that I read was Key Trends Accelerating Technology Adoption in Schools. These trends go in long-term, mid-term and short-term trends.

The long-term trends discussed were Intuitive Technology and Rethinking How Schools Work. These trends are seen to be long-term and will be at the forefront of adoption in 5 or more years. Intuitive technology was a very interesting one to me. Basically it is technology that is easy to interact with. Almost like it is an extension of yourself. With this technology, students will interact with technology in a natural way without much of a learning curve. This is great because there are times when you can spend a whole lesson just on how to use the technology instead of on what we are using the technology for! As technology advances, this will get easier and easier. Also the more students are interacting with technology at younger ages, the easier it will get to use technology in the classroom.

Now rethinking how schools work is one of the most important rising developments to come. More or less, schools have been the same since the beginning of the 20^th Century. Of course, the traditional model that we are in worked well for our grandparents and parents, but starting with students who grew up in the 90’s and beyond, it is becoming more and more necessary for us to consider if the traditional model is still working as well as it did in the past. My personal opinion is that the current structure of schools is limiting our students. With the technology that is available, our students should have the opportunities to reach beyond the curriculum as it is and experiment with real-world experiences. Unfortunately, many teachers resist too much use of technology for fear that it will replace them as teachers. We must be careful to never replace human interaction with technology, but also be open to allowing our students more exploration with the technology they have access to.

Trends that are defined as mid-term trends that will take about 3-4 years to be ready for adoption are Open Educational Resources and Hybrid Learning Designs. Before reading this article, I had never heard of open educational resources (OERs) before. The idea of being able to share all educational resources publically, while still giving credit to their source, is brilliant. I especially like the idea of being able to create my own textbook for a class by using several sources and pulling them into one place with the best resources for my students to really learn how to do math problems and apply them. I worry that this will never come to fruition simply because people tend to be very proud of their work and while they are willing to share it, they are not willing to let someone change it. 

Already in practice around the country is hybrid learning designs. Pretty much a synonym for blended learning, these models incorporate many different learning strategies including but not limited to use of technology, collaborative learning with peers, and small group instruction with teachers. One of the most popular models of hybrid learning is the flipped classroom. I tried to implement this model last year in my classes and found it very difficult. Due to changes in our state standards for math last year, I had very little resources for the flipped classroom and quickly became overwhelmed with having to come up with so many resources to give the students an understanding of what we were going to be doing in class before they got there. The one thing I loved about the flipped classroom was that I was not standing at the front of the room and lecturing every day and that I was able to pull small groups of students every single day.

Finally the short-term trends that were discussed in the reading and are one the horizon for 1-2 years are the favorites of what I read up on. First, rethinking the roles of teachers in the classroom is one that I think I am the most excited about. Traditionally, the teacher is the first person to expose the student to information. They tell their students what something is, how to solve problems, what to do in an experiment to get the desired results, and therefore they are the primary source for information that the students receive. Why? It has been proven through research that students of all ages learn better from doing rather than blindly copying what is given to them on the board. As a teacher, it also gets frustrating when you tell a student what seems like ten times how to do something and they still do not know how to do it. Rethinking the roles of teachers completely removes this frustration and allows students to control their own learning and how they learn information. It makes the students discover the answers rather than being told the answers. It inspires students to form habits of learning that will allow them to be life-long learners. Now that the teacher is not the primary source for information, they are able to mentor or coach students through discovery. Most teachers did not go into their career simply because they love the subject they teach, but instead because they love the students they teach. The new roles in the future for teachers allows true relationships to be made between student and teacher in an easier way than ever before.

With the new roles of teaching established, a shift to deeper learning approaches will come naturally. By creating authentic learning experiences and allow students to create and discover the content, learning goes beyond memorization and truly becomes a part of the student. Unfortunately, there are many things that I learned in my K-12 days that I cannot remember today. Facts, dates and definitions in my least favorite subjects have escaped me over the years, but there are many things I do remember. I remember researching foods from different countries in World Geography and then having to create a dish and bring it in to share with the class. I remember getting on the computers in Geometry and creating triangles and shapes with different properties. I remember calculating the trajectory and angle needed to hit my teacher with a water balloon using a launcher in Physics. I remember acting out parts of Tom Sawyer in my 7^th grade English class. These experiences throughout my schooling are the ones I remember most, and many great teachers are incorporating deeper learning experiences in their classrooms. We need to take learning to the next level by applying content to student lives and allowing them to explore what they are learning in the real-world.

Podcasting

I can definitely see the different uses for podcasting in education. The main thing that I can think of it really being good for is an easy way to get information across to parents and students. If you create a podcast as a school or a teacher that tells what is going on around campus and in the classroom, parents and students can log on at their leisure to listen to these announcements. All it takes is a few minutes of recording and then you can share it with anyone you need to. Another thing I could see being beneficial from podcasting in the classroom is if you have a call in podcast and students can listen to you answer questions. This could be a new kind of tutoring where you set up a time where you will be going over things they need to know and students can listen and call in with their questions.

When selecting a platform for my podcast, ease of access was the most important thing to me because I have never done a podcast before. I immediately scratched of the possibility of using Podcast Generator because you have to download it to your computer instead of just simply using an online platform. Poderator did not have a friendly website to use in figuring out which platform to use. After eliminating these two options, I was left with three to chose from: PodBean, PodOmatic, and Blog Talk Radio.

The one that I found the most beneficial was Blog Talk Radio. I liked this option because I can see the benefits of having it in the education world. You could even have students create their own radio show that discusses what they are learning right now. People can actually call in during live broadcasts and talk to you about what you are discussing. This is a great platform for educational uses, in my opinion, however, most of the great features with it are ones that you have to pay for. PodBean and PodOmatic were very user friendly platforms and easy to use. I ended up picking PodBean for this assignment because of the blog-like atmosphere that it has created into it.

My personal podcast (http://laragon12.podbean.com/) dealt with the benefits of personalized learning. I discussed my own personal experiences this past year that have led me to the opportunity to implement personalized learning this next year. I also talked about what exactly I think are some of the best reasons for being a part of the personalized learning program.

Zoom Conference #4

Link to Team Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW8IVeV-8LE&feature=youtu.be

For this unit, my team and I were split between discussing Higher Education and K-12 Education technological developments. Many of the developments are ones that we have discussed before in previous videos, but it is always good to get as much information as possible from them. The developments from my reading, 2014 K-12, included solvable, difficult and wicked challenges.

The solvable challenges for this reading included Creating Authentic Learning Opportunities and Integrating Personalized Learning. Both of these developments are extremely important in my opinion. Authentic learning is few and far between in today’s traditional educational system. Many teachers, myself included, feel like because we have so many things to teach before our students take the all-too-important STAAR test at the end of the year, there is not enough time to fill in these opportunities for the students. Because the standardized tests are not going anywhere in the near or distant future, it seems like this is an uphill battle in convincing teachers to take a leap of faith that by presenting authentic learning opportunities students will not only learn the content they need to do well on their tests, but also learn how to engage themselves in their own learning. This goes hand-in-hand, I think, with the challenge of integrating personalized learning. The idea is not a foreign one. Any teacher will tell you that no two of their students are the same and that every student needs a different amount of guidance for different topics. We as educators, need to see that need and teach our students to be self-directed learners. I believe that this will not only raise our scores, but also show our students how to be life-long learners no matter what their future brings.

The difficult challenges this reading included were Complex Thinking and Communication and Safety of Student Data. I agree that both of these challenges are very difficult to combat. Complex thinking is an important development to me because there are going to be more and more jobs in the future that require complex thinking. Unfortunately, due to lack of funding and strong emphasis on the standardized testing, complex thinking is not one of the developments that is getting a lot of time of discussion. Safety of student data is a challenge because as we transition to everything being an online focus, private data could become something that is shared to people that have no need to see that data. Due to cloud computing and data sharing, this is a real concern because students, and their parents, have a right to privacy regarding personal and school data. The only real way to combat this, in my opinion, is by having password protection for everything regarding student data. This way private information stays private.

The wicked challenges discussed in this reading go together in some ways. They are Competition from New Models of Education and Keeping Formal Education Relevant. The new models that are competing with our current model of public schools include both charter schools and online schools. Charter schools have more freedom of what they can do with their funding so they are able to become more innovative with their teaching methods and come up with new ideas. Online schools are becoming more popular especially for parents that want to homeschool their child. Many states now have full K-12 curriculum available online. This allows homeschoolers, children with disabilities, homebound students and many more have the opportunity to work on and finish school without ever having stepped in a classroom. Online curriculum also tends to have a more personalized approach to how students can learn the concepts they need to know. Because these new models of schooling are becoming more popular, the issue of keeping formal education relevant is arising more and more. When there are other, and many times better, options for students than public school, why would parents not want to explore those options? Hopefully we can figure out a way soon to bring in the innovations and techniques that charter and online schools are using into the public school’s traditional atmosphere to create the best schools for our students possible.

To me it is very interesting to hear about the trends and challenges that are going on today in our schools because it is excited to see it happening at my own school. This program that I am starting in just three weeks will be addressing both of the solvable challenges from this reading. I cannot wait to see how much my students learn from authentic learning opportunities and their personalized learning plans. Looking forward to getting started!