Personal Learning Reflection: CEP810

photo © 2009 Luis Argerich | more info (via: Wylio)
My main goal in undertaking these courses on my way to obtaining a Masters in Educational Technology is to develop my current knowledge of technology that could be used in the classroom and learn how and why they can assist in learning. Figuring out the ways in which the technology is bettering and adding value to the learning and teaching of a subject.

One of the main areas of growth I encountered in CEP810 was whether I was comfortable being either a leader or a follower in a group project. I pretty much immediately learned that I must lead to feel that our group can stay on course and to meet deadlines. To be able to balance a guidance role and not to come across as demeaning or overwhelming is something I developed over the last few months and I hope I achieved that.
These strategies are something I can bring with me back into the classroom in defining and facilitating roles for students in group work. In the elementary school, group work can be the most demanding, challenging but ultimately rewarding undertakings a teacher and students can do.
I had a chance to do just that with a small group of Grade 5 students starting to use Prezi Meeting for the first time. Roles, proper communication and planning were discussed and I could actually show them the Prezi my group was working on at that time presenting to them an authentic example to model the skills we were discussing. They even asked me last week if we got it done on time!!

I feel the SIG presentation displayed an effective use of the internet in teaching and learning and I believe is the best assignment that we turned that exemplifies good teaching with technology. Team work, presentation skills and research skills were rolled in to one online presentation. Prezi Meeting is a challenging project photo © 2009 Eric Harrison | more info (via: Wylio)
to undertake for teachers let alone students but in giving students the chance to undertake a project like ours will give them many obstacles to overcome and learn from. They need to develop communication skills, not only in face to face discussions but online also. They need to plan the presentation and find a middle ground for everyone to be happy with the layout. Finally, they need to collaboratively plan on their research and refine their research skills to fit the medium of Prezi and their final method of presenting.


I mentioned in my Personal Growth Plan that my goal was to meet each activity with vigor and take advantage of the resources I find. I feel like I have done that and it only makes me want to continue with more vigor for the courses I will do in Spring. I also mentioned that I wanted to collaborate and learn with my classmates and I feel like I have done that adequately, unfortunately due to time differences I couldn't make any of the Adobe Connect sessions.

One of my new goals is to learn more about the mechanics of teaching core subjects like English and Maths. I want to learn more and be able to describe in more detail why technology would assist certain aspects of certain subjects.

Personal technology plan

Vision Statement

Working in the educational technology field is like working in one big plate spinning factory. Sure you know what needs doing and are pretty comfortable with the actual spinning technique but it’s not always that straightforward. Keeping the plates spinning and looking out for new plates (and old wobbly ones) always keep you on your toes and you never stop looking, questioning and investigating.

Technology in education is in a constant state of flux. I’ve been involved in the area since 2003 and does everyone agree with each other on the uses of technology in education more now than back then? No, no they don’t. It seems that we all agree on one thing; we are educating the children of today for a future that we are unsure of. Back in 2008 David Warlick said that “Things are changing so fast that we don't understand the workplace that they're going into...” When I saw Mr. Warlick at a conference in Singapore in 2010 he was still stating the same facts.
I, for one, know this is the case. The people who go to educational technology conferences know this. The only people who don’t seem to know are the teacher training colleges who don’t train our new teachers to teach these digital natives. The only people who don’t seem to know this are the administrators who hire teachers who still think it’s okay (and cute) to say to me “Oh, I’m not good with technology”. But your students are!

We’re still in a rut with regards technology in education. We still need IT coordinators, integrationists and facilitators to assist in the use of technology in the classroom. I should know as I am one! When teachers were asked to model one teaching technique that they undertook in class at a recent professional development day at my school; only one teacher out of about thirty used a technology based practice. A little bit sad. But why was this case? I have been working with each grade on technology integrated activities to include in each of their units but the thinking is still that of technology being the “extra stuff” that they should be doing in I.T. class. We are trying to make technology a natural part of the day to day learning but when we still have I.T. lessons in the room that is not their classroom of course everyone (teachers and students) are going to continue to look at technology as a different subject and approach it in a different way. Even working with the I.T. teachers to integrate as much of the classroom learning into I.T. time, although a step in the right direction; is not good enough.
In my opinion technology in education needs to be seamless, ubiquitous and natural for the student and teacher to interact with. This, of course, needs training and professional development for both teachers and administration alike. It also means a solid infrastructure in the school building to support the current and future rollout of different technologies. We need to start wrapping a school around technology rather than the other way around.

Current Practice

My role of Instructional Technology Coordinator is a new one for my school and this makes my job a tough one at times. If truth be told, though, it is not as tough as I thought it would be. I set myself a goal to have taught every student from Kindergarten to Grade 5 in some aspect before Christmas this year. And I have done just that.

I started the year off with a couple of short term goals. I wanted each of our Kindergarten classes to have been introduced to our small number of iPod touches before October break. I wanted a schedule and routines in place. Squeezing in ten classes to rotate with our iPod Touches was no mean task but we got there and I’m delighted because of how we worked that we are now getting a further forty iPods so that every classroom will have a small number to keep. This was a hard fought battle but it is vital that we have the technology at hand when we want it in class. If we had kept with just scheduling the devices we would never develop the best practice of teaching and learning with the iPod. The iPods will become part of the classroom and be a natural tool for using at times when the teacher (or student) sees fit.

Grade 1 and Grade 2 are interesting years at our school. They both have their Chinese homeroom teacher teach them I.T. so I find it important to touch base and see what their skill sets are. Due to the language barrier I always have to work with the English teachers and meet with them during their common planning time to see what unit they are doing and what is up next. For Grade 1 we worked out a time when we could bring them all to the computer lab during English time to work on an activity related to a wild animals unit they were doing. We used a simple website called “SwitchZoo” to create our very own mixed up animal. The children then used their animal to write up some information on their creation. It was fun and engaging activity related to classroom work.
For Grade 2 they were working on teamwork and collaboration so we used Voicethread to work on a collaborative storytelling piece. In class they read a story called Tara & Tiree. There were 6 pages to the story with a different picture on each page. In groups they each wrote, in their own words, the part of the story linked to the picture. We uploaded these pictures to a Voicethread and recorded each student saying their story over the relevant picture.
In both cases it is hard to schedule all the classes to work with me and we ended up stretching it out over two weeks as the computer lab is on a very tight schedule. I’m not entirely happy with bringing the kids to the lab but at that age it is best to get them altogether to work on their activity and we just don’t have the technology available for them to stay in their classroom.

Grade 3 I.T. class is actually taught by one of the English homeroom teachers so it works out really well. My main activity with them was in conjunction with them reading about Icarus. We used I.T. time for them to design their own Icarus on Build Your Wild Self. My detailed explanation and examples of their work can be seen on my other blog here. As they are learning about Green Homes and conservation next we will be using Google Earth to search for green parks in Hong Kong and making an interactive tour.

Grade 4 has been busy due to one very ambitious and adventurous English teacher. We started off by using English, Art and Science class to make a stop motion animation on a stage of the Rock Cycle. Challenging and monumentous projects to do in the first 2 months of school but the end results were pretty good. One example here:

Sedimentary Rock 2 Stop Motion from Colin Gallagher on Vimeo.
I happened to mention my experimental visions of Green Screen recording to the adventurous English teacher so just recently the students have recorded in front of 6 pieces of green A1 paper a skit about their favorite season. They have turned out great and it is something I really want to do with other grades as it is so simple to achieve.
Also, in Grade 4, we have been collaborating with a school in Australia on Edmodo to discuss and carry out activities on Charlotte’s Web. This has been a great connection to make and we have Skyped with them and it has been an exciting and rewarding project.

Finally in Grade 5 my major plan was to get all our students blogging. We have achieved that but it is still early days. Our school is not ready to allow open blogging so our students, sadly, blog behind passwords (which defeats the purpose somewhat) We are also doing a Skype debate on December 13th with the same school in Australia as Grade 4 are working with. As a lot of work we have undertaken with Grade 5 is about online publishing and online communication we had Robyn Treyvaud come in and talk about Digital Citizenship and we also worked on Digital Safety units in their I.T. class.
As well as getting the teachers and students more comfortable and accustomed to using technology in relation to what they are doing in class I have given a PD session on Prezi to the staff and I’m delighted to see a number of teachers using it to great effect. I designed a website of links that would make accessing websites easy for every student from Kindergarten to Grade 5 http://primarylinks.isf.edu.hk. I will be trialing an iPad for future integration into our classrooms (I’m thinking I will work with Grade 5 on that) and I plan on presenting at a number of conferences. I will continue to make connections and have a presence on Twitter.

Personal Technology Plan

My plan in general is to stay on top of current technology integration practices. I do this by reading my Google Reader daily, subscribing to ISTE’s publications and from my connections on Twitter.
Back in 2009 The Horizon Report laid out its vision for the trends that would appear in education technology over the next 5 years. I am basing a lot of my personal technology goal in allegiance with The Horizon Report as the people involved in the report are people I very much admire. In 1-2 years it said collaborative environments and online communication tools would come to prominence. I am glad to say that I have introduced both concepts to my school already this year with both Edmodo and students’ blogs being used already; albeit in its infancy. My main goal is to fight for open blogging for our students. It is only with an authentic and global audience that our students will experience real online communication and the power of opinion and point of view. No more passwords.

By 2012-2013 the use of mobiles and cloud computing are predicted to be on the rise in education. I am seeing this in fruition and in discussions already. With our introduction of iPod Touches we are setting off on the right path. My plan for whatever school I may be in by 2013 is to make full use of, or establish, a Google Apps for Edu account. This is cloud computing at its best. I think with the use of cloud computing with students we can make some serious improvements in online assessing and communications between students and teachers. I already use Google Docs for planning and meeting notes but my goal is to use it for classroom learning in the next year or so.

By 2014-2015 the Horizon Report pinpoints Smart Objects and The Personal Web as the key emerging educational technology tools. We are seeing QR Codes appear already (well ahead of the predicted time-frame). In lieu of the amount of ideas and resources that are out there already I want to introduce QR codes by the end of this school year. With the purchase of 40 more iPods with cameras I want to use the idea of a scavenger hunt around our school (especially if a Grade is doing a Community unit) and for use in the library. I think QR codes may be of more use in our secondary school where more students have access to photo taking tools but that will not stop us working with the younger grades and QR codes. I plan to stay on top of Smart Objects and will keep a keen eye on the evolution of the technologies out there.
The Personal Web is an intriguing concept and one that I am very interested in following. This may not be something that can be undertaken straight away and is not totally ready to take off (unlike QR codes). With the implementation of Google Apps, the use of the iGoogle start page can be seen as a form of Personal Web but still something the user must set up. I would be very interested in looking at technologies that schools can invest in that “knows” what grade a student is in when they access the internet from within school and their home page is already tailor made for them with appropriate links, resources, news and teacher posted information. I see this as a very useful addition in the younger years where information overload and irrelevant links can overwhelm and confuse a young learner.

Aside from keeping in line with The Horizon Report I also plan on undertaking a number of other steps in my educational technology plan. I will finish the next two courses from MSU by Summer 2011 and plan to start the Masters modules in Fall 2011. This will be a great outlet for learning and for putting down my thinking and ideas on “paper”.
One adventure I will try to undertake in 2011 and maybe will come to fruition in 2012 is to learn how to develop and program Ipod apps. From my experience in my own school where I have wasted so much time trying to find a Traditional Chinese character App for our kindergarten students, schools will need to start developing their own apps to suit their own learning goals and objectives. I am going to try and learn this to stay ahead of that curve and just recently a whole series of “How To” instructional videos have appeared on Itunes U to help me on my way.

In conclusion if you work in the educational technology field you can get distracted by just keeping plates spinning but it’s when you look ahead and see how many more you have to do and plan on how you are going to do it, that you will truly begin to understand and prepare yourself, your students and your peers for the future.

References:
Hernandez, Pat: Preparing Kids for an Unknown Future http://app1.kuhf.org/houston_public_radio-news-display.php?articles_id=30088
website last accessed Dec 6th 2010
The Horizon Project 2009 http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2009-Horizon-Report-K12.pdf

Learning Styles Lab

As my learning continues when my school days are far behind I often wonder how on earth I learned the way I did back in high school. I remember spending 40 minutes copying teacher's notes from an overhead projector in Biology class. All our hands were so sore after each class. I got a D in my high school leaving cert (I don't know what the US equivalent of that is), which is a pass but now I know why I didn't ace it!

I am definitely, 100%, a visual and kinesthetic learner (that's why online learning works for me!). Another course I am doing in Hong Kong University is mostly a listen-to-the-professor-once-a-week class. It is not inspirational and is certainly not an environment I relish or thrive in.
I can read articles just fine but give me videos and give me visuals to spark it up a bit. The lessons at MSU are suiting me just fine at the minute, thank you very much! Throwing in a podcast here and there is definitely workable for me!

I think every educator must always remember the different learning styles they will have in their classroom. Delivery must be varied, exciting and engaging. That's where technology can assist greatly in the teaching aspect. Interactive whiteboards to assist teaching of new concepts where the students can manipulate objects, educational videos to visually support a concept are approaches that can accommodate all learners while obviously listening to the teacher...teach!

If I'm being honest I feel sorry for students today. They spend their waking hours outside of school being stimulated by every technology available in every way imaginable. By sight, sound and touch by computers, HD televisions and iPads. They come into our classrooms and more often than not are met with paper, pencil and flipcharts.

photo © 2009 Cristiano Betta | more info (via: Wylio)

Creative Commons Lab

photo © 2007 Eddy Van 3000 | more info (via: Wylio)I recently found a great website which is a search engine for Creative Commons images; wylio.com. The great thing about it is that it automatically creates the embed code for easy inclusion in your blog.





The advantages of using images in the classroom is endless. You only need to look at websites like piclits.com to know that educators realize that images can be a great source of inspiration for budding writers and be the spur for great creative pieces of writing. Educators like Tim Rylands in the United Kingdom uses images (often from games) to get students' reactions and uses mysterious and atmospheric scenes to encourage a creative and inspiring use of the English language from the students. I think the use of images can create a forgettable lesson into a memorable one.

I must admit, I have uploaded quite a few photos to Flickr and never set the default license attribution to be other than fully copyrighted. I will do so in my default settings before my next uploads as there is really no reason why I shouldn't.

My Flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/89271381@N00

My first CC attributed image! http://www.flickr.com/photos/89271381@N00/3255456048/in/set-72157613353293725/

PC Maintenance and Security Lab

I was thinking this might be a hard lab to get anything really new out of as I come from a technical background and have kept up my technical skills while venturing into the educational field. Having said that, I chose 3 tutorials that introduced me to a couple of newish concepts I found interesting.

Tutorial Title: Demonstrating Spybot's TeaTimer






I have used Spybot numerous times to rid peoples' computers of spyware/malware. My old routine used to be to run Spybot and Lavasoft's Adaware as I found that one would catch things the other wouldn't. To be perfectly honest I have neither installed on my computer now as I find that if you use Firefox and have a couple of add-ons with it you will be just fine.
I have never used the TeaTimer section of Spybot as programs like that get very annoying very fast as programs tend to change registries more often than not and you just end up disliking the constant messages that pop up. I can see that it could be useful for people who are unsure of what software or websites are genuine.

Tutorial Title: Using Sandboxie

I had never heard of Sandboxie before. It is a program you install and it can sit in between your computer and the internet trapping all of those temporary files that may contain malware or spyware. It's an interesting concept but one that I probably wouldn't undertake. It may be useful for people who really don't want to clog up their hard drives with all those spyware programs. It may be particularly useful for people who want peace of mind and take advantage of online internet banking with their bank and feel safe and secure doing so.


Tutorial 3: Using RoboForm

I knew of the existence of form and password filling programs but kind of glossed them over as unsafe. But looking through the RoboForm tutorial I began to think well, why not use it?! I have so many websites to log in to these days and I will, more often than not, forget what username and password configuration I have used. Not to mention those long annoying forms that you have to fill in on 99% of all websites. So I'm going to download and use it on my home computer and see how it goes. The only downside in my mind is the security issue, yes you can password protect your actual passwords for specific sites but there's still something in my mind that says it's a bit dodgy but I'm going to learn and shift my thinking as I go on this one.

Getting Things Done

As I failed to see this task or organize myself in time to see it I think I'm in dire need of fine tuning my GTD system! But I did actually start a process to manage my tasks a week ago and below are my notes on the experience.

How did you organize your process? (are you using paper and pencil, a phone, a piece of software)?
As I am tied to the hip with my iPhone I thought it would be best to get an app to organize my to-do list so I got Remember The Milk as I flirted with it a few years ago.


What was it like for you going through the process the first time?
It was actually quite cathartic to list out what I needed to do and when. I entered all my MSU activities that needed to be done in that week and I entered some time-critical work related tasks as well. The hardest part was to try and remember once the task was done to mark is as completed in the app.

Do you think that this process will help you? Why or why not?







It could help me but it will take a bit of time for my brain to get used to the whole process. If my mind has been dealing with task management in another way for so long then obviously it will need to adjust to any method. To get everything down that needs to be done in one central area makes sense but to stay on top of that...well isn't that just another task you need to remember?!

Do you think you will continue this process? If not, what will your process be?I am definitely going to stick with the iPhone app route but I think I will need to look for another app; one that gives me a reminder message at given times to further remind me to finish a certain task. It may be kept as an academic task manager for my studies as that will keep it simple. For work I have Outlook Exchange calendars to keep on top of work tasks.

Social Networking Lab

photo © 2010 Marc Smith | more info

I think I could probably rate in order of importance the number of social networking tools I use during the course of my professional work week. So let me just do that!

1. Twitter

This is undoubtedly my number one social networking tool. If I'm walking in between classrooms or meeting I'll go through a couple of tweets on Tweetdeck on my iPhone. It's not a conscious thing anymore I just do it as part of my day's work-flow. During the course of a work week you get to keep on top of what educators around your region of the world are up to in their schools and you get to become a part of their reflections and brainstorming.
A lot of newcomers to Twitter ask "Well what if you miss something, there is just so much tweets!". My response to that is " Well, miss it!". If something monumental goes by it will get re-tweeted enough for you to see later.

photo © 2009 Matt Hamm | more info(via: Wylio)

The main aspect of Twitter that students and other teachers need to overcome at the start of getting into it is that they must have a concrete focus. I, of course, chose a professional focus and that's the way I approach introducing Twitter to my colleagues; get a focus, get following and get followed, share thinking and ideas and then install a Twitter client to get a work-flow established.

2. Facebook

I keep Facebook for purely social purposes and it does play a large part in my socially networked life. I use it to keep up to date with friends and family only although through gaining friendships through Twitter this has crossed over a little bit in recent times. I have yet to hear or see any powerful uses of Facebook in the classroom. Within a primary school setting I know the students use Facebook as a glorified gaming platform so any attempt to use it in education would take a major shift in thinking from our students (and teachers!).
photo © 2007 AJ Cann | more info(via: Wylio)

Of course you can become fans of clubs and associations on Facebook but in my opinion this is of little value as the discussion forums and the actual valuable connections made are minimal. So the jury is out on any professional implications Facebook may have.

3. Nings

I'm a member of quite a few Nings but, to be honest, I rarely visit any of them! There are just too much and too many to avail of any real positive results from them with no real way of centrally collating any of the information on them. Checking some of the discussion forums just recently on a couple of Nings they are no doubt used but nowhere near the amount of traffic you will get on Twitter.

4. LinkedIn

LinkedIn has reared it's head rather recently for me and it's another interesting factor to the social networking scene. From my initial experience with it there is minimal discussion and is used rather for connecting people you work with now. I have no stories of jobs being offered or people being headhunted through it which is obviously one of main goals of the website. Again, I have not had any positive experiences through LinkedIn yet and is nowhere near Twitter in terms of collaborations and making meaningful connections.

So, in conclusion, I think Twitter has overwhelmed any other aspect of my professional social networks. It is just too efficient, effective and effortless in gaining and sharing information and connections for any other platforms to compete with it. Facebook will, for the time being, be my conduit for keeping up with friends and family. The other platforms we have mentioned are mere peripheries at this stage which may be dipped into from time to time but at the minute play minor roles in my professional and personal social networks.

Blogs & Webpages

If you asked a couple of years ago what the difference between a blog and web-page is I may have more of a concise answer. These days the lines are blurred somewhat due to the staggering amount of mainstream blogs out there. Is a news website like http://news.bbc.co.uk a blog? It is date stamped and newer additions to the front-page push to the top. Just like a blog. When describing a blog to Grade 5 students we discuss how a blog is like an online journal, in essence. This is true in relation to what our Grade 5 students are going to be doing but marking the difference between blogs and web-pages based on the criteria of "journal-like entries" won't be enough anymore. I would also add the possible criteria of individual viewpoints a blog may have as compared to a generic journalistic viewpoint of a web-page. But, again, it's not that simple anymore!

RSS Page Reflection

<- My Google Reader list of blogs (Click on pic to the left to make bigger!) I've been an avid subscriber to Educational (and other) blogs for a couple of years now. It's been a love-hate relationship at times. I will always check my Google Reader at least once a day to keep on top of new posts. When I go on holiday or I am internet-less for a number of days the new post updates can be overwhelming and sometimes nullifies the advantages of subscribing to the blogs. Blogs will just get "marked as read" in a blink of an eye.
As I'm in Asia a lot of the American based blogs will update while I'm asleep and a whole list of updates are waiting for me in the morning! This can be a struggle to read in any depth while rubbing my eyes sleepily. I have taken a draconian method of going over my blogs I subscribe to every couple of months and culling the ones I tend to find are either overloaded with information every day or have veered off the reason why I subscribed in the first place.
But, as you can see from looking at my list of blogs I subscribe to, the numbers steadily increase anyway as I stumble upon more interesting and informative blogs. It's all about making sure the information that pops up doesn't outweigh the value I'm supposed to gain from subscribing to blogs. Next cull comes in December!

I have to admit that commenting comes less frequently than reading. I'm a big fan of Tech :-) Happy by an educator in Singapore. He always has a list of relevant and informative links every Friday. If I'm commenting on a blog it's usually to note my appreciation and to add a link or two I can share that the blogger did not include in their initial post. And of course it's always nice to get feedback from the blogger!

I have a wide variety of different educational blogs in my feed and I have different reasons for choosing them. I have straight forward educational technology blogs which I use to keep up to date with resources being used or recommended for use in classrooms. I have anecdotal blogs about day to day life in the classroom; I find these very useful to see how other teachers face the same challenges that I have faced. It makes me feel like we're all facing the challenging profession of teaching together and we are all easily contactable and never far from lending or taking advice. I also follow classroom blogs that teachers around the world have made as a record of their learning. These blogs do not necessarily include technology integration but offer a window into the classroom of today and give me a hypothetical question as to what would or could I do if I worked in that school to integrate technology into the Unit they are studying and posting about. The last type of blog I follow is just a Hong Kong University feed which keeps me up to date on any seminars or workshops that are coming up in Hong Kong.

I use what I learn from my RSS reader in a number of ways. I will store any links that I think are useful in my Diigo for future investigation. I will make contact with any educator if I feel like we can learn from each other. I will bring up resources, ideas and/or links to the classroom teachers when we meet to discuss whether they are viable to use in current or future units of work. And just recently I have begun to collect blogs in a Diigo list I think our classroom teachers will find useful and will share that with them so they may start their own RSS collection of blogs.
I believe that if I get across the usefulness of subscribing to blogs to our teachers they will open up a vast array of self-directed (and most often free of charge!) professional development opportunities. These may take the form of connecting with other classes and teachers around the world or simply just learning about new resources, techniques or current practices that are being used in classrooms around the world.