Wicked Problem Project

Problem

Parents are still pretty much in the dark about what goes on in class on a day to day basis. They must wait for parent teacher meetings and portfolio showcases to get a solid grasp of what is going on. Students need and should give be given a wider audience to share their learning, their reflections and their thinking. Students and classes have no outlet to the outside world for immediate feedback and commentary.

Solution

In an age where Twitter is becoming the go-to medium for by-the-minute information sharing and news gathering we need to utilize Twitter in the classroom to bring this sort of modern day communication between our students and their families and the world outside of their classroom walls. My solution would be for a class to have their own Twitter account to try and utilize a very modern solution for a very old problem.

Breaking It Down

Due to my experiences in trying to implement this Twitter project near the end of a school term and in the middle of numerous other classroom activities my amended project (taken into account after feedback from Part D of the WPP assignment) will deem to lay out a plan of action to implement successfully a Twitter account for a class.

Timing

This is a major factor to take into account when planning this type of Twitter project. I would strongly advise that it is laid out and introduced to faculty in the one or two weeks before a new school year starts. I don't know how many weeks schools in America have for preparation without students but in the schools I have worked in there are one or two weeks of meetings and planning that would is an appropriate time to plan this Twitter project. Below is a timeline I have created, based on two weeks of planning time before students return to school.

Tweeting Project Time Line

Stakeholders

The stakeholders involved in this Twitter project are the administration, parents, teachers and students. They all need separate communications from the technology facilitator about the project.

Administrators:

They will need to be pre-instructed about the Twitter project a good deal in advance (a number of weeks or even months before teachers are introduced) so that any political or policy obstacles have to be overcome. The most obvious concern will be safety and if the school does not have cyber safety protocols in place then the publishing of work, pictures of students will have to be addressed, amended or the policy will have to changed in order for the school to place itself in a modern era of communications. Every school will be different so this part is vital to address as soon as possible.

Teachers:

Teachers (as described in the timeline) have to fully aware of and know all about Twitter before they will consider taking on this project. Examples of the advantages of Twitter will be included in the initial 1.1 meeting and all care will be taken to ensure that all teachers are comfortable with the use of Twitter in the classroom or at least be knowledgeable of Twitter and make an informed decision on whether they want to take it on.

Students:

Teachers along with the technology facilitator will introduce Twitter to the students in the first week of school.  Instructions and objectives are discussed with students. Examples of quality tweets and what a Tweet should inform a viewer about is discussed. 

Cyber safety will be revised and/or a number of lessons on cyber safety and digital citizenship from the Cybersmart Curriculum are implemented. Rules will be made by both students and teachers together on acceptable behavior online. 

A number of informative posters are shown and put up around the classroom to instill a knowledge of how Twitter differs from other types of communication.

Classroom Poster

Parents:

Parents are emailed within the first week of school to inform them on the Twitter project. It is obviously important to have the parents hop on board for the project to work successfully.A template of an email to be sent to parents is given to teachers who can edit as they see fit.

Email template here in Google Docs.

Execution

Teachers and students are encouraged to start Tweeting once the email to parents has been sent out and everyone is aware of the project. Routines are established within the classrooms and Tweeting duties may take different variations in each class. Some classes may assign Daily Twitterers or take on a more fluid approach and have a computer, laptop or smartphone accessible at any time for the students to tweet from.

After the first week or so teachers and facilitator should meet and discuss the initial few weeks and talk about any adjustments that may need to be made, what has worked well and what hasn't.

TP knowledge for the solution

The core technology that will be utilized will obviously be Twitter. The technological knowledge that our teachers have of Twitter will vary but introducing it to them will not be a hard task.
The main, underlying concept of this project is for the students to be able to share their learning and reflections to family (and the world) as it happens. Twitter helps this teaching and learning moment in a unique and obvious way due to the immediacy of Tweets, the audience a Tweet can reach and the ability for our followers to filter all our Tweets in one area using a Twitter desktop client. 

TC knowledge for the solution

As the learning and teaching content will be fluid, varied and can be represented in many different ways, Twitter is a perfect tool to represent all of the different facets of learning. Students will take photos, embed links to videos or any sort of media that the students wants to share. Students will also Tweet written reflections on their learning. Twitter will hone their reflecting techniques due to Twitter's 140 character input limit so it will add more of a challenge to the reflection process. Students will have to investigate their word choice and pinpoint the most important parts of their learning they want to Tweet.

PC knowledge for the solution

This project is, in essence, a solution to the problem of how students can share their learning and their reflections to their families and a wider audience for more authentic feedback and continued discussion. As it will be used in a wide variety of classes throughout the day and subjects the pedagogical approach to students learning the content will vary greatly. The most important part of our students' learning, though, is their reflections on what that have learned. So we will not, necessarily, change our pedagogical approach to teach the content but we will make sure the students are encouraged at any time to reflect using Twitter.

Student Experience

It is a small enough task for students not to get put off by it. It is a meaningful activity as it promotes students as authors to the world. The anticipation of getting more followers and to have conversations about their learning with a wider audience will provide engagement and motivation. 

The students will have not experienced anything like this before and it's hoped that this innovative way of communicating with family and people outside of the classroom walls will become common place in the future of our students' learning.

Implementation

Implementation would be as described as above under the "Breaking It Down" sub-section. Taking into account teacher feedback my revised implementation would not happen in the middle of a school year. Stakeholders, timing and execution are described as above and are a revision of my initial way I implemented the Twitter project with one Grade 5 class which is described below:

Surprises
As the planning for this was altered drastically from my initial plan to Tweet our field trip to Taiwan I've had to rush out an email to the parents of one class last week (it didn't help I was away at a conference for five days!). The plan is to trial run with it in one class to see what the experience is for students.

The surprises are and were that the number of replies have been sparse to say the least which leads me to.....

Unexpected bumps in the road (What you would revise)

Parents were not very responsive, only two responded to me. One to ask a question about the sign-up and one that was concerned about safety. I was actually expecting more queries about safety but as we had guidelines about safety in respect to our Grade 5 student blogs and would follow the same guidelines I guess it wasn't too much of an issue. At the minute we only have two parents following us so far. As the parents of our Grade 5 students have not been the most active responding to our students' blogs I guess this shouldn't be too much of a shock With moving to a new school next year I think any initiatives like this should be laid out at the start of the year, if a school's environment is not conducive or responsive to these types of initiatives (or not prepared)  then the uptake will be poor.

Delights (What went well)

The students were enthusiastic at first. Initial impressions from the classroom teacher were that the students were thinking more on things they can reflect on and Tweet about. They could tell the difference between the more planned blogging to the more immediate and spur-of-the-moment Tweeting.


However, after a couple of days there hasn't been much tweeting. I will be looking into this and the reasons why in my final presentation.

Pictures and/or vignettes

Evaluation

Formative: Did the project get implemented as planned?

The project did not go as planned right from the get go! The timing was terrible to put it bluntly. We had portfolio day coming up and we are now on Easter break so mindsets were not switched on to implementing anything new in the classroom.


Summative: Evidence of success in addressing the problem of practice


I still firmly believe that Twitter can be used very effectively as a communications tool in the Elementary classroom. It is immediate and opens up very effective and efficient communications between the students and parents and the outside world.
Even with the mere three Tweets that were sent out http://twitter.com/#!/g5isf I could get a sense of the way Twitter could work as a "as it happens" journal of what students are learning in class. 
The initial plan of Tweeting on a school trip is a very sound idea and one that I will implement in the future. School trips (especially overnight ones) are a time of worry and stress for parents wondering what is going on and what their children are doing and I think Twitter is an awesome idea to bridge the gap between school trip and home. It can fulfill both academic and emotional objectives nicely!


How would you approach another project of this type differently given what you’ve learned here?


I will be doing this project again and I will plan it accordingly. But teachers, students and parents need to be given heads up a long time in advance about it. Moving to a new school next year I need to instill an environment that projects like this will happen and are valuable activities to partake in. If the mood is set at the start of the school year that technology will be an increasingly used tool then projects like these will be implemented and used easier.


What are the lessons learned that others might benefit from knowing about?


Don't plan a technology integrated project without substantial thought and planning first. This Twitter activity was and is something that can become a major part of the daily classroom life so preparation, discussion and lessons regarding social media, digital citizenship/safety and teacher meetings are essential. The project will fail if not enough planning is done.


In what ways will you endeavor to do the same project again, and what will you change or not do?

This is my job and this is what I do. I will be doing projects like this very regularly in the course of my work in schools. I will implement a Twitter classroom next school year, that is a goal. I'm thinking I can try it out on an Early Years classroom as parents are a lot more interested in what their children are up to in those Grades! But I also want classrooms to be blogging too so I need to think about it over the Summer, I need to meet with teachers and administration to scope out the atmosphere and thinking about technology at my new school. Then, and only then, will I make final decisions on what best suits the environment of the school.

Appropriate for your chosen audience

Using Twitter in the classroom facilitated by teachers in any Grade level is appropriate and relevant to the times we live in. Students can take more control or less control of the Twitter account as the teacher sees fit. I believe using Twitter for communicating classroom learning could play a big part in the coming years in schools due to the no-cost, shallow learning curve and fast and effective proof of the value of using it.

Professional Learning Plan

What skill sets do you still need to increase?


I came into CEP810, 811 and 812 not knowing what to expect at all. At the start of 810 I wanted to spend more time thinking about technology in the bigger picture of education. I wanted to get more insight from "the other side", the classroom teacher's viewpoint. As I have never been a classroom teacher (in the traditional sense of the world), and have all my experience as a technology teacher I wanted to learn to be more aware of that angle. I feel like I have done before I undertook these courses but learning the TPACK model was one of the major moments for me. It's a model I will always come back to and I have shared it with parents and teachers alike since I was introduced to it..

I still need to develop my thinking on what teachers and parents want and need to know about educational technology. As you can see TPACK was over most of the parents' heads but I felt they needed to know what my job was and what I and teachers worked towards. These courses have given me a path to go down and I want to work more on teacher and parent workshops to introduce, inform and showcase educational technology resources and techniques.


What other literature or theory do you want to connect with? 


Moving to a new school next year I want to bring with me a solid knowledge of why and how educational technology is a core part of modern day teaching and learning. These three MSU courses have helped me formulate these thoughts into actions and words and has made me more confident in my profession. I still want to continue researching TPACK and it's usage. Is it something I just have in my thoughts, is it something that teachers need to know? I think it really helps teachers understand my role and they begin to realize that I help them with the technological knowledge "part" so they shouldn't feel pressure to...at first!

In addition to understand more about education in general and technology I will be looking more into the PYP and the role technology plays. I'm lucky enough to have got a sneak peek at the IBO's document about Technology in the PYP and I'm happy to see it follows NETS and my philosophy quite closely.

How will you pave your way and make sense of the opportunities you are exposed to? 


I will continue what I'm doing. I've been very busy this year in my new role and the fact I was undertaking two separate courses at two different universities. A lot of my year was punctuated by deadlines and evening classes rather than student report cards and parent meetings! Going back to being a timetabled technology teacher but with a major role in driving educational technology forward in my new school next year will be equally as challenging. Especially if, as I plan to do so, I start the MAET with MSU in the Fall.

Being exposed to the scheduled and timetabled assignments in the CEP courses has given me a very good sense of how PD could be delivered to teachers and what path those PD sessions could take. The courses has also formed more opinions in my mind about what works and what does not. I have made my mind up on WebQuests, Prezi and Jing amongst others and their part in the educational technology 


How are you going to take what you learned here and integrate it into your personal and professional workflows?  


All the core concepts and methods that I experienced in these courses are naturally applicable to my professional workflow. Online and mobile learning have been important parts of my life now for a number of years. When I taught I never gave students handouts and the portfolios they created were always digital. I will bring this concept to my new school as I know they have not gone for this method yet. I live a mobile life myself, everything is accessible on my mobile phone and when my iPhone was stolen this year I felt, for the first time in years, disconnected from the world.

What specific goals do you have between now and next summer in your teaching practice? How specifically do you plan to accomplish these?


I will be working with Grade 5 up until the end of the Summer holidays. I feel like I haven't worked with them enough and I have focused more on the earlier grades as the teachers there needed more assistance in planning and implementing technology integrated activities.  The Grade 5 teachers are more accomplished and able in working with technology so I worked with them minimally throughout the year. I will work with Grade 5 up until the Summer to help them with Common Craft and Green Screen video creating. We will also create a Blogging License document which will allow students to open up their password protected blogs to the world if they meet a certain number of standards in the Blogging License. So a very packed few months left with Grade 5.

Which goals do you think you can accomplish on your own, which do you need help with, and where might that help come from?


I always require teacher support when working with their students. With my Grade 5 goals I have already timetable events with the teachers as if it doesn't fit in with their schedule then we have problems. I have liaised with our Principal of our school about the blogging license as it requires a dramatic shift in our "closed wall" environment our administration has always supported. With the past year of closed wall blogging behind us the Principal was "swayed" into agreeing with me that students should have their blogging open to more commenting and viewing outside our school environment.

What is important to you as you develop both personally and professionally?


Some people may not agree with me but it is important that I am not seen as a technology bully or just known as "the tech guy".  I have always had a large amount of empathy for technophobe teachers and just like we need to differentiate for students it is even more important to differentiate for teachers. I feel it is important to be friendly, approachable and humorous in my day to day life (both professionally and personally). I believe it helps break down any barriers or traverses any bridges between the technology and the teacher. I see myself as the toll-guy. The toll is free and I'll lift any barriers that are in the way. I may even point out the fantastic scenery on the way...

Group Leadership Project

CEP812 Group Presentation on Prezi

What tool did your group use to deliver the PD tutorial?  Why?
We used Prezi as our presentation tool. I have used Prezi Meeting in a group presentation before and it is very easy to segregate the workload easily using it. We could easily add video and audio by either using flv files or uploading our videos to YouTube. So therefore, it worked out great as a standalone presentation tool.



What did you learn during the development process of the final product?
The first time I used Prezi meeting in another group presentation we had one group member who was late finishing his part of the presentation. This time everyone was amazing and had their work done ahead of schedule. This helps immensely as we could continue and finish the path early and see if we needed to change anything.



What would you do differently if you had to develop a similar product again?
Not a lot to be honest! The communication was great, we each knew which area to work on and we did so effectively. What I want to do is do some more research on animation apps on the iPad. I haven't looked further than Doink because I've been working with it for 2 years now on their website with G3-5 students. So it was a natural progression for me to check out their app on the iPad.

PART D - Findings and Implications

Formative: Did the project get implemented as planned?

The project did not go as planned right from the get go! The timing was terrible to put it bluntly. We had portfolio day coming up and we are now on Easter break so mindsets were not switched on to implementing anything new in the classroom.


Summative: Evidence of success in addressing the problem of practice


I still firmly believe that Twitter can be used very effectively as a communications tool in the Elementary classroom. It is immediate and opens up very effective and efficient communications between the students and parents and the outside world.
Even with the mere three Tweets that were sent out http://twitter.com/#!/g5isf I could get a sense of the way Twitter could work as a "as it happens" journal of what students are learning in class. 
The initial plan of Tweeting on a school trip is a very sound idea and one that I will implement in the future. School trips (especially overnight ones) are a time of worry and stress for parents wondering what is going on and what their children are doing and I think Twitter is an awesome idea to bridge the gap between school trip and home. It can fulfill both academic and emotional objectives nicely!


How would you approach another project of this type differently given what you’ve learned here?


I will be doing this project again and I will plan it accordingly. But teachers, students and parents need to be given heads up a long time in advance about it. Moving to a new school next year I need to instill an environment that projects like this will happen and are valuable activities to partake in. If the mood is set at the start of the school year that technology will be an increasingly used tool then projects like these will be implemented and used easier.


What are the lessons learned that others might benefit from knowing about?


Don't plan a technology integrated project without substantial thought and planning first. This Twitter activity was and is something that can become a major part of the daily classroom life so preparation, discussion and lessons regarding social media, digital citizenship/safety and teacher meetings are essential. The project will fail if not enough planning is done.


In what ways will you endeavor to do the same project again, and what will you change or not do?

This is my job and this is what I do. I will be doing projects like this very regularly in the course of my work in schools. I will implement a Twitter classroom next school year, that is a goal. I'm thinking I can try it out on an Early Years classroom as parents are a lot more interested in what their children are up to in those Grades! But I also want classrooms to be blogging too so I need to think about it over the Summer, I need to meet with teachers and administration to scope out the atmosphere and thinking about technology at my new school. Then, and only then, will I make final decisions on what best suits the environment of the school.

Mobile Learning

Make a live audience poll at Poll Everywhere

I used PollEverywhere to produce a quick poll on website usage for our Grade 5s. Because I work with K-5 the introduction of cell phones into our classrooms is not going to happen so we could not avail of cell phone voting.

Polleverywhere is an interesting website and although it pushes it's utility towards cell phone voting it doesn't make it too hard to vote using a widget.
I asked the question "What website do you use most at home?" For two sets of classes I used the "option poll" so the students didn't have free choice. Good to see that they visit their class blogs more than Facebook!

With the other two classes I used the "free text" based answers, because although I think I'm pretty hip to what websites Grade 5 students go to I wanted to see what the current trend is! With the text based answers poll I could not embed an input area into our Grade 5 blog so I had to link to the input box on the polleverywhere website.

Unfortunately on the final day of term before Easter break my G5 teacher forgot to give the poll to the kids so I tweeted it out to populate the poll. Unfortunately, again, some neanderthal decided to put a porn site down as their most favorite website to visit at home. So I had to take down the poll...


Mobile learning is certainly a technology that suits the age we live in. I have introduced 40 iPod Touches to our Kindergarten year which gives each classroom a set of 4 to use. We are also seeing how iPads can be utilized in the upper elementary school. So far it's harder to choose iPads over laptops. In my opinion, at the moment, iPads and Ipod Touches are at their most beneficial in the early years due to the vast amount of educational apps geared towards that age group.

We are living in transitional times regarding what technologies to use in our classroom. There are are debates and some quite heated ones going on in the comments section of blog posts and online newspaper articles. Again we are at a moment in technology evolution where some people are just plain scared of change and introducing any sort of "technological" item into the classroom to assist learning will set alarm bells ringing.

Educational technology is ever changing, ever innovating and the critics will always be evolving their counter-claims to any sort of change. The future is blurry but mobile technology is going to become a big part of education.

PART C - Implementation

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Surprises

As the planning for this was altered drastically from my initial plan to Tweet our field trip to Taiwan I've had to rush out an email to the parents of one class last week (it didn't help I was away at a conference for five days!). The plan is to trial run with it in one class to see what the experience is for students. I sent out the following email to the parents:


------------------

Dear 5Z Parents,

In an effort to integrate more 21st Century aspects into our classrooms we are going to trial using Twitter to allow students to share and reflect more effectively with family, classmates and the world beyond. 

What is Twitter? Well, take a look at the following Common-Craft video (as you may know our students have been making these recently, but this is from the official site!) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddO9idmax0o

Ok, so now you know what Twitter is, how can you start following our class Twitter account. Follow this simple video to create your own account: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO2o7pCaw4o

When you have created your Twitter account go to this address http://twitter.com/#!/g5isf and then click the Green Follow button, then you will be able to follow all of our Tweets from G5Z.

Any questions, please drop me a line at cgallagher@isf.edu.hk.

Best Regards,

Colin Gallagher

------------------

The surprises are and were that the number of replies have been sparse to say the least which leads me to.....

Unexpected bumps in the road (What you would revise)

Parents were not very responsive, only two responded to me. One to ask a question about the sign-up and one that was concerned about safety. I was actually expecting more queries about safety but as we had guidelines about safety in respect to our Grade 5 student blogs and would follow the same guidelines I guess it wasn't too much of an issue. At the minute we only have two parents following us so far. As the parents of our Grade 5 students have not been the most active responding to our students' blogs I guess this shouldn't be too much of a shock With moving to a new school next year I think any initiatives like this should be laid out at the start of the year, if a school's environment is not conducive or responsive to these types of initiatives (or not prepared)  then the uptake will be poor.

Delights (What went well)

The students were enthusiastic at first. Initial impressions from the classroom teacher were that the students were thinking more on things they can reflect on and Tweet about. They could tell the difference between the more planned blogging to the more immediate and spur-of-the-moment Tweeting.


However, after a couple of days there hasn't been much tweeting. I will be looking into this and the reasons why in my final presentation.

Pictures and/or vignettes

PART B - Storyboard and Script

We used Google Presentation to layout our storyboard and scripts. This was best as we could each work on our own areas and add slides if we wished without infringing upon anybody else's work.

Find the storyboard and script here:

https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AYae8JRa-kpoZGZnODVzZ2dfNTVrdmhkZDI2ZA&hl=en_GB

As we are doing our final presentation in Prezi, we have not added notes on slide transitions as we will be zooming from one place to the next. We have also nicely sectioned off each area of the Prezi so we know the path it will take and the order of our storyboard reflects that.

We have been able to segregate out the workloads very well from the start of our group project. We each know our respective areas to work in. I will look after the introduction and "Animation as a Digital Storytelling tool on the iPad". Dessa will look after "How iPod Nano or Touch recording (stories, activities, other assignments) can be used in the elementary classroom." and Neringa will look after "iPod touch/iPad apps for elementary classroom students to develop reading/vocabulary/spelling and writing skills"

Part B - Application of TPACK

Prologue:


Due to my misunderstanding of dates that assignments were due, I will not be able to fully implement the entirety of my proposed assignment in Part A of my WPP Project. However all adventures in technology integration benefit from having trial runs and tests so I will have one of my Grade 5 classes tweet out what they get up to in their classroom during a school week and get feedback from parents, students and the teacher involved. I will, prior to that, email the parents of the class with the details and introduction to Twitter (including a Jing tutorial). There, I think I'm calm now that I have that re-planned it out! Onwards!


====================================================


What is the TP knowledge for the solution?  (i.e., how does the technology you have chosen support the teaching strategies and methods you have chosen?)


The core technology that will be utilized will obviously be Twitter. The technological knowledge that our Grade 5 teachers have of Twitter is good as I was lucky enough to be able to introduce the benefits and advantages of using Twitter as a Professional Development tool. They both are aware of the advantages of Twitter, how to tweet using their iPhones and the little Twitter tips that help along in the process of Tweeting.
The main, underlying concept of this project is for the students to be able to share their learning and reflections to family (and the world) as it happens. Twitter helps this teaching and learning moment in a unique and obvious way due to the immediacy of Tweets, the audience a Tweet can reach and the ability for our followers to filter all our Tweets in one area using a Twitter desktop client. 




What is the TC knowledge for the solution? (i.e., how specifically does this technology make the content in your problem more intellectually accessible?  Be sure to think about representation.)


As the learning and teaching content will be fluid, varied and can be represented in many different ways, Twitter is a perfect tool to represent all of the different facets of learning. Students will take photos, embed links to videos or any sort of media that the students wants to share. Students will also Tweet written reflections on their learning. Twitter will hone their reflecting techniques due to Twitter's 140 character input limit so it will add more of a challenge to the reflection process. Students will have to investigate their word choice and pinpoint the most important parts of their learning they want to Tweet.




What is the PC knowledge for the solution? (i.e., how specifically do your pedagogical choices make the content in your problem more intellectually accessible?) Be sure to think about how the student will experience the content given these instructional strategies.

This project is, in essence, a solution to the problem of how students can share their learning and their reflections to their families and a wider audience for more authentic feedback and continued discussion. As it will be used in a wide variety of classes throughout the day and subjects the pedagogical approach to students learning the content will vary greatly. The most important part of our students' learning, though, is their reflections on what that have learned. So we will not, necessarily, change our pedagogical approach to teach the content but we will make sure the students are encouraged at any time to reflect using Twitter.

PART A - Brainstorm Session

As you can hear and see from the above recordings we experienced lots of echos and communication issues.

Dessa, Neringa and I had our brainstorming session on Thursday 7th April 8am my time,
8pm theirs. We had already asynchronously thought out a couple of things on a Google Docs document (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nEBPl-dF1tXt_9AcvvbhDrS32SL5Z-VG01ExRnHtXEg/edit?hl=en_GB) so we really only had to sort out some logistics as we had a good idea on what we were going to do our project on.


We chose the broad area of using Mobile Technology in the Elementary classroom specifically to assist with literacy. We were going to specifically focus on apps but Dessa only has access to an iPod Nano so she made the subject base broader.


We will use Prezi Meeting to present our tutorials as this is the easiest tool to work with as a group and to collaborate more effectively.. We will incorporate embedded videos demonstrating the areas we are each focusing on.


The Prezi will be sectioned off into 4 parts. One for each of us to our subject area and one for the introduction of the entire presentation. The immediate task was to set up the Prezi as soon as possible and we have done so and got the layout sketched out.

Colin will do Digital Storytelling and the iPad. Doink animation app.
Neringa - tutorial on app on learning vocabulary/spelling or language (how to use it, videos, etc)
Dessa - how iPod Nano recording (stories, activities, other assignments) can be used in the elementary classroom

Web Conferencing Experience

We used vyew.com. I will not use it again. I would rather use Skype and work together on a Google Doc at the same time. The document did not update or sync in real time and I lost a lot of typing. Audio was horrible and laggy also. I relish checking out new tools but my mantra is you have got to use the right tool for the right job. vyew.com is certainly not it. 

Web-Conferencing

As a group we decided to choose vyew.com. I tried to register at DimDim but for some reason I couldn't sign up.

 We all decided on a date and time and were all present and correct to start the conference on time. Both Dessa and I could talk to each other on our microphones but Neringa had issues with hers. When I spoke to Dessa I could hear my voice a couple of seconds later appear on her side so there was significant lag which slowed communications down.




At the end of the conference we were all just typing messages to each other which would have worked better on Google Chat or something as the chat box on vyew was small and cramped.

My group mates didn't tell me until after that they couldn't edit the main page although I did ask them if they could see what I was writing so along with technical faults we need to work on our communication too.

Overall I can't say I like vyew.com that much and I would not use it with elementary school kids. Due to time constraints and limited options we will still use it as the group brainstorming platform this week.

PART A - Description of Need or Opportunity

photo © 2010 Keri J | more info (via: Wylio)

An educational need or opportunity. This element is fundamental in this project. Since we have limited time, energy, and resources, cool technology without a clear sense of why it matters or what we gain by it is of little value in the educational setting.

When I found out I was to be one of the chaperones on our Grade 5 trip to Taipei, Taiwan from the 24th - 27th May 2011 I started thinking of how we could make the learning and information sharing more immediate using technology.
I'm sure my school is not the only one that bans the use of any electronic device other than cameras(which are merely just cameras nowadays, but never mind) so I had to come up with something that could be teacher facilitated but student driven.
To put it simply I wanted to come up with a way that students could share what they are experiencing on their trip, what they are learning and I wanted parents and teachers back home to be able to see these reflections and give feedback and ask questions of our students.

How you plan to address this educational issue with technology. You need to make a clear and convincing case that your proposed solution will make a real impact on the issue you identify, and that your proposed approach is a reasonable approach given its costs and possible alternatives.

With the recent protests in the Middle East Twitter has become the de facto way of communicating and transferring information in the most effective and immediate manner. I propose we set up a Twitter account for our Grade 5 school trip and inform and train our teachers and parents in how they can follow and interact with our Twitter account.
There are no better ways than Twitter to present our students' learning to an audience back home both anxious and excited to hear about their experiences. As Twitter is free the costs are minimal (more on additional costs later).
With instant feedback on any of our students' Tweets the opportunities for expanding upon their learning is immense with valuable feedback and questioning from our followers on Twitter.

Logistics of solution: For example…

What is the scope? (e.g., when and where will tool be used and for how long? Who all will use it?)

As the trip will take place over a number of days the whole Project will only be "alive" for around a week if we take into account any extra feedback after or any pre-trip questions before we leave Hong Kong for Taiwan.

I plan on setting up the Twitter account we create for our trip on all of the teachers' smartphones and discussing strategies for Tweeting with each teacher. My plan is that we let students know about the Tweeting activity and they are encouraged to come to any of their teachers when they want to share a photo/reflection or merely just an update of what they are doing. The additional costs I mentioned earlier will be the roaming costs we will incur while Tweeting outside of Wi-Fi zones. I have already checked with our mobile phone network and we can get 24hour limitless data roaming for around 10US Dollars which I don't see as being a problem at all.

Relevant research and resources (from the Internet and elsewhere) including reports on the closest effort you can find to what you are planning to do as well as ideas and materials you may be able to build upon in your own effort.

A quick search on Google brings up a South Florida school who tweeted their trip to Kennedy Space Center (http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/educationblog/2011/02/follow_a_field_trip_on_twitter.html and Twitter feed here: http://twitter.com/HeronHeightsEl ) From looking at their Tweets it is not entirely clear who was Tweeting. My plan is put down the students initials or first name and class whenever we Tweet so people back home can figure out if their child has just Tweeted. It will also give the student a sense of ownership over their Tweet. 

A college group in the United Kingdom tweeted about their sports trip to South America (http://www.gulliverstravel.co.uk/news/cheltenham-college-get-tweeting-on-tour and Twitter feed here: http://twitter.com/cheltcoll2010) Looking through their feed gives a very good overview of what they were doing and experiencing as they were in each part of South America. With our Grade 5 students we will look for more learning related to what area they are in and any new information they have learned in the midst of being there.

A plan for the portion you will implement during this course and the portion you will implement after this course completes.

I will plan everything during this course and will have everything complete by the time this course ends. I will most likely need an extension on my Implementation stage as the school trip takes place around the date that submission is required.
The overview of what I need to do is as follows:

Talk to teachers on the trip of the plan of action and make sure everyone is on board.

Create Twitter account.

Make Twitter tutorials for parents (Jing)

Send email/letter to parents with project details, Twitter account details and tutorials on Twitter

Embark on trip 24th May and Tweet as we go!
Get back 27th May and write up implementation and findings stage.

Get together the Presentation on the entire project.

Indicators of a successful project

The indicators of a successful project will be how much value the students and parents found in the whole Twitter experience. The proof will be in the Tweeting from both our students and our parents alike. The Twitter feed will tell all!

My Video Bio

I very recently made this as my application to the Apple Distinguished Educator 2011 (which I was successful in!).

I think it sums up what I'm about professionally and what I specialize in (elementary school technology integration).
I'm not the type of person who likes to shout from the rooftops about how great I am so making this self-lauding proclamation was a bit unsettling for me. But I had the core creative idea in my head since the movie Inception came out last Summer so I knew exactly what I needed to do.

The password to view it is in our Video bio thread in the discussion forums of CEP812 (I have not got all permissions from parents of the students that appear in it).


ADE 2011 Application from Colin Gallagher on Vimeo.

A Funny Thing Happened With Technology

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Funny Thing Podcast

CEP 811 Reflections

photo © 2009 George Eastman House | more info (via: Wylio)


1.
What are some things that you have learned about effective teaching strategies when integrating technology?

Everything needs to tie in with traditional teaching strategies. Sure our goal may be to transform our teaching with technology but the foundations of teaching must be adhered to.

Discussions
Lectures
Questioning (and Answering)
Explaining
Demonstrating
Group work (collaboration)

All of the above can be transformed by using technology but we must make sure we don't transform it so much that we lose the vision and the pedagogical processes that teaching and learning is founded on.

2.

How did integrating web-based technologies help you think about and evaluate uses of technology?

The use of web based technologies have blossomed over the last few years. No more dodgy educational software on CDs that you have to install on every single student computer. It is a testament to the amount of web based software out there that the images that we create for our students have fewer and fewer software titles installed on them.
We are going towards the "cloud" more and more. You can edit videos, create music, create maps, create mind-maps, edit pictures and design objects all online now. I rarely give educational software a second look now if it's on CD only. In fact, music software we had to install recently for some African Drumming compositions was the most buggy software I (and the students) have had the displeasure of using.

I think Web first, offline second in relation to integrating technology.

3.

How have you met your own personal goals for learning about technology integration?

The major thing I've taken away from CEP 811 is basing any technology integration ideas on the "traditional" strategies of teaching and evolving it from there. Everything I introduce into my school tends to do it by default but it is very useful for me now to think a little deeper about what we are actually changing, why we need to change it and what is the added value in changing it.
My goals remain the same always. To always learn, and to always learn from others; students and teachers. And as I have mentioned above to think a little more about what we are doing and how it changes and adds value to the teacher and the student..

4.

Do you have any new goals? What are your plans for reaching your new goals and your long-term goals after this course is over?

I'm constantly looking at what I'm doing in my profession and looking for ways to improve. If I didn't have something new to improve upon or learn I would feel weird! Especially in this profession. I've been thinking a lot about how I express myself within my professional social circles. I definitely realize that I am a better writer than speaker. If given the time to prepare I can make a killer presentation but in a very immediate and instantaneous environment I know I don't come across as well as I should (or I'm just paranoid!). As I've recently been accepted into the ADE class of 2011 I am aware that this aspect of my character needs to be worked on. I am going to look into the different ways I can approach this.

Online Learning

Using this document, I'm going to choose Wikis as an online learning experience that our students could use.

What content could this help you teach?


I haven't had the opportunity to use Wikis with elementary school students yet but I hope to sooner rather than later. At the recent Flat Classroom conference in Beijing the word "wiki" was used more than any other platform for use in global collaborative projects.
Wikis could be used in a number of different subjects and the ideas are endless. Some examples include collaborative storytelling, student e-portfolios or global projects.
I'm in the initial planning stages of connecting our classes with other schools to create a reading group wiki where our students read the same books and discuss and take part in activities on a wiki.


What type of pedagogical strategies might you use with your students?

With the use of wikis the natural pedagogical strategies that occur are cooperative learning. Students will naturally join in group discussions and group planning throughout the course of activities on the wiki. It is also a great introduction to distance learning for our young students whose future may involve more distance learning than we ever faces in ours.
Working with other students on the wiki on global projects also creates a scope for cross-disciplinary teaching on themes as they tend to be problem based projects that require a wide range of learning and investigating.

What technologies do you think would be harder to use with your students? Why?

As I'm involved with elementary school students the use of a career planning tool would not be appropriate or effective to use even with upper primary. The majority of the tools on the document above can easily be used with elementary students. The career planning tool would be very effective for seniors though. Students in elementary could get into this style of activity by starting an e-portfolio to keep evidence of their learning.