Research Line: What came first, my teaching or my research? (chicken or egg)

So in my latest 660 class (I've had so many of these, but they're all good) which is a doctoral seminar, I got to thinking about my research line/agenda.

I've always had a thing for technology integration. It allows me to be incredibly creative and take my mind further than anywhere before. I started out with K-12 integration. I loved thinking of ideas. For my student teaching experience, I had my first graders creating weather news reports and then I videotaped them. But that wasn't the ingenious part. I also wanted the backdrop like a real weather studio where the picture of the sun appears in the background. Since we didn't have the green screen :) I used a PowerPoint presentation with a picture of Michigan and animated clipart. I projected this image onto the screen with a LCD projector and placed the students in front of the screen. Lukily, the picture of Michigan had water (which was light blue, almost white) so there was no funky image projected onto the students. It turned out super cute and the kids had a copy of their own weather forecast when we finished.

It makes me come alive along with my audience. I am incredibly passionate about what I do and I love the technologies becuase it introduces a new possibility into the classroom. That's why, when a new technology comes out, I want to know all about and think about how we could use it in the classroom. It's a new way to address learning and make it exciting.

Therefore, if I had to pick my one research area, it would be technology integration into educational learning experiences (especially creative ones). More specifically, I really enjoy anything with preservice teachers, exciting them about technology. I think it's all about the manner in which you teach. The university faculty are some of the most important influences on the way these students teach. That why I want to be a professor instead of a K-12 school teacher. Think of all the children I will be impacting by preparing better teachers. I'm not just teaching technology, I'm teaching teaching.

Research Line: What came first, my teaching or my research? (chicken or egg)

271 - Philosophy from Week One: Learning skills and integration, incorporating vision, reflection and collaboration - the perfect combo for learning.

So, I'm thinking that 271 is going better than I first thought. After the first class, I was kind of bummed, because my students just sat there in awe, not asking any questions. I was afraid I had totally lost them and it was WAY over their heads. We had some really cute ideas. Luckily, I had all early childhood education students so I was able to really focus the software and aim of the course. Hans took all the Agricultural Education students. I really think you need to connect education more directly to students. This is shown throughout education. Many accomplish this with a smaller group, but if you can tailor the instruction to better meet a whole group of students, isn't that better? More ROI. :)

Anyways, I was so pleased with my first planned course. I first had my students draw a representation of themselves in a Paint program (to learn how to use Paint). Next, I had them save those in the Public Folder (to get them used to saving things and where to save them) so they could present their drawing to the class. As they were explaining, students were supposed to take notes (using Word or Works or Notepad) of students who had similarities to them. Then each student came up and we used Kidspiration to draw connections to one another to emphasize how we share common bonds. I wanted to build a community of learners.

Since the course is still fuzzy to me, it was difficult to explain. It felt like I was going by the seat of my pants, but I LOVE LOVE LOVE being able to be creative and think of these types of things.

I was also able to introduce them to WebCT Vista (where they were supposed to post an introduction of themselves), Blogs (using Elgg.net), and the course in general. We just reviewed how the cases would work and viewed the three movies files I had which were the first case. I'll talk about those in a separate blog.

I am also having the students keep their own blog in Elgg. They subscribed to our EDCI 271 community where there will be a community blog (for course suggestions or it could be used for debates or posting about different technologies and how we could use them) and a community wiki (where we will define ideal technology integration and come up with one class definition). Overall, I really want to emphasize learning the technologies while accomplishing technology integration visions. I think this may be the key. They are learning both skills and integration techniques all at the same time while reflecting and collaborating. I discovered this accidentally, but what a brainstorm! I love it! Plus it's students centered. I asked them to answer a survey that lets me know what technologies they wanted to learn about. Therefore, I can tailor the course to meet their wants and needs. The important thing is to remain flexible.

271 - Philosophy from Week One: Learning skills and integration, incorporating vision, reflection and collaboration - the perfect combo for learning.