Week 5, Technology Integration Decisions

Overall, today went well. I felt like there was good interaction with the students. They were able to answer questions and interact with me and each other. All the lecture worksheets questions were designed to deliver in groups. This seemed to promote good student interaction. I will try to incorporate more group questions. I'm not sure that individual questions every really worked well.

Interestingly enough, I can hear students complaining about the readings and how they had no clue where the readings were before. However, they think that with the test review, everything should be OK. We shall see. The more I see about their knowledge of applying standards and objectives, the more nervous I get. We need to make sure that we have multiple copies of the standards. I like this, but we need to have WAY more explanation about this. I'm almost thinking about dropping the objectives section.

We definitely need to have a good/bad objective slides. Games that ask students to select what they would do, what's wrong, etc...

I spent too much time on the students slide. Also, I think we should eliminate objectives and stick with students and environment. The first one,

The video from YouTube is terrible. It had a dirty name for the intro. I missed this. But it provided a laugh.

Perhaps we need a whole section on the objectives. Or at least a tutorial. We will need to talk about how critical this actually is.

Week 5, Technology Integration Decisions

Things to add

Podcast study sessions

Edited versions of the PD principal movie with Principal Ottenbreit

Watching other people do the same lecture or review the same content as you gives you some great ideas. As I'm watching Doug present, I really liked a couple of things he did. First of all, he posted a fun article for students to read as they came into class. This gave students something to look at during those few minutes before class. Great idea. I'm planning on doing this in the rest of my lectures. Perhaps even using videos that way. Also, I liked how he drew on specific points from the video. I actually wanted to pause the first video to make comments - but I'm not sure how halting this would be and how much it would disrupt the flow.

Things to add

Week2 Lecture, Introduction to the Course

Today went well. I started with an introduction to the course. The Simponize characters went over well. After a brief review of the course, I had students get into groups based on their content areas. It took me some time to reorganize them once they were in the correct spots. The TAL learners kind of mixed things up in the 1st lecture and so now all the TAL folks are up at the top in one small corner. I will try to move them a little. They had a mission to create a collage of their pictures and names. I didn't care how they did it, but they needed to get this to me by Monday at 8:00. I already have one team that sent theirs to me. A little more time was dedicated to this assignment since they all seemed so energized about it. I will try to give them more problems to solve. I really liked this approach and it seemed to energize them.

Next I discussed some aspects of globalization and the flat world and how it's impacting our students. I think this gave them more of an appreciation of how our world is expanding. However, some of the stories and short quips need to be worked on. I think perhaps watching Thomas Friedman's MIT video and then finding a PPT or video on how this concept applies to K-12 education would be helpful. That's my note on professional development.

I had some good videos, but unfortunately, the sound didn't work too well on the students' description of why to use technology. These should be deleted or checked back on to see if the audio is audible next semester.

Overall, I felt like there was a good energy in the room and students really talked to one another about the questions. I think the first two questions are a little drull, but probably need to be asked (about globalization). Perhaps there is a way to spice this up. The second two questions were interesting, but I need to find a way to make students expand on the questions and to get more excited or engaging with the content. By changing the content area to the group section, they could circle it there and have more space to write. Or perhaps I make these all 2 sided or have all the questions at the top and have them number their responses below.

Overall, I'd like to think of more ways to involve them in discussions with their subject area group in the lecture. This is important because it is probably the majority of interaction they will have in their subject area. Think-Pair-Share is always a great possibility. I'll have to think of some more ways to increase interaction in a large lecture hall. I could always ask one person in each group to bring their laptop in. Hmmm.....

I would like to find more videos that show the amazing ways technology is being used. The Hamilton High video, Shift Happens, and A Vision of Students Today were all great. However, the new tech high page was dull, as was the Evansville page and perhaps even the Kokomo movie (although the later part of this movie was well done.

So for next week, I'm looking at standards, electronic portfolios, and I have less information in that presentation that I need to cover (this lecture had a LOT of videos).

Week2 Lecture, Introduction to the Course