School Meet » Educational Technology

Constructing Your Vision with DoInk

admin — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 19:35:25 +0000

One of my favorite things to do while reading a book is creating a vision of what the scenes and characters look like. For as long as the reading lasts, I can turn into an imaginary director – staging scenes, dressing characters, and putting on my own show. Later, if the book is made into a movie, I enjoy comparing my vision of the book to the director’s interpretation. Disappointments or pleasant surprises usually follow. As enjoyable as this exercise is, I have never tried seriously to discover why I (and many others) do this. Until one day, as I was reading the Smithsonian Institute’s “Once Upon a Real Time: Telling the Stories the Past Tells Us,” I noticed that one of the methods described to improve student understanding is encouraging them to envision story scenes and characters in their minds. It became clear that visualizing is an important part of the learning process.

I wanted to test this method on my students, and I was looking for implementations that would be appropriate for our internet-age students. My explorations led me to a free, web-based drawing and animation application called DoInk. DoInk is relatively new and tries to appeal to those who enjoy drawing and creating animations, sharing them with others, and publishing them for all to see and enjoy. Published art creations become part of a big pool of props that users can search and use in their own creations. This web-based art and animation tool is backed by a dedicated DoInk community, turning it into an active social network focused on art and animation.

One can think of many educational implementations that an application such as DoInk can benefit. Students can draw scenes and characters from stories they read, create a simulation in science, or visualize complex problems in math, in addition to other subjects. All educational disciplines can benefit from a tool such as DoInk. Students really enjoy using DoInk because they spend a lot of time working on it. They welcome working on any project with DoInk, even if it is complex.

In the ‘Escape on the Pearl’ project, I analyzed the story by looking at it from different angles. One such angle was visualizing my own version of important scenes in the story. The task was not as easy as I thought it would be. It was not enough to just open DoInk and start drawing. The drawing had to be a reflection of the times in terms of scenery, clothing, characters, etc. Before starting to draw, I had to research how the 7th street wharf at Washington D.C., the Pearl, the people, the dresses, and the buildings looked like. Only then could I combine my vision with the authentic look of the times in order to start planning the drawing and put the animation together.

I always believed that projects in which students need to recreate a scene or a simulation of some phenomena would have the most impact on data retention and student understanding. In order to draw a simple scene from a story or a documented historical event, students need to understand a lot about the times and the people. In order to simulate a scientific phenomena as part of a science project, students have to clearly understand how everything works and how it all fits together before they embark on the task of simulating it with an animation tool.

As simple and enjoyable as this tool is, the cognitive processes that take place in order to bring such a project to fruition can be quite complex. DoInk is the type of technology tool that helps learners articulate and show what they know, reflect on what they have learned, and construct personal representations of meaning. In a conference about the brain held at UCLA, researchers said that the brain is more likely to retain information if the topic is presented in ways the brain is not normally accustomed to. As long as students have not watched the scenes, events, or simulations in movies or T.V., creating visual representations of any of those are clearly different than what they usually do.

The Pearl by mebogler, made at DoInk.com

Meaningful Learning With PersonalBrain

admin — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 05:55:41 +0000

In a typical middle school, a social studies teacher was contemplating how to commemorate black history month in a way that will leave a lasting impact on students who had no idea what type of life, humiliations, and struggles the black community in America had experienced. She decided to pick “The Story of an Escape: Flight on the Pearl,” from the Smithsonian Education series “Once Upon a Real Time: Telling the Stories the Past Tells Us.” The story is about the famous escape of slaves in Washington D.C. in 1848, which was a watershed in the fight of the anti-slavery movement in America. In view of the enormity of the task, she decided to divide the class to teams. The assignment was to read the story, understand it, identify and analyze the stakeholders, scenes, plot, and viewpoints. The teacher tried to avoid assigning roles because she felt that it was part of the learning process. Instead she advised students to record “story thinking” by hanging up large sheets of paper around the classroom and record their thoughts while working on the story. This, she thought, will help her students identify the main components in the story and make role assignments easier.

As students were struggling to make sense of the story, the teacher’s recommendation was indeed very helpful. It helped them focus their attention on what was important and look at alternative views their peers came up with. However, they still had difficulty seeing the big picture – how characters relate to each other, how they influenced the flow of events, what type of an impact the story had on history or vice versa. The ability to visualize how all these components relate and influence each other would be difficult for an adult, not to mention a child, especially if traditional resources are all the child can use. Students can use different computer applications to address different parts of the assignment, but none allows them to put it all together in a manner that will help them see the entire picture, like pieces in a puzzle.

PersonalBrain is an application that does just that and much more. It is a visual content management solution and an associative information organization system. It is what we call a mind-mapping solution that allows its users to branch out their ideas or thoughts in a visual diagram. Any piece of information or “thought” can be linked to any other piece, creating structures of information that reflect the way users think about the information. Mapped and linked ideas help users follow a train of thought, flowing from one item to the next. What makes PersonalBrain so unique is that it is a dynamic mind-mapping tool that allows users to keep track of the big picture even as they go on into execution phase and attach supporting documentation created with other applications. The beauty of this is that there is no divorce between the conceptual phase and the execution phase and users can see the big picture while they are busy working on the detail. Users can attach spreadsheets, documents, website resources, animations, simulations, or any other type of file that makes their nodes come to life and contribute to a detailed, well rounded picture of the users’ thinking, thus making it easier for others to understand.

If the same classroom had access to PersonalBrain, they could immediately lay out a visual diagram of the story’s main framework. They could start with the project planning phase which includes assignments, observations, questions, and resources and follow with a detailed analysis of the scenes, stakeholders, plots, and viewpoints. A student would not be able to plan, design and execute it all with PersonalBrain. Execution would require them to use different applications. However, students will be able to see how all project parts tie in together and fit into a larger context. As they work on the details, they can discover new relationships and record them in their PersonalBrain diagrams. Project parts created with other applications can be attached to their respective nodes, linking the details into the project’s conceptual view. Students can move in and out between the big picture and a detailed view of the project, never loosing track of the relative location of data they explore in the larger scheme of things.

According to David H. Jonassen, meaningful learning happens when learning tasks are situated in some meaningful real world task and students are led to recognize that the world is not a reliable and simple place and ideas rely on the context they occur in for meaning. PersonalBrain facilitates this type of learning by requiring learners to analyze the underlying structure of the ideas they are learning, while they are trying to link them to their own knowledge structures.

Bibliography:

David Jonassen, Learning to solve problems with technology : a constructivist perspective, 2nd ed. (Upper Saddle River N.J.: Merrill, 2003).
“Smithsonian Education – Telling the Stories the Past Tells Us,” http://smithsonianeducation.org/educators/lesson_plans/telling_stories/index.html.
“TheBrain.com – Welcome to TheBrain,” http://www.thebrain.com/.

You can interact with this mind map by clicking on its nodes and whenever a document is attached to a node, you can view it by clicking on the bottom of the mind map.

Making Observations With Google Apps

admin — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 00:42:17 +0000

One of the major stumbling blocks that students face when conducting research is how to construct meaning from what they read. Research usually starts with a question or topic that the teacher has assigned or the student is curious about. In most cases, the students use a search engine to look up as many sources as possible for their research. Students often use advanced search to filter research results to fit their exact topic or age level. As they identify their sources, they usually store research results in a web-based research management tool such as Diigo or Zotero. As complex as this may seem, students as young as 8 years old perform this process almost flawlessly. The problem usually starts when they open a piece of text and start reading what it says. When students get to this stage, I can almost see the wall that is formed between the student and the text. They seem mostly lost. Why is it so difficult to read text, understand what it says, and identify the things that relate to the students’ goals? Of course, the entire process is not simple. It requires students to be good readers, have a good vocabulary, comprehend the meaning of those words in context, identify important ideas and how they relate to one’s topic. Even students whose vocabulary and comprehension levels are that of typical students of the same grade-levels, tend to stumble when it comes to identifying relevant ideas pertaining to topics they are researching.

: Observations Form

These were my thoughts as I designed the ‘Observations’ tool. The tool, which was created with Google Forms, includes two fields: Relevance and Observation. Relevance is described as ‘Who or What is this observation relate to,’ and ‘Observation’ is the observation itself. As students read text, they need to focus on sentences that are important to their goal, rephrase them, and write them as observations using the ‘Observations’ form. Observations are fed in one at a time. When the student presses the ‘Submit’ button, the observation is listed on the spreadsheet attached to the form. Soon, a whole list of observations accumulates and becomes available for students to use in their projects.

This type of note-taking has great individual, as well as group, benefits. As an individual, a student can always go back to the Observations List and recall, add new, or correct observations he/she made. As a group, students can look at other students’ observations to learn from, get new ideas, or use as a foundation for brainstorming with group members. The tool is also valuable for evaluation purposes. By going through student observations, teachers can understand the foundation that students based their ideas upon. As its name indicates, the ‘Observations’ tool helps students make observations, which implies that it was not designed specifically for text. Depending on the type of

project students are engaged in, they may be required to use different senses to make observations. In a science project, students may different phenomena very carefully or even tinker with apparatus and write observations about what they see, feel, smell, taste or touch. In a storytelling scenario, students are encouraged to record their thoughts as they reflect descriptions of characters, events, and students’ emotional reactions to a story. In all types of projects, the observation tool can help students focus their thinking on what they need to know, reflect back on, and build a knowledge foundation that students can collaborate and brainstorm with.

The Obsession With Typing

admin — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 23:29:23 +0000

I know that I promised to continue my “Project-based learning Google templates” series, but I could not help myself but share my thoughts with you about a subject that has had me thinking for a while- typing. A few weeks ago, our school held an open house for prospective parents. As parents walked through the computer lab, one parent approached me and asked me about our computer program. I explained to her that we have one computer class per week in which students are researching and creating projects that relate to topics they study, using web-based tools (Google Apps). It was clear that my response was not what she was looking for and she kept asking: “Are you teaching typing?” I told her that due to limited computer lab time, students cannot engage in typing. She walked away and joined the group and I was left wondering: why are so many parents and teachers focused on the importance of typing skills?

Don’t misunderstand me, I have nothing against typing. In fact, I believe that every student needs to be fluent in typing as soon as their workload grows (obviously, not in the first grade levels) and a lack of typing proficiency becomes an impediment to completing their work and a burden on their schedules. At that point, they need to go on one of those fun web-based typing tutorials and practice typing every day for about ten to thirty minutes. In a couple of months, students will be able to master typing to an extent that they will be able to handle most of their typing assignments. I am puzzled as to why parents and teachers in elementary school adamantly insist on typing lessons for their children even if they are at the expense of acquiring important technology skills that are much harder to learn and more useful in the long run.

In elementary school, where most students’ work is handwritten, the need for typing lessons is not very substantial. It is always nice to have students come to the computer lab and finish their typing much faster. However, when you start weighing the complexity of acquiring typing skills as compared to technology skills, such as working with spreadsheets, word processors, web-based applications, account management (login, etc..), and handling multimedia tools (editing and embedding them into projects), it becomes clear that typing is a drill that does not require much thinking to accomplish. Why waste precious computer time on a drill that can be easily done at home as part of a student’s daily homework.

The only reasonable answer to this is that for many years typing was considered to be a skill representing an important aspect of technology. Not very long ago, the essence of technology was that students will be able to type-up their papers, either by using the typewriter or later using a word processor on a computer. Students could not do as much with technology as they do today and technology was not as ubiquitous as it is at present. Times have changed since and today’s worker needs to be highly educated and technologically qualified. In addition, they are expected to master communication and collaboration tools that will enable them to exchange ideas and projects with colleagues all over the world. Typing is certainly a big help in accomplishing tasks, but it is not viewed as a major skill to have anymore. This is because you can easily learn it on your own when you require it, and many of the widely used smart phones don’t use a traditional keyboard layout.

Throughout the years, the responsibility of teaching typing was traditionally assumed by the school and in many schools this tradition has been retained. That is probably part of the reason why parents look to schools to provide that skill to their kids. Another reason is that some people believe that students should not be overloaded with homework and prefer to have their kids learn typing at school instead. This outlook hampers our ability to sustain our dominance in science and technology.

In most cases, when parents and teachers are updated about the latest trends in educational technology, they are willing to assume the part of training their kids to type at home. The more technologically savvy parents and teachers are, the more they understand that typing is just one skill in the wide plethora of technology skills that students need to master, and that some are more difficult than others to learn. As technology gets more ubiquitous in schools, the focus will change to reflect our new world. In fact, in many schools it is already changing as we speak.

Planning the Task with Google Apps

admin — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 20:22:40 +0000

Imagine a classroom getting ready to start working on a project. The teacher has just assigned the driving question–a question designed to look into the heart of a discipline and serve the purpose of organizing and driving activities in the project. Getting ready to plan activities for this project turns out to be a challenging task for the students. The teacher, who anticipates the difficulty, decides to break the task into more manageable sub-goals and provides them with a project template designed to systematically guide them through the core components of a project: defining the task, documenting information sources, recording observations, inferences and questions. Using this template helps students become task driven, thoughtful planners, focus on one small thing at a time and pay attention to details. As a result, students end-up gathering a meaningfully organized body of information they can rely on to answer the driving question and write their project conclusions.

A Model Project with an Assignment List

A Model Project with a Task Assignment Sheet

A typical project in a planned project-based environment may begin in different ways. How to begin depends on students’ grade level, their experience with project-based learning, and to what extent the teacher is ready to delegate responsibility to the student. Task assignments may be the first thing students decide on or it may come after the driving question, if students are the ones developing it. The decision to engage elementary students in project-based learning and train them to take charge of the process is quite demanding and most teachers don’t have the necessary time to make it happen. Therefore, teachers in my school prefer to assign the driving question, provide clear project specifications and assign specific roles to each team member in the group. This does not warrant that task assignments are predetermined by the teacher. Each member’s task is wide enough to break it down to clear steps and deadlines. Students engage in task assignments after they understand the assignment well enough and have a chance to generally overview the subject.

The process of task assignments follows the students’ analysis of the role they assume. Based on their understanding of the role, they devise a set of steps and deadlines to perform it. Team work facilitates peer review, helping each member refine their task assignments. They also need to learn to synchronize their tasks, if task precedence is important for project completion. The tool that enables all this consists of a ‘Task Assignment Sheet’ and an ‘Assignment List,’ both part of a Google Site Projects Template created by me. The following section describes how to create a ‘Task Assignment Sheet’ by breaking the task into the necessary steps and components that are needed for students to be able to use it and collaborate. It is very important that you perform these steps in the order they are listed. Otherwise, you may have problems with sharing the information correctly with all team members.

Click Here to Download Instructions
How to Create A Task Assignment Sheet

Project-Based Learning With Google Sites

admin — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 23:28:31 +0000

Last year, I introduced Google Sites as a presentation and collaboration tool for my students. They used it to create projects covering the California Missions, Native Americans, and each of the 50 states. On the surface, the sites functioned as an online replacement of traditional paper. In essence, students were able to create quite sophisticated projects with it. For example, students were able to embed a Google Map, marked with all 21 California missions into their site, long before Google enabled this functionality. But the main advantage of using Google Sites or the entire Google Apps package was that due to its web-based collaborative nature, students could brainstorm and work with their team members and access their files from anywhere. As the students learned to master Google Sites, the company kept adding new features almost daily. Some of these additions have opened up new possibilities for using Google Sites as a project-based learning template that helps students organize their work and manage the process of creating a project in teams.

I have been a long- time advocate of project-based learning because I believe that it encourages students to become independent self-driven learners. I employed my basic understanding of project-based learning to help my students use this approach in their work. However, I always felt the lack of a systematic approach that other teachers and I could refer to when guiding students to use it. When I stumbled upon the book “Teaching Science in Elementary and Middle School Classrooms,” I knew that the book was a serious contribution to creating a systematic approach to handle project-based learning in science. The authors -Krajcik, Czerniak, and Berger – have laid out a detailed formula for implementing project-based learning in science that any teacher seriously attempting to use it can rely upon. The book is filled with practical descriptions of procedures and forms necessary to cover the entire process: formulating the driving question, developing scientific investigations, using technology, developing collaboration, developing benchmark lessons, developing proper assessments, planning a project-based curriculum, and setting up the classroom for project-based learning. However, the book’s focus on science made me look for additional sources that had a more universal approach, such as the excellent and exhaustive Buck Institute’s Project Based Learning source.

After reading all these excellent materials, I was able to formulate a methodical approach to project based learning that I was eager to apply with my students. A combination of this methodical approach with the benefits that Web 2.0 technology affords, started making a lot of sense. Web-based applications such as Google Apps hold the promise of student collaboration, making it an ideal platform for project-based learning. As an avid user of Google Apps and other Web 2.0 applications, I started toying with the idea of implementing a project-based framework using Web 2.0 tools. I created a template with Google Sites that serves as a project-based guide for students to follow. The building blocks of this template vary depending on the subject that the project is focused on, but it has a few generic components that are likely to show up in any project. A typical project template may include a “Team Task Sheet” for planning each members’ roles and responsibilities in the project, an “Observation Form” for encouraging students to record and share their live or text-based observations, a “Questions Form” for recording and sharing questions that may lead to a driving question, and a “Research” section which displays the bibliography of the sources students consult.

A Project about The Pearl's Escape using Google Sites

I have created a sample project based on the Smithsonian Institute’s “Once Upon a Real Time: Telling the Stories the Past Tells Us.” The project is classified as a historical story and tells “The Story of an Escape: Flight on the Pearl.” Based on this story, I created a template that has the above mentioned building blocks, as well as specific sections that stem from the project’s topic–telling a historical story.

In the next few blog entries I will focus on each component of this template separately. Starting with the “Project Task Sheet” designed to help students describe their tasks in the project, followed by a student generated list of bibliographic resources and how to include them in the site, promote brainstorming by recording and sharing observations with the “Observations” form and use the “Questions” form to focus the discussion towards a definition of a driving question. Each component will be described for its educational value, how it serves project-based learning, how to approach each task and tailor it for your own needs. A live demonstration of templates in action will be available towards the end of this academic year when my 5th grade students’ template-based projects will be displayed on our Balboa Magnet school website.

Bibliography:

BIE: Project Based Learning: Overview: Project Based Learning. (n.d.). . Retrieved December 24, 2009, from http://www.bie.org/index.php/site/PBL/overview_pbl/

Krajcik, J., Czerniak, C. & Berger, C. (2003). Teaching science in elementary and middle school classrooms : a project-based approach (2nd ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill.

Smithsonian Education – Telling the Stories the Past Tells Us. (n.d.). . Retrieved December 24, 2009, from http://smithsonianeducation.org/educators/lesson_plans/telling_stories/index.html

Motivated to Succeed by Learning Robotics

admin — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 22:55:14 +0000

The Robotics Show

Eddie carefully placed his robot at the starting point of the wooden maze which was located on the floor of the school’s auditorium. Parents and visitors joined the crowd that was patiently waiting for the Napa Street Elementary robotics show. Prior to this show, students’ robots and written reports were displayed on a big table at the center of the auditorium for all to see. The students were standing next to six laptops, making last minute changes to the programs they designed to drive their robot through a big maze. The students’ goal was to have their robots traverse the maze from start to finish using either a light sensor, a bumper, or no sensor at all.

The show was the culmination of a sixteen week advanced robotics program in which 4th and 5th grade students were expected to design, build, and program a robot from scratch and drive it through a wooden maze. The entire process was broken down to three phases: design, construction, and programming. The robot building experience was supported by benchmark lessons and web-based building resources. As they progressed through the entire project, students applied investigation methods to solve problems they encountered in each phase. In doing so, they were tapping into their previous experiences, their peers’ experiences, external resources, or if need be, asking for help.

In the design phase, the goal was to build the sturdiest robotic frame which can withstand a fall. A few failed building attempts led students to the conclusion that bracing protects robots against falling apart in the middle of the race. The task required solidifying the robot with vertical beams that could be attached with pins to the robots’ frame. The beams’ holes had to exactly fit the holes in the robots frame and students realized that they had to apply their knowledge of Lego measurements to accomplish the task. Many times, bracing difficulties forced students to redesign and rebuild the robot to allow the beams to fall into place.

I assumed a mentoring role and helped only when students asked for it. I enjoyed following their attempts to come up with the best robot based on their understanding of the assignment. Participation in a beginners’ course and a few

Students Collaborate on Robot

introductory benchmark lessons taught them that building goals dictate the proper gearing arrangement. I was listening-in to team partners as they discussed whether the robot should be fast or slow, the impact of wheel size on performance, and which type of sensor to use, if any.

When they finally built the robot, they could not wait to test it. Testing immediately turned into a reality check, shattering many of their building assumptions. Estimated time for each turn in the maze turned out to be unreliable. They learned that friction, manufacturing differences in engine power, and a dwindling supply of energy from batteries could cause fluctuations in time and speed. It soon became clear that time estimates were a poor predictor of a successful traversal of the maze.

A new plan was needed and it had to rely on the light sensor. This alternative was not pursued before because programming the light sensor was much more difficult but more reliable. This change in plans sent them back to the drawing board. They had to design the light sensor and attach it in a way that would allow an accurate reading of the light and securing it to prevent it from falling in the middle of the race.

They asked for my help in programming the light sensor. Some students were able to understand the programming right away and went immediately to implement it in their robots. Others asked for more help. This solution did not turn out to be smooth sailing either. As soon as they started testing, they discovered that light sensors are affected by ambient light in the room. The readings they got while testing in the room next to the computer turned out to be different than the readings they got in the auditorium, where the maze was located. Students had to make repeated programming adjustments to light sensor readings to make sure that the robot will not veer off the black path it was designed to follow. They also had to reduce the speed to make sure the robots could keep track of the black path. Sometimes, fulfilling this requirement meant that students had to change gearing arrangements.

However, in the end, it all started to pay off. More and more students started seeing their robots complete the maze. They were thrilled with the results. They kept repeating the process and became experts in adjusting the programming as conditions changed in the auditorium. Relatives and friends gathered to witness the results of the students’ hard work. The show was a huge success and the students were running around with their robots showing them off to everyone.

Changing the Robot's Design

Throughout this entire process, students also learned to handle a robotics project management database, which they used to report problems, solutions and investigations. Students would fill investigation notes for each problem they encountered and the solution they came up with. The goal was to create a repository of student problem solving expertise that other students can rely on when facing similar situations. The database was designed and created by me using the FileMaker Pro database engine.

I still look back at the experience as one of my most fulfilling and uplifting experiences I ever had in education. Classes ended after four years for lack of budget. The school is located in an underserved community in the San Fernando Valley part of Los Angeles. The students that were picked to attend these classes were not necessarily the best and brightest, although there was a high percentage of those. Any student who expressed a keen interest in the subject could also attend. In fact, due to a disproportionately large male enrollment, the school made an effort to convince girls to attend the classes. They managed to convince a few to enroll. After concluding both the beginner and advanced classes, those girls were so enamored with the subject, they told me that they were looking into pursuing a career in engineering.

These students’ enthusiasm became such a source of inspiration for me for years to come. On one ocassion, I called into the school and told them that I will be a few minutes late due to traffic. When I finally arrived, students were standing next to the school gate waiting for me to arrive. As I approached the gate, they all shouted: “Mrs. Bogler, You are here!” I have never been greeted with so much enthusiasm before; I was overwhelmed and touched by their reaction. On another occasion, a struggling student became so attached to robotics that he felt obligated to call the school and express his regrets for not being able to attend due to sickness. He promised to be present for the next lesson. This is the first time he ever did such a thing. I witnessed situations in which students were so determined to have their robot traverse the entire maze, that they just refused to quit and go home when class ended. I could not disappoint these students and always volunteered to stay as long as it took for them to accomplish the goal. I had students telling me that they are so grateful for participating in this class because this is the first class that challenged them.

When I first started teaching at Napa, the principal told me that the students were unable to envision themselves graduating from high school, let alone plan for a career. I think that the robotics experience transformed these students’ views

The Robotics Lab

about their ability to achieve and for the first time helped them envision themselves as engineers among other professions. It is also a testament to the powerful impact that technology can have on student motivation, on their desire to learn, and to dream about the future. Had this course been part of the curriculum and not just an after-school class, it would have been an invaluable experience in which students could make connections between the material they learn and the practical application of building and driving a robot through a maze. As the department of education tries to focus on STEM education in the classroom, it is worth looking at examples like this and learn their valuable lessons.

Using Web 2.0 Technology in Elementary School

admin — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:03:23 +0000

About a year ago, I started working with Balboa Gifted/High Ability Magnet Elementary School. The school hired me because they were looking for a person who will help them pursue new avenues in technology. The state of California was already experiencing one of its biggest financial crises, significantly affecting public schools and other state-sponsored programs and organization. My goal was to create a program that will be low-cost and effective.

At the time, I wasn’t at all acquainted with any web-based applications. I knew that many companies were working on web-based applications and that it was considered as the trend of the future. I also knew that they were not stable enough to compete with existing desktop applications. As a fierce advocate of project-based learning, I was looking for web-based productivity tools that would help students create projects that reflect what they are learning in the classroom, in one or multi-disciplines. Students can utilize the tools to construct knowledge, develop innovative products, search, evaluate, and analyze information, develop their critical thinking skills, communicate and work collaboratively. A combination of web 2.0 products, particularly Google applications, fit my goals best.

I started using Google Docs, Sites, Maps, Earth, Notebook, Sketchup and other web-based applications, such as: Mindomo–a mind mapping tool and Scratch–an animation and simulation tool. I spent hours experimenting with these applications and created project prototypes using a combination of these tools. The results and the possibilities for student learning surprised me. Soon enough I discovered that Google is offering Google Apps, which include: startup, e-mail, talk, calendar, documents, sites, and video, free for educational institutions. Google Maps, Sketchup, Notebook and Earth have their basic free version, as well as other Web 2.0 applications such as Mindomo and Scratch. These apps were all free and I was just required to set up 560 accounts for our 3rd to 5th graders, our faculty, and staff. I was then ready to start.

The outcome of this project is displayed at Balboa’s school website.

The Balboa Magnet Projects Page

The site includes a rich ‘Projects‘ section with student projects listed by Teacher Name. Students used a mix of different applications to create their projects. Some projects were done with non web-based application (MicroWorlds), but the output was converted to html and posted on the web. Most student projects were done with Google Apps and other existing Google applications such as Maps and Notebook. For example, 5th grade students created web sites for each state in the United States. Our third graders worked on collaborative sites about Native Americans in which each team member worked on different aspects of their assigned tribe. Fourth graders worked on a web site dedicated to everything they learned about California, starting from the California regions, missions, and a mission focus. A few had time to work on

Mapping of the Oregon Trail on Google Maps

the Gold Rush and map the Oregon Trail. This project was particularly interesting because students mapped the California’s twenty one missions on Google Maps, including an image and a description of each mission on the map. When they finished mapping all missions, the students embedded their map in the ‘Misssions’ page in their California site and linked it to the original map created with Google Maps. There are many other projects displayed on the site such as Google Presentations about Famous Americans.

Using Web 2.0 technology and Google Apps accounts has encouraged the creation of a new computer culture in our school. Students are frequenting the computer lab on lunch and break times to experiment, advance their projects or create new, original projects of their own. Our fifth graders enjoyed working with Google Apps so much that they asked permission to keep accessing their Balboa Magnet accounts even after they leave to Junior High School and I was happy to oblige them after Google granted us 200 additional accounts. I definitely feel that my students have really acquired many skills in technology and they feel very comfortable using those skills. Even our third graders (who I was afraid would have problems with logging into the system due to their age) are accessing their accounts without any problems. I feel that my students have established a foundation in technology this year in terms of mastering the basic skills. I now want them to use this foundation to further engage in different aspects of project-based learning.

My Journey as an Educational Technology Specialist

admin — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:26:19 +0000

In most cases this would be the place where I introduce myself and explain to you why I write this blog and what is its main focus. In this case I would like to reveal this information as I take you through a journey that started in my childhood and how it influenced my direction in life and ultimately creating this blog.

As most people, I can’t recall most events in my educational upbringing, but there are a few defining moments and central figures that I will never forget. Those were usually inspiring teachers or unusual methods of teaching that I keep going back to to reflect on whenever a similar educational situation arises in my professional life. These instances are not always inspiring or positive in nature. Sometimes, they are just important lessons I learned while trying to cope with a problem or dilemma I encountered.

My struggle with understanding Math was one such issue. As an elementary student I was quite good in math, but as I started learning algebra, geometry and trigonometry, my confidence started to fade. I spent more and more hours trying to solve problems, which surprisingly never resembled the examples that the professor gave in class. I always felt that I was lacking a fundamental foundation that could help me understand the underlying concepts behind the formulas. Teachers usually did not take the time to go into these details. They provided a general explanation of the topic with a few sample exercises and covered a few typical problems that a student may encounter. Then they moved on to assigning as many problems as they could to make sure that students repeat them enough times to master the subject. At least, that is what they hoped.

When doing homework, I always remember that I could not find similarities between the examples that were worked-out in class and the problems I was working on. The only ammunition I possessed was to try to plug in numbers into known formulas and hope that the outcome will somehow make sense. It never did, because one problem never resembled the other and when I was trying to reach deeper into my thinking, there was always a feeling of void or shaky ground that could not be relied on. I wished that there was some way that can help me turn these obscure formulas into something I can grasp and manipulate in ways that may lead me to solve the problems. Until one day a new math professor told us that in order to feel confident in solving any problem in math, you need to learn to identify its underlying concepts and learn to develop the formulas on which it is based. This observation, which was so different from what I heard before, had a great impact on my interpretation of problem solving in general and became an important component of my educational philosophy.

Years later as I became an educational technology professional I reflected upon this experience. I realized that as understanding should be the aim of education, my focus should be on applications of technology through which understanding is enhanced. I believe that for technology to be effective, it needs to be applied in ways that promote teaching for understanding. The tools that students used in my computer lab to work on their project are a testimony to this general direction. Through the years I took students on a journey through a wide range of technology uses and applications. Students have created multimedia projects, simulations, animated stories, robots, and data manipulation projects. I also tapped into Web 2.0 technology and helped students use web-based applications to work in teams while communicating and collaborating effectively. In view of the exponential growth of information, the need for students to sift through this information, make sense out of it and focus only on the things that can benefit their research became apparent almost as soon as our reliance on internet-based research started growing. Finding and designing tools that can help students store, organize, and interpret information in meaningful ways, became a high priority for me and an important component in my classes.

In this blog, I intend to write about my experiences in learning, designing and teaching educational technology as reflected in my work with students and teachers. Entries will cover the areas mentioned above and will include stories, case studies, and my thoughts about different technologies and teaching methods. I hope that this journey will benefit my readers as much as this reflection will benefit me personally and professionally.