Podcast Assignment

This assignment really underlined for me the importance of knowing where my students are at in terms of technology. There is a huge variance in their use and also their understanding of technology. In some cases, I am streets behind them, and in others there is not only not much experience or exposure, but also not much interest in using technology, except for games. If I want to close the gaps in exposure, while building interest in the learning side of technology, then I will need to be very careful how I structure assignments using technology.

In terms of demographics: There are eighteen students in my class. Fourteen of them have regular access to the internet at home, although one says his access is intermittent because the computer is old. One student did not participate in the survey. Three students have no access at home but do have access at school; I will need to take care to encourage them to make use of it. More than seventy per cent of the class use the internet to do homework, and several use it to enhance their extracurricular activities. I interviewed three students who use technology frequently because I was interested to see how they used it specifically as a learning tool outside of school. You will hear on the podcast how one uses it to explore her interest in ballet, and another his interest in music. The third student uses technology for a wide range of activities.

I would have liked to include several other students; there are a few that have an interest in photography, for instance, as well as some keen athletes that track their sports heroes online.

I was mildly surprised, however, that many of them do not use their cell phones for anything other than texting and the occasional actual call. I had been expecting more use of apps using the internet based on the reading for this course. Even the numbers with cell phones were lower than I expected. This might be explained by the sky-high cost of both telephones and internet access with them in Bermuda.

In addition, this assignment has made it clear that using the technology we have available has limits. It took a large number of attempts for me to be able to use the recordings I had made, and I am not clear yet why the blog sites will let you attach videos but not sound bites. In order for me to really use audacity properly would have taken even longer. I say this not to complain about the assignment, but to remind myself that learning how to do anything well does take time and effort, and in my attempts to become more technology-fluent I have been reminded that everyone is in a different place.

Here is the podcastmachine url for this project: http://www.podcastmachine.com/podcasts/14211/episodes/74957

 

 

Reflection: Technology and My Goals

Reflection: Technology and My Goals.

            One of the most important reasons for me to take my Master’s Degree was to grow as a professional teacher.  This particular module has been a very steep learning curve for me, because while I am confident in the technology that I know how to use, and am even viewed as a leader in technology in my school, the actual range of applications that I know is very small.  The more I am learning, the more I realise just how little I do know.

            In this course I have learned how to make a podcast.  That was very difficult for me, for a variety of reasons, some of them to do with the technology itself and some to do with my understanding of how to use the technology.  Some new skills I have picked up just from that one assignment were the differences (at a very basic level) between MP3, MP4, WAV and AUD audio files, how to record a voice memo on an Ipod, how to save voice memos to my computer, and how to manipulate the audio from those voice memos using Audacity in order to make the audio for a podcast. I also had to learn how to convert that audio using podcastmachine in order to create a podcast link on my blog.  All of those new skills have stand-alone value, but the ability to create a podcast has several applications for my classroom.  I hope that I will be able to advocate for loading audacity onto several of the computers in the lab, allowing my students to explore its use.

            The next most difficult thing for me to do was creating a wiki.  Part of the difficulty I faced was to do with technical issues; wiki is not completely free now, for example, and managing the permissions seems to have changed since the course was set up.  I enjoyed not only using the wiki once it was set up, but collaborating with my classmates.  This collaboration was definitely one of the high points of this course.  I am not quite ready to use a proper wiki with my class; I need to do more exploring before I will be sure what I am doing.  However, I am planning a webquest before Christmas.

            One of the other high points for me on this course was getting to understand how a blog works.  I am absolutely thrilled that my class blog is now up, and even happier about the response to it from my students, parents and principal.  I plan on continuing to use the blogging site I created for this course in order to reflect, and hopefully collaborate with others to continue to grow both as a user and a teacher of blogs and blogging.  I will also be using an RSS feed, a very useful tool I had never even heard of prior to this course.

            While I would not say my understanding of the teaching and learning process has grown significantly, it is always good to be reminded of the pedagogy behind what we do.  There is always room for deeper understanding, which will lead, one hopes, to better teaching.  I have, however, as a result of this course, come to understand the differences that I am seeing in the way my students function as being at least in part a result of their digital upbringing.  In a Frontline interview (P.B.S., accessed 2012) Steve Maher describes our students as being surrounded by a “cloud of information”, stating that we must be able to capture their attention in order to even reach them.  Our students know so much more, about so many things, compared to the majority of us growing up.  We need to find ways to celebrate that knowledge and to help them sift it into byte-size pieces (pun intended) that they can use to grow. 

            Dede (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010) says that we need many kinds of thinkers to succeed in this “neo-millennial” world.  It does not matter where we stand in the on-going debate about what caused the changes we see in our students, but it does matter where we go from here in educating them for the changes we see in the world around us.  My hope is that I will be able to provide my Twenty-first Century learners with a rounded twenty-first century education, which Giroux (accessed in 2012) terms “balanced literacy”.  Besides ensuring content understanding and connections between it and the real world, I must prepare my classes for jobs using “non-codified thinking” and “complex communication”.  (Levy and Murnarc, 2006) At the same time, it is critical to note that expert thinking in any field still requires the basic “3 Rs”.  .  Bates and Phelan (2002) sum it all up as stating that there have been “elemental changes in the way work is done”, even going so far as to say that there are five basic competencies needed for success as an employee. They need to have skills in resource use, interpersonal, information and systems skills, and have knowledge of how to use technology in order to access and use all the above.

            In order to be successful in empowering students to acquire those skills, I must not only model them myself, but also become more focussed on their individual learning requirements.  I have been hearing about “learner-centred” instruction since my undergraduate training back in 1998, but still see much more “teacher-centred” instruction in my experience.  Differentiation is only part of becoming learner-centred, and in order to continue to grow as a teacher I must continue my own education in the continually expanding possibilities for instruction and the tools to deliver it.

            One of my long-term goals is to increase the amount of time we have booked in our school’s computer laboratory.  I was successful in raising our scheduled time this year from one forty-five minute lesson to two hour blocks, and I am already seeing how much more beneficial that extra time is.  It has meant, for instance, that I am able to focus on word processing in one of the two lessons, zeroing in on specific applications and procedures, while being able to explore some of the myriad other opportunities offered by the 2.0 world in the other.  Of course, the success of this additional time has only made me want more of it. 

            Obstacles I may encounter fall into two realms.  The first is to do with timetabling.  Our system uses block timetabling which means the lab is only free at very specific times, and there is only one lab for the school.  I also will have to justify the way I am using the technology if I am using it in “core instructional time”.  I do have some backing in this regard as my principal is very supportive of the use of technology in the classroom, and in addition it does seem that our system’s use of the Cambridge International Programme (which has specific requirements for technology use built into the curriculum) will provide me with leverage.

            The second realm is the technology itself, as it is available here in Bermuda.  It seems, from conversations with my Walden classmates, that we are about half-way between the haves and have nots.  Certainly, we have enough computers for each child and internet access is generally good.  These are important requirements.  However, like many jurisdictions, we are limited in our access of many of the 2.0 tools that would enable us to really narrow that technological divide. As Thornberg says (Thornberg, 2004), technology should be an expectation, not an option, and the cost of internet access at home in Bermuda is very high when compared to many other locations.  In addition, there are technical hiccups that often interfere with the smooth delivery of a lesson.  These seem to be related to the fact that we have aging equipment and not enough money in the budget to either maintain it properly or to replace it when required.  As budgets are being cut even further this year, I can foresee this problem growing rather than being reduced.

            My second long-term goal is to find more ways to use technology in order to help me differentiate instruction for my learners.  This year I have received parental support for the use of a program I tried out last year that helps my students with their Mathematics.  One of the reasons I really like this program is that it contacts me as the administrator whenever a student logs in, reporting on what they did and how they did on it.  I am using this principally for homework at this time, but am finding time in school for mini-conferences with the students about what I see in what they are doing. In addition, it is just a couple of clicks for me to let their parents know how they are doing.  One of the parents is so excited about this that she has asked me to look at a similar program for spelling, offering to fund it if approved.  The main obstacle to this kind of differentiation, of course, is available internet access.  How I wish that my school had Wi-Fi instead of hard connections; I have four computers in my class that are connected through our server, and eighteen children to use them.  Because access in the lab, as previously stated, is limited, I have to be very sure I am providing students that do not have internet access at home with the time and encouragement to log in to these programs at school. 

            In order to accomplish this goal, I must be very aware of what my students are doing and what their situations are.  I must also be sure that I am clearly focussed on instructional objectives, and that I find ways to include all my learners.  Regarding access in the classroom, perhaps devices that use satellite technology may become available, but in the meantime I must work to not only use what we have very efficiently, but to try to boost the number of tools that I have.

            When reviewing my checklist from week one, I was interested to note that some of my answers should have been different to begin with.  For example, under point 8 “Use a variety of digital tools to collaborate and communicate…” I should have checked “sometimes” instead of “frequently”, or perhaps even “rarely”.  When I completed the checklist the first time, I was not really aware of the possibilities for communication and collaboration using blogs and wikis, as I have never used one.  Today, however, as a result of this course, I not only have some experience in using blogs and wikis, but am actually celebrating having organised my own class blog which is now up and running.  This is also true of point 9, “Design learning experiences incorporating technology”.  It is not that I was not designing those learning experiences before; it is just that I was, in most cases, “doing things differently” instead of “doing different things” (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010).  I think that while I have learned a lot, there is still a long way to go before I can consider myself to have lost my non-digital “accent” (Prensky, 2001).

            Student achievement is not just about doing well on a test.  It is about how my students do further down the road.  Are they ready to face the challenges of lifelong learning, or of full and relevant participation as citizens of our country and our planet?  If the “power of human capital” (Hof, 2007) is about to be released, then I want my students to be riding that wave.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Resources.

 

Bates, R., & Phelan, K. (2002). Characteristics of a globally competitive workforce. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 4(2), 121.

Giroux, J. (n.d.). Retrieved September 2012, from https://class.waldenu.edu/bbcswebdav/institution/USW1/201320_02/MS_EDUC/NCATE_EDUC_6710/Week%204/Resources/Resources/embedded/The_New_Literacies_article.pdf

Hof, P. (2007, August 19). Businessweek. Retrieved 2012, from http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2007-08-19/the-end-of-work-as-you-know-it

Laureate Education, Inc. (2010). Designing curriculum, instruction and assessment. Baltimore, MD.

Levy, F., & Murnane, R. (2006). Why the changing American economy calls for twenty-first century learning. New Directions for Youth Development, 53-62.

P.B.S. (n.d.). Retrieved October 2012, from www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kidsonline/view/#ixzz28HmG1x5Q

Prensky, M. (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants Part 1. On the Horizon, 1-6.

Thornberg, D. (2004). Technology and education: Expectations, not options. (Executive Briefing No. 401). Retrieved from http://www.tcpdpodcast.org/briefings/expectations.pdf

 

 

This week I have been busy recording some of my class's voices in order to make a podcast. The task involved giving my students a survey regarding their comfort level and interest in technology, and then selecting a few students to interview for the podcast - with their parents' permission, of course!

The recording part was fun, however I have run into technical difficulties with getting the audio onto Audacity, the audio editing program we were recommended to use.

So, nursing a tecchie headache, I am going to try uploading to this blog from Windows Media player instead. Here goes...