Final Project

This assignment was probably the most difficult for me to accomplish in that my teaching style and lessons are not so much single CPI oriented in that I focus on one specific standard, teach it, and then move to the next, but rather I tend to integrate the CPI's throughout the lesson, possibly touching on all of them in one learning experience, and maybe only one in the next, and so on. This is especially prevalent when doing "big picture" lessons that have students exploring events that happened over decades and affected nations, rather than single focused events or personages.  

For this lesson I chose to use one that I had been working on for the methods class that I felt had a fair amount of technology already imbedded in it. As I had said before, being a visual learner myself, I tend to use graphics and multimedia in almost all of my lessons, so this seemed to be the best one to use for integration and adaptation. Plus, I'll probably end up teaching it next semester, so improving its documentation and process is definitely worthwhile.

The lesson is from the unit on the Cold War and focuses on the fall of the Iron Curtain using geography as its key function. Students will gain a better understanding of the current borders of European countries and the changes in national sovereignty that occurred as Communism collapsed. 

The first CPI and NETS-S standard are addressed in the first section. The lesson begins with an audio clip of Churchill's Iron Curtain speech followed by a lecture and PowerPoint presentation to activate students’ prior knowledge of the geographic situation in Europe post WW II. Images and maps are included in the presentation with hard copy map hand outs for the students. Students will evaluate the information presented and confirm their knowledge through a brief question and answer period. Students will also have the opportunity to view two other videos that give cultural and economic background information.

During the next section, students will pair off to work on a mapping activity that will be undertaken during class time. Students will be required to use computers, the internet, and various web based mapping products to research and develop a map presentation of the border changes from 1938-1991. Students will first be given explicit directions again via a PowerPoint presentation and then a modeled example will be presented. The students will have creative reign on the activity, but will be given a rubric to follow to ensure all content standards are met. Students will deposit their research and started presentations in a Google Drive folder so that they can continue to work on them collaboratively for homework. Once the project is finished, they will upload it to the class Google Drive folder.  The CPI and NETS-S standards are covered because the students are researching and developing maps show the border changes over time, collaboratively and using technology as their main tools.

The final section involves students to continue their collaborative efforts while completing the presentation from home, and also involves them completing a digital timeline of the key events that led to the geographic changes in their presentations. This digital document will be completed singly, but students can continue to collaborate when creating it. The third CPI and NETS-S standard are really included in the project development from the previous section as well, and further refined through the digital timeline.

The capstone to this lesson is the student pairs presenting their mapping projects and timelines in the subsequent class periods. The use of technology in defining the project parameters, in research, production, and storage, as well as the class presentation of the final product, I believe authentically replicates collaborative projects that students will surely encounter as they further their educations and enter the workforce. I would assess them throughout the process and on the final product.

As I said at the beginning, it was really hard for me to deconstruct the technologically integrative aspects of this lesson (along with single CPI's). I guess because I include them so intuitively now, it makes it hard to realize just how many I use and expect the students to use. I think that as we have all become accustomed to current technologies or at least those that we are familiar with, that we don't even consciously consider them as separate. I am looking forward to exploring new technologies for projects such as these. I know there are others out there, and hopefully through contact with other educators and students, we can further their use in our classrooms.

Interactivity #5

For this interactivity I interviewed a friend who teaches middle school Social Studies in Edison Township, and I'll preface this with saying that my friend is considered the "tech guy" at his school.

When we started discussing the NETS-S/T standards, he said he had not heard of them directly (echoed by my co-op and other teachers at Hillside High School, as well). We looked at them together online, and read through the ones relative to the sixth-eight grade levels, which he teaches. As we read through them, he basically commented that while his school and district have not officially implemented them to his knowledge, they were pushing technology integration via the NJ  Core Curriculum Content Standards (NJCCCS):  Educational Technology and Technology Education, Engineering, and Design , which to both of our eyes were more detailed. He stated that with all the recent standards changing, it was hard to keep up with which ones were current and applicable, and which ones the superintendent had decided to make a priority, beyond his content area, but was sure that the mandated standards were getting the most traction and visibility.

We continued to discuss his use of technology in the classes he teaches, and he stated that his lessons and activities are often technology driven. He uses a wide range of devices such as a series of products from Promethean, LTD , a company that makes smart boards, tablets, pointing devices, and a bunch of other really cool products. He especially likes the Learner Response System which allows him to track student responses to questions and myriad of other functions he felt were useful, and his school recently acquired an ActivTable which is like a giant tablet that he uses for mapping and other projects. Beyond the devices, he has his students creating and collaborating on multimedia projects and presentations, using video and digital cameras, and doing written assignments in Word. He uses a class website to transmit information, accepts assignments through e-mail, and even maintains a class "blog" in Google Groups, where his students can upload and collaborate on their work.  He also communicates with parents through the school's Genesis system.

I was not really surprised with any of his answers. Not knowing about the NETS standards didn't really concern him as he was trying to implement the state standards, and I would tend to concur with that strategy. The NETS standards are like the broad foundational document whereas the NJCCCS standards are more detailed, and frankly are the ones that we will be assessed on, so it only makes sense to focus on those.

As for my own promotion of the NETS standards, I think that I'd do as above, and use them as a background and a companion document to help better understand the NJCCCS.  With the constantly changing standards, I think it's enough to understand the key task that we need our students to become proficient at and in my opinion the NJCCCS accomplishes those without any question. My thoughts behind this may have to do with my old military mindset. Our tasks were always clearly spelled out like the state standards, so it's easier for me to grasp them and work through them.Nothig ambiguous or left to interpretation.

Updated Interactivity #4 Spreadsheet

Interactivity #4

Interactivity #4 Spreadsheet

I chose this particular lesson because it meshed with the unit plan I am working on in my methods class: The Cold War, and was a little more comprehensive than some of the others I had found. It does have it's shortcomings though. I found that it lacked specificity, especially in the inclusion of media technologies, but I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt, figuring that using things such as a PowerPoint presentation while lecturing are pretty much implied now, and need not be specified. I also thought that there could have been more emphasis on specifying media usage during the oral presentation, rather than just listing "visual aids". Again, this could be implied, as students today are more accustomed to including all types of technologies in their works.

The key point to this activity was the student's use of the internet to research their assigned topics. The plan offered three websites as examples to get the students started, but made no limits on which ones they used. I probably would have given them a few more examples, and encouraged them to explore ones that come up further down on the search results list, especially since the requirements stated that opposing views (U.S. v. USSR) were mandatory. The lesson probably could have been completed as a traditional research assignment, by having the students source books from the library, but I don't feel they would have come up with nearly the amount of information in the time allotted compared to internet searching.

Overall, I believe that this lesson will meet the stated learning goals, and conform to the NJCCCS CPI's, but would be better with the media recommendations stated above. Their inclusion will transform this from a good lesson to a great one by applying differentiated learning strategies that will be an asset to all.

Interactivity #3

I entered Interactivity #3 with definite reservations. My experience with online collaboration from a previous web based class that I eventually dropped, gave me an idea of  what I perceived would happen with this: people would do their work, and no actual collaboration would take place.

Unfortunately, that's what basically happened with our group, although I did have some contact with a couple of the members via e-mail, our conversations were not really directed towards the assignment. It was mostly in regards to everyone's status due to Hurricane Sandy.  I think we were all too preoccupied with recovering than collaborating. I know I was. When I did get to a relative's house that had power and internet, I accessed the spreadsheet and saw that everybody had made their inputs. That did leave me with a fairly daunting task, which was to find stuff they had not. Difficult, but after what seemed like days, I finally got it done. 

I think that our inventory definitely provided some good technologies that we can use. I'm personally using a couple of them currently, and have used a few of the others in classes or lesson planning in the recent past. 

I am convinced that online collaboration is viable. I'm a member of a couple of organizations that regularly collaborate online with documents or projects, and I do contribute to those or at least comment on their progress, but that is often done through a forum or regular e-mail list. I wonder how we can make that willing voluntary participation work for students who are assigned groups and are basically forced to participate?  Somehow we either need to incentivize it better, or transfer the  ownership to the students so they believe it is all of their doing, and not something we're making them do.

Something to think about.

Integrating File Sharing Across Devices

So, as I continuously collect digitally based content for both my own research (18th Century colonial American military, social, and material culture), and my ever expanding History Education curriculum and lesson planning resources, I decided that it had become too unwieldy to continue to keep transferring documents and the like from my desktop to my thumb drive, and then to my laptop and vice versa.  I went looking for an alternative solution that would allow me to synchronize the files and folders, and add new content across the devices. I also added an iPhone to the mix, not that I would negotiate any files per se on it, but I find myself increasingly using it as a camera to document stuff, so it needs to be included.

I did a cursory internet search  and came up with the a bunch options: iCloud, SkyDrive, Google Drive, and Dropbox  garnered the most web attention. I gave them a glance. Each had their pros and cons, but overall they seemed similar. I then proceeded to  search out reviews of each on the techie sites.  They were all cloud based, meaning that they would create a copy of your files on a server of their hosting that you could access from any internet connected device, in addition to creating an additional folder on your own devices where the new synced files would reside. I then posted up a request of my techie friends on Facebook to give me some input. Their responses were similar to the web reviews.

As I looked more in depth at each I was surprised to find that iCloud had some limitations on the file types and functionality, SkyDrive, while having the most functionality, was adverse to firearms (how can you study military history without them?), and apparently searched your private data with a security program that would identify that content. That narrowed it down to Google Drive and Dropbox. After looking harder at Google, I realized that I had existing files already saved there, and a plethora of ebooks (can you say 18th century primary source documents!) so I opted to try it out.

 Downloading was easy across devices, and as soon as I added a file to the Google Drive folder it immediately synced up the other devices and the folder at the website. In the coming days I plan to add more content and organize my files and folders better, and this will definitely make it easier and faster. There is also apparently an app that allows Microsoft Office content to be automatically synced as well, but I haven't figured that out yet.

So, I believe that I've found a useful tech tool to help me organize and manage my data better and that will infinitely make lesson planning easier because now I'll have access to all my files across devices and won't have to constantly keep looking for and rediscovering stuff that I figured  would be great for a lesson but couldn't remember where I saved it.

All good.

Interactivity #2

"If a picture is worth a thousand words, then surely those words can open a window to the past."

Interactivity #1

My three top picks for communications technologies would be:

1.      The computer with access to e-mail and social networking.

2.      The cell phone and by extension the smartphone.

3.      The radio.

I think Olivia’s Story typifies the ease, proficiency, and adaptability of kids today with their use of technology. Her lack of ownership of a computer did not preclude her from her ability to navigate through the web and create websites. Her phone and iPod also became extensions of her personality and are indispensable and inseparable additions to her life. So it is with most students and younger adults today. Growing up in the age before computers and mobile devices, I first found them not necessary for my daily work life, but as business and the military moved to use these technologies, I was “forced” to adapt to them. Today I find my use of the computer and smartphone to be regular and important aspects of my daily routine. The availability of the internet for use in research and social media communication whether by smartphone or computer are now second nature. E-mail delivers almost all my important professional and personal correspondence.  

Our students are probably more immersed in the technology than their constant and continual use reveal. Almost all their social and academic activities are technology based or driven. I think we as educators, need to develop learning strategies that build upon our students familiarity and dependence with the current technologies and foster inquiry into emerging methods and technologies that build upon that base. As a social studies teacher, the ease at which I can find and provide primary source documents and media to use in my lessons, and my students familiarity in researching and finding their own information will increase their content exposure. I know for my own research and learning purposes the ease in which I can access virtually any topic through the internet via the computer or smartphone has been an unbelievable resource. Access to the vast number of collections that are now digitized used to take hours and days of travel and often great expense, are now literally at our fingertips. Our students have grown up with this technology, and it appears second nature to them.

All the benefit does not come without its shortcomings. The sheer volume of information out there often makes it hard to focus on the important topics, and the validity of the information itself is often suspect due to the ease in which anyone can publish a website. Another is the amount of time we all spend on frivolity that could better be spent focused on required topics. I myself am guilty of checking in on Facebook or any number of internet forums for interesting threads, or checking e-mail for new info, when I should be focusing on a lesson or something equally important. I think we all need to look to ways to make our technology based times more qualitative and less time consuming, and I think that as educators, we’ll need to find ways to direct that in our classrooms.