I really enjoy finding trends in data. I think the most valuable thing I learned in this class was how to make charts and graphs to graphically represent data. When I was breaking down the data for Lake Forest Elementary School (LFES), I began to see something interesting in the data. I was able to isolate that information and show it on a line graph so that it was clear to anyone who looked at it. Then I was able to go back through four years of data and show that same pattern. At that point, I could make a claim and support that claim with data. That’s powerful.
Now I can go back to LFES in the fall and show them the data. I can make recommendations on how we can use technology to affect change based on that information and collect data to track progress. Being able to read data gives me a power tool in my tool bag! Now I can align data driven learning strategies with school specific data to show school leaders, teachers, parents, and other stakeholders how technology can impact learning. As I create technology plans with LFES and its teachers, there may be some challenges along the way. As our demographics change, some people may say our data is not valid. Others may balk at having to change long-held teaching habits. Some teachers may struggle with technology integrations. Nevertheless, with data backing changes and decisions in instructional decisions we can back up our recommendations with data-driven strategies and interventions. In the field of instructional technology one must stay up-to-date on what is going on not only in instructional technology but also in education in general. The point at which these two fields meet is the nexus of where leaders in the field of instructional technology live. Using an RSS feed like Feedly is absolutely critical. In one location I can check all my favorite blogs for the latest tools or classroom integration strategies. I rely heavily on Richard Bryne, Free Technology for Teachers, and Vicki Davis, Cool Cat Teacher, for great tools and great strategies. Then I read Hack Ed and Educational Technology and Mobile Learning for more in-depth information on educational initiatives and movements within instructional technology including software and hardware trends as well as popular instructional strategies. For general educational information, I read Edutopia and Mindshift. Instructional technology is developing incredibly fast, and every day brings new information that I need to keep up with in order to be a leader in this field.
My Feedly also allows me to connect with others in instructional technology. I post responses and questions on the comments and blogs I read, I send articles and blog postings to colleagues who have an interest in the subject matters, and I use topics and ideas I find to generate my own blog posts. Almost daily I come across an article or blog that is applicable to a project I’m working on with a teacher I’m coaching or another coach I’m planning a project with. I click the share button and send it on to him or her with a note about how we can use this information. Also, I love tweeting out great information to share it with my PLN on Twitter. My RSS feed gives me another way to stay involved in my professional community. Through the course of this class, I have learned a lot about the leadership side of being an instructional technology professional. Working with ISTE’s Essential Conditions and looking at them through the lens of a visionary leader has been powerful. Shifting my mindset from the day-to-day role as a coach to the far reaching role of a leadership position has impacted how I think about myself as an instructional technology leader. Thinking in terms of years instead of grading periods or semesters has helped me understand the scope of a Shared Vision and its importance for a school and district. The Shared Vision Statement was a challenge to represent all shareholders, but I knew it was important to involve and represent all shareholders so they had ownership of the vision for technology. The SWOT analysis was an intense dive into the inner workings of an instructional technology department with a school district and made me understand the importance of ISTE’s Essential Conditions. It is hard to have so many different aspects of technology functioning effectively; however, It is critical for a technology program to run well. A school or district’s strengths are only going to be strengths as long as the district is able address the weaknesses and identify threats as well as develop opportunities into new strengths. This is where an action and evaluation plan comes into play. A strong action and evaluation plan is the roadmap that allows a school or district to move forward in realizing its vision. As instructional technology leaders it is the vision, the dream of the future, that keeps us working for our students. Reflection- 7430 Web Tools
Web tools are the bling of instructional technology, and I like bling! I feel like a cool kid when I sit down with other instructional tech people and say something like: “Have y’all seen the ___________ app yet?” and everyone scrambles for their phone because they haven’t! Inevitably, this one question sparks a tirade of one-up-manship as everyone pulls out their latest and greatest app or tool to impress the group. The best part of this game is that everyone wins because no one knows all the apps or tools that get tossed around. In ITEC 7430, I learned about a couple new webtools, but what really made me a better tech integrator was thinking about how to use these tools to enhance learning. Bringing in a new tool doesn’t benefit students unless it can be integrated into the curriculum, lesson, or unit to enhance or extend learning. Though the process of looking at various categories of tools I had the opportunity to deeply think about how to use those tools as an extension of learning rather than something to bejewel a project or lesson. One example of how I would use what I’ve learned in this class to enhance or extend learning is to have students explain their project or assignment in a screencast. I’ve created screencasts to explain how to do something on the computer, but I’ve never had to explain my work before. After the fifth time I re-recorded my lesson plan project, I realized that accurately and succinctly summarizing my work challenged me to think through my work on a deeper level. Likewise, having students create a podcast rather than a traditional report brings an extra depth to their understanding of what they are reporting on, as it did me. Since I began pursuing my teaching certificate in 2000, I knew ultimately I wanted to do professional development. I was fortunate that early in my career I had some really great professional development that kept me from giving up on education as a career. I loved teaching, and I loved my students, but I didn’t love a lot of the minutiae that is involved in a career in education. Good professional development provided me strategies and ideas to help me with the aspects of the job that I struggled with, and I credit those well-timed conferences and sessions with keeping me in the game.
As I continue to develop my career in education, I want to help other teachers deal with the stressors they face in the classroom. I feel strongly that technology can be a tool that helps give teachers time back in their hectic schedules to get back to the stuff that really matters: building relationships with students. In the era of personalized learning, teachers who utilize technology to get to know their students’ strengths and weaknesses will be the ones who build the strongest relationships because they will be the ones with the time to get to know their students as individuals. Technology that helps students learn through avenues that are engaging and responsive to the way they learn and technology that helps teachers assign, collect, and grade lessons will create learning environments where teachers and students are co-creators of learning. I want to be a vital part of that classroom. Keeping students safe on the internet is akin to saving them from themselves. Whether it is sexting, sending inappropriate photos, or posting bullying messages students will publish information on social media channels that have the potential to cause them social or legal problems in the short-term and long-term. The power of the internet and social media to impact a student’s life is tremendous, and there is not a way to prevent the misuse of these tools by students. So, what is an educator to do? The answer is easy: learn and lead. First, learn about digital citizenship so that you can knowledgably talk to your students about both the good and the bad consequences of posting to social media and publishing photos and other work on the internet. ISTE Standards for Students (2016) states that students should be global collaborators; they should work collaborative with students and experts from around the world. In order to accomplish this goal, students need to be able to post their work safely and responsibly online. All educators need to start their quest to learn how to learn about good digital citizenship at Common Sense Media. For any educator who really wants to increase their knowledge and be a leader in their school in digital citizenship, he or she should check out the Common Sense Media Certified Teacher Program. This is a free program that will help teachers gain the knowledge they need to not only help their students but to also help their school and community. Maintaining an open dialogue with students, colleagues, parents, and community members is a critical part of keeping students safe on the internet. They will look to you to be the expert, so learn as much as you can about digital citizenship. The second part is the fun part! Lead by example. Post to social media. Use social media in your classroom and professionally to set the standard for your students on how to use it in a positive way. Class blogs, class Twitter feeds, a class Instragram are all ways to share student work with a world-wide audience while modeling how social media is used responsibly and respectfully. There are many websites to help you learn about digital citizenship. Netsmartz.org does a great job with their one hour course. To help students learn online safety, try these games from the FBI. Cyber Surf Island teaches students how to protect their information online, Friend Finder helps students learn safe ways to communicate online, and Invasion of the Wireless Hackers helps students learn to protect their information online. Every teacher should make sure they are sharing these basic strategies to keep students and student information safe on the internet: · Never share passwords, even with your best friend. You should never give your password to anyone. Also, update your password periodically. · Make it your policy to never say anything on the internet, social media, or in a post that you would not say in person. The anonymity of the web can make us feel braver than we would feel in real-life. Public networks, like the networks you get on at Starbucks, are not secure. People are able to easily see what you are doing and the information you input into your computer and online websites. It is best to never enter passwords, personal information, or credit card information on public networks. You might be asking yourself, “Why do I have to teach digital citizenship? Why do educators have to be concerned about keeping students safe online?” Well, certainly schools should not be the only authority figures in a young person’s life teaching these lessons, but there are two main reasons why educators need to take the lead role in this task. First, many parents don’t know enough about digital citizenship to teach their children about it. After all, most parents have never been explicitly taught all the complexities of digital citizenship, so they do not have the depth of knowledge to be experts for their children. The second reason, and perhaps the most important, is that we are moving towards an educational system that is technology driven. Between online learning, personalized learning, and blended learning students are going to increasingly be accessing their learning online. Because the educational system is demanding more online learning, students must be taught by the educational system how to effectively use technology and how to safely use technology. We have moved past the time when the band saw in shop class was the most dangerous piece of equipment in the school building. The 2016 Horizon Report calls personalized learning a “Wicked Challenge.” I wholeheartedly agree – it is a wicked challenge. The challenge part comes in with a major mind-shift for educators regarding technology and how students learn. The Horizon Report looks into the future of educational technology and lays out the trends and upcoming challenges for instructional technology. The 2016 reports highlights wearable technology, artificial intelligence, and virtual technology as up-and-coming movements. While all of these technologies will certainly appear in classrooms, their impact will be minimal. I’m in classrooms on a daily basis as a technology coach. I’ve got news for all the ed tech companies out there: stop making any more new technology! Stop it, seriously. Just stop. We need to hit the pause button for a bit; teachers aren’t integrating the technology from five years ago, much less the brand new technology like augmented reality and virtual reality. It’s not that classroom teachers are luddites; it is that the system is still geared toward teacher-driven instruction and rewards students for the amount of learning they can regurgitate onto a bubble sheet rather than for learning that is authentic or derived from critical thinking, tenacity, and metacognitive skills. The teachers of the [near] future are fighting to emerge from the quagmire of standard driven, teacher-centered education. Technology can help them do that, but a lack of time to learn new technology, and misunderstanding of how students learn technology, and a culture of traditional teaching dampens their ability spirit. In the infographic pictured here, you can see what the teacher of the [near] future can look like, depending on whether or not the teacher chooses to fight their way out of the muck. The teacher of the [near] future that we need is the one who F.A.I..L.s students, gamifies, and blends learning.
I love web tools that allow teachers to provide the right level of support for each student with a minimal amount of work on their part; after all, technology should be making work more efficient , and streamlining work rather than generating more work. PicLits.com is one of those web tools that offers multiple levels of support to help learners at varying levels.
PicLits is a website that allows users to write original poetry based on a visual prompt. It provides users with a variety of high quality, interesting pictures intended to invoke emotions, thoughts, and ideas. Students select a picture from a scroll at the top of the page. Then the student can select drag-n-drop [sic] or freestyle to add words to their picture. Drag-n-drop [sic] is the default setting, so words in lists separated by part-of-speech appear at the bottom of the page which students can click on to move to the picture. Then, the students can arrange the words on the page anyway they want. The drag-n-drop option is great for students with writing disabilities or students developing English vocabulary. For students who do not need the scaffolding of a word bank or need the challenge of coming up with their own words, there is the freestyle option which allows students to type any words on to their picture. For students that need a challenging enrichment assignment, teachers can have them use the drag-n-drop option, but require them write in iambic couplets, write a haiku, or write a poem only using prepositional phrases.
The creativity that PicLits inspires will get students’ minds churning with ideas. These types of quick activities are a great way for students to build confidence, but a longer, more involved project will allow students to examine their creativity and grow it in ways smaller assignments cannot do. Check out their introductory video. Khan Academy and Pixar Studios have partnered together to provide this learning resource. This amazing resource shows how animated films are created; it is interdisciplinary project-based learning guaranteed to engage your students! While they recommended this curriculum for students in grade 5 and up, I would suggest adjusting the lowest level to students who have a solid understanding of the slope-intercept concept in mathematics. If you have 3rd graders who can compute slope, then great! But if your 8th graders struggle to understand that concept then the math and related concepts will probably be too frustrating for them. While PicLits and Pixar in a box are great creative resources for students to use in your classroom, Spark Post is an app available on IOS or Android that students can use on the fly on any mobile smart phone or tablet. Spark Post is an Adobe product that allows anyone to take a picture, or use a stock photo, and create social posts, memes, inspirational quotes, or graphics. Not only does it make high quality graphics in just a few taps on your device, it is a ton of fun to play with. Fair warning: don’t download it unless you have a couple hours to kill! Students can use Adobe Spark to add an graphic to a presentation or create a data visualization or infographic to demonstrate learning in any content area. For students with special needs, having them demonstrate learning by summarizing a main idea or the gist of a major concept with a picture and a few words is a great way to support their learning. Also, all learners could use this tool to create visualizations of vocabulary by finding pictures that represent the definitions. Having a classroom where students can be creative can be a huge drain on the teacher; also, the time it takes to teach students all of these tools can take away critical time from covering content standards. So how can a teacher encourage their students to use a variety of tools that allow them to be creative while still maintaining high standards? My recommendation to teachers is to not reinvent the wheel! Once the teacher knows the tool well, and can effectively explain what to do as they navigate the steps to access the tool on their own computer then they are ready to screencast the process and build their very own library of training videos. One easy to use screencasting tool is Screencast-O-Matic. Check out my screencast as I explain how to convert a PDF into a Word file.
I love using digital media in the classroom. Podcasts, videos, music, pictures, blogs are all digital media that can be effectively used in the classroom to teach and engage students. One of my favorite tools to show teachers is Radio Lab which is a podcast that explores science, human experiences, and sociology. There are two main ways I coach teachers to use Radio Lab in the classroom. The first is to spark curiosity to set students up to learn and give them a reason for their learning. For example, this clip from podcast 5 of season 6 entitled “Numbers” talks about a mathematical phenomenon called Benford’s Law. Benford’s Law states that in a random set of numbers ones and twos will occur more than eights and nines. Initially, that may not seem too exciting, so, during the first couple minutes of the podcast, after the basic information about Benford’s Law has been explained, I conduct a hands-on test of it. I have students to take a dollar bill and read off the serial numbers; this experiment has never failed to support Benford’s La. That’s when it starts to become interesting to them. The Radio Lab podcast makes this weird math fact very interesting by having witty dialogue and easy to undertand explanations of complex information. As the podcast progresses, experts talk about the applications of Benford’s Law such as catching criminals, detecting tax evaders, and verifying the validity of data sets.
When I present to educators, I like using this example because it addresses higher level mathematics, requires students to think about the role of patterns in everyday life, and demonstrated how formulating questions and discovering answers can have a major impact on our lives. Additionally, podcasts like Radio Lab provide general knowledge that many students, especially students with disabilities and English Language Learners, often are missing. This deficit in general knowledge can have a negative impact their learning (Robb). Exposing students to information that is interesting and engaging allows all students the opportunity to build general knowledge so it can be accessed later to help build new learning.
Radio Lab is a great resource for students in high school, but podcasts are not just for older students. There are podcasts for younger students as well. Brains On! is a great podcast for upper elementary and middle school students. This podcast explores interesting science questions. I love their podcast on boogers because it is totally gross, a bit of a taboo subject, and a totally legitimate biological function that I cannot and do not want to explain to students. It is the perfect way for students to pick up (pun intended) good information. Podcasts are great auditory learning tools; their counterpart in the visual learning realm would be infographics. Infographics are documents created to provide the reader with a great deal of information presented in a way that is visual. My favorite tool for creating infographics is www.easel.ly. Check out this infographic about Virtual Reality that I created. Easelly has great resources to help teachers and students create infographics. Their Tutorial can help you get started. The trend in communication is moving towards move visual types of communication. Check out this article Fastcompany.com to learn more about why visual communication is booming. Knowing this trend is here to stay, teaching students to read visual information such as infographics is a critical literacy need! If I had to choose one tool to help students become more aware of their world, build an understanding of the diversity that exists around them, and increase their global awareness it would be Twitter. Twitter gives students immediate information about what is going on in the world around them faster than any newspaper, news cast, or radio station can report. Also, when students follow real people from around the world, they get primary documents (tweets) directly from the sources. Quiz time! Who tweeted this statement: “Most of my team are women. I thank them - and call on every government minister and leader tomorrow to celebrate their female team members!” Could it be President Trump? It could be, but in the US we do not have government ministers. Could it be Katy Perry or Justin Bieber who each have over 90 million Twitter followers? Probably not. Actually, this is a tweet from His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates, or HH Sheikh Mohammed as his seven million Twitter followers know him. He is promoting the 2017 International Women’s Day and showing his support of women’s rights in a part of the world that often does not give women the same freedom and rights as men. Twipolmacy is a phenomenal source for information about the social networking of the world’s most influential people. It collects data on the social networking of leaders across the world and complies the data from their Twitter accounts to empirically show how world leaders communicate and the impact their communication has. They generate a list of the 50 most influential world leaders each year (click on the hyperlink to see 2016’s list). Having a scroll of the Twitter feeds of all world leaders playing in a classroom would be incredibly powerful to students. When students study about faraway places or countries they have never heard of, this type of information can help them build a connection, empathy, and understanding of the world around them. The tweet from HH Sheikh Mohammed may not seem like a big deal unless you know about the plight of women in Middle Eastern countries. So, a shout out to women who are working may not mean much when it comes from most people, suddenly carries a great weight when students can see that it comes from a leader of a country that is trying to speak out against humanitarian issues in a region of the world where women suffer atrocities every day. #Powerful! Without technology and the ability to connect to people throughout the world, students might not be able to make the connections to diversity and awareness on a global scale. Their backyard or apartment complex seems like the whole world to them. I remember that feeling as a child; I remember thinking everyone was like me, and everyone had the luxuries I had. That is all I knew. Students today can access the worldwide web anytime to see and hear what is going on around the world. Check out this video at Discovery VR to see and hear an African woman’s story about surviving with HIV in a third world country. Virtual reality lets people feel what it is like to walk in someone else’s shoes. Hearing Doris’s story, seeing her world, and walking with her though her village adds a dimension to her life that is hard to get through a two-dimensional video. Virtual reality is a very new way to invoke understanding and empathy for issues that occur outside of our students’ immediate, tangible worlds. On Discovery VR students can jump into other worlds, virtually. While VR goggles will make the experience more realistic with a 360-degree view, students can view the video on a mobile device and appreciate the experience without goggles just by moving the device around. Robb, Laura. "Teach Kids to Build Their Own Prior Knowledge." MiddleWeb. N.p., 23 Aug. 2016. Web. 07 Mar. 2017. <https://www.middleweb.com/13223/teach-students-build-prior-knowledge/>.
Do you wiki? I wiki. Come on, everyone does it. You know… all the cool kids wiki.
As it turns out, more than all the cool kids have a wiki. Both the beauty and the bane of wikis is that anyone can have one. The beautiful part of wikis being (largely) free is anyone with a notion can create one. They are easy to access thanks to sites like Wikispaces, Pbworks, Google Sites, and myriad others; also, since wikis use a simplified visual editor, the barrier that was coding no longer exists, which prevented many people from creating websites. The downside to wikis is that there are a lot out there that are ineffectively utilized. Prior to high quality, easy to create blogging sites like Weebly, Wix, Edublogger, and others people did not have an easy place to build a website, so they used wikis as a de facto websites or blogs. Because wikis are easy to access and use, we see a lot of defunct and misused wikis. A study in wiki usage showed that “most wikis that are used at all are sued for short-term projects and assignments rather than as long-term course platforms” (Reich, Murnane, & Willett, 2012). This explains why there are so many wikis out there that are not being used actively, but when wikis are well used and become a part of a teacher or a student’s learning toolbox we see exactly why wikis are important in education. An effective wiki provides a resource for people to collaborate, share resources, and provide feedback on anything one wishes to post. Ward Cunningham wrote: “A wiki is a body of ideas that a community is willing to know and maintain”; wikis need people to build a wiki and sustain it. There are characteristics critical to successful, effective wikis that separate them from ineffective wikis. The most critical factor that differentiates the effective from the ineffective is a wiki should be collaborative. In this case, collaborative means that more than one person should be making changes to it, adding content, and updating/editing frequently. By virtue of collaboration, the wiki is better than what it would be with a single owner/editor/content provider. To give the reader a visual picture of what makes a good wiki, check out the infographic: “What Makes a Quality Wiki.” In the Euler diagram, the convergence of all 4 characteristics represents a wiki that is strong in all aspects. I have evaluated four wikis which are represented by dots on the infographic. A great example of a collaborative wiki can be found at Vicki Davis’s Westwood Computer Science classroom. It shows how powerful it can be to publish student work. Each student has an e-portfolio with their own page on the wiki. If you check out the recent changes on the page (look in the upper left-hand corner for the “Recent Changes” page) you will see many different contributors. The power and value in a wiki is having knowledgeable, diverse collaborators who provide a wide spectrum view of a topic, see this blog post from Creative Education for more information on the importance of wikis for collaboration. Westwood High School’s wiki lands in the junction of resources, structure, and collaboration. However, it is not in the middle of the diagram because the lack of visual elements means the user has to work to understand the structure of the website. Some visual elements might enhance the users’ experience. Resources are a critical element for a good wiki. An excellent example of this characteristic is DiRT a digital research tool wiki. DiRT is a plethora of tools for digital research. What I like about this site is that every link I clicked on worked (which is a rarity with wikis and webpages). Additionally, as a graduate student in digital technology, all the tools on this site are applicable to my work; it’s like a one-stop-shop. DiRT is an excellent example of a wiki that has high quality resources that are valuable to its users. The DiRT wiki is strong in structure, collaboration, and resources. The one area in which it is a little weak is visuals. However, the lack of visual elements does not negatively impact the users’ experience mainly because of its excellent structure and clean template on the front page. Another characteristic of effective wikis is the structure of the site. If your information is not effectively organized then users will not benefit from the information on the wiki. If you want to see a wiki with a good structure check out the Discovery Utopia. Everything a user needs can be found on the left-hand column of the front page. The table of contents on the right-hand side links to anchors on the front page since it is longer than can be seen without scrolling down. Additionally, this website does a great job of showing how a teacher can utilize the functionality of a wiki to publish student work to a worldwide audience. Discovery Utopia wiki effectively uses all four characteristics. Students post their utopia creations on a single page in which they can view and interact with their peer’s utopias. This wiki serves as a great example of how wikis can be used collaboratively by teachers and students to co-create a rubric. The structure is clear and logical, and the visuals are welcoming but not overwhelming or distracting. For all these reasons, Discovery Utopia lands right in the middle of the diagram. The final characteristic of good wikis is visual appeal. While wikis are geared towards people who do not code and may not be savvy in digital design, it is important to make your front page inviting and appealing. For a good example of a visually appealing wiki, take a look at Newton Barwa Academy’s Homework Page. While it is obviously not a professionally crafted website, it is neat, clean, and inviting to the user. Your graphics, pictures, or interactives should not be overwhelming or take away from the purpose of the page, but a little personalizing of the front page is appreciated. The Newton Barwa School’s homework site has strong resources and structure. Where this wiki could be more effective is in collaboration. A variety of teachers have added resources which is great, but there does not appear to be collaboration among contributors. In other words, the pages are all single authored with no one adding on another’s page. With more collaboration and involving students in this process, the wiki could be more effective.
These wikis are just examples of what constitutes a good wiki; all of them are excellent examples of educational wiki sites. It’s thanks to companies like Wikispaces and many others that have created open source web-based tools for people to use. The amount and variety of resources teachers and students can use has boomed in recent years. Now students, teachers, and parents can access a plethora of free resources for a variety of purposes.
Once upon a time, you could not purchase a new computer without having to purchase Microsoft’s Windows platform. And then, if you wanted to be able to type essays, letters, or other documents you had to purchase their Office products. Now, computer users can access Linux OS for free to run their computers, and Google Drive does everything the pricey Office program does- maybe not as easily, but for free. As I was perusing the internet for this blog post, I found a new suite of tools that I have fallen in love with! GoConqr is an educational platform on which users can create learning aids such as flashcards, mind maps, presentations, and more for free. For companies and institutions that want to create online courses and more robust resources, there is a Pro version. You can check out all the plans here. However, I joined with the Basic account, referred 3 co-workers and was bumped up to the Basic+ edition, which has all the functionality I need. If I wanted to get rid of ads and make my assets private, I can pay $21.95 for the year. I wanted to find a tool that would allow the teachers I coach to create quizzes that would prepare students for their Milestones test. On the Milestones there are questions that require selecting more than one answer, questions that are provided based on a student’s response to a previous question, and questions that require students to use the computer’s mouse. Google Survey and Microsoft Forms cannot do all of these types of questions. Initially, I looked at Zoho for a tool to use to create mock Milestones questions and quizzes. I found their survey tool Zoho Survey. I am super impressed with the survey tool because of a variety of different types of answer formats an author can use to solicit data. (check out the awesome survey I crafted as I explored Zoho). Students using this tool to collect data would fall in the ‘analysis’ level of Blooms Taxonomy because they would analyze the data they gathered and draw conclusions from it. Overall, I am very impressed with Zoho’s robust suite of tools, and I am impressed that they are free. I found GoCoqr when I was searching for an alternative to Zoho Challenge, a quiz creator, which is no longer supported by the company. My favorite GoCoqr tool is the quiz builder where teachers can use fill-in-the blank (also known as a cloze exercise) to measure student learning. Teachers with interactive whiteboards can use these assets as a station. Also, these resources work well with laptops, desktops, and touch devices. Below is an example of a cloze quiz I created. This tool is a great way for teachers to make quizzes that will prepare students for online testing situations.
A great tool for collaboration is GoConqr’s Mind Maps. Students can work together either synchronously or asynchronously just by sharing the link to the mind map. They can add pictures, notes, or documents to their mind map. This tool fall in the ‘create’ category within Blooms Taxonomy because it allows students to create an artifact using what they know to construct a unique product. With one click of the mouse, students can turn their brainstorming session into a set of notes. What a great way to gather ideas, information, and resources! Also, teachers can use this to build lesson plans, collaborate with PLCs, or develop collaborative content.
When I began creating a flashcard set in GoConqr, I could see how powerful it would be for special needs students. While flashcards are low on Bloom’s Taxonomy, falling in the recall category, special education students and English Language Learners greatly benefit from repeated exposure to new information over a period of time. Special needs students who need to learn vocabulary can use the flashcards on any device, and if access to technology is a concern, teachers can print out flashcards directly from the program. Additionally, these flashcards have a kinesthetic element to them when used with a touch device or interactive whiteboard which can engage special needs learners (“LEARNING STYLE (AUDITORY, VISUAL & KINESTHETIC) & DYSLEXICS,” 2017). It is amazing to see all the open educational resources available on the web. It is thanks to these sites that students can easily access tools to collaborate with anyone around the world. That’s power!
Reference
LEARNING STYLE (AUDITORY, VISUAL & KINESTHETIC) & DYSLEXICS. (2017). Retrieved February 23, 2017, from Dyslexia Victoria Online, http://www.dyslexiavictoriaonline.com/learning-style-auditory-visual- kinesthetic-dyslexics/ Reich, J., Murnane, R., & Willett, J. (2012). The state of Wiki usage in U.S. K-12 schools: Leveraging web 2.0 data warehouses to assess quality and equity in online learning environments. Educational Researcher, 41(1), 7–15. doi:10.3102/0013189x11427083 |
Ana HaleHula Hoop Champion, 1980 Crestwood Middle School (I can't believe I peaked in the '80s) Archives
November 2017
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