Wrapping it up into a mini-course

My goal when creating my mini- course was to create a "virtual" place that contains all the resources students would need as they do their final projects in my class.  This collection of tools could be used independently to teach students about the resources available or it can be used as reference to refresh students on how to do some aspect of the project. By using technology to present these skills to students I don't have to use as much class time and students will have the mini- course as a  resource they can access on any computer.  I see this mini-course growing as additional tools get added.  In fact the whole way that I even go about doing my final project I now see changing to incorporate even more technology tools. 

The first question I asked myself when I began is, where do I want this mini- course to exist? I first chose google sites because of  my familiarity with it and ease that my students could access it. As I began to set up my class I was just not happy with how it felt or looked.  This made me uninspired to even want to do this mini- course. I knew I needed change.  In class when Sally introduced us to Haiku I found it interesting but was concerned still about the ability to access and compatibility to other application I might use.  The selling point was the first day in class we shared our projects and I saw how clean looking and easy Haiku was to use.  I immediately set up an account and began work.  The importance in how my class appears does matter to me.  I know I can be turned off as a learner when I am not stimulated by what is on the page in front of me.  Teaching teenagers, which have an even a shorter attention span I knew this was important.  In the end I am happy with Haiku and I look forward to seeing how my students react. 

The instructional design of this class followed the Dick and Carey method. First, I identified the instructional goals for the entire project or purpose (stated above), then I thought about who were my learners ( high school students), what do they currently know or the skills they currently have about technology, and then thought about what am I trying to get them to know in this mini- course ( library tools, the do's and don'ts of searching the world wide web, and Diigo) . I then was able to create objectives for the course which explained to the learner what they will gain from taking this course.  The final assessment for this mini-course is the students doing their final projects in my class.  I then worked from the final assessment back to create the lesson students would need in order to successfully complete their final projects. As I thought about how I was going to teach each mini- lesson I thought about the ways my students learn best.  I made sure to include lots of videos as well as written instructions. I tried to keep the information on each page to a minimum to not overwhelm or concern the learner. I provided mini assessments along the way that make the students use their new skills and serves as a formative assessment for me. At the end of the mini-course I also ask my students to do a reflection on what they learned and asked them to provide feedback on what they like or disliked about the mini- course so I can then adjust as needed. 

In my mini-course I have all four big theories of learning; cognitive, behaviorism, constructivism, and connectivism working together.  I am requiring students to think and learn new material (cognitive), I hope to change the behaviors of my students ( behaviorism) when they do research for any class, students get to design their final project in the way they want on a self selected topic(constructivism), and I am introducing them  to Diigo as a way to share resources and ideas with others in and outside of their class( connectivism). At the end of the course they will have knowledge about these new tools I am introducing them to, they will gain knowledge of how to use the new tools, and then apply them to their final projects sharing with me the knowledge of these resources. 

:) 

The truth about how many senses we have

The questions of "How many senses do we have?" recently was brought up in class by our professor. After the conversation was had in class I decided to go on a google search to see what I could find out about this very question. So I opened up Google and typed in "how many senses do we have".
  Site one was from a Dr. Travis Langley, Professor of Psychology at Henderson State University he does not actually define the term sense he does note that there is more then the traditional five and comes up with a list of 10 main ones: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, heat, cold, pressure, pain, motion,and balance. He then continues on to talk about the difference between sensation and perception. Site two from TLC Family How stuff Works starts off by saying "The standard list of five senses doesn't really give our bodies credit for all of the amazing things they can do. There are at least a dozen different things we can sense." The site goes on to say "In order for us to have a sense, there needs to be a sensor". They then go through and break all different parts of our body down into sensors we have and come up with up to 20 different ones. I skipped over the next couple of sites as they were just yahoo forums and another forum where the same question I had asked was also asked and I wanted more reliable information. Next Wikipedia was listed. Wikipedia actually defined sense as "Senses are physiological capacities of organisms that provide data for perception". It then states "Human beings have a multitude of senses" and it goes on to list Sight, hearing, taste, smell,and touch as the basic five but then notes that the "ability to detect other stimuli beyond those governed by the traditional senses exists, including temperature (thermoception), kinesthetic sense (proprioception), pain (nociception), balance (equilibrioception), acceleration (kinesthesioception)[citation needed], and various internal stimuli (e.g. the different chemoreceptors for detecting salt and carbon dioxide concentrations in the blood), only a small number of these can safely be classified as separate senses in and of themselves. What constitutes a sense is a matter of some debate, leading to difficulties in defining what exactly a sense is." Further down on the page they state that "there is no firm agreement among neurologists as to the number of senses because of differing definitions of what constitutes a sense." At this point in my search the truth about how many senses there really are was becoming clearer... There is no true answer it is based on how the word is defined to you and what you classify as a sense. I at this point see the reason why we only teach student the basic five. I don't see any harm in the basic ten that the professor of psychology stated but the list of 20 plus is that really necessary common knowledge? I feel in some ways my knowledge of what a sense really is may be more blurred then it was before this question was even brought to my attention.
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Instructional System Design

Reading about Instructional system designs made me think a lot about my early days in education when I began learning how to do basic lesson planning. As a teacher we are always having to go through different design activities related to lesson planning and course design. Instructional system design I see as being able to take on varying sizes of projects. Often in my educational training we go through procedures to design a unit or lesson using some different type of method usually which puts focus on some new skill we have acquired. I see this Instructional system design to be something that can be used for even non educational purposed items which might still have some educational value. Video Gaming is one of the worlds where I could see Instructional System design to be used. Playing a video game there is often objectives the creators of the game have set out to instill on the user playing the game. Often the game starts out by teaching the player how to use the functions of the game to play. Then a mini assessment of sorts will be given to see if that development was successful. The player must implement to new skills learned along the way. I am sure when developers of games design them they would create very similar charts shown here for the ADDIE model. Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and constant Evaluation...isn't this what we do as educators on a daily bases? Basically instructional system designs is just another way of systematically think about the things we all already do in the classroom. It provides a way to organize the ideas as teacher we already have in the back of our minds as important. Basically it is an organizational tool which can be used with even modifications in a variety of ways.

Connecting to the Classroom

There is always a question I keep in the back of my mind every time I learn something new related to technology or attend a conference. How can I use what I have learned to help connect my students to the world. One idea that I have been trying out on a recent project is setting my class site up with a digital bookmarking site. Now it may not seem like much but it allows my students to share site with each other when they work on a site. I have it set on private right now but I could open this up to whole Diigo community. When I introduced the students to the site the other day students were setting up their accounts and immediately they were talking with one another in the chat section of the page. Students want to be connected and they want to share ideas with one another but they don't always want to do this in the classroom. I am thinking about eventually opening this site up. I have also wanted to find more ways.

Digitalizing Education

During a lesson I am teaching in the classroom one of my students asks me " Why did Greenwich England get picked as the place where the Zero Degree Longitude line is?" Not knowing the exact answer to this question might of made me a bit nervous in the past but now all I need to do is sit down at the computer, or have a student and look it up. I can jump from site to site seeing what ideas and thought are out there on this exact question. Digital Technology.... it is everywhere... in our cars, cell phones, TV, and even classrooms. It has changed the way we get information and provides to us constant information of the world around us. No longer do we have to wait weeks even months to talk to a pen pal in china.. now we can just log on and send a live message or even Skype and see a live picture of them. Information is no longer an item you have to just go to a library to find out. Just having a computer at our finger tips a world of knowledge can be tapped into and information can be given. What does this all mean to how we educate our children of tomorrow... a lot and nothing. I say a lot in that there is a lot more information out there for our kids to see and learn from and it is our new duty to help guide them though this world of massive information. I also say nothing because really some of the basic practices that have been in place for years still apply. We still need to know how to read, write and do math. I think Digital technology just allows us to do these three things in new ways. Classrooms went from having chalk boards to white boards, to now smart boards. Pen and Paper to typewriters to now computers. Is all this technology better? I think that will be a question we may have to wait on to get the answer. Technology is helping us connect with others around the world and bring the world together in the information sharing. Learning can take place in a lot of different environments. What the effects this will all have is yet to be seen but a change has occurred!

Learning knowledge

9/6/12 in class: What is Learning? Learning is when you take in a new experience and grow from it. It does not always occur after every new experience often it requires you to make connections to other experience you have. What is Knowledge? Knowledge is a broader term to represent all the information that you know. What you have gained from all your learning experiences and carry on with you.

Brain Explosion

"Wow it is already Thursday can't believe tomorrow is our last day of class"... those were the words shared as I left the class today. I am excited to see and learn about all sorts of new doable things! While there are always struggles of will this work or will that work... at the end of the day there are still a lot of great things out there that we can use with our students. Having a class like this once a year I think would be awesome just a way to see what is new out there and share amongst each other our skills even. So next year... what am I now going to take on with me. I have used a lot of this week to get my website cleaned up a bit as we all know it will never be done. I really do want to use this more as a home base for my students to go to and add items as the year goes on. I would also like to start the year using Diigo verse throwing it at students when they are trying to do their final products. I also do see myself creating some jings as a way to show students how to do various thing. I think I am going to add more digital options to various projects and show students how they can create comic strips or videos as part of a project instead of the normal posters or powerpoints they often like to do. I really think the website that we have created as a list of resources is going to be a place I visit over and over again to see what else I might be able to do. there is a lot to think about... good thing i do have some time to think before school begins.

wednesday buisness

Today in class I did a lot of cleaning up and organizing of things. I went thru my website and restructured it quite a bit actually. I had to add a section for my biology classes and then reduced my classroom resources down to one page per subject area instead of one per period I teach this will keep it all organized when begin teaching in the fall again. I also added links I had to my biology website. I then went in and played around with my diigo account that my students had used this fall for their final project in my earth science class. It was not organized very well and I am not one for mess online tools. I went through and created tags for all the links students have posted this way now all the future links which get added are into categories students and myself can find easier. I hope to introduce this bookmarking tool earlier in the year in hopes students can use it all year as well as for their final project. At the end of class I decided to play with wordle as I have always loved ones I had seen on other sites. I had a blast create and playing with it but then found out that unless you want a tiny little box on your website you need to go thru some additional steps to get the wordle to be useable. I was able to get a screen shot and hopefully will be able to get it now on my website. I enjoyed learning about additional places to play with photos or make movies. I really enjoy doing this and a ot of that information will be used more for my private live. I also have started up a private website that I was going to try out for my pictures on wix.com I liked the professionalism of it. I have wanted a place to showcase my pictures as this point I would like to watermark then before I place them on my website which I can do via my ipad as I have a cool app which does this. Really this week I have gained a lot both personally and professionally. Most of all i like the fact you let us play and just have fun.