Seats and email.

Last EDOL 533 Post

I have used email for a long time but never been a fan of chat rooms or social networking sites. I am in the process of setting up web pages for my various classes at Beijing No. 55 High School and in each class am beginning to discuss whether we should include blogs and a wiki for each class.

Let me share a story that will reveal part of the challenge of dealing with the Chinese educational system mindset regarding the change this entails. As a consequence of this technology class and EDOL 538 which I am sure some of you take I have become really sensitized to alternative ways of doing things. I also saw some fabulous teaching in International School classrooms here in Beijing when I did my Classroom Observations for that class: Students didn't sit in rows but where seated in groups of four at four desks placed together like tables actually designed for that kind of seating. It is not only effective but my students love it.

I started this rearrangement on Friday and did it again today. Well when I went  lunch today, the math teacher who is also one of the Grade 10 homeroom teachers and uses the room where I was 'experimenting'  was ahead of me in the lunch line. She turns around and starts ragging me - in Chinese so all the other Chinese teacher know she is on me - about moving the desks around and that I had better put them back. I am trying to politely ignore her (I am thinking Grrr!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! but just endured it.).  So she starts hammering me more telling everyone, "He doesn't understand Chinese." I knew exactly what she was saying but didn't want confront her.

When I get back to the office, I am telling some of my students who are in the class about this and she just happens to overhear the conversation. She then gets more upset and says she is going to have the school put in writing that the desks in that classroom cannot be moved. Huh! We are talking here about seats and changing seating to help the student.

Ironically this teacher went to the UK and got her Master's. She has lived abroad and yet the idea of change is still absolutely terrifying. She just blocked/blocks it out.  

This has nothing to do directly with communication tools which are supposed to be the point of this particular post but it does indirectly by discussing the societal context here for technological change which is comprehensively covered in Chapter 13 of the text . And it reveals that this society hears endlessly the mantra "peace, harmony and stability" because they want - at least in education - for the 21st Century to stay away.  

I feel better.

PS By the way I will respect her concerns and make sure that after my classes the seats are put back like she likes them. W.

Lesson Seven Comprehensive Assignment

Today during the Spring 2011 Teachers' Meeting I saw a presentation that used Prezi (http://prezi.com/) an online and live presentation creation tool from Prezi, Inc. It has all the functionality of PowerPoint but is much more powerful, has a more attractive appearance and is easier to use. For these and following reasons it meets my instructional objective of providing my students and myself with a superior presentation tool:

While online you can use a browser to collaborate on prezis with others, You can send and show your prezis to non-Prezi users. Your prezis can be accessed from any computer. If you register it - buy a license - , when you don't have internet access you can export Portable Prezis. And it works on iPad's. (http://prezi.com/learn/prezi-online-software/)

I haven't used Prezi yet but when I start class on Thursday I will tell all my students about the software and suggest they look at it. If the students like it I will suggest they use it. According to today's presenter you can also upload PowerPoint's and it converts them. Likewise is has a built in mind-mapping function - a feature I am eager for my students to start using -, that makes it really easy to conceive and structure presentations. Because they are built into Prezi it will accomplish multiple objectives.

My goal is to improve their presentations.

I anticipate that some students will be reluctant to switch from PowerPoint. Ironically students in their mid-teens are very reluctant change from things that they are use to, things with which they are comfortable. It will be really important therefore to have the students carefully compare it with Microsoft's presentation software, evaluate it and then decide. I will not force it on them.

I am also eager to see if it works well the wikis I will be using in all of my classes. Because wikis are by nature collaborative the collaborative nature of Prezi should easily meld with and enhance them. Also, it can work both offline and online so it will be easier to immediately incorporate offline and online videos, text, photos and audio into the wikis and keep them current. And repeating what I said earlier, I have never been a big fan of PowerPoint's appearance. You can spiff it up but it can be time consuming to do this and it still isn't very attractive. What I saw today looked really excellent.

Lesson Six Comprehensive Assignment

My study of WebQuests this week entailed the following:

Strategy/Action Plan for my own WebQuest creation for Comprehensive Assignment,  Lesson Six, EDOL 533.1

Study all pages of "Concept to Classroom/Workshop: WebQuests/Explanation/Welcome..."

            from http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/webquests/index.html especially          "essential parts" or "six critical components page."

Study Dr. Dodge's paper "Some Thoughts About WebQuests."

Define short versus long term WebQuests for my project(s).

            Refer to "Exploring, Using Adapting, & Creating WebQuests.doc"

            Study Tip under Introduction:/1. in "What are the essential parts of a WebQuest?" page    on Concept to Classroom site                                     (http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/webquests/index_sub3.html)

            Study Tip under 3. Process on same page.

Study "Dr. Bernie Dodge's WebQuest template.doc"

Study Tom March's online articles "Why WebQuests?", "WebQuest Design Process", "Pre-           Writing Your WebQuest" and "Link Like You Mean It!"

Study '' Developing A WebQuest For Your Classroom, Basic Form.doc"

Supplemental Study Bushra Faisal's "Introduction to WebQuests.ppt." from             (http://teachnologymadeeasy4tchr.manageyourevents.net/webquest2.htm)

       and her/his How to Create a WebQuest from

            (http://teachnologymadeeasy4tchr.manageyourevents.net/webquest2.htm)

Decide which online tools to use to create WebQuest:

            Tom March's Pre-Writing template     (http://www.tommarch.com/learning/prewrite.php)

             Zunal.com to create scratch or adapt and existing WebQuest

                                                                        (http://www.zunal.com/index-create.php)

Introduce to target classes with http://webquest.sdsu.edu/webquestwebquest-hs.html

Continue intro with http://ozline.com/webquests/china/

For casting WebQuest refer to

            Christina J. Schindler's "WebQuests, Teaching with Technology"                             http://www.tcnj.edu/~caties/documents/WebQuests.pdf

   and

            Internet Expeditions, Exploring, Using, Adapting, & Creating WebQuests

            http://eduscapes.com/sessions/travel/create.htm

   and

            QuestGarden

            http://questgarden.com/author/create.php

   and

            Filamentality

            http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/fil/

   and

            Zunal.com

            http://www.zunal.com/index-create.php#

Notes on Action Plan above. WebQuests are going to play a really important role in my teaching. As the list above indicates, I spent a lot of time this week looking through the WebQuest material available on the net. Dr. Goldberg was correct: If I had waited until the last minute I would never have finished.

I believe I now have a good basic grasp of WebQuests and was excited how nicely it dovetailed with my discovery of Virtual Worlds last week. I in fact created a WebQuest that will scaffold into a comprehensive Virtual World  exercise in Grade 10 MYP Technology Class. 

I learned a great deal from Tom March's various pages especially his "The WebQuest Design Process as used and developed by Tom March" page. I quote: "Professor Allison Rossett has described a useful equation. Envision the optimal learning outcomes for a particular unit or activity. Then compare that to the actual outcomes. The learning gap is the difference between Optimals and Actuals. Given a curricular unit you'd like to develop, look for the learning gaps. Keep these handy for when you want to state the Question and Task for your WebQuest."

The learning gap concept is brilliant and I believe I have had some success putting that into the Process section of my own WebQuest "Virtual Retail Space for Technological Product Sales." The students will have enough knowledge to start the Quest but by the time they are done will be pushed to really tap their deep thinking skills, will have to deal with their "leaning gaps." 

Lesson Five Comprehensive Assignment

This has been a terrific week of learning. It started with the video at the end of last week's or Lesson Four's class. There was so much wonderful, interesting and appealing information on a topic I really like, the visual arts. The Chapter 8 on the Pearson site were also fabulous. (I will  be ordering Inspiration 9 software from Amazon this week because they have it on sale.) Some of my sophomores are shooting a film during this Spring break so it and it will be fun to talk with them about the iMovie tutorials when they come back to school though I suspect that they will find them too rudimentary.

The closest I come to using the communication tools is text messaging on my mobile phone. Students are told not to use their cell phones in my classes and they comply. My students respect me and know that I being a reasonable person will let students field a call from her/his parents if some family matter requires it. They always let me know ahead and then as I require step out of the classroom for the call. This seldom happens though and it is not a problem. If for some reason my phone rings during class I hold it up in a conspicuous manner and shut it off. Again this may happen only once or twice a term.

You have to understand that everyone here uses their phones no matter where they are. For instance, in our weekly teachers' meetings our principal regularly checks his messages and answers - yes answers - calls.

Short message functionality is something I use all the time to communicate with the 13 other foreign teachers for whom I am MYP/DP Trainer and Supervisor. This is an example of asynchronous communication that I do use and my students use but it never interferes with class work. It is also handy to broadcast assignments and make class announcements. As with my foreign teachers, I have distribution lists for my classes and it is really convenient. This is never abused.

I require that students give me their email addresses and mobile numbers. Students who don't have printers send me their assignments so I can print them and because I like to have a digital copy. I am relentlessly invited to join Facebook and the like and I refuse. They know I don't even open the invitations but immediately delete them. I am kind and warm and caring with my students and have a lot of fun with them, love to kid them BUT it is as a teacher to his students not as their pal. Aside from the fact that my email is completely insecure, there is no email abuse problem here.

I will be using virtual worlds and wikis this term for a couple specific projects which will require. buying a wireless router for my classrooms. This week I will email my students and have them open accounts at Second Life or Freznoo for the former. Once I have a wireless router in the classroom we can do an intranet just for the class so it will be really easy to play with wikis. Also eager to incorporate iPad and Mac into that becasue many of my students are into Apple.

So grateful that God provided this online course. It is already making a huge difference in my work.

Lesson Four Comprehensive Assignment

1. What was the presentation about and to whom did you present it? I am not sure this will qualify for the Lesson Four Comprehensive Assignment but wanted to try. During Fall  Term this year I wanted to test how well my Grade English Language A was doing with the International Baccalaureates (IB) MYP concepts of learning contexts (Areas of Interaction) and the inter-disciplinary dimension of their IB various classes.

In order to both actualize and assess the Grade 10's potential here, I created  an activity spanning all four units of Fall Term 2010 where the students studied one literary per units: Charles Dickens' The Tale of Two Cities, Feodor Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground,  Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim and Sophocles' Medea. During the Dostoevsky unit the 16 students in class were broken into four group and each group assigned one of the following perspectives on the work: politics, history, religion and society. They then collectively explored Notes from the Underground from that perspective. 

The students were then apprised that they would each have - individually, not collectively - as part of the term's summative assessment to create and present a PowerPoint Presentation that inculcated that theme as well as at least two of the other works on the reading list, at least two of the other subjects they were studying, TOK (They are in the last year of MYP but Beijing No. 55 requires they do the DP's Theory of Knowledge or Epistemology course.) as well as refer to the  Approaches to Learning in the MYP's Areas of Interaction contexts  and most important of all articulate how this study had changed them.  

Because, the students' presentations slides were for the benefit of the audience they not to be read verbatim. Instead the students were required to expatiate on the points displayed demonstrating real knowledge acquired and then field their classmates' and my questions at the end to ratify learning. All presentations had a 10 minute time limit - including questions - and were videotaped. This worked beautifully.

2. Of which item in [student] presentation[s] are you the most proud? By using PowerPoint, the students were able to honor the complexity of the assignment. Though everyone 'came through' it was particularly satisfying that some of weaker students had some of the  best presentation. Most importantly, the students didn't read from their slides but instead presented their material with confidence and panache. Very satisfactory. 

3. What might you [have the students]do differently if you could [repeat the exercise]? The presentation is not over because the tapes of each students presentation go into to her/his learning portfolio for the year and the class is going to review them at the beginning of Spring Term with the students using MYP Assessment Criteria to assess themselves and each other.

4. How did your students respond to [each other's] presentation[s]? They were extremely appreciative of the quality of the work of their classmates but also had a keen eye for flaws and inadequacies and expressed that effectively and persuasively. They also asked excellent, insightful questions.