OETS in My Classroom

OETS (Oregon Educational Technology Standards) is a set of standards designed to promote technological literacy in students. That these standards are necessary at all speaks to how central a part of daily life information technology has become in recent years. Record keeping in hospitals, international collaboration in business and online banking are all examples of areas in which information technology plays an important role, and if the function of school is to prepare students for the world than technological literacy must has a place in its curriculum. OETS is designed to standardize and clarify this, outlining ways in which technology and its appropriate use can be incorporated into more traditional classes.

It is worth noting that OETS does not refer to any specific technology (GoogleDocs, Facebook etc.). This is because technology changes so quickly that standards could not be revised quickly enough to keep up, and what students learned to use in school would likely be obsolete by the time they start working. Instead, OETS describes how technology should be used, leaving the teacher to determine which programs and devices are most appropriate to use at any given time.

I've been moderately literate with information technology most of my life, and so seeing the benefit of promoting technology use in the classroom has not been difficult for me to get used to. Though I teach 4th and 5th graders, whose ability to appropriately use technology is limited, there are several ways I have tried to incorporate in my class that reflect OETS. For one, information technology has played an important role in research projects I have assigned (3. Research and Information Fluency). I prefer to give students broad goals and let them determine for themselves how best to achieve them. In the field of research, it is up to the student to find sources that provide them with the best information. It is also important, however, that they are able to determine which sources are reliable and which are not, and so we also spend time in class discussing which types of web sites are likely to provide useful information. I have also used GoogleDocs to have students upload information they acquired outside of school to a common spreadsheet which then charts the results they obtained as a class. Through this they have seen for themselves the value in working as a group to gather the most accurate results possible (2. Communication and Collaboration). I have also talked to my students about how how serious an issue plagiarism is, and how important it is to make use of the ideas contained in the information they find without copying the words directly (5. Digital Citizenship). Finally, students need to learn to fend for themselves when using technology, as the software they used in 5th grade will be obsolete when they are in high school. I try as much as possible to encourage students to become familiar with technology through using it rather than through direct instruction so that they will be better able to learn for themselves how to use the "next big thing" that becomes popular (6. Technology Operations and Concepts)

One difficulty I've had with using technology in my classroom is that my students' parents are for the most part unfamiliar with it themselves, meaning that they can only receive a limited amount of help at home. It has also been difficult at times to convince them of the value of using technology over more traditional methods in some situations. Finally, there will almost certainly come a time when the state of the art moves beyond what I myself am comfortable with, making it difficult for me to incorporate it into my own classes. This is already a stumbling block for many current teachers. As information technology continues to play more and more of a central role in the world, however, incorporating it effectively into my classes will become increasingly important, and thanks to OETS I now have a way to gauge my effectiveness in this area.

INTASC

This link in this post shows that I tried as best I could to demonstrate that I have met the standards required my this class. This includes creating presentations using a variety of media, as well os demonstrating current and future applications for these media in a classroom. Check out the document at this link for further details.

My Experiences with Skype

I had several of years of experience with Skype before joining the education department here at Willamette (I've chosen not to share my Skype name because I chose an embarrassing one when I started my account and Skype wont let me change it). I first came across it while living in Japan as a free and easy way to keep in touch with my friends and family back home. I was attracted by the idea that I could speak with anyone, anywhere at anytime without having to worry about how much time I was spending while having sound quality greater than a normal telephone line, as well as the opportunity for live video. I used it the most to speak with my parents in Salem once a week. I also used it for group chats with friends in different parts of the world (in my case, me and a friend in souther Japan, one in Osaka and another in the United States). Difficulties I experienced include unpredictable data rates leading to reduced quality and unexpected dropped calls. On the whole, however, it was much easier to use and better quality (not to mention less expensive) than any phone line I have ever used.

For the same reason, especially given my connection with a school that has connections with Japan as a central part of its mission, Skype could be an excellent tool for my classroom. I have long wanted to set up a live chat with students in Japan, and a video chat through Skype would be a very nice way to do this. The most significant hurdle for me, matching class-times between America and Japan (which do not line up at all) has nothing to do with the tool itself and could be overcome by having one class come to school one day at an odd time. I haven't yet been able to set something like this up, but it remains a possibility that I would like to explore.

Multimedia Presentation

For my multimedia presentation I teamed with two other students to put together a presentation on uses for ScreenToaster, an online service that captures videos of the screen of your computer as you work on it. My contribution to the presentation was a video in which I demonstrated how to use the class web site that I had recently set up. I chose ScreenToaster because I thought it had potential to be something useful to me in my classroom. As it turns out it was simple and easy to use, and I can see myself using it in future lessons.

GoogleSheets Demonstration

This is my attempt to pull some visually and mathematically interesting information out of the table of test scores on our example sheet from Ed Tech class. The first table shows how each student fits into categories of standard deviation above and below the average for each test.



Green indicates more than one standard deviation above the mean, yellow indicates less than one standard deviation above the mean, orange indicates less than one standard deviation below the mean, and red indicates more than one standard deviation below the mean. This information can be useful for showing how students' standing compared with the rest of the class changed over time. Israel, for example, started off greater than one standard deviation below the mean (red) and finished greater than one standard deviation ABOVE the mean (green), a greater improvement relative to the class.



This graph shows the relative change of the mean, one standard deviation above and below the mean, and the maximum over the course of the tests. This shows that, on the whole, the class improved with each test over the grading period.

GoogleSheets Demonstration

Part I

Part II

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Web 2.0 Tutorial

Even though we have had plenty of exposure to Google Docs through our Ed Tech class, I thought it would be nice to share my perspective as a teacher at a school that is currently in the process of having our students use GoogleDocs as a normal part of their classwork. We're only a few weeks in, but it's been fun seeing how much we've already been able to accomplish, and I really am excited about the possibilities for this new tool in our classes.

My Favorite Web 2.0 Tools

Web 2.0 as I understand it came around while I was still living in Japan.  I can still remember where and when I first heard about it.  I was driving to a friend's house in the country listening to a podcast of NPR's Fresh Air when one of their critics began talking about checking out old concert videos on a site called YouTube that I'd never heard of before.  Once at my friend's house I borrowed his computer to see what this YouTube was all about, and was immediately hooked. 

There seem to be two basic ideas behind Web 2.0, one is that content is created by the users, not mediated to a central company that you pay for their service.  This is the idea behind YouTube and social networking sites like Facebook.  People create their own entertainment and share it with everyone else.  The other idea, which I think is more important, is the idea of the internet being the location for a computer's applications and storage, and the computer being a terminal with which you access them.  This is the idea on which GoogleDocs, to give one example, is based.  The reason this is so significant is that users are no longer necessarily tied to one specific computer.  If you begin a file on GoogleDocs at home, you can continue to work on it at a friend's house or the library or the office without having to carry anything with you.  

Having worked in my own classroom for nearly a year now, the advantages of this to education are pretty attractive.  One of the biggest issues we had with using technology last year was file storage and transfer.  Every child had his or her own thumb-drive, but as with anything else, they are easily lost and many projects were lost this way.  With some Mac users and some PC users we also had compatibility issues between different types of software and different operating systems.  This year we are in the process of shifting everyone to GoogleDocs, and though this process isn't yet complete, I think this is going to make a big difference in fixing some of the issues we dealt with last year.

One tool that looks interesting to me is screentoaster.com.  I really like the idea of creating a short demonstration of how to complete a task ahead of time and having that presentation available for my students online in case one of them was either absent or needed to see it again to understand what I was trying to show.  Like anything else, it will take some getting used to, but I see a lot of potential for this sort of tool.

My Favorite Web 2.0 Tools

Web 2.0 is a radical change in how computers interact with the internet.  Previously, computer applications and file storage were all done on one's own personal computer with the internet being a means of sending information from one computer to another.  Under Web 2.0, applications and file storage move to the internet while the computer becomes a terminal with which to access them.  This has many advantages to computer use in the classroom.  Computers that only serve as terminals to the internet are much less expensive and much less complicated than traditional computers that have software loaded on them directly.  Using school computers as a terminal also allows students to continue working on assignments at home regardless of whether or not their home computer has the necessary loaded.

2009 OTEN Conference

Posting somewhat late on my trip to the OTEN conference last Saturday.  You can hear my observations for yourself in the Yodio clips I've posted below, but here is the summary of what I thought.  The best compliment I can give is that, on a beautiful sunny day in which I had a long list of things I needed to take care of to get ready for the next week of school, I'm STILL glad that I took the time to attend.  The keynote speech and the work sessions inspired me to think of ways I could use technology in my classes, and at this point it looks like I'll be trying out a few new things this year (short video projects, web sites etc.) because of what I heard there.  Check out the audio for more details about what I did and what I learned.

Keynote Speech

Work Session 1

Work Session 2

Blogs

In getting ready for this blog post, I've been having difficulty imagining how I would make use of blogs in my classroom.  I've never been much of a user or reader of blogs in the past, and to be honest, what time I have spent with them has convinced me that most blogging is either narcissistic, a waste of time, or both.  I also think that the age of my students (4th and 5th grade) limits the role blogs could play in my classroom.  In playing around with this technology the last couple of weeks for my ed tech class, though, I think I understand how it could be helpful to me if used in the right way.  Here are a few possibilities I've come up with.

First (and foremost!) a classroom blog could be a useful way to keep the parents and students informed as to what's going on in the class.  Communication between the teachers and parents is very important to my school, and I already do this to some degree.  Each of the teachers has a web page through the school similar to a blog that we can update any time we like, and for the most part we use it once a week to explain what the parents and students can expect over the next week.  Finding the time to update more often than that has proven difficult, but I think it's a good idea.  A blog serving a similar function would make leaving comments or questions possible, and that would be helpful.  Responding to all the comments on the other hand. . .

A blog could also be used something like a wiki, where students go out and find as many pieces of information on a topic as possible and post it on the blog.  I can imagine giving an assignment that asks the students to go out on the internet for information on a historical figure (how about George Washington, since we're covering American history this year?), post it on the blog and then add a comment or two on what their classmates have added.

Having each of the students maintain and update their own blogs for their class, as we are for ours, would open up possibilities for completing assignments online.  This could simplify the grading and turn-in process which always takes more time from the class than it should.  I also like the fact that other students could add their comments in a way that they couldn't in a normal classroom setting.  

I'm going to have to become more familiar with blogs myself before I can understand all of the possibilities for using them in my own classroom, but the possibilities are out their, and they're certainly worth looking into.

Biography

Like many people I've met in the Aspire program I am a Salem native, and it's been fun being back in my hometown going to school with so many people who have connections to my life when I was younger. Take the two Shawnas, for example, one of which is currently teaching at Schirle, my elementary school, while the other is at Judson, my middle school. Even Professor Jahn was a teacher at Sprague while I was a student there. It's been about ten years since I had any connection to Salem other than my family, so it will be fun getting to be a part of it again.

I began thinking about education as a career while living in Japan from 2004 to 2008. I had gone over intending to be a translator, and instead ended up taking an opportunity to teach English to elementary school-aged children.  It wasn't what I had planned, but I'm very grateful it worked out that way because I have had more fun and been more fulfilled working with kids than I ever would have translating. I spent most of the four years as a roving lecturer in the the 30-odd elementary schools in the city I worked for teaching English and multiculturalism. In doing this job I had the opportunity to see many different teachers work in many different situations and began to get a feel for what made the successful ones successful and the struggling ones struggle. I also saw what a difference a teacher could make on group of students, and before long began wanting a class of my own to work with. Not being a native of Japan there was no way to become a full-time classroom teacher there, so in the summer of 2008 I returned to Oregon.

I got my wish much sooner than I expected when the opportunity to fill an emergency vacancy at the Sheridan Japanese School three months later. Working with my ideal grade level, 4^th and 5^th grade, while at the same time being able to share the experience I have teaching in Japan has been a real dream come true for me, and while the experience has been time-consuming and challenging, I can't imagine a more perfect place for me to be. All I want is to be the teacher I can for my kids, and I'm really looking forward to everything I'll be learning here at Willamette to help me do that.