Course Reflection

Part One: Course Reflections:
As a result of taking this course, I have learned about many new tools and resources. More importantly, this course has provided the opportunity for me to learn from colleagues about the ways in which they use these different tools and resources in varied classroom situations. Generally, constructivism guides my implementation of most digital tools and resources. According to Roblyer (2016), constructivism is a belief that all knowledge is constructed in the mind through experiences. I like technology that allows students to experience something that they could not do without the technology or to experience something in a richer way with the technology. Examples in a math class would be web sites with simulations and interactives that could not be accomplished with paper and pencil.

Professionally, this experience has added a wealth of resources, along with their annotated uses, to the collection of things that I typically show when I give workshops to teachers. This also reminds me to keep reaching out for different ways to approach learning. Though the focus of this course was not on online teaching and learning, much of what we learned in this course has application to the online course I teach for teachers who are new to online and blended learning. Something I will change in my own practice is to make sure I am setting an expectation for my learners to reflect on how they can apply what they learn with me to their specific classroom needs. We were required to do that all along in this course and I found that to be a powerful part of my own learning.

Part Two: My Blogging Performance Assessment
Looking back at my whole blog I would say that, overall, I am very happy with my blogging for this course. The rubric calls for a blog that is rich in content, thought, insight, and synthesis. I believe that each of my posts includes those things at an appropriate level. I made great effort in each blog to connect the learning of the module to my work. I included references, and cited my sources in text and in list using APA style. I did have one blog post that was almost a week late due to a family reunion at a campground without Internet connectivity. My responses to the posts of other students were substantial. I was clear about the things that I learned, or that I agreed with, or that I would challenge.
Grade
Content: 68/70
Readings & Resources: 18/20
Timeliness: 16/20
Responses to Others: 28/30
Overall: 130/140 (93%)



Roblyer, M.D. (2016). Integrating educational technology into teaching (7th Ed.). Allyn & Bacon.

Assistive Technologies in the Chrome Browser

The school districts I work with in Riverside County take many different approaches to selecting devices for their students. When they ask for my recommendation, I generally suggest iPads for grades K-2 and Chromebooks for grades 3-12. There are many reasons behind that recommendation - cost, ease of management, touch and interactivity, and personalization. But one of the most important reasons is the ability of both of those types of devices to be adaptive and assistive. For this blog post I am going to discuss some of the assistive characteristics of Google's Chrome browser. While the assignment was to discuss the accessibility of the computer that I use, I decided to focus on the browser itself. At home I use a Mac desktop machine. At work I use a Windows desktop, a Chromebook, and a Mac laptop. The common thread is that I use Chrome almost exclusively on all four of those devices.

Accessibility Extensions from the Chrome Web Store

Extensions loaded on my Chrome browser

According to Roblyer (2016), providing students who have physical, sensory, or communication impairments with some assistive technology is not just a good practice, it is implicit in the 1997 federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Below are some of the capabilities of the Chrome browser that can assist students with special needs:

OpenDyslexic is a Chrome extension that formats pages with a special font and paragraph highlighting designed to help students with dyslexia focus and decipher text.

Before OpenDyslexic

With OpenDyslexic

Clearly (by Evernote) can help students with attention deficits read pages more easily by removing distracting images, ads, and multiple pages.

Google Voice Search allows students with physical impairments or language issues that make it difficult to type to do research on Google by speaking their search questions directly into the computer.

High Contrast

High Contrast is a Chrome extension that can help students with certain visual impairments read pages more easily by converting the view to white text on a black background causing the text to really pop off the page.

Google's Image Alt Text Viewer helps visually impaired students read pages by replacing images with their descriptive text. Then a page reader will be able to include image descriptions instead of just skipping the images.

ChromeVox is a browser extension that reads pages to students who may have specific vision, learning, or language issues. This extension was designed by Google specifically to meet the needs of visually impaired users.

Roblyer, M.D. (2016). Integrating educational technology into teaching (7th Ed.). Allyn & Bacon.

Obstacles to Integrating Technology in the Mathematics Classroom

There are many obstacles that prevent math teachers from fully embracing the use of technology in their classrooms. The primary challenge appears to be teacher resistance (Norton, McRobbie, and Cooper, 2000). The researchers studied a mathematics staff in a secondary school where there was a high level of access to technology, but also a low level of technology use. They found that teacher resistance was related to beliefs about mathematics teaching and learning and the math teachers' own existing pedagogies. In part, the solution is to expose these resistant teachers to technology integration strategies that could move the teachers toward integration in a meaningful and comfortable way.

According to Roblyer (2016), There are are several more major obstacles to technology integration in mathematics. Some of those challenges are listed here along with some tools and strategies that could serve as potential solutions for these challenges.

Image licensed through PresenterMedia

Obstacle: The need to bridge the gap between abstract and concrete. The use of virtual manipulatives can help bridge that gap by allowing students to interact with abstract math concepts through simulations. The National Library of Virtual Manipulatives is one online resource for these virtual manipulatives.
Obstacle: The need to allowing representations of mathematical principles. Technology like graphing calculators can help enhance the way students represent mathematical concepts and equations. Desmos is an example of a free online graphing calculator that is helping students understand problems and equations with a host of virtual tools.
Obstacle: The need to support mathematical problem solving. Students need opportunities to engage in problems without having the solution path outlined for them. Technology tools like the Geometer's Sketchpad allow students to interact with the principles of geometry in ways that are not possible with paper and pencil.


Norton, S., McRobbie, C. J., & Cooper, T. J. (2000). Exploring secondary mathematics teachers’ reasons for not using computers in their teaching: Five case studies. Journal of Research on Computing in Education, 33(1).

Roblyer, M.D. (2016). Integrating educational technology into teaching (7th Ed.). Allyn & Bacon.

Social Networking and Walled Gardens

Molly Large and I worked on this project together. Please take a look and listen to our presentation. Then, join the conversation by adding your voice to our VoiceThread.

Internet Safety & Cyberbullying

This past June I had the opportunity to do a presentation on Internet Safety for a group of parents at a PTA-Family Involvement Network Conference in Riverside, CA. I took the approach of sharing things that a parent (rather than a teacher) could do to keep their child safe on the Internet.

After doing some research that included websites by Common Sense Media and the FBI, I was able to create some slides with pertinent information to share with the parents at this conference. Every parent wants their children to be safe and responsible while they are online. In general, the best first step is to have a conversation with you child to help them understand the seriousness of Internet safety, and to arm them with some strategies for dealing with potential issues. Here are a few things that parents can share with their children:

• Stress the importance of following established family rules about when and where to use the Internet. They should only be online when adults are around to provide supervision. They should also be required to share any account passwords with their parents.
• Remind them to be polite and respectful as they deal with others in online environments. They do not want to accidentally solicit any problems through their own behavior. 
• Teach them how to understand the rules of particular websites they want to use. They should know what is not appropriate and how to report the inappropriate behaviors of others. 
• Review the red flag of being asked for personal information - particularly names, addresses, phone numbers, age, email addresses, and even school names. Children should know that they can be found by strangers just by giving their name and the name of their school.
• Teach children never to send pictures of themselves or anyone else in their family to someone they have never met.
• Finally, it is not always easy to define "inappropriate" behavior. Teach your children with words that they will immediately understand. They should immediately tell a trusted adult if anything "mean" or "creepy" happens while they are online.

I also created an infographic about Cyberbullying. The parents seemed to appreciate the infographic, so I am including it here: Standing Up to Cyberbullying.

Created with easel.ly

Video in the Classroom

References

Collett, Jessica L. and Kathleen M. O’Neill. 2006. “Sometimes less is more effective: Applying educational research to the use of popular video in the sociology classroom.” Paper presented at annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Montreal, Canada.

Fadel, C., & Lemke, C. (2006). Technology in schools: What the research says: A report from the Metiri Group, commissioned by Cisco Systems. Retrieved from http://www.cisco.com/web/strategy/docs/education/TechnologyinSchoolsReport.pdf

NTTI. (2004). Tips for Using Instructional Video and Public Television Programming in the Classroom.

http://www.brptv.com/html/edserv/ntti/nttipdf/02media.pdf

Basic Suite of Software

According to Roblyer (2016), the "basic suite" of software tools includes a word processor, a spreadsheet, and a presentation application. When I started teaching, in 1985, my school had one computer. That computer sat on the secretary's desk for the sole purpose of typing  letters for the principal. It was 1992 before I had a computer in my classroom with the Microsoft Office suite of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. For the next fifteen years, Microsoft Office dominated my use of word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations in my work and for my personal use.

That dominance was disrupted in 2007 when Google Apps were made available. Google Apps were made available for free, and that was hard to understand after having to pay so much for the Office products over the years. However, more than the $0 price tag, it was the ease of collaboration that made the Google tools so attractive for the classroom. Having students be able to collaborate in real time on a spreadsheet, or a word processing document, or on the slides of a presentation really changed the way a teacher could use this "basic suite" in the classroom.

Image licensed by Presenter Media

Writers write. We know that the more often students write, the better they become at writing. Among the advantages to using a word processing application is that students write more often, they will edit and revise more often, and they can more easily share what they have written with authentic audiences.

For me, the biggest advantage of spreadsheets is that they allow students to manipulate data. For example, a teacher could tell students to look at a chart of data about the solar system - size, distance from the sun, rotation, revolution, etc. Or that teacher could have students go online to research each of those data points and put them into a spreadsheet. Once the spreadsheet is compiled, the students could then sort by each of the fields. Doing this will foster making connections that they might otherwise have missed by just reading a chart.

The power of presentation slides comes from learning to use the combination of text and graphics, along with your voice, to convey meaning beyond what could just be written. When students start using presentation applications as more than just a projection of their written report, they will be communicating in ways that could not be done without the presentation application.

Roblyer, M.D. (2016). Integrating educational technology into teaching (7th Ed.). Allyn & Bacon.