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It's Getting Clearer...

5/4/2019

2 Comments

 
     This week has been a great one for looking at our projects from different angles and asking more questions. ​
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     The biggest growth spurt for me and my project was initiated by the DQ Initial Analysis a couple of weeks ago. Articulating my ideas, work, and learning into this framework helped me on so many levels. I began to see connections between the research project I did in the fall, the subsequent action research I’ve been working on, and the Instructional Design Models we’ve been learning.  I was able to start seeing a vague image of my capstone in the distance, beginning to take form. This week’s work has begun to help this vague image of my capstone gain focus and definition.
     I think, in an Innovative Learning Masters Program especially, it is very important to continue to revisit Punya Mishra’s TPACK model.  Watching his video this week caused me to look at the bigger picture and reevaluate how TPACK fits into the framework of my project. Viewing it from a different perspective, I ask myself, “How do all the pieces of the web I call my project interconnect to form a context for technology, pedagogy, and content?”
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     In my project, technology (which Mishra says can be as simple as a blackboard slate) is a valuable piece of the puzzle. Although it might not seem like my project is technology focused, it would be infinitely more difficult to implement without technology.  I used technology in the form of simple alphabet games, both on paper and online, to strictly control the methods being used to teach the Kindergarteners.  This is important because the people using this technology to teach the students are not trained teachers. They are parents, older siblings, volunteers, and middle schoolers.  The pedagogical approach to my project is the most complicated feature of my project. I’m using research on what has been done like this, and also exploring new areas to find the best ways to design the program so that the teaching is effective for the students.  Luckily, the content is my best friend. Alphabet sounds is content that virtually anyone in the Kindergarteners’ lives has already mastered, and can help them to do the same.
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      The work we did this week on the THINK SHEET was also especially helpful.  This activity gave me a moment to explore, in a visual way, the variables in my project.  I created a Mind Map (my favorite visual organizing tool) to explore additional possibilities that could be.  Had it not been for this activity, I would have never taken the time to go further. After completing this step, updating my visual prototype (also a Mind Map from bubbl.us) was a snap.  Having these two tasks complete made my Table of Contents process a snap. Even though we might not have a Table of Contents for our projects, creating this linear representation of the components of our projects was highly valuable. I was able to organize the elements, while double checking for completeness and for flow.
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     Continuing to look at our Capstones from multiple angles is essential because it enables us to keep asking ourselves questions that help us to further develop it, and refine it.  This process illuminates any unseen gaps, as Dervin might say, allowing us to find our way to a clearer picture of our projects' potential.
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Developing the Big Picture

4/16/2019

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     How can we develop partnerships to improve the early literacy skills of primary students?  If I were presenting on this topic in a conference or training, the first thing I would do is try to connect my audience to the problem.  A little more than a third of students enter Kindergarten lacking alphabet knowledge, and four years later, a little more than a third of students are performing below basic on standardized reading assessments.
     Kindergarten teachers are already working ridiculously hard to catch these students up and teach them what they need to know in order to become beginning readers in first grade, so that they can go on to become proficient readers and access all the content they need to be college and career ready.  Where can we look to for help for these students? Perhaps the answer lies in relationships outside the classroom. Perhaps we can draw on relationships outside the classroom to enhance students’ learning after they leave our rooms for the day. How can we build partnerships with parents, siblings, local middle schoolers in after school programs, or extended family to create solid learning opportunities in the sociocultural contexts that are familiar to our students?
     If I were to walk my audience through the process I have followed up to this point, I would tell them that enlisting parents is definitely worth all the hard work of scheduling evening meetings, getting help from a bilingual parent liaison (if you have one), carefully selecting activities to be done at home… As long as you don’t expect everyone to participate.  My experience showed me that a parent intervention program can work...for those who choose to participate.  Then I would share the struggle that ensued when I spent hours preparing games and activities for the Boys & Girls Club to implement.  I’d tell them how I visited weekly until everyone was comfortable with the plan. And then I’d tell them how hard it was to surrender control.  How hard it was to look at the participation logs and realize that students were only given about one session a week during the 3 week duration of the program.
     Right now, I’m looking forward to collecting some qualitative data to find out how a program with community partners like this could be better.   I’m also looking forward (with a little fear, too) to my next round of action research: a sibling tutoring program. I’m excited about the potential, and also scared that I’ll hear horror stories of sibling rivalry from concerned parents...
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     Enter TPACK.  As I move into my last round of action research, TPACK helps me to look at a bigger picture to answer my driving question.  
      Content:  What content to the students need to get solid on?  Simple: Letter sound knowledge.
     Pedagogy: How should they be taught?  Letter sound knowledge is factual information.  Clark tells us that drill and practice is best for factual knowledge.  Sweet! Because drill and practice is the perfect kind of activity to put in the hands of novice teachers like volunteers and family members.
     Technology: What kinds of “technology” tools will best support student learning?  The SITE Model reminds us that “technology” doesn’t always have to have an electronic factor--it can also include devices, strategies or systems.  Along these lines, I have selected game play and simple alphabet activities as the technology that will best support the drill and practice style of teaching students letter sounds.  Examples include letter sound memory games and board games, letter sound bingo, online alphabet games, and online letter sound videos.
     TPK (Where technology meets pedagogy):  How do I choose and manage the technology to best help students learn?  I developed some criteria to help guide me in selecting technology and activities.  For TPK, I believe the following two criteria apply: Activities must be free, and there must be a high focus on teaching the letter names/sounds, as opposed to higher focus on a game concept.  Also, as Clark suggests, activities should mostly be drill and practice.
     TCK (Where technology and content knowledge meet) This is where I believe my criteria comes into play again.  The following two criteria must be met for the games, online activities and tools to be considered for my program.  They must:
  • Teach alphabet letter names and sounds
  • Teach correct consonant & vowel sounds for Kindergartners (short vowel sounds only)
  • Include simple visuals that support the letter sounds (apple for a)
     PCK (Where pedagogy and content meet):  How do I approach different learning styles and scaffold content for student understanding?  This is an area of struggle for me. The role of teacher will be in the hands of others. How can I prepare them for this task?  Perhaps I can be sure to include a variety of activities for tutors to offer students. Perhaps I can prepare tutors (and students?) by offering a summary of cues to look for, or questions to ask that will help them know whether they need to try a different activity, or make it easier for the student.  I must use the concept of PCK to guide me as I craft quality guidelines for tutors as they facilitate students’ learning via selected games and online activities.
     This week has certainly been a time for synthesis and zooming out to make connections and find missing pieces.  I find myself feeling a bit overwhelmed, and at the same time, excited about seeing things more clearly!

5 Comments

Developing My Model

3/30/2019

4 Comments

 
     Plugging away towards my capstone project, this week yielded a peak in clarity for me.  Our assignment “DQ Prototype Initial Analysis” required just the right amount of synthesizing and motivation that navigated me towards a clearer understanding of where I’ve been, and how that experience is guiding my process as well as goal destination.
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     Through the guiding outline of the DQ Prototype Initial Analysis, I was able to relate my project to Dervin, Clark, SITE Model, and Pebble in the Pond ISD Model.  Just taking the time to process through and find connections from these resources to my work was very enlightening. Things began to make more sense when I realized that the SITE Model is actually the ideal model for my project because it brings the content to students through sociocultural subcontext of family, role models, siblings, and peers.  The learning is integrated into the student’s environment in a way that it embeds itself into the values of the network. Learning the alphabet letter names and sounds means spending time with parents before bed, playing a game with an older buddy at the after school program, or figuring out how to beat the next level online with a big brother or sister.
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     I also took a moment to discover that, as the SITE Model would predict, my goals are heavily embedded in the sociocultural subcontext of my life.  To go a step further, Dervin’s work would even apply. All of my experiences growing up as a poor latina student in California have led me to this gap filling endeavor that I have constructed.  Nearly every job I’ve had has focused on a similar population in some way or another.
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     I really appreciated the steps in this assignment that required us to justify our work. It prompted me to think through some of the next steps in my project and do some further research to confirm that the direction I’m headed is a good one.  Now I feel much better about where I am going and how it is all connecting!
4 Comments

Background for Constructing a Capstone Resource

3/17/2019

3 Comments

 
     This week, as we read Baggio (ch 7-9), Clark (ch 3-6), I struggled with context. The richness and versatility of the content this week had me constantly rotating between three contexts: teaching students, teaching colleagues, and teaching through my capstone project.  It is fantastic that these readings apply very well to each of these contexts. For now, I will focus on how the readings helped me to develop ideas around creating a product to share the work of my research and knowledge around my driving question and Capstone project: “How can we develop a network of support for our youngest learners in the early literacy achievement gap?”
     I felt that Clark gave the most detailed information on how to teach, while Baggio told us how things should look to our learners.  So let's start with Clark.

Clark:

We learned from Clark about teaching procedures, concepts, facts, and processes.
  • Procedures are steps that a learner must follow to get a job or task completed. Concepts are often nouns or classes of “things”.
  • Facts can be:
    • concrete objects (such as labeled parts)
    • unique data (such as prices or features of equipment or quantities of things)
    • associations in statements (what we normally think of as facts: President Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth). Processes are systems.  I immediately wondered the difference between processes and procedures.  
  • ​Processes are systems.  I immediately wondered about the difference between processes and procedures. Procedures are step by step directions on HOW to do something that the learner needs to do. In contrast, understanding a process helps the learner to know how something is done outside of the learner’s responsibilities, how something works.

Baggio:

Baggio is great for thinking about how to “package” all the learning we want to present to our users.  Once we have read Clark, we can process how it might look as we present it in a clean, consumable way for our users.  
  • Baggio teaches us to keep our screens simple (learners take in an entire screen/slide as one image) and our text as readers are naturally inclined to read: left to right, top to bottom.  
  •  When designing learning objectives, be sure to match them with your visual objectives.  Think about whether you want to convey feelings, content or action and then match your visuals to those objectives. Be sure to present the materials in a way that agrees with the content of what you are teaching.
  • ​Try to remember that “levity, brevity, and repetition” is a great way to go!

My application towards creating a resource to share my knowledge and research (Capstone):

​      These readings helped me to consider different aspects of my project, and how I might design my presentation.  For example, am I presenting a potential procedure for my learners to follow in order to achieve an impact on students in the early literacy achievement gap?  If so, then I must be aware that Dervin says my learner will have a unique perspective as they seek to fill a  "gap".  I must take into consideration users' different levels of prior knowledge and experience as I plan my presentation. I must be sure to include proper visuals to support my user in understanding the process that I am proposing.
     I will have many facts to share with my users (research and knowledge).  How will I present this information?  Clark mentions the use of reference resources when teaching facts.  Perhaps rather than bogging down the user with too many facts or details, some of the content can be presented as reference resources that are accessible when the user wishes to explore them.  These might be clickable text or image links to further information as desired.  Since I tend to want to give as much information as possible, this would be a good way for me to remember that not all information is needed at once.  Also, Clark mentions the use of mnemonic aids.  It might be fun to work a mnemonic aid into my presentation to add interest and make it memorable.

     Clark also often mentions designing practice for users.  While my project might not exactly offer practice for real life applications, I might consider including questions for the user to think about.  For example, "Who are potential partners in your students' lives?"  Another idea to help users apply the knowledge offered by my project might be to include a link to an online quiz or an invitation to follow a hashtag. 
     Baggio inspired me to think about aligning my visuals to what I want to convey in my presentation: feelings, content or action.  Perhaps I want my hook to convey feelings, my research and knowledge is my content, and action is the procedure or how-to.  If I categorize these aspects of my project as such, my visuals can be better aligned to those goals.  Then there's my new favorite Baggio mantra: "levity, brevity, and repetition!"
     I think the overall big picture to keep zooming out to is Dervin's perspective.  As I design my project I need to continuously be aware that learners will all have different levels of education and experiences, values, motives and goals, as they approach the gap they seek to fill.
3 Comments

Key Points from Dervin, Baggio, and Clark

3/2/2019

3 Comments

 
From the Mind’s Eye of the User by Dervin
Upon rereading this text, a few points became clearer with the context of other readings (especially Clark).  Here are my “aha” points:
  • Information Use as Transmission Vs. Construction:  Humans have no external resource for measuring truth, as all understandings are self constructed.
My take:  Since all learning is self constructed, it is difficult to build context for learners.  We do not know their experiences and how they will make sense of the materials and techniques we use.  I find this applies especially to adult learners, with potentially more diverse experiences.
  • Information Use as Seen by the Observer Vs the Actor:
  • Providers are constructing for users from the outside
  • We design for users based on what we think they want
  • Even when we ask them what they need (our assumptions guide the questions we ask), the result is a design based on our own assumptions
My take:  Since we cannot climb inside the minds of our users, how can we best help them from the outside, on their terms?  Even with empathy--how do we do this?

Methodology and Its Methods:
  • The act of researching how humans construct information and make sense of it:  following a person’s construction each step at a time, and observing how they gather and interpret information that decides each new step--uniquely.
My take:  When a person is in the state of information need, he is facing his gap.  This method reminds me again of the empathy step referred to in design thinking that we have begun to discuss.  It answers my question above, about how to (to the best of our ability) see inside their minds as they enter a state of needing information and then filling that gap by taking another step, all the while answering questions for the researcher.  The questions are not predetermined or based on our own assumptions, but follow the path that the user takes us along. Is this how we operate the empathy for our end user step?

The Visual Connection by Baggio (Ch 4-6)
Baggio is such a nice read.  I like this content because I have always felt that I am an extremely visual person--to the point that I’m almost anti-audio.  I hate noisy environments and I rarely even listen to music. Silence is my favorite song!

Key Points:
  • 3 things that influence the way people learn:  
  • Prior knowledge:  Neuro-associative pathways are roads well traveled to easily access our prior knowledge. Using these pathways helps us visually understand what we are seeing.
  • Context:  This is about how the learner finds relevance to the new information.  Baggio says we can use context two completely different ways to our advantage when teaching.  We can present something in a familiar context to help a learner, or in a completely ridiculously outlandish context, to make the learning more memorable for the learner.  Attention is drawn to the relevant information, because it is outside of an expected surrounding.
  • Expectations:  This is how a learner anticipates what will most likely happen.  “Expectations set the stage for what we see and what we focus on.” (Baggio, The Visual Connection)
My take:  This reminds me a little of learning targets because we are setting the what, why, and how up with our lessons.
  • Learning styles not really proven, but like conation, people seem to know intuitively how information enters their brains.  Most people are visual learners to some degree.
My take: I am 100% a visual learner, and scored 15/20 on the visual learner quiz.  Sometimes I think reading online is harder than in a book because I remember more of what I read in relationship to its visual placement in a book:  beginning of the chapter, left side page, right side page, what color I highlighted it, etc… These things are less possible with online reading.

  • Cognitive load:  If new information is too overwhelming, excess is eliminated and doesn’t make it into working memory, and then later the long term memory.  Visual design for learning must apply restraint so as to not overload the learner. Remember that the learner takes in the entire image on a screen at once.  Try looking at your screen from a distance: What do you see/notice? Try looking upside down. This trick might help you to see what stands out most with your visuals.
My take: This (cognitive load & relationship to design for learning) is very important for me to remember as I design many presentations and PDs for my staff.  I tend to try to get lots of info into my visuals, which might be a bad habit.  Sounds like it would be better go keep things simple visually, and then supplement orally, or break things down more into smaller chunks.

Develop Technical Training by Ruth Colvin Clark (Chapters 1 & 2)
This reading almost felt like a blend of Baggio and Dervin.  I think reading this helped me to connect to some of the ideas in Dervin with which I struggled.

Key Points:
  • Ineffective training (and teaching) is a huge waste of time, money, and energy--for everyone.
My take: Ineffective training on educational software happens all the time:  iRead, System 44, RI, MI, Benchmark, Bridges. All of these resources are not utilized to their full potential, mainly due to lack of time for training and practice.  There are so many features that teachers never learn to use.

Instructional Systems Development goes like this:
  1. Needs assessment: Who needs training and on what?
  2. Task Analysis: Define training content and performance outcomes/learning objectives and assessment to see if objectives and outcomes are met.
  3. Development: Instructional methods to communicate content and achieve the performance outcomes (workbooks, videos, lessons, etc…).  
  4. Course evaluation:  Time to pilot test your instructional materials and assessments and then revise.
  5. Final implementation via selected media to carry content using instructional methods.
My take: Media and information is useless without effective instructional methods.  Needs assessment makes me think of the few parents who signed up, but did not participate in my study.  I cannot assume reasons why they did not participate. I would have to do a needs assessment= empathy step (design thinking).

Task analysis seems to have been done for us for years by our curriculum:  accounting for unconscious competence--remembering to teach the tiniest steps that are not obvious to people who are already competent.  I think teaching Kindergarten helps teachers develop the skill to pay attention to this. I always say that I think every teacher should have to spend some time teaching Kindergarten!


Development: Sometimes I am grateful to have curriculum that has done all of this for us, because of the time it would take.  Other times, I wish I could slow down and be creative.


Lesson structure includes:
  1. Introduction:  Lesson purpose, objectives, relevance of the info to the learner, context, and outline of lesson
  2. Knowledge Needed and Major Task of the Lesson:  Main body of the lesson and practice with feedback
  3. Summary:  Condensed key points with a reminder of objectives, perhaps a preview of next lesson
My take:  This section sort of reminds me of the old style lesson plan formats they taught us in credential programs.  We always started with “anticipatory sets.” Trying to connect it to my learning now, I think this basic format can still work--but there is so much diversity today.  We have flipped learning, project based learning, and almost as many different approaches as there are learners. I do find it interesting that the purpose of this book is commercial, yet it is nearly exactly what we were taught to do as teachers.
  • Educational Taxonomy: The idea that grouping learning goals to determine the instructional methods that would work best for them.  Bloom’s taxonomy among others is mentioned.
My take:  I think these taxonomy approaches are revised continually.  The first thing that came to my mind is Webb’s Depth of Knowledge, and the current taxonomy we have been looking at which identifies learning as “surface, deep, and transfer.”  Is this the work of Hattie, Douglas, and Fisher, or did they build on the work of others?
  • Structured Writing Technique (type of information display based on the 5 kinds of content).  Information is visually simplified and chunked to give more access to the viewer.
My take:  I would love to read more about this.  It reminds me of Baggio. Of course I would be looking to see visual examples!  I often search for images on topics rather than text, just because I am looking for simple illustrations of information.  I think this is really important for learners.
  • Detailed Notes vs. Outline Notes:  Research shows that providing detailed notes allows learners to have the information for future use, to be able to add personal thoughts, and use more energy to pay attention to the lesson rather than copious note-taking.
My take:  I love this. I am always super appreciative when slide decks are shared in advance so that I don’t have to stress out about taking notes, or pictures of every interesting slide.  I even love it better when we are given paper copies of slide decks with lines for our own notes! Like Baggio, I need to write everything down.
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  • Home
  • Innovative Learning Master's Program
    • 701 - Dynamics of Equity
    • 790 - New Literacies Research
    • 702 - Digital Eduvators >
      • 702 Blog
    • 791 - Sensemaking and Design >
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    • 703 - Transliteracy >
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    • 792 - Capstone >
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