![]() Educators have a plethora of software at their disposal. There are many types of software. Chapter 7 divides the available software to three major groups; productivity software, classroom management software, and online tools. Our assignment for this week utilized software that blended two of those groups. We were to create instructional material using online productivity software; Google Docs, Google Slides, and Google Forms. I have never used these particular Google Apps before this project. All three apps were very easy to use. If you were familiar with other word processors and presentation software, the use of these online apps were intuitive. However, Google Forms allowed a new dynamic in the online classroom. It made making a survey and analyzing the data gathered extremely easy. I am not familiar with any program at my disposal that would be as easy to use and distribute to a class electronically. This part of the assignment went very well! The second part of this assignment was meant to show us how we can use this online format to encourage collaboration among our students. However, I had much difficulty trying to collaborate with my own group members. One of the major hang ups seemed to be how to share our files with permission to edit. Also, account names were different. All of my files are available on my Google Drive, which I access using my gmail account, not my USM email. However, my group members sent the invite to collaborate to my USM account, so I had to access two Google accounts repeatedly to complete this project. In the future, I need to think ahead and start the process on my Google account registered to my USM email. This part of the assignment took me much longer than it should have! I do see the potential this online editing tool can have in a group project situation. The online editing allows all of the students in a group to see the status of the project as it is being built. Students even had the ability to chat with each other if they happen to be online at the same time. I have my MLS 315 students work in groups on a research presentation. This fall, I will suggest to my students that they use Google Slides to collaborate outside of the classroom. I think this will allow the students to keep track of what their classmates are or are not doing throughout the semester. As far as using Google Apps in my everyday workday, I do not see myself leaving Microsoft word behind and using Google Docs. There is no benefit to that change. However, because of its potential in making group collaboration so much easier, I will try to incorporate the Google Apps in my classroom.
2 Comments
![]() C4.Q2. Students with special needs include both those who have disabilities and those who are gifted. Technology can provide solutions to help meet the unique needs of both groups. However, schools typically have limited budgets for technology. Considering that the needs of all students should be met, what do you think the best allocation of limited technology dollars should be to meet these students’ needs? Give examples to support your views. Initially, when considering how to spend money allocated for technology for special needs students, I thought the amount should be divided evenly. The goal when teaching a student with special needs or abilities is to help each child reach their full potential, regardless if the program is for disabled or gifted children. Two of my children are a part of the gifted program at the elementary school they attend. I would love to see my children use the most innovative technology available to them. However, after reading the chapter, I realized that, although the goals in teaching disabled and gifted are the same the methods and tools educators use to accomplish the goals are different. The disabled children need to have assistance that will allow them to perform at their potential level. The gifted children need to be kept engaged with material and master critical thinking skills. The chapter in the textbook clearly states how disabled children can be assisted through technology, however the textbook was not as clear on how technology can be used to help gifted children as much. I do not fault the authors for this. I believe that there are other, more traditional, avenues that can be taken to keep gifted students engaged with the material and to help them master critical thinking skills. For example, project based learning and introducing them to design thinking. As a result, I have changed my opinion on how money should be allocated to the special needs students. I believe that disabled students have more of a need for technology in the classroom than gifted students, therefore, more of the technology funds should be allocated to the disabled students. C5.Q3. What is the most significant opportunity presented by technology integration? What role does training play in effectively integrating computers in the classroom? Technology integration in the classroom has opened doors for communication like never before. I believe that this has been technology’s most significant contribution to the classroom. Both the instructors and the students benefit from these new routes of communication. Educators can discuss ideas and solutions to problems with other educators using discussion boards and list servs. Our professional organization has an educational branch called Clinical Laboratory Educator’s Conference. You can sign up to receive emails from their list serv. This is very useful because it connects you to hundreds of other educators that are facing the same issues in the classroom that you are on a daily basis. Instructors can also use technology to bring other subject-matter experts into the classroom via Skype, TEDtalks, and Youtube. When I was asked to teach a course on laboratory management, I knew that I lacked the expertise to teach with confidence certain areas of that course. I turned to TEDtalks to supplement my lectures on topics such as motivation and leadership. These examples benefit the students somewhat indirectly. However, the students benefit directly from this greater ability for the instructor to communicate by receiving quick answers to questions via email, immediate feedback on quizzes, via iClicker, and access to course materials in multiple formats via the school’s learning platform (Blackboard). The students are also able to communicate with each other more effectively. While working on projects students can jointly work on presentations and papers via programs such as GoogleDocs and EverNote. All of the programs and applications listed above will not be helpful in increasing communication unless the instructors and students understand how to utilize them correctly. This is where training, for both educator and student, is critical. The administration of school systems and universities should invest in this training. USM has made an effort in doing so. The Learning Enhancement Center offers courses in many of the programs necessary to successfully integrate technology into my classroom. C6.Q1. After considering the various types of digital technologies presented in this chapter, what three pieces of equipment do you think you would most want for your future or current classroom? Explain why you selected these three and how you would use them for teaching and learning. This chapter presented many different types of stand-alone digital technologies. I was surprised and pleased to see that I already had access to most of the technologies discussed. Of the technologies I currently use, I find that the overhead projector, the iClicker, and a digital camera are the most useful. I use the overhead projector on a daily basis. I build PowerPoints to direct my lecture. Embedded in these PowerPoints I usually have links to supplemental material, such as videos, that I can show to the class during lecture time. I also use the overhead project to utilize my other digital technology which is the iClicker. I give short review quizzes at the beginning of each class. The students can get immediate feedback as we go over the answers to each day’s quiz. The last item on my most useful list is the digital camera. Last fall, I was able to capture a video one of my white blood cells eating a yeast cell using a camera that fit into the ocular of a microscope. That has to be a personal favorite! This camera can also be used in other classes in our department because the subject matter of most of our classes are on a microscopic scale. ![]() C1.Q2. Lifelong learning is not just a teacher preference; it is also a requirement for maintaining state certification. Technology literacy courses and workshops are some of the most popular learning experiences for certificate extension and renewal. Do you believe that taking additional courses in technology literacy is an important as those for your content or discipline? Is too much emphasis being placed on developing and maintaining technology competency? Defend your view. The world our students live in, and will eventually work in, has become a technology filled world. Therefore, it is imperative that we alter our teaching styles to reflect the world around us. I teach junior and seniors at the university level, so not only are the students needing to be prepared to work in this technology filled world, they are coming to us expecting to be taught in a technology filled classroom or not in a classroom at all. My department, Medical Laboratory Science (MLS), has put many of our courses online. Although our field is extremely technology dependent, one only needs to walk into a medical laboratory at a hospital to see just how technology dependent, it is a different type of technology than what the book is referring to. As educators in this field, I think we tend to want to use our continuing education credits to learn about the newest and greatest technology in the laboratory. We are excited about our field and would like to bring what we have learned back to our classroom – which is a good thing! However, because we are educators, I think we could, and should, dedicate some of those continuing education credits to keeping ourselves abreast on the newest and greatest technology in the classroom as well. I do not think that we require enough continuing education in technology literacy at a university level. It has been my experience that we require more of our students than we do of our faculty. C2.Q3. You have learned about a variety of technologies useful to support learning in this chapter. With which one of these are you most comfortable? Which are most useful in helping to prepare 21st century learners? Describe the technology and its potential applications in the grade level or content area you wish to teach and demonstrate why it is most appealing to you. When trying to integrate technology in my classroom, I have been overwhelmed by the plethora of tools available to educators. Many of the tools seem exciting and attention grabbing, however I am left questioning their actual usefulness. I try to guard myself from adding technology to my classroom for the sake of adding technology. I appreciate this chapter’s attempt to identify which tools could be useful in achieving certain goals in the classroom. Of the tools listed in this chapter, I have not used any of them, however Blackboard does accomplish the tasks that many of the tools are designed to perform. I am looking forward to exploring A.D.A.M., OnLine Labs, and the Inspiration software. These could all be used to reinforce the material I present in the lecture portion of my courses. As the chapter states, the students are entering the Information Age workforce. They will need to be equipped with a different skill set than previous generations. I can see where many of the collaboration and creativity fostering tools can be used to enhance the students’ skills in these areas. I incorporate a group project in each of the face-to-face courses I teach because, as stated above, collaboration and team working skills are essential for this generation. However, I have not found a way to incorporate group projects into my online courses. When taking a closer look at Elluminate, a collaboration tool, I discovered that it had been acquired by Blackboard and incorporated into Blackboard Collaborate. So, I probably do have these tools available to me, I just have to find ways to incorporate them into my online classes. C3.Q1. Instructional planning is a skill every educator at every grade level must master. To integrate technology into instruction, a logical, sequential approach is needed to help teachers to clarify which technologies are most useful and at what points they should be included in the process. Discuss Design-Plan-Act (DPA) system – what it is, how the three distinct planning components of DFA differ, and why it is helpful to use a system approach to integrate technology? The Design-Plan-Act! system is an example of a systematic approach to instructional planning. It concentrates instructional design down to three processes. The first of these is to look at the big picture, or to design the overall content and sequence of the instructional unit. The second process is to plan the daily activities that will need to occur in order to achieve the goals set forth in the design phase. The planning process will include identifying which learning and teaching strategies that will be used, and what assessment tools will be used. The last process in implementing the plan, or act. In this phase, the educator is to determine how the learning activities, identified in the plan phase, are going to flow smoothly. As I have stated in one of my reflections above, I try to guard against using technology in the classroom for the sake of using technology. By using a systematic approach to design instruction, I can plan the instruction first, then decide if there is a technological tool available that might help me deliver the instruction or help the students understand the content presented. I have done the opposite. I asked my students to create a fifteen minute video to summarize a project they had worked on. The actual project content was great, however, it soon became clear that the students were spending too much time on the video instead of on the content of the project. I have since eliminated the video portion of the project. ![]() Hi, my name is Mary Warden. As stated in the 'Author' comments, I am a first-year student in the doctoral Instructional Technology and Design program at the University of Southern Mississippi. I am also an instructor in the medical laboratory science department, here at USM. While teaching, I like to create authentic learning experiences. This preference leads me to use problem-based learning projects in my face-to-face courses. I also like to bring technology into my face-to-face classes as much as possible. My immunodiagnostics course has a project that is based on a game the students can download to their phones. My online teaching course load has ranged from two to eight credit hours a semester for the past four years. I have also taken at least five online courses as a student. Therefore, I am rather well versed in the online classroom. However, I do not believe that I am using the technology available to its fullest potential. I am really looking forward to learning about these technologies and how to incorporate them in my virtual classroom! In the course of my work day I can count on using most of the Microsoft Office tools. I am most comfortable using Word, Exel, and Powerpoint. I am also familiar with email, again I use it on a daily basis. Through teaching and learning online I have become familiar with discussion boards, and live chats. Although I have read and listened to blogs and podcasts, I am unfamiliar with how to create them. |
AuthorI'm Mary Warden, a graduate student at the University of Southern Mississippi. I am currently working on my PhD in Instructional Technology and Design. Please read my self introduction to learn a little more about me! BlogrollXavier Agee
Marsha Belton Alexandra Bosarge Anthony Eya David Galvin Chantanna Gholar Ginger Keen Andrew Lamier Mingyu Li Callie Martin Adrienne McPhaul Tammy Oatis Anna Swann Demetric Williams Jerid Woods ArchivesCategories |