Podcast: Las Vocales

Podcast's Purpose: To teach Las Vocales.

Podcast Audience: High School Spanish students

Tools Used to Create and Present this Podcast: I used music and sounds from Jamendo and SoundzAbound; Audacity for audio editing; VLC Player for conversion from WAV to MP3; and Internet Archive to upload and create an embeddable podcast player.  Finally, I am using this Blogger page to host the final product.

Brief Reflection: I can use this tool to create lecture and review podcasts for my students.  I can also teach my students to use this as a part of their communications toolkit in the Spanish classes I teach.

Project 2: Screencast

Title: No Me Gusta el Sábado

Audience: Peer-students in a high school Spanish class

Purpose: For a Spanish student to use images, text (written and oral); and music to demonstrate the proper usage of a range of Spanish expressions.

My Uses: Vestibulum ac tellus vel ex lobortis elementum eu sed ipsum. Etiam sollicitudin vulputate turpis, in fermentum nisl tincidunt sit amet. Curabitur eget nisi ac turpis pharetra aliquam sit amet eget risus.

My Learners’ Uses: Donec porta ac dolor in lobortis. Nunc lacinia hendrerit elementum. Curabitur aliquam quam velit, vel suscipit velit lacinia non. Sed convallis lacus eu facilisis lobortis.

Link to My Storyboard

No Me Gusta el Sábado from Kim Huett on Vimeo.

Project 2: Screencast

Title:

Audience:

Purpose:

My Uses:

My Learners’ Uses:

[Embed Screencast]

[Link to Storyboard]

Personalization Principle #1

What It Is

According to Clark and Mayer (2011), research supports Personalization Principle #1, or, the use of "conversational rather than formal style" (Clark & Mayer, 2011, p. 182) in the delivery of e-learning.  While use of a more formal style has some benefits, research suggests that conversational style can be more effective.  Voice quality and the use of polite speech can support the creation of a personalized style.

How the Example Shows (or Doesn't) It

The screenshot below shows an example from K. Huett's spring 2016 web design course where she uses 2nd person and 1st-person plural to create a personal note with students who are just starting out in web design.

Reference

Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R. E. (2011). E-learning and the science of instruction: Proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning. San Francisco: Pfeiffer.

HC Project Overview

This podcast provides a 13-minute overview of the Henry County Project as it stands in early February 2010.

Interview with K-12 Stakeholders

K-12 Stakeholders: Matt and Caleb
In order to learn more about the perceptions of technology integration in a public school, it can be useful to solicit the opinions of the stakeholders--the people who are actually using, or not using, the technology.

I spoke with two high school upperclassmen, Matt and Caleb. Matt is a senior, and Caleb a junior, and both boys have access to internet-connected home computers with a variety of applications and cell phone texting. Both use Facebook regularly as their primary online social networking tool.

Both boys attend Carrollton High School in Carrollton, Georgia, about an hour west of Atlanta.


Establishing the Context
On the high school website, Carrollton High School is described as a “break the mold learning environment" where students learn in hands-on, relevant ways. The website also notes that the school offers 12 Advanced Placement courses and consistently ranks among the top 20 high schools in Georgia for graduation rate performance.

Looking at the 2008-2009 data in the most recent School Improvement Plan, the high school has a student population of approximately 1200 students. The school system overall (from K-12) is 53% Caucasian, 34% African-American, 7% Hispanic, 3% Multi-racial, 2% Asian, and .2% Native American. 47% of students are eligible for Free and Reduced Lunch. The 2008-2009 graduation rate was 84%.

On the System Goals and Objectives webpage, the system states the goal of providing “increased access to technology as a learning tool to improve instruction and student achievement for all students.” To this end, the school system is working on the following objectives:

• Students will acquire the knowledge and skills, as outlined by state and national technology standards, to become proficient with the continually changing technological applications.
• All teachers will acquire the knowledge and skills to seamlessly integrate technology into their teaching practices.

It is not clear which "state and national technology standards" the school system means, but it's likely that on the national level, they are referring to the National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS-T) and the National Educational Technology Standards for Students (NETS-S). On the state level, they are probably referring in part to the Georgia Performance Standards, which call for some technology-integration-related components across the curriculum. Additionally, the Georgia Department of Education, as per its Technology Plan, explicitly recognizes the value of the NETS-S (p. 15) and 21st Century skills, as defined by the Partnership for 21st Skills.

In a very small nutshell, the NETS-S call for students to use technology to support

• creativity and innovation;
• communication and collaboration;
• research and information fluency;
• critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making;
• digital citizenship; and
• fluency in technology operations and concepts.

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills calls for growing students'

• information literacy,
• media literacy, and
• ICT literacy.

But enough statistics and prefacing!

Now, let's see what Matt and Caleb have to say about the use of technology in their school this year. For ease of attribution, I have color-coded each boy's words and/or ideas. Matt is blue, and Caleb is green. Interview questions are in black.


The Interview

What classes are you taking this semester?
Caleb—AP Calculus, PreAP Chemistry, AP US History, Performing Arts (aka Drama)
Matt—Physics, Economics, AP Statistics, and Performing Arts


If you had to describe your school, would you describe it as high-tech, low-tech, or somewhere in between?

"The virtu-communists are pretty bad."

Matt says the Graphic Arts department is high-tech because they use iMac computers.
Caleb says the Broadcast Department and the Vocational Department overall are high-tech.
Matt adds that the internet has problems. "The virtu-communists are pretty bad." He explains that the internet is down a lot and the internet filtering system doesn’t work properly. Legitimate, non-threatening science information gets blocked, for example, and he finds this "annoying."


But don’t you have a phone you could look information up on? Are you really blocked from the internet at school?
Matt says that if you have an iPhone or Blackberry, you can look up info. But he doesn't have such a phone.
Caleb says he doesn’t have internet on his phone or even “multimedia messaging.” He adds that a lot of kids do have the ability to access internet via phone.


At your house, how is internet use regulated?

“Basically the idea that [my parents] could do whatever they wanted with my computer at any given moment keeps me from doing stupid things.”

Matt says that his home computers have McAfee, which stops him from going to certain websites. He says he is able to access more websites at home than at school since the school system blocks “everything.” The school filtration system blocks game sites, for instance.
Caleb adds that Google Images is mostly blocked out. On Google Images, “you can be searching for Gandhi, and [the school internet filtering program] will block like half of [the images.]”
Matt says “Yeah, my computer won’t block a picture of Gandhi, for sure.”
Caleb explains that when he was twelve or thirteen, he used to have a program that would shut down his internet at nine o’clock at night, which he found "obnoxious." But at this point in his life, there is no limitation on his internet access. He knows that having “tech nerds” for parents means that they can find out what he’s up to.
“Basically the idea that they could do whatever they wanted with my computer at any given moment keeps me from doing stupid things.”


Have your parents taught you how to behave on the internet, or have you just kind of figured it out for yourself?
Matt—yes.
Caleb says he's been given a few talks. He says that internet etiquette is common sense. “I’m not sure my parents are the greatest example of how to behave on the internet.”


In your classes this semester, can you give me some examples of how you are using technology?
Caleb—“My blank stare means no.”
Matt's Economics teacher will use the Promethean Board for making notes, graphs, and visual aids to support learning. His AP statistics teacher uses a projector to show notes or "give problems." The physics teacher will sometimes use the projector for notes. Caleb adds that the Physics teacher plays a lot of YouTube videos, and Matt says, “but we won’t talk about that!” They laugh knowingly.
Caleb—“In my classes, we’ve barely used any sort of technology.” He goes on to explain that Drama is the best example of using technology. They take videotapes of their shows, put them on the big screen and analyze themselves. The piano is electronic, adds Matt. In Calculus, the teacher uses a whiteboard (the kind with markers), and he refuses to switch to an electronic whiteboard. Caleb thinks it makes sense to use the “old school” whiteboard in Calculus, because it suits his teacher’s method. The Calculus teacher occasionally hooks up a projector to a graphing calculator to demonstrate what the students should do on their calculators. In Chemistry, they use Bunsen burners, and in AP US History, they do nothing but sit there and listen to their teacher “babble on about nothing.”
Matt says “I don’t feel empowered at all.”
Caleb says “We don’t use [technology] ever in our classes….they’ll give us projects sometimes that require us to use electronics…like we need to print something out, or we need to create a PowerPoint, but usually that has to be on our own time, on our own computers, or we can go to the library. And, our new librarian has a lot of random, strict rules now…and the library’s often closed. So, a lot of the times people who wouldn’t have computers at home who need to do projects like that wouldn’t be able to because of her arbitrary scheduling of not having [the library] open.”

Do you know how to make movies, and if so, where did you learn how?
Caleb knows how to make movies because of his parents and because of his own playing around with the software. He did not learn it from school.
Matt learned how to make movies in a 9th-grade Computer Applications class.
Caleb explains that the entire vocational/business hallway has a bunch of computer labs with different classes. In 10th grade, Caleb took a Business Essentials class, in which students created PowerPoints and typed up documents and played games on the computer. “[Business Essentials] was the dump class that no one actually wants to be in.”

Do you ever use the easy, Web 2.0 type of technology on the web?
Matt says that in his Spanish class and in some of his Business classes, he has used the Moodle learning management system a little bit. In the Spanish class, students would use it to do activities. He estimates that they would go to the computer lab one day per week to do this.
Caleb recalls how one time in French he obtained permission to report on Toulouse-Lautrec using a wiki instead of through a written paper.

Have you guys taken any online classes?
Niether Matt nor Caleb have taken or are taking any online classes, although they know people who are. Caleb mentions a friend who is taking German online because he didn’t want to take Japanese, Spanish, or French, which are offered by the school.

How would you change the use of technology in your school?

"I think there are a lot more interesting and captivating ways one could learn US History than sitting and listening to someone talk..."

Caleb says it depends on the class. In Calculus, you don’t need a whole lot of technology to learn the concepts. Matt adds, “We don’t need Calculus to begin with.”
Caleb continues, "I think with things like AP US History, I think that a computer program could be teaching us better than we are being taught right now. While that’s sad, it’s true, I think there are a lot more interesting and captivating ways one could learn US History than sitting and listening to someone talk. And I understand that that’s one of the hardest subjects to teach because basically it is a bunch of storytelling. But US History could definitely use some updating and maybe some activities online. Some sorts of programs that bring you in to stories like that, to help you learn about it would be useful."
Matt says “To me, if they created this technology where they could put this recorder on the table, and it takes the person’s voice and turns it into notes on your computer, I would take History every day, because then I would get an hour and a half nap every day.
Caleb suggests, “Maybe we should design AP US History games."




Post-interview Commentary
Remember the Carrollton City School system's technology objectives stated up top? The ones that they're currently working on? Let's turn them into questions and see if we can patch some kind of answers together, using Caleb and Matt's input above.

1. Are students acquiring the knowledge and skills, as outlined by the Georgia Technology Plan, NETS-T, NETS-S, and Partnership for 21st Century Skills to become proficient with the continually changing applications?

It seems that students who elect to take classes in the Vocational Department (Communications, Graphics, and Business) may be obtaining some of the knowledge and skills. More information is needed on how these skills are taught. There is a big difference between learning technical skills and demonstrating the ability to use a piece of technology to actually communicate, collaborate, problem-solve and think critically.

Not all students take classes in the Vocational Department, and so it may be possible that some CHS students are graduating with very little technology use and exposure than what those teachers outside of the Vocational Department are providing.

Matt learned to make movies at school in an elective course, while Caleb learned at home. For students who don't take such courses or have the home support, we can probably assume that they won't learn to make movies just yet.

2. Are teachers acquiring the knowledge and skills to seamlessly integrate technology into their teaching practice?

As to whether or not teachers are acquiring this knowledge, I cannot begin to answer based on this brief interview. However, we can look at the ways in which teachers are using technology and draw some small inferences. We know that some Chemistry teachers use Bunsen burners; some Drama teachers use video for student self-evaluation; some Economics teachers use Promethean Boards or for displaying notes, graphs, and visual aids; some Physics and Statistics teachers crack out the projectors for displaying notes or "giving problems." Some French teachers are comfortable enough with allowing students to turn in assignments in alternative formats (e.g., the Toulouse-Lautrec wiki); and some Spanish teachers are using Moodle to support classroom learning.

Some teachers seem to expect students to have access to computers outside of their class, and some teachers, according to Caleb, ought to be replaced by a computer.

No one says it quite like a teenaged stakeholder. And reflecting on the things Matt and Caleb said, it would seem that this school has some work to do in meeting its stated technology objectives. However, there's no doubt that were we to talk to 2 different students at the school, we would learn even more, and perhaps contradictory information related to these topics. If we were trying to effect change of some kind in this environment, we would definitely want to gather a great deal of information from a diversity of stakeholders before planning and implementing change.

Interview with Chris Miller

“Learning is still primarily a social activity, and the use of technology to facilitate that connection among larger groups of people (I think) would really result in an increase in our ability to learn and to impart learning to the students that we serve.”




Click here for a direct link to the MP3.


Chris Miller is a special education teacher at Sanger High School, a rural North Texas school. He is also the go-to technology person on his campus. From hardware troubleshooting and installation to software assistance and technology integration ideas and strategies, Chris is on call for the teachers at the school (and at other schools in the district).

What follows are the compiled notes from the interview. Feel free to comment on this blog, and enjoy the podcast.


Chris's role at Sanger High School
Chris teaches special education; provides support services for students in response intervention model; and assists with instructional technology (webpage, multimedia integration, wiring, etc.) on campus.


About the Students, Faculty, and Staff
Approximately 10-20% of SHS students qualify for the free-and-reduced-lunch program.
The student body is mostly Caucasian, with Hispanics being the largest minority.

There are approximately 60 teachers, 12 support staff, and 10-15 instructional aids.


Student Access to Computers
The campus has three computer labs (not including classrooms for business and multimedia classes); one mobile laptop lab with 25 computers; approximately 2 computers in each classroom; between 4 and 6 computers in each resource classroom; and 6 computers in the content mastery classroom (which serves ESOL/ELL and students with Section 504 services). Computers are also available in the media center for research purposes.


Technology Integration for Administrative Purposes
Sanger ISD uses Skyward to manage student information and communicate with parents.

“[Teaching] is a public business, and we’re serving children, and the parents have a right to be a partner in their child’s education, and [technology] has really helped. "

Chris explains that Skyward allows teachers to put in grades real time. Parents can login and see students’ grades, discipline, and attendance. He finds that this instructional technology adds a degree of transparency and opens up communication among stakeholders.

People can be resistant to system-wide change at first. For instance, some teachers may feel threatened when the outside comes in to see into teacher’s business. However, what goes on in the classroom is not just the teacher's business. Rather, it's everyone’s business, and parents have the right to see what’s going on in the classroom.

“One of the things about instructional technology that I think is really helpful is that it adds a degree of transparency…between the community and the vested parties and the school. Part of the difficulty in school administration is getting open communication between parents and stakeholders and the teachers.”


Chris's Take on Technology Inside his Special Ed Classroom
Chris teaches one freshman resource math class of 10 students. In the class, they go over about half of the algebra curriculum.

In terms of technology, it's not necessarily of benefit to integrate technology. Sometimes, the students in this class need a more "basic approach." His students tend to benefit more from concrete, physical activities.

He uses online resources for projects and online materials that go with the textbook adoption. He uses PowerPoint presentations for note-taking. He projects fill-in-the-blank-style notes onto the whiteboard and use a marker to fill in the gaps.

Chris has experimented with other technology-integrations projects. For example, he made a cheap interactive whiteboard using a Wiimote (remote control for the Nintendo Wii gaming system) and software developed by Johnny Chung Lee.






Helping Other Teachers Integrate Technology
With English-language Learners, the district uses Rosetta Stone to help students with learning English. Because of the small size of the ELL sub-population, the district is unable to dedicate a full-time staff member to their instruction. While a program such as Rosetta Stone might help students make gains in language, Chris explains that it doesn’t help students develop the cognitive academic language proficiencies (CALP) that the students need.

At the school district's alternative high school campus, they use computer-assisted instruction to teach students at varying academic levels.

For poor readers, they have incorporated screen reading technology. Chris likes the voices provided through the ATT screen-reading technologies more than some other options, saying they often sound more natural than other options.

For some students with autism spectrum disorders, he has found that providing a combination of instructional settings has helped these students be more successful. The traditional classroom can cause a great deal of “sensory overload.”

He cites the example of one such student who uses computer-guided instruction successfully for chemistry and US history. The student is able to focus on these subjects without having classmates disturb him.

But for geometry, this student has not benefited from computer-guided instruction. His frustration level rises quickly when working on this subject, so he tends to benefit from a more traditional instructional model. Using varied settings for this student, Chris has noticed a rise in this student’s self-esteem.


Technology Proficiency of Teachers at School
Chris starts by explaining innovations he’s witnessed over the course of his tenure during the past ten years. Approximately nine years ago, the district transitioned from paper-based gradebooks to electronic gradebooks. There were teachers at that time who had issues with the transition and had to receive one-on-one assistance to understand.

He likes to use the math teachers as his "litmus test" for new innovations. Several teachers in this department have been teaching for several decades. Most math teachers have LCD projectors in their classes, and some use Bluetooth-enabled input tablet from eInstruction.

Chris cites the example of one teacher who posts all lessons online. She uses TI SmartView to emulate the graphing calculator. Everything is on the data projector. She uses pictures to demonstrate the stages of math problems. Document cameras being expensive, she does this with a nice web cam mounted on a broken overhead projector: it works well.


The Student Response to Technology
Chris suspects that this rural population is less tech-inclined than, say, a more urban or suburban population of kids might be. The kids tend to be more kinesthetically inclined (e.g., they’d rather ride a tractor than type on a computer). This said, he would still describe them as “wired in.” For instance, many of the students use social networking tools such as MySpace and Facebook.

On the one hand, he finds that they seem more internet-savvy now than they were just a few years ago. He sees students evaluating information more critically and being less naïve when faced with online information. And, on the other hand, he thinks it’s possible that he’s seeing a decrease in kids’ ability to delay gratification.

“One of the things with the information technology is that we have information delivered so quickly and expediently, so sometimes waiting or struggling for the answer can be difficult, and that’s actually something that we almost have to continue to teach the students.”


Administrator Expectations
In Texas, the implementation of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is not in complete accord with the state standardized testing. When NCLB looks at the results of the Texas standardized tests (known as the TAKS), they use those results to judge the school’s performance. Additionally, the same standardized test results are used to decide whether students can pass and graduate.

This double-dipping of purpose has called what Chris describes as “interesting conflicts.” For one thing, the validity and reliability of the measures of these tests are questioned by some critics, although Chris explains that this is improving. There are questions surrounding the appropriateness of applying the results of the standardized tests to special populations.

The results of the TAKS test can translate to the giving or withholding of funding in a number of ways.

Sanger ISD does not place what Chris describes as an overbearing pressure on individual teachers to perform, and he finds this to be positive in that it allows teachers to use their training to meet the needs of their students in the classroom. While this has its benefits, it also includes the risk that students will advance through the grades without the achievement of a cohesive and cumulative goal set.

In response to this risk, the district has adopted the online curriculum which provides the vertical curricular alignment that hopes to prevent gaps in student learning.

Chris describes a “pretty conservative” district philosophy where educational technology is concerned. Rather than forcing the integration of technology on teachers, the district encourages the use of technology. The district emphasizes teaching and learning as a process that occurs among people in social contexts. This social approach is a strength of SISD.

"We’re talking about PowerPoints and document cameras. We’re talking about internet access. We’re talking about computer labs and a few computers in the classrooms. We’re talking availability. But not so much the one-on-one access that the Texas Education Agency would like to see.”



Obstacles to Technology Integration
As a technology integrator, Chris says that it has not been so much what he knows about as it has been what others (e.g., teachers, administrators, etc.) want to do that has been important. He gives the example of how he tried to get the district to install a Moodle server 5 years ago but the administration did not support it.

He has come to learn that he cannot expect teachers to instantly embrace new technologies that he introduces them to. Rather, teachers need to be given time to explore the technologies and discover the relevance of those technologies to their instruction.

His role has shifted from one of recommending specific technological interventions to one of listening to what teachers are saying they think they need and supporting those needs. He attributes this shift from recommender to facilitator to helping him become more useful to his colleagues.


The Change Chris Dreams Of
Chris dreams of implementing a learning object repository for displaying teacher and student artifacts that also has a strong social networking piece.

“We recreate the wheel in education so much that I think we could increase efficiency and effectiveness if we had access to each other’s content on a larger scale.”