If You Can't Beat Them....

Join them. As the old adage goes, this is the principle behind an article I read on NPR discussing how a college psychology professor is using Snapchat to supplement his classroom and his students learning. the professor knew that a majority of his students were constant users of Snapchat, and devised a way to use their habits to help teach his class. Michael Britt, a professor at Marist college in upstate New York, posts real world examples of the material he is teaching to Snapchat. His students can view those examples outside of class, and in a medium to which they already pay close attention to. NPR found that many of the students thought the Snaps were helpful and aided in their understanding of the course material.

This makes sense to me, because new information is best processed in a medium where the learner is actively paying attention, or has behavior to support the processing of new information. however this is just one example of a positive use for the app, in a sea of scandal, and less than responsible uses for Snapchat that many people are familiar with. the article explains that there are many school districts that deny access to services like Snapchat on their school networks, but the article maintains that some of those districts are keeping a watch for viable reasons to re-evaluate those restrictions.

I chose to highlight this article because it reminds me how important to me it is to always be searching for positive educational uses for technology. It is easy to misuse technology, and be irresponsible with new software or systems. Just as it is easy to find innovative solutions to long standing questions using the same technological tools. Just like a hammer can be used for creation and destruction, new technologies can provide just what might be needed to help with the learning process, we just need to be creative enough to find them.

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Attendance Management

As a future teacher I find myself thinking about ways that I can ensure my classroom runs itself, so that I can spend more time instructing, and less time focusing on the logistics, and general office work that it takes to run an organized classroom. Some teachers have aides, or classroom assistants, I have taken classes where a student is given responsibilities such as managing attendance and passing out or organizing classroom materials. I understand that can be a positive learning experience. however as this blog  generally focuses on technology use in education, I wanted to find apps and other resources for classroom management. Through the use of my PLN, and RSS feeds, I found an article discussing 3 apps for use specifically with classroom attendance.

The article is a simple posting of 3 handy apps that allow teachers different amounts of control from their mobile device or tablet. the apps are: K12 Attendance, Attendance Manager, and Teachers Aide.
All the apps allow the user to create a class, input names of students and then track their attendance to varying degrees, some even allowing to send texts or emails to absent students.

I also know that different schools, sometime school districts, have their own system of logging, recording, and processing data about student participation in school. So  apps like these seem redundant to me personally, unless the apps have a way to interface with the schools own proprietary system or software. These apps work great for organized extra curricular activities where attendance may not be as important to the schools main office, or for private schools or classrooms that do not have a central attendance system, or as a way to organize any group of people that meet on a regular basis.

Finally I would like to leave some questions to the reader, many of these classroom management apps are free, would it be prudent for schools to adopt use of them centrally? Are apps like these redundant and unnecessary? Do they have a place as educational tools for student TA's or aides as a middle man to the schools own system? It is great that people are developing software for this purpose, perhaps the development itself will drive further questions leading to more innovation. as always a link to the article is provided below.

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UDL

The National Center on Universal Design for Learning provides guidelines for practice while teaching  in today's diverse classrooms. It is true now more than ever that school classrooms have students from different cultures, languages, and educational needs, furthermore each person learns best in a slightly different way, and it is important for teachers to do their best to provide the most opportunities for the growth and development of their students in the classroom. Most importantly, the UDL spreads the understanding that there is no one curriculum that is best for every student.

The goals of UDL are simple and boil down to three main points.

1. Represent the material in a variety of ways.

• What one student may not understand can be presented in some other way that may make more sense to said student.
• Learning anything from a different angle increases overall understanding for students

2. Provide a variety of tasks to reinforce learning.

• Some students may respond better to hand on examples.
• Other students learn by discussion or reading.
• Others learn best from organizing ideas in their notes.

3. Offer options that engage students in learning.

• Some students may not be able to do an assignment for any number of reasons, this does not mean they should miss out on getting credit for it.
• Choices in assignments allow students to have some control over their learning which gets them more involved in the process as a whole.

The National Center on Universal Design for Learning began from the same ideas that fueled the civil rights movements, and continue to do so, and that is providing equal opportunity for every person. The main idea of the organization is to break down barriers to learning. Barriers such as socioeconomic status, health issues, or disabilities should not limit the experience or potential of any person to learn and grow. 

The UDL's approach focuses on the curriculum, to eliminate constraints that exist within the foundation of the learning /teaching/evaluating process so that it is more accommodating to a larger portion of today's students. For example what makes sense for sally may not make sense in the same way to Susan, or Mitchel, but that does not mean Susan and Mitchel are slow, or stupid. They just learn differently to Sally.  Those students should not have to suffer or be frustrated in class just because the design of that class does not include or incorporate the way they learn.

Breaking the barriers for learning is not the same as lowering standards, or making the coursework easier, or simpler, in any way. It just means taking a look at standards that are exclusive or only have a single implementation. and adapting them to be more versatile, Which in many cases extends the range and depth of coursework, leading to greater understanding from all students. 

Flipping classrooms: with Salman Kahn

Flipping the classroom is a topic that has come up more and more as I work towards becoming an educator, and when I first heard of flipped classes I honestly did not know what was meant by it (I had to ask of course). I had mixed feeling about implementation, and have been cautious about how strongly I agree or disagree with others on the topic. For this reflection I watched the TED Talk by Salman Kahn, who began the Kahn Academy series of YouTube videos and has now developed those into a robust educational site with software developed with collaboration from teachers, and are working to form a truly global classroom.

The idea of using these videos as an aid for flipping classrooms actually came from some teachers that began to flip their own classes when the videos were just recently put up on YouTube. The teachers would assign videos to their students as homework, and then work on exercises and practice problems during class time. In this way the students can interact and help each other, and the teachers get one on-one-time helping students with individual areas of struggle as opposed to a one size fits all lecture followed by students struggling with homework on their own.

As with anything, the system only works when said system is well developed, andhe current iteration of the Kahn Academy definitely fits that bill. As a teacher I could create a classroom, register my students, and track their activity and progress through learning modules, this overcomes the greatest hurdle of changing any system; accountability. The classic classrooms enforcement of student accountability was based on the turning in of assignments for a grade, which in turn motivates the students to actually do the work, so as long as the teacher has access to see that their students are watching the videos and can tie those to a grade, the system is essentially the same. Except now the lecture portion is being done at the individual pace of the students, instead of at the pace of each class which can leave some students behind. The equivalent to a student playing the video then leaving the room and doing something in another room, is just the same as a student copying another students work, it will probably happen and the signs will be clear when it does. Furthermore, since the teachers are having more interaction with their students, they will be more in touch with those students abilities, and better able to detect problems with study habits.

some of the points that stood out to me during the talk were:

• When Salman Kahn first started making these videos to tutor his cousins, they actually preffered the videos to one-on-one interaction because they could rewind, and pause the videos, or watch them again without felling like they were wasting their cousins time, and the video never got frustrated with them.
• snapshot tests: Kahn spoke about how assessments usually just take a snapshot of how a student is doing at a particular time, and through data Kahn Academy found that the pace that any individual student excels changes, so the snapshot could be very different just a few short days later, in terns of which students appear to be "gifted" or "slow"
• Swiss cheese knowledge: when students do not fully understand a particular lesson, but have to move on simply because the class has moved on whether they "passed the test" or not. this leads to struggle down the road when they may need that concept they do not fully understand to learn the next module or lesson.

as a future educator I have been very intrigued by the idea of running a flipped classroom. One of my classes last semester was taught as a flipped class, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and felt like I got a lot out of the experience. furthermore, there are numerous opportunities provided by flipped classrooms to incorporate and fulfill every one of the ISTE standards for students and teachers alike. Particularly those concepts involving critical thinking and group-work, as examples and problems will be tackled in class the course material can be more challenging.