Classroom of the Future

Today my baby son was sick.  He has been sick and is just not getting better, so I felt like I needed to be at the doctor's office with my wife in case there was anything really important with the diagnosis.  So I e-mailed my EdTech professor and let him know I wouldn't make it to class.  So I asked him what my options were.  Interestingly enough, he said I could stream the class from home and participate remotely in a group as we collectively build a document online.  Sweet, said I.  Let's do it.  In participating in this remote classroom exercise I was able to meet Standard 5 for the International Society for Technology in Education National Education Technology Standards (ISTE-NETS) https://sites.google.com/a/u.boisestate.edu/hans-portfolio/technology/iste-nets-for-teachers/standard-5-1.

So we used a tool from http://www.ustream.tv where my professor has a channel.  At the appropriate time I accessed the stream through a link embedded in the "quest" he had given for me to do.  Once the stream began I was able to hear and see my professor introduce the discussion and get a plan for how this project was to go.  I was also able to chat... sort of.  The chat application didn't work very well.  I was not able to speak back to my professor.  I can see how that can be a good thing because some students may not be very professional or need extra technical help with their microphone.

Anyway, I was connected with "Group 4" to collaboratively create a Google doc about the classroom application of the video website http://www.vimeo.com.  One of my student peers created the document and e-mailed me an invite to collaborate on the Google doc.  Once I was in the Google doc, I was able to chat with my classmates about the document while we researched different aspects of the paper.  We all edited and built the document in real time.  Google docs is pretty sweet!

My only negative is that I could not audibly communicate with my partners.  There was some dead time as I was waiting for them to either respond to a chat message or do some more editing in the document.  I assumed they were doing some research, talking about how the website could be used in the classroom, or discussing something with the professor.  This information I unfortunately was not privy to.  They did try to update me briefly in the chat, and so I did get at least part of the picture in that respect.

Overall it was a great experience.  This is something that could easily be reproduced into a public school classroom.  It's basically like the "Classroom of the Future" post in my legacyhappens blog (http://legacyhappens.blogspot.com/2012/02/classroom-cant-find-your-place-in-this.html).  I'm looking forward to using this type of technology when I teach because there might be an important lesson I'll be going over and if a student is sick for the day he or she won't have to miss it.  They can get better at home and still play a part in the classroom.  Good stuff, we just need to work on the audio aspect.

Annotated Video Playlist

Here is an annotated YouTube playlist I put together to illustrate how something like this can be used in the classroom.  In total it is a little under 7 minutes long for all six videos.  I had fun putting it together and I hope you can watch it as well.

Reflections of Assistive Technologies

Some technologies are worth more than their weight in gold.  Below is Josh's story.  It is about 8 minutes long and definitely worth watching if you have any interest in assistive technology, children with autism, or education in general.  The video is about a child named Josh who has autism.  At first he was described as non-verbal and  by the end of the video he's making eye-contact and reading to his teacher and classmates.

Assistive technology like the AbleNet Super Talker and the AbleNet Bookworm (more info on AbleNet here: http://www.ablenetinc.com/) allow students to communicate in a socially safe and predictable manner.  Josh's teacher was able to identify the toys that he enjoyed playing with and figured out what technology could be used to make him feel more comfortable communicating, not only with his teacher, but with everyone in his social circle.  The great thing about these technologies is that they really only need to be used temporarily.  Once the student has developed the skills/comfort that the technology provides, it can be phased out of use so that he/she can do the things other students can do without the use of any additional help.

The goal of any school special needs assistance is to get the student to the point where they don't need the assistance any more.  I see that with Aurora (my daughter) as well.  She has mild spastic diplegia cerebral palsy.  When she was going to public school she had an IEP (Section 504) plan because her brain has a hard time switching topics and ideas.  It's mild but it's there.  In addition, she wore braces on her feet, ankles, and lower legs while going through physical and occupational therapy several days a week.  Because of the IEP and all the therapy and braces, she no longer needs as much individual attention in the classroom, is out of her braces, might go out for the swim team at the YMCA, and rides horses like a champ!  Sometimes these assistive technology devices give just the right amount of help to give the students the momentum to stay caught up.

The Jigsaw Method

One of the quests for my Educational Technology class took me to these two resources to learn about the Jigsaw Method:
http://www.jigsaw.org/
http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/archive/cl1/CL/doingcl/jigsaw.htm

The Jigsaw method is basically a method of teaching that bring collaborative learning into an easy-to-implement format that can also be used in a very flexible way.  So the class needs to learn about a certain topic, say something broad like the Civil War for example.  The teacher would first divide the class into diverse groups of about 4-5 students each.  Then the teacher splits that topic into 5 different sub-topics with a student from each group focusing on a single topic.  For example, the topics could be:

1. Reasons the Civil War began.
2. Who were the big names involved?
3. Major conflicts during the Civil War.
4. Which side won the war and how?
5. What was the result of the Civil War (what happened afterwards)?

So each group would be learning about the entirety of the Civil War as each member of the group researches their assigned topic.  If there were only 5 computers in the classroom then each group would be given some time on the computers to research their assigned topic.  While that group is doing research, the other groups could be working on their presentation or working on other subjects.

The fun part comes next.  Each "subject-matter-expert" meets with students from other groups that researched their same sub-topic to collaborate their material.  When they come back to their group they share what they have learned.  Each member of the group then needs to write a report about the Civil War based on the sub-topics presented in their group.  A great advantage to this style of learning is that it necessitates each student pay attention to and respect the presentation of others in the group regardless of whether Johnny is thought of as a nerd or Susy looks weird otherwise their own grade will falter.  A possible disadvantage is that this does take some time and preparation on the part of the teacher to make sure everyone is staying on task even it isn't their turn on the computers.  In addition it depends on the fact that there are even computers in the classroom.  These days, however, that isn't too much of a stretch.

What Does That Mean?

The traditional style of teaching (and the easiest for the one teaching) is to present the material to the student in a very linear way.  Here is the information I think you should know.  Now it is your responsibility to meet me halfway and try to make sense of the information I have delivered.  In this method the responsibility of the teacher is simply to make the information known.  There is no accountability as to whether or not the student has actually learned the information.  Tests in this sense give no feedback except for how short of perfection they fell (past-tense).  This leaves the student hanging and if the student actually did learn something it was a miracle.

One of the definitions of being a teacher is one who causes to learn.  How can a teacher truly be teaching if his student hasn't learned what the teacher was hoping he would learn.  In order to cause learning the information to be presented has to be presented in a way in which the student will absorb it.  This is different for different classes, different people, and different subjects.  No cookie-cutter model for teaching will work.  The ideas we hope to give to our children must be contextualized in a way that involves them.

My heart is that every student I will ever interact with will know that I care about who they are more than what they learn.  Of course it is also my hope they the things they learn will be remembered and recalled successfully as it applies to their lives.  So, this being my first post for this blog, that is what the title of this blog means.  I hope to cause students to learn.  I want them to want to learn.