The whole point of a good lesson is a good a take away. The most straight forward and  thorough explanation and demonstration of how to change a tire is all well and good, so long as you walk away actually knowing how to change the tire!

Chapter 6 gives teachers some excellent tools and resources to successfully integrate meaningful technology into the classroom. Using these tools are incredibly important in moving towards the next stages of tech integration.

#Goals

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I like any tool, program, or strategy for success that walks me through how to actually achieve. Magana’s scales to measure and track progress of each integration of the T3 framework were all helpful because they each have their own place in a thriving classroom. Something that sparkled among the text was the necessity for “precise, measurable, and actionable” goals (Magana, 94). Professional goal setting is one simple, meaningful way to reflect on personal progress, as well as the progress of students. The entire professional goal setting scale was very helpful. I can plug in whatever technology tool I and the class are trying to master, what we doing and hoping to accomplish with it, and suddenly a complex process is organized for comparison with my set goals. 

#JustDoIt

Actually putting this goal-setting guide into practice is the point of the lesson from this chapter; the take away. The ‘changing of the tire’, if you will. I plan to use this guide first, not in a future classroom, but in my office, which daily deals in higher education. I currently use Prezi to convey important information to students about opportunities at Southeastern Oklahoma State University. Before last year I just gave oral presentations to classrooms full of high school juniors and seniors. I eventually upgraded to using technology to better engage students. I’m beginning to master this great resource. At first I was just in the automation stage of replacing everything I had presented orally into the electronic presentation.  I can now work through this guide to assess if I have mastered the automation phase and can move a little deeper into utilizing the technology in a more holistic way of helping students better consume the information I present in more engaging ways, such as adding videos, sound bites, and additional resources.

If I was applying the guide to a classroom, I would obviously look deeper into utilizing Prezi as a transformational and transcendent technological resource for students. Having a precise, measurable and actionable scale to measure success is exactly the kind of tool I appreciate. Chapter 6 is rich with practical, simple tools for educators to monitor and evaluate their success. And now I have them in my belt. 

References

Magana, A.J. (2017).  Disruptive classroom technologies:  A framework for innovation in education.   Thousand Oaks, CA:  SAGE. ISBN#: 9781506359090

I used to be a dancer.

A real one. Not just the dress-up-in-a-tutu and shake-that-groove-thang-around-the-house kind of dancer. As real as any young dancer could be. I practiced at a dance studio no less than three times a week and studied seven types of dance from 4-17 years old. And I was good at it. I was known as a fast learner; the one who could pick it up and always remember the right moves. Then I went to college and joined my university dance team. It was not like studying at the studio. It was much more informal, and the style was much less tradition. We focused on Hip Hop.

But it was no problem! I loved hip hop and I still had a knack for memorization. A challenge eventually arose, however. On this dance team, the instructor of a dance regularly switched out. The captain would teach a dance, then the coach, then one of the officers. We were always learning underneath different peer instructors. This usually wasn’t a problem for me. I was a “fast learner” and I could always remember the choreography. Until one particular officer became the instructor.

He did not teach like the captain, my previous instructors, or any of my other peers. He ran through the moves with very little detail and unclear direction as to what 8 count the move was to happen. “Is that pirouette on count 5 or 6?” I would ask, with my formal training in mind. “It’s just after the scuff. Whenever you hear the drum beat.” he would respond. He didn’t teach from a formal background so all his moves went to musical beats instead of structured 8 counts.

Then a queer thing began to happen to me. I couldn’t remember the choreography for any of his dances. We would practice them a week later and everything he had taught was gone. My team might ask me to recall a move, as I normally could, but because it had been taught so informally, so unlike how I knew how to learn, I was lost. Back to square one.

What’s Happening?

The teaching technique that was lacking during these dance lessons from that officer was differentiation. Granted, he was a dancer and a biology major, not a teacher, so we may cut him some slack. He did not realize that taking the students’ (or teams’) unique learning styles into account and instructing us based on our readiness or learning profile would affect our retention, and ultimately, performance of his choreography. If a teammate couldn’t do a move that he could do and put in the dance, they better figure out how before the performance. If a teammate was formally trained, as about half of us were, then be prepared to throw 8 counts out the window. The teaching style was “inflexible” and, for me at least, my performance reflected it. (Basye, 38). To grow in this skill, he could have taught to musical beats, as some of the team was accustomed, as well as offering a variation in 8 counts so as to meet us where we were and support our different learning styles (Grant & Basye 12).

An example would be, “The pirouette is after the scuff, when you hear the heavy drum beat, then land on the cymbal. For my counters, that’s scuff on 4, prepare 5,6, pirouette 7, land 8.” Everyone wins by offering musical cues and counts.

Individualized & Personalized Instruction…Pretty Much

My senior year I missed a lot of dance rehearsal for my Psychology courses. I once had to meet with this officer outside of class to learn his routine before recital. It was a tough dance to an a cappella song…no musical beats. To my astonishment, he became a wonderful instructor when I was the only pupil. The lesson became individualized. He taught at my pace, pausing to answer my questions and repeating sections I wasn’t picking up easily (Basye, 38). Additionally, since I was the only student, the lesson was personalized for my needs. He taught according to my preferences (Basye, 39), adjusting to my needs regarding the pace of the lesson and my ability to memorize the choreography, as is typical when using personalized instruction (Grant & Basye, 14). However, this personalized instruction was inevitable as I was the only student. We couldn’t have gotten far if he had ignored my learning needs.

Katarine Hale’s assertion that students do not choose for themselves “stories” with plot lines like “challenged”, “slow learner”, “average student” is observably true. There was a time in my dance history where that was my story. “Asks a lot of questions”, “Doesn’t pick up choreography easily”, “Slow” were how I could be described. However, this wasn’t my story when I was under a different type of instruction, instruction that tailored lessons to the needs of the different dancers. It seemed, instead, that my instructor played a huge role in writing my success story. I was “quick” and “receptive” and ultimately seen as “talented” if whoever taught the choreography was thorough and patient. That observation is very striking to me as a future educator. I dare say I’ve never before considered it.

“The best we can do for our children is show them that their story can change if they want it to, and give them the right tools to do so.” -Katharine Hale

References:

Grant, P. and Basye, D., (2014). Personalized learning: A guide for engaging students with technology. Eugene, OR: ISTE

They say there’s more than one way to skin a cat. Although, I wish they would find another way to say it. So far we’ve seen multiple strategies for implementing technology into the classroom; SAMR, TPACK and T3. With all these cat-skinning methods running around the educational world, educators want to make sure that the strategies they use are legitimate. They want to be able to answer  “YES!” to questions like, “Is using this technology making learning efforts more efficient”, “Do students use digital technology to grow closer to achieving their goals?”, “Are my students using technology to produce, save, and review useful information?” “Are students using technology to investigate and solve real world problems?” (Magana 29, 43, 69). This last question is particularly important. Does technology help students better engage in Authentic Intellectual Work?

T3 is one method that remains relevant for supporting student engagement in Authentic Intellectual Work and creativity.

Translational

T3 is so named for it’s three phases, translational, transformational, and transcendent, and from there, each phase can be broken down into two stages. Phase one, the translational phase, deals with taking everyday tasks from non-digital to digital. Instead of writing papers, students type them. This is an example of “automation“, the first stage within the translational phase (Magana 29). This stage, while not complex or creative, is the first step towards efficiency and can help students use these tools to simplify their own lives and future work spaces. Consumption, stage two,  is “…accessing some digital form of content-related information or knowledge” (Magana 31). This goes one step past automation by taking in knowledge found from digital recourses, not just replacing manual tasks. If students don’t know how to access and use digital resources, they won’t move to more innovative technological uses of it.

Transformational

If you haven’t guessed it, each phase builds upon itself to help students work toward creative technological implementation to solve actual problems. The transformational phase involves more change than phase one. Magana describes it as, “…the intentional application of digital technologies to unleash students’ learning expertise, in ways not possible without technology” (39). Stage one of the transformational phase is production. Here, students move beyond translating tasks from analog to digital, and use technology to create new experiences and produce their own digital artifacts (Magana 42). They are able to create new goals for themselves and track it with new tools, such as Google Drive or Microsoft Office 365. This phase is about transforming education by doing new things in new, technology infused ways.

Stage two is contribution. This stage allows students to use the new technological tools they have found to contribute to group learning and collaboration. Here is where we really begin to see AIW taking form within this model. Students find new platforms to share what they know and are able to do with, not only their class, but classrooms around the world with such tools as Skype, facetime, and blogs (Magana 53).

Transcendent

This is the pinnacle phase in the T3 model. The transcendent phase is all about moving beyond the realm of expectation and limitation and creating new technological experiences. Stage one, inquiry design, helps students identify a question, or line of inquiry, and generate and creative, robust solution (Magana 69). Tech tools can help students ask the big questions like “What if” and provide tools like Google Forms or MindJet for brainstorming new ideas for possible solutions. Finally, stage two of the final phase, social entrepreneurship.

This stage, “…builds on the inquiry design phase by contextualizing students’ uses of technology tools into experiences that are driven by authentic need and passion” (Magana 76).

Social entrepreneurs are on the front lines of addressing relevant issues that move them. Teaching students to identify what they are passionate about, how they can contribute to positive change, and show them how to use the technology to accomplish it empowers them to be life long contributors to a better world. And not just in an idealistic sense. In a hands-to-the-plow, practical sort of way.

So what have we learned?

It’s easy to say that technology in the classroom will help students achieve AIW. How is the question. Educators need a plan of making this happen. T3 provides steps at each level of integration, as well as examples, to help educators know when their tech integration is contributing to authentic learning and the tackling of real world problems. Technology will be a part of students’ future, with or without the classroom. We can use the tools we’ve just dissected to tech students how to best use it to their advantage outside of our classrooms.

References:

Magana, A.J. (2017).  Disruptive classroom technologies:  A framework for innovation in education.   Thousand Oaks, CA:  SAGE. ISBN#: 9781506359090

Asking me to compare and contrast these three frameworks for integrating technology in the classroom is a little bit like asking me to compare and contrast what type of people I think Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez and Arianna Grande are. I will make observations and give my most educated opinion, but if I’m honest, there is a lot more beneath the surface that I don’t know about them than what I can see from the outside.

Similarities

If I personally knew any of the aforementioned pop stars, I could more precisely answer the question of how they are alike and different. But I have no personal experience with any of those people. We don’t hang out. Similarly, I have no real experience with the TPACK, SAMR or T3 model. If I had a classroom on which I could experiment, I could dive into the subject deeper. As it is, I’ll start with the similarities I can see. These frameworks are all models that educators can use to help them organize and include technology in their lesson plans. All three help to communicate the importance of utilizing technology in the classroom; advocating for more tech-savy educators and classrooms (Magana, 17). They all assert that technological knowledge and integration is as significant as pedagogy and content (Magana, 19).  They are all a step in the right direction…and then the direction changes.

Differences

The TPACK model is the most basic of the three. It’s biggest strength is that it highlights the importance of technological integration in the classroom and encourages the use of modern tools. It doesn’t, however, provide much detail on how educators can make this integration. That is where SAMR comes in. It builds on to TPACK by …”providing a more in-depth hierarchy for categorizing technology tool use” (Magana 19). It’s more detailed and can be applied easily to more than one discipline, such as business or construction. It’s so broad, however, that it still doesn’t quite get at how to integrate the technology for educators. Along comes T3 to build even further! This model provides more detail by highlighting translational technology use, transformational technology use, and transcendent technology use. Understanding this model helps educators move from basic tech integration, to deep knowledge and innovative classroom technology.

Well if you’re asking me…

The model that will always resonate with me is whatever model tells me how to do whatever challenging task I’m meant to do. I like SAMR because it is simple and, consequently, so am I. But T3 provides more details and examples of how teachers can build technology into their routine, starting with basic changes and moving to complex changes. At the very least, T3 gives me goals to aim for as an educator and a way to track the progress of those goals. “Are my students benefitting from the technology? Is it useful in more ways than just saving time? Is this technology adding value to the content or just making it more efficient?” These are the questions I will be asking as I build my lesson plans.

References:

Magana, A.J. (2017).  Disruptive classroom technologies:  A framework for innovation in education.   Thousand Oaks, CA:  SAGE. ISBN#: 9781506359090

It’s no secret that there are subjects in my life that I hate dealing with. American football is one such topic. The relevancy or general goodness of Country music is another such subject. But there is no subject under the sun that I want to avoid more…than TECHNOLOGY.

The ISTE standards within education are designed help educators maximize resources like technology to create innovative learning environments for students. This is a good thing! Students have more resources available to them online to make learning and creativity easier, less time consuming, and readily available for all. As Gura says, “Technology enhances creativity, it drastically reduces the cost of actualizing our intent.” (76). Technology, it seems, is here to stay in my life as an educator. It’s unpacking it’s bags and paying rent.

There are many ISTE standards that I can implement as an educator to help foster creativity in my classroom, but the two that stick out to me, and the two that I plan to use in an eventual English lesson, are

Knowledge Constructor and Creative Communicator. 

Why though?

The Knowledge Constructor standard has been happening in English classes everyday long before the digital age. According to The International Society in Education, the idea is to utilize digital tools to research topics, gather resources, sift through findings and decide what is relevant to the assignment, collect their thoughts using digital resources, and grow as life long learners by developing theories and ideas from their findings (1). Any research paper, creative writing assignment, or persuasive paper will utilize this, if not champion it.

And my favorite, COMMUNICATION! Clearly articulating your ideas, research, or opinions requires strong communication skills and it does not come naturally to everyone. Students must learn to communicate well; a pillar for a successful, happy life, in my opinion. This standard has students choose from a variety of platforms to communicate their ideas; social media, oral presentation, a collage, etc. They can use preexisting formats as a base for further developing their own message and present it in a well organized format (2).

Am I optimistic?

Considering my aforementioned disinclination towards technology, fostering the creative implementation of digital resources in my classroom isn’t exactly Sunday brunch in my book. This will be particularly challenging for me in two ways;

1) Creating creative assignments that will set students up to succeed when imposing these standards on them. I’ll need to think of assignments that can build their creative muscles.

2) Provide valuable resources for students to use themselves. This will require me to become more familiar with the digital resources that are out there and I would really just…rather not.

Perhaps the incredible cliche, “I thought I was teaching them, but really, they taught me.” is a cliche for a reason. I suspect that I will stretch and grow and learn far more than my students in my ever-evolving quest to become an exceptional educator.

 

Reference:

Fred M. Newman, M. Bruce King, Dana L. Carmichael (2007). Authentic Instruction and Assessment: Building a culture of creativity in your school. Eugene, OR: ISTE. ISBN#: 9781564843807.

International Society for Technology in Education. ISTE National Educational Technology Standards (NETS). Eugene, OR :International Society for Technology in Education, 2016. Print.

Recounting my experience with authentic intellectual work is like recalling a dream; hazy around the edges, misty in the middle, flashes of familiar faces and concepts, and the sensation that I’m forgetting something tragically significant. Perhaps it’s hard for me to recall because I am still beginning to learn what “authentic intellectual work” really means.

Before reading chapters 1 & 2 of Authentic Instruction and Assessment, I thought there was just visual, auditory, and hands on learning. You’re supposed to know what type of learner you are, you know. But I’ve never said to myself, “I learn best by implementing only the most authentic intellectual work….” To my credit, who goes around knowing that “…construction of knowledge, through the use of disciplined inquiry, to produce discourse, products, or performances that have value beyond school” is a multiple choice option for how to learn. I do now.

The brightest shining-star memory in my illustrious academic career that is a good example of authentic, beyond the classroom, must-have-for-everyday-success intellectual work was from a senior level psychology course over interviewing skills. Before I was going to be a professional teacher, I was going to be a professional listener. And studying professional listening lead me to the inescapable scenario of interviewing a classmate, using the skills and methods we were learning, in front of my studious peers.

We roll played as client/counselor. She talked about an issue in her life, real or fictitious, and I asked deeper questions based on what I had heard. We were instructed not to go full PhD. Psychiatrist on our pretend patients, and keep it in the realm of simplicity. “What do you mean by that”, “What I’m hearing you say is this this and this. Am I understanding that right?”, “What did you do next?”. If we didn’t know how to keep the conversation going, we could phone a friend. In this class, “phoning a friend” translated to staring blankly and frantically at the professor for help. But I was doing so well practicing the skills we were learning that I didn’t have to tap out. I was doing it. I was leading this hypothetical session!

Finally, following with her story, I asked her, “And do you think the frustration you’ve been feeling at home is connected to your relationship with your mother?” Suddenly the oxygen had been sucked from the room. The classroom became a vacuum. No one breathed. Was that a soft gasp I heard at the back of the room?  My partner looked like she had just taken a volleyball to the face. She stared at me, mouth agape, eyes like oysters, and uttered, “Uh…”

“And we are going to stop there for today! Good work, ladies!”. Dr. SaveTheDay came to her aid and cut me short before I could launch into a full diagnosis. We were both a little embarrassed. I didn’t mean to go that deep into the questions. She didn’t mean to be so open. Our professor reminded us that questions like that were to be left to professional counselors. Currently we were only practicing interviewing skills. Patience is a virtue; we would get there eventually.

That was the first, and perhaps the only, time I felt the confidence to actually become a counselor. It was the first time I could truly believe in myself to be able to retain what I was learning in school, and use it to listen to and help others. Maybe I had some natural intuition to be good at this. Maybe I could really get there.

Maybe my classes were really teaching me.

Teach the skills. Provide an opportunity to sink or swim. Think on your feet. Practice with purpose. If that is where authentic intellectual work gets you, I want more of it in my future classroom.

 

Reference:

Fred M. Newman, M. Bruce King, Dana L. Carmichael (2007). Authentic Instruction and Assessment: Building a culture of creativity in your school. Eugene, OR: ISTE. ISBN#: 9781564843807. 

 

My name is Sheridan Burns. Masterful Thoughts is my first attempt to blog and I’m diving into it exclusively out of obligation! My Bachelor’s degree is in Psychology and I’m now pursuing my Master’s of Education for the purpose of becoming an exceptional teacher. This blog is a necessary cog in the machine of higher education; make a blog, make an A. Hopefully, Masterful Thoughts will help me become more comfortable using technology in my own future classroom. Considering that I am more comfortable sitting on a cactus than I am with using technology, this blog is likely to be a thorn in my side as well as a tool in my professional belt. I have high hopes for deeper knowledge and high fears of regular outbursts of frustration while on this blogging journey. Welcome aboard.