EDTECH 502: The Internet for Educators focused on two main skill sets. The first, and most significant, was using HTML5 and CSS3 to design websites in Adobe Dreamweaver. I came into the course with some prior experience using earlier versions of HTML, but most of my efforts were very utilitarian with minimal styling and I had no experience with CSS or Dreamweaver. As a result, the pages I built in this course are much more attractive and show a greater degree of sophistication than my prior efforts. While I'm not ready to compete with professional web designers (by a long shot), I can build a basic website and make it look reasonably attractive.
The other main aspect of this course was an introduction to various models of web-based lessons including jigsaws, WebQuests, and virtual field trips among others. In some cases, I've seen or used lessons with similar structures elsewhere, but had not made much use of the Internet within these lessons. Creating web-based lessons following these structures required me to become much more familiar with the Internet resources available in my content area.
One of the most powerful aspects of web-based activities I saw throughout the course was the opportunity for differentiation. I teach a 9th grade physical science course which every student must take, meaning I see a wide variety of students in my classroom. The range of reading levels poses a particular challenge as I have students able to read at a college level who find our textbook (written at roughly a 7th grade level) overly simple while other students read at an elementary level and find the same textbook incomprehensibly difficult. When working on many of the projects for this course, I was able to find worthwhile resources at a variety of reading levels, giving me an opportunity to provide all of my students with appropriate texts as well as tools to scaffold struggling readers toward more challenging options. This realization of how easy it is to differentiate a web-based lesson has me working on adapting many of the assignments I typically use the textbook for.
My ability to build basic web pages will make it possible for me to present differentiated resources, whether as links to other web sites or as content I've written myself, in a well-organized format with a reasonably professional appearance and an engaging task. This approach will be much more straightforward than attempting to copy and distribute appropriately articles or other texts at a variety of reading levels.
Sunday, December 29, 2013
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Web Quest
This project was my introduction to the WebQuest as developed by Bernie Dodge and Tom March. The goal of a WebQuest is to use Internet resources to engage students in a higher-order thinking activity with a strong inquiry component. In my building, we have been striving to increase our use of inquiry and to find more opportunities to challenge our students with critical thinking and other high-level tasks, so a WebQuest should be an excellent fit in my classroom.
As I considered topics, I decided to incorporate an engineering task into the WebQuest. We are working on some curriculum revisions to increase the presence of engineering in our 9th grade science courses, and one of the challenges is finding ways to ensure the science content is integrated into the engineering projects. The research and writing components common to many WebQuests provide an excellent platform for students to explore the relationship between physical science topics and the product students design and build. I picked one of the projects we are considering which I am most excited about, a task where students build a vehicle that will protect an egg in a head-on collision, and built a WebQuest around it.
In the Virtual Field Trip project, my first experience designing a site with multiple web pages, I spent very little time planning before I dove in and paid for that mistake by spending more time than necessary on later stages of the project. I learned from those mistakes and, this time, tried to front-load more of the effort. I typed out the majority of my text in Word, then sketched a basic outline for each page on a whiteboard. This allowed me to determine in advance which tags I would need and ensure the structure of each page would be consistent across the site. I then built the start page into Dreamweaver and wrote the majority of the CSS before beginning any of the other pages. By front-loading my efforts with intentional planning, I spent significantly less time overall on the CSS for this page than the Virtual Field Trip, driving home the importance of planning ahead on a complex project.
Egg Crash WebQuest
As I considered topics, I decided to incorporate an engineering task into the WebQuest. We are working on some curriculum revisions to increase the presence of engineering in our 9th grade science courses, and one of the challenges is finding ways to ensure the science content is integrated into the engineering projects. The research and writing components common to many WebQuests provide an excellent platform for students to explore the relationship between physical science topics and the product students design and build. I picked one of the projects we are considering which I am most excited about, a task where students build a vehicle that will protect an egg in a head-on collision, and built a WebQuest around it.
In the Virtual Field Trip project, my first experience designing a site with multiple web pages, I spent very little time planning before I dove in and paid for that mistake by spending more time than necessary on later stages of the project. I learned from those mistakes and, this time, tried to front-load more of the effort. I typed out the majority of my text in Word, then sketched a basic outline for each page on a whiteboard. This allowed me to determine in advance which tags I would need and ensure the structure of each page would be consistent across the site. I then built the start page into Dreamweaver and wrote the majority of the CSS before beginning any of the other pages. By front-loading my efforts with intentional planning, I spent significantly less time overall on the CSS for this page than the Virtual Field Trip, driving home the importance of planning ahead on a complex project.
Egg Crash WebQuest
Sunday, December 8, 2013
501 Course Reflection
This course, titled Introduction to Educational Technology, was designed to provide a basic overview of the field, including how to understand rising trends, how to evaluate an institution's use of technology, and how to analyze key issues within the field. This course also gave me a foundation of the skills which will be required moving forward in the MET program, including screencasting, principles of effective academic presentations, and research techniques.
This course has also provided me some valuable insights. This course required the use of several tools I was already familiar with and showed me, very directly and concretely, how they can be effectively applied in an educational setting. For example, I have seen a few colleagues use social networks as a tool for communicating with their students. In this course, we used Google+ for not only communication, but for active collaboration with our peers. This experience has given me a new perspective; the changes to how social networks are used in this course compared to my prior experience are simple, but have added a powerful element to the course. I am now energized to reexamine other familiar technologies to consider how I could use them more effectively in my classroom.
At the start of this course, I was skeptical about the likelihood of building a community in an online course. This semester was my first experience taking any courses online and I've spoken to a number of people who found their experience with online coursework to be very impersonal and, as a result, have been very hesitant to participate in efforts to offer online courses in the district where I teach. The structure of this course provided a framework for interaction that was a stark contrast to what I'd been lead to expect. The requirement to post assignments to a Google+ community, the use of small groups, and the clear expectations for participation are strategies that could easily be adapted to other online courses and have me much more interested in offering an online component to the courses I teach.
I expect that, over the next few semesters, I will continue to see technology and my classroom in a new light. These perspectives, and the important skills that come with them, will continue to improve my classroom practice and allow me to be a more valuable asset to my district as we increase our integration of technology.
This course has also provided me some valuable insights. This course required the use of several tools I was already familiar with and showed me, very directly and concretely, how they can be effectively applied in an educational setting. For example, I have seen a few colleagues use social networks as a tool for communicating with their students. In this course, we used Google+ for not only communication, but for active collaboration with our peers. This experience has given me a new perspective; the changes to how social networks are used in this course compared to my prior experience are simple, but have added a powerful element to the course. I am now energized to reexamine other familiar technologies to consider how I could use them more effectively in my classroom.
At the start of this course, I was skeptical about the likelihood of building a community in an online course. This semester was my first experience taking any courses online and I've spoken to a number of people who found their experience with online coursework to be very impersonal and, as a result, have been very hesitant to participate in efforts to offer online courses in the district where I teach. The structure of this course provided a framework for interaction that was a stark contrast to what I'd been lead to expect. The requirement to post assignments to a Google+ community, the use of small groups, and the clear expectations for participation are strategies that could easily be adapted to other online courses and have me much more interested in offering an online component to the courses I teach.
I expect that, over the next few semesters, I will continue to see technology and my classroom in a new light. These perspectives, and the important skills that come with them, will continue to improve my classroom practice and allow me to be a more valuable asset to my district as we increase our integration of technology.
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