Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Reflections On Learning about Teaching, Learning, and Assessing in the Digital Era

Wordle: A Review of Learning about Teaching, Learning, and Assessing In The Digital Era

For my final reflection in the Teaching, Learning, and Assessing in the Digital Era course I decided to put technology to a test.  After much reading about concept mapping my interest in the uses of concept mapping in my own teaching/learning practice was rejuvenated.  I had several complex, deep, ideas about creating a visual which would summarize my learning and show relationships between ideas. The reality of the time frame available to complete this task lead me to an experiment with technology.  I used the free applet Wordle to create a map.  I would refer to it as a word map rather than a concept map.  

The way I "fed" information to this technology (Wordle) was to copy all of my blog entries for this class and paste them into the Wordle creator.  The illustration above is the product of my experiment. I was curious to see how Wordle would summarize my learning.  As I read about the mechanics behind Wordle I discovered that the "word map" is formed based the frequence of use of the words.  As I examine the Wordle of my blog entries it reflects a summary of the most frequent terms about which I wrote. 

Over the course of my research I found an interesting blog about how to use Wordle in classrooms: The Top Ten Ways to Use Wordle at School .   I look forward to diving deeper into the resources listed for this week on concept mapping when I have more time to explore and experiment with concept maps


Friday, June 20, 2014

Auxiliary Aids and Services for Postsecondary Students with Disabilities

Image:Wikimedia Commons

This week we are asked to send a letter to a representative of a post secondary program as a student requesting auxiliary aids and services for postsecondary students with disabilities.  The Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 Higher Education's Obligations Under Section 504 and Title II of the ADA
U.S. Department of Education
Office for Civil Rights
Washington, D.C.
Revised September 1998

States:

A postsecondary student with a disability who is in need of auxiliary aids is obligated to provide notice of the nature of the disabling condition to the college and to assist it in identifying appropriate and effective auxiliary aids. In elementary and secondary schools, teachers and school specialists may have arranged support services for students with disabilities. However, in postsecondary schools, the students themselves must identify the need for an auxiliary aid and give adequate notice of the need. The student's notification should be provided to the appropriate representative of the college who, depending upon the nature and scope of the request, could be the school's Section 504 or ADA coordinator, an appropriate dean, a faculty advisor, or a professor. Unlike elementary or secondary schools, colleges may ask the student, in response to a request for auxiliary aids, to provide supporting diagnostic test results and professional prescriptions for auxiliary aids. A college also may obtain its own professional determination of whether specific requested auxiliary aids are necessary.

Examples of Auxiliary Aids

Some of the various types of auxiliary aids and services may include:

  • taped texts
  • notetakers
  • interpreters
  • readers
  • videotext displays
  • television enlargers
  • talking calculators
  • electronic readers
  • Braille calculators, printers, or typewriters
  • telephone handset amplifiers
  • closed caption decoders
  • open and closed captioning
  • voice synthesizers
  • specialized gym equipment
  • calculators or keyboards with large buttons
  • reaching device for library use
  • raised-line drawing kits
  • assistive listening devices
  • assistive listening systems
  • telecommunications devices for deaf persons.


It is critical to ensure that young adults can advocate for themselves as they enter post secondary learning environments.


Friday, June 6, 2014

Soapbox

Image by: whatcomteaparty

This evening my colleagues and I had a wonderful sharing on a Google + Hangout.  The format for our dialogue was entitled "Soapbox"
and here is the instructor's description:

 ASSIGNMENT: To do this, you will select a topic from ideas that we have not deeply considered and have not been chosen for project topics. A suggested list is below.
You will have 8 minutes to get on your soapbox and inform, orate, philosophize, advise, etc. on your topic based on the current state of the art, data, and research. The audience will then have up to 4 minutes to respond, question, analyze, etc. Feel free to support and augment your soapbox with relevant resources and technology.
ASSESSMENT: Two people will peer-review each presenter using the rubric below.
(Assignment and rubric developed by Laura Greenstein Ed.D)

The two hours whizzed by as we listened to each other discuss such topics as:

What teachers need to know about technology?
Too young for technology?
If students have the answers, what are the questions?
STEM to STEAM
Something surprising about CCSS resources
Assessing MOOCS
Assessing ISTE/NETS Standards
The future of teaching, learning, and assessing with technology

The soapbox format enabled all participants speak with conviction and passion. I gained more insight into the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) standards for coaches. I gained some great tips for early learners in respect to technology. I learned that STEAM is STEM with the Arts added. One colleague shared some great strategies and data about teachers and the types of questions we ask are they open questions or closed questions. A library/media specialist shared 10 things teachers should know about technology. We had some informative discussion around Common Core curriculum, Massive Online Open Courses and the future of teaching, learning and assessing in the future and the need to give teachers time to process and align standards, curriculum and assessments.


The beauty of this assignment is that we shared multiple perspectives. We also shared the results of our investigations so this project resulted in a collaborative effort where we can all benefit from the work of each other. 

Monday, June 2, 2014

AT and Considering Families Value Systems

Do you consider cultural diversity when developing instructional plans for your students?



There should be no doubt that the success of any educational plan using assistive technology is dependant on the receptiveness of the family to the plan.  The figure above from Brotherson, M. J. Family-centered and Culturally Responsive Assistive Technology Decision Making. Infants & Young Children, 355-367 shows key steps to include when practicing a family centered approach.  

It is easy for misunderstandings to take place if all four steps above are not considered.  As teachers we work with students from many different cultures.  We need to be aware of issues such as pride, shame, taboo, gender roles, and language barriers as we work together with our families.

Sunday, June 1, 2014

Assessing 21st Century Learning

This week we defined a set of 21st century skills and reviewed ways of assessing those skills.  Our instructor gave us a task of plotting some 21st century skills on a graph with Ease of Assessment on the vertical axis and Importance of Learning on the horizontal axis.
On an interactive slide in a google presentation we were able to drag and drop the skills on to a graph like the one below.


This activity heightened my awareness to the relationship between the two variables.  I spent some time really thinking about the importance of each skill.  I feel strongly that all the skills are very important.  It was difficult to prioritize them.  As I came back to the activity several times over the course of the week I challenged my own judgments.

As I reviewed  my classmates graphs it was interesting to notice that almost all of us had 3 areas that were both harder to assess and important.  Those areas were Critical Thinking, Digital Literacy and Global Understanding.  Is it surprising that the most important skills are hardest to assess?  Or is it that these skills are relatively new and we are not yet fully aware of the best and easiest ways to access them?  I found myself wanting to create some type of transparent overlay to more clearly see where we all overlap and what might be the outliers.

Here is a screenshot of my graph.


I know that I will continue to ponder about this exercise as I delve deeper into the topic.