Reflection 2, Week 3

This week we have reviewed ICT tools that can be used to create online spaces: blogs, wikis and static websites. Thanks to the advent of Web 2.0 and WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editing and web creation tools, even seriously challenged people like me can have a go at creating online content.

In the past two weeks, we have been chugging up a steep learning curve that began with making our own blogs and learning about the use of ICTs.

Just as I felt I was getting a handle on blogs, we were thrown a curve ball – to create a website using Weebly. If that wasn’t enough, we were encouraged to try Wordles, Vokis and a rather natty newspaper clip maker.

I decided to create a website with Weebly that I could hopefully build upon and use professionally as a teacher of Japanese.

I chose a topic and collected my ideas and some resources. Then I began to explore the art of making a website. Now, WYSIWYG tools are a fabulous improvement on writing your own code, I’m sure, but it still takes some time to become familiar with how to manipulate things and exactly what is possible. In fact, I think that’s one thing that I’ve really started to appreciate about these technologies: the technologies themselves have ample capacity to act as transformative tools in the classroom, as defined by the SAMR model. But whether you achieve that in a lesson is another matter!

This last point was driven home as I spent hours just learning how to position elements on my Weebly. In real life, a teacher probably does not have hours to spend on one resource for one class. In that sense, I’m glad that we are being introduced to these tools now and given the chance to learn some of their capabilities in this course. I hope it will help make those first years of teaching, and building our professional resources, that little bit easier.

Here is a summary of my first experiences with a Weebly:

My Weebly

This time, because this was for the purposes of an assignment, and because Vokis and Weeblies and birds with broken legs (not an ICT tool) were consuming my time like pigs at the trough, I decided to create the content without a fully realised lesson plan.

Here are some shots of the page I created and a link to it:

http://sakasama.weebly.com/aisatsu.html

 For the purposes of learning to set up a basic website and reflecting on a website in the classroom, I think this was a reasonable method. If you were a teacher in the classroom though, I can see how this would be a disaster. My website has some nice information, some cool video (a real TV commercial about greetings that uses only simple words even a beginner could understand) and even a vaguely outlined activity. It might make for good reading if you were trapped in a vault with nothing else to do. But as the basis for transformative learning, it leaves a lot to be desired. I failed on many levels to contextualise my use of the website and to consider my learning objectives for students.

In order to effectively contextualize the use of an instructional tool, instructors must think carefully exactly where the tool will be used in the flow of the course, how often the tool will or might be used, and how necessary the tool is to the learning process.

(Reynard, 2008)

In other words, unless the course being taught is a technology course, the web 2.0 tools should be used strictly to enhance specific learning objectives set forth within a certain content area.

Source: http://www.openeducation.net/2008/10/10/using-blogs-to-enhance-learning-%E2%80%93-some-helpful-tips/

If I were doing this again, and indeed, I plan to have another crack at this later to try to get it right, I would first establish what I want my students to be able to do. Then look at what content would fit this and then look at how my website could add to that learning experience.  I would also add in some other tools. I think a website might work best when used in conjunction with more interactive tools like a wiki or a blog. I’ve spent a fair bit of time thinking about this (and worrying about how much time ICTs will consume!), and here is a summary of what I think would be best practice for developing and using ICTs in the classroom.

My Weebly 2.0

I concluded that in future I would tackle this particular tool and this content a bit differently. After thinking about some learning objectives, and how to make the content of my Weebly better positioned for the students to engage, I decided that I would like to get the students to attempt to translate the little video about Greetings or Aisatsu (it’s a real Japanese TV commercial from quite a number of years ago).

I would break them into groups, assign them a 15 second segment each and get them to translate that section and embed a wiki in the page so they can collaborate as a group until they felt they had achieved the best possible translation. In this way, the technology allows the students to not only do what they could do with pen and paper (substitution in the SAMR model), but to use tools such as online dictionaries and websites to help translate and convince other students that their translation is indeed correct. If they have to compile a single translation as a group, they will also need to sort and organize, then select ideas until they have a single translation. This involves higher order thinking – defending, synthesising, prioritising and making judgments. In terms of Bloom’s taxonomy, this activity would allow the students to evaluate and create.

In order for the task to be truly transformational, to achieve redefinition on the SAMR model, I would have the groups all submit their translations to create a translation for the whole 60 second commercial. They would have created something themselves. But to really show them what translation is like in the real world, I would get them to work together to use software to create subtitles (using free tools such as Aegisub) for the commercial. Through this task they could see some of the difficulties involved in creating subtitles.

1.    There is a limit of characters that can fit on each frame, so sometimes you have to make significant cuts and choose only some parts to translate.

2.    Things like word play and jokes often don’t translate well and you have to find other ways to help the audience understand the context

Finally, the students would have a totally new product – a real Japanese commercial with English subtitles that was created by them. This could then be displayed on the website for others to view.

In my view, that is truly transformative and helps the students to see what can be done with language skills in the real world and gives them some insight into the challenges of translating movies etc.

Adapted from:

https://juliaec.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/blooms-taxonomy-encouraging-higher-cognitive-thinking-in-primary-school-classrooms/

and

http://www.hippasus.com/rrpweblog/

The thought of really doing such an activity with students makes me excited, however, I’m conscious that this would be a time consuming activity (despite the fact that the actual commercial is only 60 seconds long). It took me the better part of the day just to create a single page on my website. But I do think that the rewards of creating their own subtitled commercial would be worth the investment.

References

Reynard, R. 2008. Avoiding the 5 Most Common Mistakes in Using Blogs with Students http://campustechnology.com/articles/2008/10/avoiding-the-5-most-common-mistakes-in-using-blogs-with-students.aspx Accessed March 22, 2015

Using Blogs to Enhance Learning – Some Helpful Tips

http://www.openeducation.net/2008/10/10/using-blogs-to-enhance-learning-%E2%80%93-some-helpful-tips/

Accessed March 22, 2015

https://juliaec.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/blooms-taxonomy-encouraging-higher-cognitive-thinking-in-primary-school-classrooms/ Accessed March 15, 2015

Puentedura, R. (2014) SAMR and Bloom's Taxonomy: Assembling the Puzzle

https://www.graphite.org/blog/samr-and-blooms-taxonomy-assembling-the-puzzle

Accessed March 16, 2015

http://www.hippasus.com/rrpweblog/

Accessed March 14, 2015

Reflection 1, Week 2

In this blog post, we’ve been asked to reflect on the collaborative learning experience we participated in during the week. The experience involved the use of a wiki, and was scaffolded using de Bono’s Six Hats. The topic was “Should mobile phones be used in the classroom?”. I’ve made a quick video of the task so you can see what it looked like.

Design of the Activity

If I were designing this course, I think my goal for students would be:

1)    To understand what a Wiki is and how to participate in one

2)    To have an appreciation of what might go wrong and strategies to manage these concerns

3)    To synthesise the many theories, models and ideas they have been exposed to in the past two weeks and attempt to express how these ideas inform a particular learning experience (in this case, the use of a wiki)

As I discussed, in my video above, I think the use of de Bono’s hats to scaffold this activity was absolutely crucial in achieving those learning outcomes. Without some form of scaffolding, I think the activity would have been very messy, very loud and not conducive to meaningful collaboration at all.

Learning Theories and the Activity

I felt the activity was a good example about how learners can build knowledge and understanding together, and how they can build an understanding of a topic fairly independently from a teacher.

The task allowed us to read the opinions of our fellow students, see what information they had sourced and build our ideas based on that. I was prompted by another student’s comment to think about something I hadn’t even considered before. My focus was on the distraction that phones would pose in the classroom, how they would take away from learning. Another student noted that policing a ban would take a lot of effort and therefore distract teachers from actually teaching. It was a lightning bolt moment for me, and really had me rethinking my original opinion about the topic. This was a clear example of how constructivism can be used in the classroom.

Source: http://worldiscover.org/2014/09/03/the-map-of-where-the-lightning-fall-in-real-time/

Because the activity was a technology based one, I think it also promoted connectivity. At one stage, I saw a peer had noted that many students already owned phones. She cited a website that I was pretty sure wasn’t Australian. I was then prompted to wonder what the figures were for Australia. It was easy to open another tab and get busy searching for that information online. The wiki activity fed naturally into finding information from sources and linking to those sources so others could share the information.

Pedagogy and the Activity

After all the discussion on pedagogy, and starting to think about developing our own personal pedagogy this week, it was gratifying that when I sat down to think about this task, somethings jumped out at me right away. Maybe some of this is sinking in!

Here are the ways I thought the activity met the pedagogical principles we have looked at lately:

1.    Supportive learning environment – I don’t like discussing emotive topics with people in real life. But because this wasn’t face to face, and I knew I had the option to post anonymously if I so chose, it was easier to express what I really thought. I could hear from such a range of people, some of whom probably come from backgrounds quite different to my own, I was challenged to look at points of view and realities that I may have dismissed otherwise.

2.    Encouraging conversation – The online wiki naturally encourages students to collaborate and discuss, although I’ll share some thoughts about this later on.

3.    Encouraging independence – Although the task was structured with the thinking hats, we weren’t told exactly where to go to get our ideas. There was no reading list, and so we each had to go away, think about the topic, come up with sources to back up our assumptions and then present our conclusions. 

4.    Scaffolding higher order thinking skills – I thought the 6 hats achieved this objective nicely. They gave us a structure for considering different perspectives. It also allowed our thinking to be shaped by our peers. We had to think about the ideas they put out there, and perhaps reconsider or be ready to defend our own assertions. The 6 hats also helped organize the ideas ready for further tasks.

SAMR and the Activity

At a first glance, I guess you could say that a wiki is a mere substitution for having a face-to-face conversation, or sending a few emails back and forth. But I think this was more than that. It allowed us to conquer some rather obvious difficulties, namely distance, and it also allowed many of us to participate in the dialogue. You could go into different groups on the wiki and see what a whole range of people had to say. People added links to sources so you could see what they based their opinions on. And a wiki is quite a safe environment, people can post anonymously, they can take time to plan their responses and edit them, they can go away and research matters before posting. On the basis of that, I think we were definitely working in the transformative end of the SAMR model.

Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Activity

Adapted from:

https://juliaec.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/blooms-taxonomy-encouraging-higher-cognitive-thinking-in-primary-school-classrooms/

The task certainly allowed us to demonstrate our understanding and comprehension of the topic, because we had to put our opinions into words that we felt our peers could understand (especially knowing that they would not be able to see our facial expressions, hear our tone etc.). But more than that, it encouraged us to analyse and defend our ideas, to allow our opinions to be shaped by the input of our peers. So I think we achieved some of the analysing, applying and evaluating categories of Bloom’s Taxonomy.

One thing that I found a little disappointing about the activity was the “linear” nature of discussion that eventuated. If you look in the groups (and certainly in my group), each person posted their ideas and that was it. There wasn’t a great deal of discussion, of commenting on each other’s thoughts. I felt that we were on our way to some critical thinking, as defined by Schafersman:

“Critical thinking is also critical inquiry, so such critical thinkers investigate problems, ask questions, pose new answers that challenge the status quo, discover new information that can be used for good or ill, question authorities and traditional beliefs, challenge received dogmas and doctrines,”

 (Schafersman, 1991)

through using such a wide range of perspectives to formulate and synthesise our ideas, to investigate the problem. But I felt that we didn’t really fully achieve critical inquiry. We didn’t question or defend.

Source: http://debonoshats.wikispaces.com/Group+5

I think part of this is a result of time constraints. But in the classroom, learners would benefit more from the task if there was scaffolding in place to allow greater discussion. I've added my ideas on this to the diagram of Bloom's Taxonomy above. For example, a follow up could be to weed out duplicate ideas. In each group, I saw a lot of this. This may have been because we each put our ideas into a Word document first and then cut and pasted them in. This meant that many of us added our ideas before we had read what was already there.

Another useful activity would be to have students prioritise the ideas they came up with. This touches further on the evaluate and create categories of Bloom’s taxonomy. If students have to create a list of their top 5 responses, they will naturally have to engage in further debate, defend their reasoning and make judgements as to what ideas stay and which are discarded.  If time were a concern, perhaps each group could be assigned just one colour hat to complete this task for. Then groups could create a poster or some other means of sharing their compilation with the other groups.

Final Thoughts
 Because we personally experienced the use of a wiki as a learning tool, I feel that I have a better understanding of how they can be successfully used in a classroom setting. I summarised my thoughts on scaffolding wiki learning experiences below.

1. Other ways to scaffold a wiki (6 hats is great, are there any other tools?)

 2. How to create my own wiki

Oh and finally, I’m really sorry Gary Glossop! Despite all my care, it seems that I deleted some of his comments in our group wiki. He was very forgiving though.

References

TLRP’s evidence-informed pedagogic principles http://www.tlrp.org/themes/themes/tenprinciples.html

Retrieved March 14, 2015

https://juliaec.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/blooms-taxonomy-encouraging-higher-cognitive-thinking-in-primary-school-classrooms/ Retrieved March 15, 2015

Puentedura, R. (2014) SAMR and Bloom's Taxonomy: Assembling the Puzzle

https://www.graphite.org/blog/samr-and-blooms-taxonomy-assembling-the-puzzle

Retrieved March 16, 2015

 Schafersman, S. D. (1991) An Introduction to Critical Thinking http://facultycenter.ischool.syr.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Critical-Thinking.pdf

Retrieved March 18, 2015

Relationships between Bloom’s & SAMR

Bloom’s and SAMR

When it comes to lower level thinking skills (remembering and understanding in Bloom’s Taxonomy), the use ICTs doesn’t provide much bang for your buck. And I can see why the use of ICTs would be more appropriate for extended tasks and high order thinking skills like analysing, evaluating and creating. But over the past few weeks, I have watched my husband struggle to teach our 4 year old to write in Japanese. She happily goes off to school each day and comes home having mastered yet another letter of the alphabet. But she was steadfast in her refusal to try to learn to write in Japanese. He was getting pretty depressed by the whole thing, and I was following closely because I could see that I would probably face the same issues (hopefully with a few less tantrums) when I enter a classroom filled with Year 7 students who have been told they have to learn Japanese.

But last weekend, there came a break through. He found an ipad game that helps kids learn to recognise and write hiragana (Japanese script). It’s really only Substitution in the SAMR model, it replaces a pen and paper and some flash cards. But it was like a magic wand as far as our four year old was concerned. Now she asks him if they can do some learning!

So I think there is a place for the lower levels of the SAMR technology integrations: Substitution and Augmentation. And I certainly think that neither Bloom’s Taxonomy or the SAMR Model necessarily have to be followed in a rigidly linear fashion when planning lessons. Even in the final stages of complex task involving the creation of new materials, students still might want to use an online dictionary to look something up.

Diagramming Bloom’s and SAMR

Adapted from:

https://juliaec.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/blooms-taxonomy-encouraging-higher-cognitive-thinking-in-primary-school-classrooms/

and

http://www.hippasus.com/rrpweblog/

Bloom’s and SAMR in Practice

In order to organize my thoughts on how Bloom’s taxonomy and the SAMR model relate, I designed some ICT activities for a Japanese classroom where students are learning about everyday life in Japan.

Key words: match, name, list, label, recognise, know, identify

Students view youtube videos about everyday life in Japan. 

Key words: explain, give examples, estimate, infer, extends

Students look at blogs written by people living in Japan, and interact with them. They make lists of similarities and differences between their own daily lives and the lives of people living in Japan. Students use online dictionaries to look up any Japanese words that come up which they don’t yet know.

Key words: compare, contrast, diagram, create

Students create a video (video camera, Moviemaker or Ulead software to edit) about a day in their own personal lives, keeping in mind what they have learnt about life in Japan and choosing things that therefore might be of interest to someone in Japan.

Key words: create, compare, contrast, critique, defend, compile, explain

Students share their videos in an online classroom with students in Japan, who in turn share their own videos. They compare life in Japan and Australia. They comment on the videos and discuss why they chose to include the things they did.

In this particular case, the activities did follow quite a linear path from knowledge and understanding through to complex thinking for creation and evaluation.

References

http://www.schrockguide.net/samr.html

https://juliaec.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/blooms-taxonomy-encouraging-higher-cognitive-thinking-in-primary-school-classrooms/

http://www.hippasus.com/rrpweblog/