Instructional Design Project Reflection One

You are at the mid-point of your proposal preparation, so it is time to reflect on the steps you have journeyed through.  

Background on the Project

We are going to include more technology tools this year during our class reading of The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. Novel studies in my classroom have historically used more traditional tools and basic technology. Discussions, questions with answers, quizzes, and essay writing comprised the bulk of assessment. Most of these things had moved from paper and pencil tasks to a digital version, but the type of work was the same. This year I  am using a HyperDoc to plan a research project for the final assessment. Students will relate the theme of the book to a research topic. They will study that topic and then create a presentation (video, movie trailer, interview, or possibly document) to demonstrate their understanding of both the book themes and their supplemental research. 

How Has the Process Been?

This process has been interesting for a few reasons. First, the discussions with my fellow teachers were interesting. Generally speaking, all are fairly tech-savvy and use our student chromebooks with regularity. These teachers are comfortable with basic levels of technology, attend our yearly school-run tech camp program and and are generally people I  felt would be interested in increasing their use of technology to achieve greater student learning in more creative, student-centered ways. These teachers are not opposed to what I am creating and suggesting we try to implement, but they are skeptical about their ability to incorporate it. There are concerns that the benefits will not be great enough to justify  the amount of time and effort needed to implement it into the classroom. Going forward, there are also concerns about the amount of time it would take to prepare similar units for other grades and novels. There are also justified concerns about student behavior in some of our classrooms. While I understand these concerns and am sympathetic to them, I was quite surprised that these teachers were so fully satisfied with their current level of technology inclusion, and that they weren’t all that interested in working through these issues.

Second, this project has challenged me to not only just think beyond, but to actually move beyond my comfort zone with student technology use in the classroom. I am doing this project mostly alone. It would be great to have had a partner teacher, but that’s not in the cards right now. I  am going to be the model and the lead for the building. Hopefully it works well, and we’ll be a positive example for others to follow. But it’s a little scary because I ‘ve not done a lot of work with video. I  can usually figure it out, but I like to be prepared for all eventualities in my lesson planning. I don’t like to waste time. This project, these readings, and this class has reminded me that ‘learning as we go’ is still learning for students. I  don’t want our class time wasted, but problem solving tech issues and figuring out how to produce a product is also valuable. I  just need to remember that students shouldn’t be looking to me as the answer to all their questions. They need to lean on and learn from each other to ignite their constructivist learning. 

Challenges

The biggest challenge that I  have had during this project is that I  am always reshaping the focus and resizing the scope of my project as we learn more. I  started with a very broad idea that incorporated predominantly substitution and modification type tasks.  As we’ve learned more about social constructivist theory and the benefits it brings to student learning, I have shifted my project to focus primarily on activities and instruction that support this theory. I'm constantly reworking the ideas, setup, resources, and directions in my head.

Looking Forward

I  am looking forward to teaching this project. I am optimistic that it's going to be a great experience for students, and that they will really demonstrate their knowledge and understanding in a creative way that I would never have considered. I believe that I can set up parameters and structure the assignment in a manner that helps students immerse themselves in the process and develop a rich final product. However, this type of creative technology usage is not something that I  have much experience with, so I am also nervous. I have a really great class this year though, and it’s a good group to try new things with so I  am excited that we are going to learn together.

This is also the type of learning, unit creation, and technology usage that  I have set as one of my own professional goals. Once I get comfortable doing this type of work on my own, I  will also be able to use this experience to guide other teachers in our building toward using these collaborative, creative tech tools to generate  content driven instruction and assessment. This a big part of my future role in the building.

The Best Part

I  have taught The Outsiders  for years, and I ‘ve never particularly loved it. In my opinion, the writing is sub-par, the vocabulary is ostentatious (oh, there’s some irony for you), and the themes are cliche. However, the students love it and my colleague loves it. So I  teach it. This project has made me excited to teach the book this year. I ‘m looking forward to having a better plan and more in-depth objectives and assessment. This project has increased my investment and interest in the novel, something that my previous teaching lacked.

The Worst Part

There have been some disappointments in this process as I  stated above, but I haven’t had any truly negative experiences. 

Technology Specialist as Instructional Designer

The idea of the technology specialist as an instructional designer gives me a lot of ideas and hope for the future of my school. Currently, as the part-time instructional technology coach there isn’t the time (on my side or the classroom teachers) to approach our technology integration is such a systematic way. We are integrating based on what we feel capable of, what looks fun or interesting, and what we can do easily without much planning or prep time. Teachers are overwhelmed and always juggling new expectations; it’s difficult to ask for time to integrate one more thing into their classrooms. This piecemeal approach has been slow and isn’t resulting in the type of tech use and teaching that we ultimately want to see. The idea of using instructional design and working on tech integration from a top-down, wide lens approach makes sense and reaffirms my belief that tackling units rather than individual lessons or skills for tech integration is a better long-term approach. As my role grows into a full-time position, this idea will provide a more comprehensive approach and make the outcome more valuable for not just me, but also the classroom teacher.

Looking Back, Looking Ahead

The Best Take Aways

I have learned a tremendous amount from this class and have already starting many of the new sites, apps and resources into practice in my classroom and in the lessons I am making to help the teachers in my school. The most frequent new tool I have used is Flipgrid. I started studying how to use video in the classroom in Week 2 when I started making my presentation on Flipped Learning and then continued it in Week 6 when we took an app into the classroom. Since this time we have started using Flipgrid at least once a week for something. I am still working on managing the response time. Students are working to lengthen their responses, but it's getting better.  

The other resource that I am loving was something I found when we did our project with Twitter.  While I am still not a huge fan of posting on Twitter, I have definitely found a number of great resources by following people there, particularly the Google Teacher Tribe (GTT) Podcast. I listen to it each week on the way to work and then follow up with all their resources online. I'm considering trying to start a "podcast club" at my school, similar to a book club where we all listen to the GTT podcast and then meet to talk about what we like and how we could use the ideas in class.   I also found the Twitter chat surprisingly fun and helpful. I think I will definitely follow one of those again. 

What's Changed?

I think that I have made a lot of personal growth and gained a ton of knowledge because of this class. It has definitely opened me to new experiences and encouraged me to try new things in the classroom. It has been great to learn about some new websites and apps that I wasn't familiar with and also to see how other people have used them. I am still really excited to find ways to start incorporating blogging, podcasts, and more video into the classroom. I have lots of ideas about how to help bring some of our big traditional school projects to the 21st century.  

What's Stayed The Same?

I am not sure that I have grown quite as much in my sharing side. I am still hesitant to share on social media and prefer to maintain a small digital footprint. However, I am taking into account the argument that the absence of a professional digital footprint isn't necessarily a good thing. I'm still not convinced I plan to put a lot of information out there publicly, but I am definitely looking at it in a new light, and can see a value to have a professional web presence even if I keep my personal profile limited. 

Tech in School

This class has really helped me a lot in my new position this year. It has exposed me to websites and apps that I didn't know existed, shown me new ways to think about student learning, and really helped me to try to move my teaching to a new level. In Week 2 I analyzed the SAMR model and compared my teaching. At the time I put myself solidly in the Augmentation level, but I think I am definitely moving more into the Modification level, and part of my new job has me really helping teacher to do the same thing. They are much more comfortable moving from S to A to M when there is someone there to help them. I was nervous at first about this class and this position, but the last eight weeks have been really exciting and interesting to me, and made me really happy that I am embarking on this new career path. 

Active Learning Reflection

Padlet Image Source
by L. Gibbons

This assignment was incredibly interesting to me because I so enjoyed reading the blog we were assigned to analyze. This blog was written by a 9 year old Chicago boy to his classmates while he lived on location in Toronto to film a movie. He shared many of his experiences about life in Toronto, filming a movie, and attending school in a trailer on set.  

As students, our focus was supposed to be on analyzing the Active Learning traits that were happening in the blog exchange. But Max's story so interesting to me that I found myself just lost in his story. I found myself continuing to research his story, looking up the history of his family, following links to research facilities he worked with, and researching the disease his character had. I read his story, and then followed my own related interests to learn more based on what I had read. My experience with his blog is the very experience teachers hope to bring about by engaging students in active learning. 

Active Learning

Active learning is defined as an approach to instruction that focuses on student-centered learning. Students are asked to engage in the learning process and take an active role in their own learning as opposed to the more passive role that you find in a more 'traditional' classroom. In Active Learning, students engage in more active modes of learning including lessons that are inquiry based, collaborative, reflective, self-assessed, relevant and generally engaging to students. 

Our Padlet Assignment

While my experience with Max's blog was an example of active learning, my continuing research wasn't the task we were assigned. We were asked to analyze the blog for its active learning properties and write about it using padlet. You can see my padlet in the image below or by following the link. The blog illustrates several aspects of active learning, particularly for Max the writer of the blog. First, it's an interactive activity. Max writes a post and his classmates and teachers respond. The writers are predominantly students, although comments were moderated by a teacher. There is some group discussion, but unfortunately, Max doesn't appear to respond to the comments left by his peers often. Within the comments students were able to connect with Max's time in Toronto by sharing their own experiences with the area. Several students posted comments about people they knew in Toronto or about connections they had to his experiences. 

This blog is certainly an outstanding example of student centered work and student reflection.  There is a lot reflection by Max on his activities, experiences, and learning process while on the movie set. Some of these things are related to his schoolwork, but most are related to the research he conducts to prepare for his role. He immerses himself in the medical world by meeting with real-world patients, doctors, and researchers to study and learn. He travels to their professional environments to observe, interview, and discuss the areas he is interested in and needs to learn more about. He learns a tremendous amount in this way and it furthers his interest in science and also film-making. 

Padlet Created by L. Gibbons
Image Source

Is Active Learning Needed?

Having students engage in active learning should be a part of the classroom. I don't believe that all lessons need to be student-centered to have a successful classroom, but to achieve a balance and prepare students for their future, active learning certainly has a role. 

The avenues and mediums for engaging students in active learning have changed in recent years, but overall this is not a new idea. Technology has made it easier to develop lessons that are student-centered and inquiry oriented, but these philosophy has been a part of teacher training for many decades. 

In my classrooms, I have used many simple tasks that help students engage with learning by collaborating and communicating. We use the 'Question' feature in Google Classroom. With these questions students are asked to provide their own response and then also comment on others' from the class. I also recently discovered the polling feature of the 'Question' area and I think that would be a great way to quickly find out where students' interest lie. I use padlet to gauge what students already know (the K, of a KWL) and to spark discussion before beginning a lesson. We can come together at the end to record what we've learned new as well. Students also use the share feature on Google docs to collaborate on group projects, peer edit papers, and to solicit my feedback.  Just this past week, I have begun working with video in the classroom. Students are recording themselves conducting their science experiments, and then they are sharing them with the class and uploading them to Google Slides. This is has been far more engaging to students than the traditional tri-fold board they used to complete for science fair. 

I have not moved into the world of student blogs or websites yet. I began looking at ways to incorporate these areas over the summer, possibly starting with digital portfolios for students, but haven't found the time to introduce or manage them yet. Student portfolios is a goal for next year though. Students will keep their work organized digitally and be able to reflect back on assignments and see their own growth.  It is a good opportunity for students to reflect on their own learning, watch their own progress, and determine areas of strength and weakness. 

On a more professional note, I'd like to also create a site that would organize all our digital resources for the staff at my school. It would help people know what is available to them, but also be a way for staff to reflect on how much/which avenues of technology are they actively incorporating into their classrooms, and where they have room to grow as well.