Final Project

Zachary Webb
EDT5410
June 23, 2009

Final Synthesis Project
Lesson Planning with Online Telecommunication Tools

Target Audience-

The target audience for this lesson plan is both 7th and 8th grade science students at Timberland Charter Academy. The students that would be receiving this lesson are both male and female and are between the ages of 12-15. They have had experience working with graphs on computers as well as on calculators and paper. Many students in this population have special education needs which are not accommodated by an aide. There are anywhere from 18-22 students per science class with 4 classes per day. This lesson would be taught to all science classes. The reason why I chose this age group is because that is exactly what I teach on a daily basis and I wanted to create a lesson that I could connect with and potentially use.

Context-

This lesson is designed to be executed in a charter school environment. I teach at Timberland Charter Academy which is a public charter school located in Muskegon, Michigan. Timberland accommodates approximately 550 students in grades K-8. The school is fairly new, opened in 1998 and is chartered by Grand Valley State University. There is no tuition to attend this school however; students are required to wear uniforms. There is a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds of students that attend Timberland. At times, it can be challenging to grasp the interest of and appease all.

Learning Objectives-

After this lesson, students should be able to interpret data from a spreadsheet and create a graph that corresponds with the data collected. Students will have learned that they can use online tools, such as SUMO Paint to create graphs, they can save them to their student ID numbers, and they can share them with friends. This is an important objective to learn because scientists collect, analyze, and interpret data on a regular basis. This is also an area where many students struggle on the MEAP. Students need to be familiar with various ways to create graphs. With this assignment, students will be able to do just that with also adding a bit of their personality into the creation of their graph.

Detailed Description of Lesson-

o The online tools that will be used in this lesson are Google Docs (forms specifically) and SUMO Paint. Google forms are a way to email people of interest and ask them a question or various questions using a questionnaire form. You can specify what format of the question you would like the participant to see—multiple choice, yes/no, or short answer. Google Docs will then tally up the results in a spreadsheet format. The other online tool, SUMO Paint is very similar to the Microsoft Paint application, but has many more features. Students would then interpret the data collected from the spreadsheet and create a graph on SUMO Paint. Students really have the ability to get creative with this because there are so many different ways to create the graph using paint. There are many different brushes to use, filters, colors, and adjustments to make. What is so great about both of these online tools is that they are absolutely free!
o As the instructor I would use the Google Docs to create a questionnaire to email students: What are your summer plans? The results would be tallied in a Google Docs spreadsheet and we would discuss them as a class. After our discussion and interpretation of the results, students would then be responsible for creating a graph to display these results using SUMO Paint. As a brief tutorial I would use the EMLO cart to guide students through a “how to use SUMO Paint.” Many students are already familiar with Microsoft Paint and Photoshop and I would be confident that they would know exactly what I expected of them. After students were completed with their graphs, they would save them to their student ID numbers on the network and/or print their graphs. Students would have opportunities to share their work and/or display it in the classroom.

Artifact-

The artifact I chose to share is an example of what a student may create as their graph using SUMO Paint. What is so great about SUMO Paint is that you can save your work directly to your computer or to a free SUMO account. Check out my blog for the link to this artifact or click here for a direct link.
http://z1webb1.blogspot.com/

http://www.sumo.fi/files/images/aideddzdpfegihgm.png

Justification-

When recalling the concept of Computer Imagination from week 2, I feel as though the incorporation of online tools as opposed to low-tech alternatives are the way of the future. The online tools that I chose to document in this assignment appeal to students and teachers. Students are interested in this type of assignment because they can use the technology to get creative and show how they are different from others. It also appeals to teachers because there are not necessarily several print outs to correct. Everything can be kept in a central location. It saves time for the teacher and saves money for the school district. It is also environmentally friendly by eliminating paper waste. I can recollect from Siegal that these tools can create a community of users which means multiple people can access the same information and share ideas. With this type of lesson, students are able to share information, interpret each other’s findings, and grow as learners.

Reviewing Web-Based Applications

Zoho reminded me much of google docs. I have used google docs before at school and Zoho seemed like a very similar application and featured many of the same capacities. Like google, you have to set up an account. From there you can use a word processor, spreadsheet, email, you can create online presentations, and much more. I noticed that Zoho may accommodate better for the business world. I noticed there are several applications for creating business reports and presentations such as projects and invoices. I would highly recommend using either google docs or Zoho to any of my co-workers because it allows for ways to have an online network of tools used in the office. I could see this being beneficial to staff when presenting information that needs to be easily accessed and kept in an organized format. My thinking to more toward professional development days and staff meetings where a presenter can have their information save to Zoho. Zoho is free to use for personal use however, if you are a business that would like to access some of the other features I mentioned before there are varies prices that cover that. Overall, I felt Zoho was very comparable to google docs and would highly recommend to co-workers based on its functionality and cost effectiveness.

I thought that students would really benefit from using SUMO Paint. My students really enjoy creating their own diagrams and illustrations for scientific processes. They like doing this by either freehand or using word/paint docs. SUMO Paint is very similar to the Microsoft Paint application, but has many more features. Some of the features I really liked about SUMO Paint was that you can save to either your computer or a SUMO account. This would be beneficial to use in the classroom because students would not have to set up accounts through SUMO to use the paint application, they could just save to their own student ID numbers. Students really have the ability to get creative with this. There are many different brushes to use, filters, and adjustments to make. I would not only use this in my classroom, but recommend it to co-workers because it really allows students to be creative in their interpretation of what we are learning in the classroom.

Reflective Essay #7

The tangible take-aways that I found to be relevant in Chapter 30 were the two sections on How to Use Audio Effectively in Rich Media and the Use of Cognitive Sources of Motivation. The reason why I chose to reflect on these sections is because I am constantly trying to find new ways to bring out these aspects in my classroom. For instance, incorporating sound into the classroom. Reading is a major target area of improvement in my school. I will often have the students follow along in their textbooks while I play the text on CD. It has been proven that audio narration is more effective than just text alone. The other section that I can relate to and take away from is the Use of Cognitive Sources of Motivation. According to the text, “Cognitive sources of motivation include any instruction strategy that helps learners more readily achieve the instructional goal.” I found the example of organizers as an area that I would like to focus more on in my classroom. It was noted in the text that, “the best way to help learners enjoy a passage is to help them understand it.” To help my students better understand what they are reading in their science textbooks, I need to focus on creating organizers/guided reading alternatives. Luckily there are many options through technology in which I can create these organizers that are clear and easy for students to follow.
The part of Chapter 31 that really made me think, “that’s so cool” was the section on Advanced Performance Tracking. The tight-fitting body suit that can track body movements and give instructions on how to improve your tennis serve was shocking. The system’s ability to track and give feedback can be very useful to not only athletes, but also people who may be disabled physically and are working on physical therapy. If someone is “learning to walk again” the advanced performance bodysuit device could be worn by this person and the computer program would generate advice and feedback for improvement. This type of technological advances can really help people in need. It would be a major breakthrough in the healthcare system. I would have to imagine it would be very expensive, but beneficial.

Week 6

One way that I feel as though my school could learn from what instructional designers do in higher education are distance learning modules. My district, like many others is facing significant budget cut issues. My wife’s district in fact, is considered cutting their alternative education program. If this proposal should go through, there is discussion of offering online courses for these students through distance learning. If this is the case, then there must be a team ready to take on new challenges and potential problems that may occur. Much of this workload will fall into the hands of the current technology instructors of the district.
I feel that I am competent with how communication skills at school. With my place of employment, students are picked up by family members (we do not offer bussing). For this reason, I am often times confronted by parents with issues or I approach parents with problems that are occurring with a particular student. Although I prefer to speak to parents face-to-face, that I not always an option therefore, I use email and telephone. Another area that I feel that I am competent with my position is my lesson planning and organization. My school provides a data base of lesson plans and what GLCE’s they cover. By planning this way, my units are stored on the school’s computer and database. Two areas that I feel that I can improve on are demonstrating effective questioning skills and promoting the retention of knowledge and skills. Sometimes during my lessons I get so caught up in what we are doing, I forget to stop and probe for questions. I learned in my undergrad classes to constantly ask students questions. With that, I also need to continue to go back and assess content that has already been taught and build on that.

Website

http://sites.google.com/site/mrwebbsclasssite

This site is intended for my 7th and 8th grade science students. Here I have created a couple of pages that would assist students with projects we are working on in class. I have also included a few fun gagets such as polls, puzzles, games, clocks, and an online dictionary. I chose to include the clock because I always tease my students about watching the clock. Also I chose to include the online dictionary because students always come across words they are unfamiliar with. The dictionary is a tool for them to look up meanings of words they do not know.

Screencasting

This is a video demonstration of a webquest that I do with my students in regards to health education. The screencasting provides an introduction to the webquest activity students would be exploring individually. I breifly run through what some of the elements are that students would navigate individually.

Reflective Essay #5

I find it noteworthy that legal issues and training play a big role in instructional design/technology. I would never have thought that a lawsuit could result from training. Interesting enough, failure to perform certain mandated tasks can land an employer in that position. I guess the most obvious type of lawsuit that I could see filed against someone in the technological field would be lawsuits involving property rights. I have had friends sued for “stealing” songs from the internet. I could see property rights being an issue in schools due to the fact that students use the internet for information on reports and papers. Often times, I have to remind students to cite or quote all work from their sources. Instructional designers need to aware of these times of laws governing rights and materials. Another aspect of instructional design and technology that I found to be interesting and that I could relate to was the globalization of training. For a corporation to be able to expand its business beyond its typical boundaries it must be able to be compatible with other nations and languages. “Problems and solutions resulting from the use of software in different cultures provide contexts and strategies for designing instruction for different cultures.” There is an entire workforce out there creating software that is accustomed to different cultures. I find this interesting because we have several Spanish speaking students that attend my school. Many times I have to find support and/or adjust their workload due to a language barrier. These students sometimes prefer to read and write in their book using the Spanish glossary/dictionary. Luckily our textbook comes supplied with many ways to aide Spanish speakers. Such tools include online resources that have been recorded in Spanish, printable letters to send home updating parents on content taught in class (Spanish), and like I said before, a Spanish glossary. I find it interesting that it is someone’s job to create these tools for students to expand globalization of training.
One trend that I find interesting in schools is the Step-Up-To-Excellence process. It is “designed for successful or average-performing school systems that want to step up to the next higher performance level. It can also be used with failing or low-performing districts if these districts develop the necessary conditions for successful whole-district change.” What is most interesting to me about this piece is that it can help failing schools by requesting leaders who can act as an entire system, not just a school. These leaders must convince their followers to reshape their thinking. I also thought the strategic leadership team was interesting. I like the fact that it was a small group, no larger than 15 that combined leadership from varies aspects of a school district. Those on the team included the superintendent, one principal and teacher from each grade level. I think this would benefit my school because these people are not responsible for daily work of improvement but to provide leadership for whole-district improvement.