RUNNING HEAD: TAT2 Task 1: Integration Design TAT2 Task 1: Integration Design Charles Rich March 26, 2017 A Written Project Presented to the Faculty of the Teachers College of Western Governors University
TAT2 Task 1: Integration Design 2 TAT2 Task 1: Integration Design This instructional unit addresses shortcomings in educational technology training and will provide teachers with useful training and online resources they can use to meet the requirements for the use of technology in our workplace. Due to scheduling limitations and availability of resources each of the lessons in this unit will be designed to be either delivered in a one-hour In-Service Training (IST) or at the teachers own pace in their classrooms. Instructional Goal Given effective training and or job aids, teachers at DLIELC will integrate technology in their classroom and demonstrate their proficiency in it when asked or on a yearly review by their supervisor. Instructional Objectives The following is a list of instructional objectives used in this unit plan: Performance Objective 1: Given an Air Force computer with intranet access teachers will demonstrate their ability to access the AF e-learning Portal and enroll in a course of study. Performance Objective 2: Given an Air Force computer with intranet access and a link to SharePoint teachers will demonstrate their ability to use the application to share resources. Performance Objective 3: Given an Air Force computer with.edu access and a Smart Board teachers will explore learning resources and reflect on their ability to use the Smart Board effectively. Performance Objective 4: Given articles on the effective use of technology in an educational environment teachers will work together to develop a working definition of the effective use of technology at DLIELC. Performance Objective 5: Given a.mil computer, YouTube, and the lesson or unit objectives from
TAT2 Task 1: Integration Design 3 one of our books teachers will demonstrate their ability to find videos that align well with the objectives. Audience Our teaching staff is represented by individuals from very diverse cultural and professional backgrounds. In some cases English may be an instructor's second language. Many other are married to foreign language speakers and may also speak a second language themselves. All are required to have a Master's degree or equivalent experience in ESL or a related field, but experiences and philosophies vary quite a lot. Just as our teachers have differing experience and training in ESL, so too they have different levels of skill in dealing with technology in the classroom. The instances I have seen run the gamut from teachers who are not comfortable at all with technology and would probably rather stick to using a whiteboard to others who are totally self-sufficient and not afraid to hack a problem. Instructional Sequence This unit consists of the following five lessons: Air Force e-learning This lesson introduces teachers to the Air Force e-learning (AF e-learning) system and is three hours in length with an hour of instruction and approximately two hours of selfpaced exploration of an online course provided by Air Force e-learning. SharePoint Basics This lesson will introduce teachers to the SharePoint portal on our intranet that allows them to share files, ideas, and other resources. The lesson consists of an hour of classroom instruction or teachers may opt to view a PowerPoint presentation if they are unable to attend an IST. Exploring the Smart Board In this lesson teachers will be shown how to access e-learning resources on the Smart Boards used in our classrooms to learn how to use the boards more
TAT2 Task 1: Integration Design 4 effectively. The lesson is a more informal exploration and discussion of the Smart Board and available resources and is one hour in length. Seminar/Focus Group: The Effective Use of Technology in the Classroom This lesson will present teachers with articles that highlight prevailing attitudes on technology in education and effective use of it. The teachers will then be provided with a sample rubric and charged with coming up with a definition of the effective use of technology and will be asked to create basic guidelines or our own rubric for implementation. The lesson is two hours in length including an hour for group discussion and collaboration on defining the effective use of technology in our organization. Aligning Videos with Lesson or Unit Objectives In this lesson we will discuss how to choose videos that contribute to student understanding of a topic taught in our books and how to align the videos with unit objectives. The lesson is scheduled to last one hour. Overall these lessons comprise eight hours of learning, some will be lead by a course instructor, others are self-paced on a classroom computer. Most lessons follow a basic sequence containing a pre-instructional activity, content presentation, learner participation, assessment, and follow-through activities. Instructional Theories and Designs The instructional design for this unit was the Dick and Carey five step instructional component model. Each lesson was broken down into pre-instructional activities, content presentation, learner participation, assessment, and follow-through activities sections. Instructional Strategies In most cases the instructional strategies were based on constructivist theory. Our primary emphasis at DLIELC is teaching English for Specific Purposes (ESP) to foreign military officers and enlisted, most of whom are on their way to follow-on training at various military facilities in the
TAT2 Task 1: Integration Design 5 US. Most already speak English fairly well but need to learn English specific to their job field. Our focus is primarily on student centered instruction, which is constructivist in nature. It makes sense that given our form of classroom delivery that our teaching staff would be most comfortable with lessons and exercises where they are asked to construct meaning for themselves. In many cases teachers are being asked to work together to come to a consensus or to create something together. Otherwise teachers are told where to find information (a sort of cognitive approach) then told to create something with that knowledge (a more constructivist approach). In that sense you could call some of the lessons blended learning. Materials Materials provided for this course will include either an interactive presentation or printed exercise provided by the instructor. Interactive materials will be made accessible on the domains they pertain to (.mil or.edu) for later use or reference. Resources For In Service Training (IST) sessions needs include IT equipment to include a PC or laptop and an interactive Smart Board. Most likely these sessions will be conducted in our larger presentation classroom or a computer lab depending on the number of attendees. Tutorials and online presentations will be included for some of the lessons and will enable teachers to learn at their own pace on their classroom computers and when it fits their schedule. Some of our lessons pertain to our.mil, or military provided desktop computers and others apply to the.edu or classroom instructional laptops connected to a Smart Board. Assessments Assessment in these lessons may prove difficult due to a number of factors. This unit of instruction is broken down into lessons that can be taught in an hour or two due to the lack of training time available for teachers.
TAT2 Task 1: Integration Design 6 These lessons are mostly in the intellectual skills and attitudinal domains, making them a bit difficult to evaluate. Because this is peer instruction participants are not subject to grading or evaluation by the trainer. They are, however, expected to apply some of these skills in their daily work and are rated yearly by their supervisors on these abilities. Teachers are asked to complete tasks or create a product after completion of some of these lessons. In the AF E-Learning lesson teachers are asked to enroll in a course or read an E- Book and report on the results of that. Upon completion of the SharePoint basics lesson teachers are asked to set up their SharePoint site and post a document to it to show they were successful In the Effective Use of Technology in the Classroom seminar teachers are asked as a group to come up with a working definition of the effective use of technology and/or establish a rubric to evaluate teachers' effective use of technology in the classroom. The lesson on Exploring the Smart Board asks teachers to complete pre and post assessments to achieve couple of goals; The pre-assessment questions allow the instructor to establish teachers' level of use and understanding, but they also help form some expectations in the minds of the participants that will guide the exploration of the materials. The post test is intended as reflection, but also being that this lesson is partially in the attitudinal domain it aims to encourage teachers to do more with their boards. The last lesson, Aligning videos with lesson or unit objectives, asks teachers to evaluate each others choices of video and decide whether they align with unit objectives. As this is a fairly
TAT2 Task 1: Integration Design 7 subjective evaluation it will likely only build awareness and spark debate on what is aligned or appropriate. Technology Analysis of Five New Technologies The tables below provide information on five technologies that can possibly be integrated into this unit of instruction. Camtasia Description Support Meaningful Learning This software allows for the creation of videos and screen recordings. I like to say that we live in a YouTube world where students and some teachers prefer to get their information from three minute videos. This tools allows teachers to create short presentations that are more like a video podcast (Vodcast) that students are likely to find more engaging. Location in Plan of Instruction Camtasia could be used in the place of some of the PowerPoint instruction in the plan. Tool for Teaching or Tool for Learning? Benefits This tool is primarily one for teaching. It allows the teacher to deliver content without having to be in a classroom setting. Presentations created in this software tend to be more interactive and palatable than a stock PowerPoint presentation. It s better to be able to show a student how to do something on their computer than to tell them and show a static slide or the result. The software also allows for some embedded content like quizzes and interactive activities. Drawbacks The initial $200 cost of the software can be off-putting to those who don t want to invest their own money in presentation software and it can not be installed on government computers, which means the work has to be done on privately owned computers. Longer presentations can end up being very large and difficult to provide to consumers through email or online. Most video sites, like YouTube, have limits on how big or how long videos
TAT2 Task 1: Integration Design 8 can be. The software supports a limited number of output formats and is really designed to upload videos to their own service or to YouTube. Camtasia can also be a bit buggy at times, so patience is sometimes required. Google Office Tools (Docs, Slides, Sheets) Description Support Meaningful Learning Google offers a number of collaborative tools teachers can use for class projects. Google s online offering are basically office tools on steroids. It s especially helpful in that multiple people can edit a document, spreadsheet, or slide show at same time and see the changes as they happen. It support meaningful collaboration, rather than meaningful learning. The learning comes from the content that is produced. Location in Plan of Instruction These tools lend themselves well to the seminar on effective use of technology in the classroom. The source readings and sample rubrics could be posted to Google Docs and shared with participants and the documents they produce would end up there as well. These products could either be shared with all teachers or converted to Word documents and saved on our intranet. Tool for Teaching or Tool for Learning? Benefits Drawbacks This tool supports both the teaching and learning domains. It really depends on how you use the tool, whether you are presenting or creating information. The most noticeable benefit of this tools is how quickly information comes together. I have used it on group projects before and papers and presentations seem to build themselves. Participants are generally able to collaborate better and come up with a more polished product this way than if they each did their own portions and pushed them together in the end. The main drawback is getting participants together in a group,
TAT2 Task 1: Integration Design 9 logged into Google, and collaborating. Rubistar Description Support Meaningful Learning Rubistar is a free online tool to help teachers create quality rubrics. This tool makes the creation of rubrics easy and certainly teachers can learn more about what makes an effective rubric by viewing examples in the site s database. Location in Plan of Instruction This tool will be useful for participants in the seminar on effective use of technology in the classroom. In that seminar they are asked to create a rubric for the use of technology at DLIELC. This online tool will allow for fast prototyping/creation of the rubric. There is even a good example of such a rubric already on the site called Elements of Effective Educational Technology. Tool for Teaching or Tool for Learning? Benefits Drawbacks This tool is designed for teaching. This tool allows teachers to get down to the creation of a rubric without having to worry about the format and creates a printable result. The only drawback I can see is that once you publish your rubric it becomes public and searchable. One would have to be aware of the effects of this on proprietary or sensitive information. According to the sight tutorial there are ways to make rubrics for print only and not saved. Smart Exchange Description Support Meaningful Learning This website is a collection of Smart Board activities and lessons created by other teachers. Smart Boards encourage students to interact with content and the activities enhance learning. Many of our teachers use their boards to show videos and present bigger versions of handouts; Few use them
TAT2 Task 1: Integration Design 10 as a manipulative/interactive tool. Location in Plan of Instruction The obvious use for this site is to show examples in the lesson Exploring the Smart Board. Tool for Teaching or Tool for Learning? Benefits Drawbacks This is initially a tool for learning how a Smart Board can be used and those who master it would use it for teaching. The Smart Board could be a very powerful tool if used properly. Most of us have not been shown what is possible. This site could be the stepping stone teachers need to use the equipment at a higher level. The drawback of this site is that many of the activities there are for younger children and we teach adults. It might be harder to get teachers interested in the resource if they don t understand how they can apply the techniques they see used there on their own boards. SchoolTube/TeacherTube Description Support Meaningful Learning These two online resources do basically the same thing and that is they allow teachers to share videos with their students in a classroom setting or environment. YouTube has millions of videos online, many of which are educational. SchoolTube and TeacherTube allow teachers to collect relevant videos or self-created video presentations in one place. Location in Plan of Instruction These sites will be explored in the Aligning Videos with Lesson or Unit Objectives lesson. Tool for Teaching or Tool for Learning? Benefits This is a teaching tool instructors can use to deliver video learning content to their students. The benefit of these sites is that there are already a number of videos on various topics collected there and most have already been evaluated and aligned with common core curriculum. While we don t use common core the standards applied to these materials ensure they are better thought out and filtered than on YouTube. Teachers can also use these sites to provide and evaluate their own materials.
TAT2 Task 1: Integration Design 11 Drawbacks I have not experimented with SchoolTube yet, but I am a TeacherTube member and have my own classroom there. Unfortunately to truly benefit from all of the features on TeacherTube you have to be a paying subscriber. I have also had such difficulty posting videos to TeacherTube in the past that I broke down and put them on YouTube anyway. This and the fact that videos and lessons can be rejected and removed from your collection if they don t properly align with common core would turn a few of our teachers off. The process should be easier than posting to YouTube, not more of a hassle. I am hopeful that SchoolTube does not suffer from the same issues. Technologies Chosen Of the five technologies listed above I have chosen three that I will use with this unit, Teacher Tube/School Tube, Rubistar, and Smart Exchange. Following is a brief discussion of each of these. I chose to use Teacher Tube/ School Tube because these provide good educational examples that are well organized and aligned to educational standards, unlike YouTube which tends to be a more general and not necessarily evaluated for its educational merits. Additionally, these sites allow teachers to post their own videos and to create and manage playlists they can share with their students. I included Rubistar because in the seminar/focus group I ask teachers to create a rubric for the use of educational technology in our organization and I don t want them to have to think about the format of the rubric as much as I want them to think about its content. I haven t worked with this tool before and there may be some issues I am not aware of, but a quick test of the application seemed to do what I wanted it to. There also just happens to be a rubric already on Rubistar discussing the issue at hand which may give us something to build off of.
TAT2 Task 1: Integration Design 12 The only drawback I see to using this tool is that once the rubric is published it becomes public and searchable. As long as our teachers are careful not to include any sensitive information then that shouldn t be a problem. Smart Exchange is a public forum provided by the manufacturer of our Smart Boards as a place for teachers to share activities. If teachers know where this is and spend some time looking through the lessons there I am sure they can find examples they can modify and use in their classes. Why reinvent the wheel? The disadvantage of Smart Exchange is that there aren t as many examples on the forum as one might expect. I guess teachers are just too busy to log in and share their lessons online. There are enough to get started though. Appropriateness of Technologies Camtasia is appropriate as an attention grabber. We have become kind of conditioned to groan and settle in for a boring hour every time someone pops a PowerPoint up on the screen. But if you ask a student to look up information they often run straight to YouTube to show you what it is they are thinking. On returning from break I often see half the class on their phones and most are watching YouTube videos. I have used other tools to create videos and vodcasts in the past and have had students ask me questions about the video they saw on YouTube not even realizing it was one of mine. If we want to engage our students we need to do so on their level, not with static slides or overhead projectors. Rubistar is appropriate because of its simplicity. The definition of a good tool is one that doesn t seem tool-like. As things get more complicated we generally like using them less. Rubistar makes a seemingly difficult task easier and will make teachers more likely to achieve the objectives in the time allotted.
TAT2 Task 1: Integration Design 13 Finally, Smart Exchange is appropriate because it is designed for Smart Board users and the lessons there are designed by teachers who face a lot of the same challenges we do. It is challenging enough for some of our teachers to create Smart Board materials and hard to get motivated to do so at times. Given examples and a place to start the task can only get easier. I ll be the first to admit that most of the activities I use are recycled or re-purposed lessons found elsewhere. There are only so many hours in the day and I like teaching more than I like preparing to teach.
TAT2 Task 1: Integration Design 14 References About Google - Products. (n.d.). Retrieved December 10, 2016, from https://www.google.com/intl/en/about/products/ Camtasia. (n.d.). Retrieved December 10, 2016, from http://discover.techsmith.com/camtasiabrand-desktop/?gclid=cj0keqia7k7cbrcrwt26v5uhs98beiqa0jzszzg2xjy rm1llorndtuiv9jpzvcw0vrqixy6jgtpf5h0aaviq8p8haq Elements of Effective Educational Technology. (2005). Retrieved December 10, 2016, from http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php?screen=showrubric&rubric_id=1123989& Lesson plans and resources for your SMART Board - SMART Exchange. (n.d.). Retrieved December 10, 2016, from http://exchange.smarttech.com/index.html#tab=0 RubiStar Home. (n.d.). Retrieved December 10, 2016, from http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php SchoolTube. (n.d.). Retrieved December 10, 2016, from http://www.schooltube.com/ TeacherTube.com. (n.d.). TeacherTube. Retrieved December 10, 2016, from http://www.teachertube.com/