As part of our Mobile Learning activity, Carla, Josh, and I brainstormed apps that can be used to promote each level of Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy.
Applying:
Video Production- Create a video to highlight a process or material learned (CJ)
PowerPoint- Have students create individual slides in small groups to divide up a topic into smaller, more easily applicable pieces. (SS)
Infographic- Put together a graphic explaining the content in lay terms (CJ)
As part of our Mobile Learning activity, Carla, Josh, and I brainstormed apps that can be used to promote each level of Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy.
Understanding:
Lucidchart- Comparing/classifying information from the class using charts such as venn diagrams, mind maps, etc. (CJ)
Pinterest- Create a board with slides of class content for students to add in their own thoughts about each idea/content bullet. (CJ)
Wordle- Create a thought-map of keywords students associate with a topic. The more times a word is listed by students, the bigger it appears in the thought-map. Useful to check where student understanding might be lacking. (SS)
Wolfram-Alpha: Introduce wolfram-alpha as a new search engine for students to use. Extremely academic and intelligent, it is beneficial to both educator and students looking to understand new topics. (JG)
As part of our Mobile Learning activity, Carla, Josh, and I brainstormed apps that can be used to promote each level of Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy.
Remembering:
Poll Everywhere- Ask review questions at the beginning of class related to the material covered from previous sessions. (CJ)
Evernote- Students can create notecards during class to help review for quizzes, exams, etc. (CJ)
Apps for review- Depending on the kind of review needed, there might be an app that contains the information students are trying to remember, such as the characters used in Japanese or Korean alphabets, the elements in the periodic table, or the capitals and names of U.S. states or countries worldwide. (SS)
Calendar – While a simple app that is free on every phone might seem just that, simple, a well maintained calendar is extremely beneficial to a student preparing for classes. Events such as quizzes, tests, etc. can be shared by an educator with their students with relative ease. (JG)
Scott and I worked together to create a synchronous online teaching lesson on MOOCs. We enabled student to peer interaction through the use of breakout rooms in Carmen Connect, in which we encouraged collaboration and working as a group. We asked for student to teacher interaction by checking knowledge at the beginning of our lesson. We had intended for student to content interaction by going through our links to various MOOCs available, but ran out of time. Our media and technology was set up correctly and allowed us to move seamlessly through the lesson. We used the PowerPoint as well as a video and student response to address multiple different learning styles and engage students in active learning.
Student-led Lesson on Video:
Pre-assessment tools/Writing prompts–I had the class list all the words they associate with the topic of video and share them to show the breadth of the topic we would be addressing.
Questioning–Asked discussion questions to foster conversation between all members of the class.
Use a variety of instructional strategies–Instead of simply using a PowerPoint presentation, I also incorporated a number of videos both to give examples and to give the class an entertaining way of understanding the material.
Micro-teaching #1:
Assess content and learning needs of different learners–Scott and I took into consideration what we knew about the class’s backgrounds and interests and used that to create a lesson on MOOCs that would provide valuable examples and information for their needs. Before we started our presentation, we did a knowledge check to see who knew of MOOCs or had taken one before.
Use a variety of instructional strategies–We alternated between a PowerPoint, a video on MOOCs, and individual responses or group discussions.
Group students for group work based on instructional need–We placed the class into two breakout groups and had them address different questions, then allowed the groups to share their thoughts with everyone else when we came back together.
Micro-teaching #2:
Help students develop individual and group learning goals–Narmada and I made sure at the beginning of our presentation to state the learning goal of our lesson on children’s literature and educational psychology. At the end of our lesson, we asked the class to consider how they could use another field of study to teach a difficult concept in their own fields.
Questioning/Student interviews–Through the use of discussion questions we prepared beforehand, we assessed if the class was following on our same train of thought and were able to see how we were using children’s literature to teach them (in a very brief overview) the two psychological concepts.
Student-led Lesson on Video:
For this lesson, I used a PowerPoint presentation that included several videos that I wanted to share with the class. Two of the videos I wanted to share were part of a Prezi which I had linked to within the PowerPoint, but that I was unable to access by clicking during my presentation. I solved this problem by logging into Carmen and loading the Prezi from there. I had no trouble playing the other videos, except for some minor lagging issues that could not have been avoided. I emailed the PowerPoint to myself before class so that I would not have to worry about remembering the file on a jump drive.
Micro-teaching #1:
Scott and I had some technical difficulties when we were trying to get the hang of using Carmen Connect. It ended up being a good thing that our presentation was pushed back, because I had been unable to access the new Connect session at home and I am not sure I would have been able to navigate our presentation without any practice. I later figured out that I could only access the new Connect session through Internet Explorer and not through Mozilla Firefox. Since we ended up with a bit of extra time, Scott and I stayed in the Connect session on the day we had thought we were going to present and he helped me familiarizing myself with the program’s capabilities. Because of this, we were able to smoothly deliver our presentation the next week without any hiccups in our technology usage.
Micro-teaching #2:
Narmada and I decided to each make a video of us reading a picture book to use for our lesson. I was able to make mine easily using the software I had at home, but when we tried to meet to work on Narmada’s together on campus we were stuck without any access to one of the computer labs that has iMovie or Macs. As a result, we began her movie in Windows Movie Maker. There were some strange issues where the pictures she inserted into the video kept showing up on the screen upside down when we put the video on other computers, while they looked correct on her laptop. We had to spend some time converting the file to be able to open it in iMovie because we wanted to be able to fix the upside down images as well as add the background music. However, I am not as familiar with iMovie and we could not figure out how to rotate the image or fade out the music at the end. We ran out of time to access the lab while trying to fix these issues, so instead Narmada sent the files to me and I finished editing the video on my computer at home. Then, on the day of our lesson, I had issues getting the files to upload to my Google Docs account because they were so large. After waiting more than an hour for the upload to complete, it was still unfinished. So instead, I put the files onto a jump drive and got to class early to place them on the desktop of the main computer. After that, there were no more issues with the technology we used. Phew!
Student Led Lesson on Video:
Although I did not put my questions onto slides, I did have the class interact with the topic by asking open-ended questions and facilitating a discussion that incorporated all of our various fields of expertise as well as our interests. One of the activities I asked the class to do with me was to list all of the word associations they have for the term “video”. After our class, I took these lists and I incorporated them into a word map using a website called Wordle. The bigger the word, the more times it was listed by the class.
Micro-teaching #1:
Scott and I included two types of assessment as part of our presentation:
We checked knowledge by having students raise their hands in Carmen Connect (formative assessment), and then we later broke the class into two groups using the breakout feature, and had them complete lists of pros and cons together (summative assessment) that were then brought back together for a whole class discussion. Although we were pressed for time, we did our best to make sure everyone was able to engage with the material.
Micro-Teaching #2:
Narmada and I also included several discussion questions to help the class understand our idea of using children’s literature to teach psychological concepts:
We attempted to do both individual and group assessments during the time we had available.
This was something I had trouble remembering to address even after learning about it in class. I have since gone back over the materials used for each assignment and added sourcing information to give credit where credit is due and included a creative commons license on those materials I don’t mind sharing.
For the final micro-teaching lesson, Narmada and I made sure from the beginning to source everything we used and we included the creative commons attribution license on our PowerPoint so that anyone who happens to find it can use it without needing to contact us for permission. I find the creative commons licenses to be useful when thinking about websites such as Prezi, which allows you to share your presentations with anyone who cares to look at them. It is handy to have a symbol that can be placed on those presentations so that other teachers can use them in their classrooms and edit them if that is something I would like to allow.
When working on the Rainbow Fish video for our final micro-teaching, I ensured that I obtained sounds that were free and marked with the creative commons attribution license. I found freesound.org to be invaluable for this. The pictures were taken directly from the picture book and I did the voice-over myself.
Higher Education settings are predominantly Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), at OSU we are seeing that approximately 85-90% of our students have smartphones. Describe a way for students to use their mobile devices that reach various levels of Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy.
Instructors on any college/university campus can utilize the technology students have on them 24/7. Below we have provided several ways that mobile devices can be used in the class across all levels of Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy. As we were creating this list we started to recognize that some apps can be used at multiple levels of Bloom’s depending on how you ask the students to use their device/app. One obvious issue that instructors/students might face with BYOD is an instance when a student doesn’t have a mobile device of any kind; as we learned from the Katy ISD case study the teachers there simply paired students up when students did not have their own device. I loved how in the one EdTech video, ‘Why Mobile Learning Matters?’ they mention the concept of how instructors can start to facilitate learning in the classroom instead of teaching at the students. This reminds me of a more inquiry based teaching approach to the classroom which I tend to like and can be beneficial for creating lifelong learners. It is important to note that mobile devices should be a support for learning not the entire focus (Abilene Christian University, 2011). (CJ) (SS edits)
Utilizing a BYOD activity in the classroom can be really beneficial, but it can also backfire very easily if the technology being used is unfamiliar or inaccessible to the students. For instance, if a teacher who owns an iPhone wants students to access a certain app, but only a small percentage of students can access it because the majority have a different kind of device that does not have the app available. With large classes, trying to have everyone participate in an activity through BYOD can be really cumbersome–I took a course where we were all supposed to type reactions to videos into a Google document, but with 30+ people typing at the same time, there was trouble finding a free line in which to type. Given the prevalence of smart phones, tablets, and laptop computers amongst students, I think the issue with BYOD is less with access to the technology and more with having an effective means of implementing an activity and monitoring it. One activity that I would love to implement in my classes is a wiki page created by the students. The reason I haven’t done it yet is because I was asked to do this for one of my classes, and it was tedious because instead of a community wiki, we were all building practically identical pages with the same information (more of a blog or personal wiki). It would be challenging to divide up the work in such a way that all students were engaging with all of the material, and yet individuals or small groups were creating different content on the website that linked back to the concepts covered in class. (SS)
One way both educators and students might avoid conflicts mentioned above would be to pre-assign the installation and testing of an app or website before planned class time using the resource to ensure everyone was familiar with it and did not need technological assistance. While being able to provide students with excellent new ways to address learning through their mobile devices is a good thing, we must keep in mind that the 2012 ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology found areas of special concern in relation to student technology use, like the fact that students do not like to use social media for academic-related things. In addition, much like educators, students need to be trained in the use of apps (perhaps not so much the general use of their mobile device). If an educator wants to utilize an app on mobile devices as part of their class, there have to a) be an alternative to the app that anyone can use (otherwise as alluded to above you’re risking the alienation of someone in your class), and b) be prepared to teach everyone proper usage of the app. Not to put the onus entirely on the schools, the individual student has to be prepared for class and if knowing how to use a required or recommended app on their mobile device (should they have one) would be paramount to their success. The main thing it seems as a student to keep in mind when addressing the various levels of Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy is that there are numerous options out there for you to improve your educational life through digital assistance — the key is finding app and resources that work best for you personally and keeping a good regiment of using those apps or online resources on a regular basis. (JG)
Remembering:
Poll Everywhere- Ask review questions at the beginning of class related to the material covered from previous sessions. (CJ)
Evernote- Students can create notecards during class to help review for quizzes, exams, etc. (CJ)
Apps for review- Depending on the kind of review needed, there might be an app that contains the information students are trying to remember, such as the characters used in Japanese or Korean alphabets, the elements in the periodic table, or the capitals and names of U.S. states or countries worldwide. (SS)
Calendar – While a simple app that is free on every phone might seem just that, simple, a well maintained calendar is extremely beneficial to a student preparing for classes. Events such as quizzes, tests, etc. can be shared by an educator with their students with relative ease. (JG)
Understanding:
Lucidchart- Comparing/classifying information from the class using charts such as venn diagrams, mind maps, etc. (CJ)
Pinterest- Create a board with slides of class content for students to add in their own thoughts about each idea/content bullet. (CJ)
Wordle- Create a thought-map of keywords students associate with a topic. The more times a word is listed by students, the bigger it appears in the thought-map. Useful to check where student understanding might be lacking. (SS)
Wolfram-Alpha: Introduce wolfram-alpha as a new search engine for students to use. Extremely academic and intelligent, it is beneficial to both educator and students looking to understand new topics. (JG)
Applying:
Video Production- Create a video to highlight a process or material learned (CJ)
PowerPoint- Have students create individual slides in small groups to divide up a topic into smaller, more easily applicable pieces. (SS)
Infographic- Put together a graphic explaining the content in lay terms (CJ)
Analyzing:
Lucidchart- Organize course concepts, create dichotomous keys, mind-mapping etc. (CJ)
Wordle- Check to see which key concepts or words are sticking in student’s memories, and what new associations they may be making with the content. (SS)
Evaluating:
Discussion Boards- review material and collaborate, hypothesize, etc. on the content delivered (CJ)
Twitter- Limited to 140 characters, so an easy, quick, non-intimidating way of facilitating discussion around a topic and between students. (SS)
Reddit – A private subreddit for a class would allow for the posting of any format of material (youtube, images, documents, etc) and provide a place for evaluation (up or down-voting). (JG)
Creating:
Google Drive/Buckeye Box- have students collaborate together to create presentations, videos, etc. to present content learned in class and teach to the rest of the students (CJ & SS)
Wiki- Have students create a course wiki that arranges the content learned in a logical manner and provides a place for them to look back and review what they have learned, or teach a concept to a fellow classmate. (SS)
Google Docs – As mentioned above it can be very tricky trying to use in a large classroom setting. However, in a small group like ours, it works extremely well for collaborating with colleagues on projects. Use it in concert with Google Drive/BuckeyeBox for student projects. (JG)
Summary:
As you can see we highlighted who thought of each idea as we were brainstorming. I come from a very science and application based curriculum where most of my ideas can be utilized flawlessly in most settings. I could easily see how I could use Susan’s ideas in any of my classes too but my mind didn’t always go in that direction. I think all of these Apps or Online based sites can be utilized in every classroom and should be. I know I need to work harder at addressing vocabulary and reading skills in my courses so students are working across disciplines in my course, just like they will be required to address Common Core standards in their high school teaching. (CJ)
As Carla said, our different backgrounds gave us both a unique perspective, but working together allowed us to see how all of these ideas can be utilized in any classroom. Although I’m more literature based, I still frequently use charts and mapping exercises (among many of Carla’s great ideas) to help students make connections with concepts they might already know. Now that I know the blog website exists, I’m really hoping to utilize that with my students in the near future. (SS)
As a student I find that I very much agreed with what the ECAR study on undergraduates showed: I was keen on having instructors who utilized course management systems and didn’t shy from the digital world. I am very much in favor of using apps and online resources in class, as I do not believe you can say you’re truly educating or learning to your full potential without using one or the other. (JG)
Process:
After Narmada and Jamie had decided on the question regarding the lesson plan, I emailed Josh and Carla and suggested we work together on one of the other questions. Carla and I were able to meet in person at the library and we went through Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy and brainstormed apps that pertained to the question we had decided to address. Carla create the Google Document in which we did our work, and Josh and I followed her format of introductory paragraph, listing app ideas for each area of Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy, and summary paragraph at the end. In this way, we were able to complete the assignment and include all three of us in the project without needing to meet in person more than once.