Synthesis Essay
Significance and Success
Sandra Toth
“The key to realizing a dream is to focus not on success...but significance! Then...even the small steps and little victories along your path will take on greater meaning”
~ Markesa Yeager
My journey began after twenty-two years of being a home schooling stay-at-home mom when four years ago I decided to become an online high school English teacher. After teaching for about a year, it dawned on me that I loved working with technology. Though I loved technology and computers, I realized there was more I wanted to learn. I started pursuing my Master’s in Educational Technology degree with Michigan State to become a more knowledgeable online teacher, one that was ready to teach 21 Century technologies to students. However, my goal of obtaining a Master’s in Educational Technology was not just about knowledge. While working with my online students, I noticed a need that needed to be addressed. My online students lacked motivation and the desire to achieve their goals; sadly many were failing. It was at this time that I realized I needed more knowledge if I wanted to help my students. I chose Michigan State to help me reach them. Through obtaining my Master’s in Educational Technology degree, it was my hope to learn how to inspire and motivate my students. I chose to focus on ways to use technology with literature and creative writing (two things I teach and love) as a way to connect with my students and engage them. Now that I am nearing the end of my time with Michigan State, I am confident to say that I am better prepared to help my online students. Why do I feel confident? I am confident because during my time at Michigan State, I took many courses that were instrumental in helping me reach my goals and I value each one of them. However, having said this, I feel there are several courses that stood out out as being very significant in helping me reach my goals as an online teacher.
CEP 810: Teaching for Understanding with Technology (technology certificate course) was my first course and my introduction into the world of technology and teaching with it. Although the majority of time in CEP 810 involved learning about new technologies, it began first with teaching me the importance of a Personal Learning Network Plan. By creating my plan, I learned that using technology was a part of every aspect of my life and recognizing the ways I used it was important. My Personal Learning Network Plan helped me to structure my life and the importance of what technologies I came to the program knowing. Creating my Personal Learning Network Plan basically enable me to see “what I came to the table with” and what I needed to know when I left. After developing my Personal Learning Network Plan, which in the beginning was quite small, I went on to learn about the importance of the workflow system and how to create my own. I learned that creating a workflow system is vital for helping me stay organized and on top of things. Although maintaining my workflow system is an ever-ongoing process, it enables me to be a more efficient teacher. Next, I went on to learn many new technologies and terminologies that I did not know before starting the program, such as: Blogs (I made my first one), RSS readers, Twitter, Google Docs, Voki, VoiceThread, Netvibes, Flicker, Prezi, Netshare, the Cloud, Creative Commons, and firewalls.
One of my first assignments using technology involved searching for an interactive tool that I could use with my high school students. Along with two of my peers (Sig Group 4), we chose to use YouTube videos. While focusing on our content areas, we each demonstrated how we could use YouTube in the classroom. My part of the project involved the novel, Diary of Anne Frank and a poem by Robert Frost. I made a sound argument as how YouTube could be used to teach literature and poetry in an exciting way and provided many resources and tools to help teachers. I concluded the course by using Prezi to make My Personal Network Plan, which showcased many of the technologies I learned in the course and how I currently used them in my online classrooms and how I hoped to in the future.
Sig Group 4’s Presentation
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My Personal Technology Plan Prezi
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Next, in CEP 800: Learning in School and Other Settings was an extremely enjoyable course and another one that I took towards earning my technology certificate. During the course, I first learned the importance of “understanding student understanding” and that all students are individuals and may understand things in different ways. As a teacher it is important to be patient when communicating with students. Also, as a teacher in the 21 Century classroom, it is important that I know how to use technology to create “power learning experiences” for my students and hopefully motivate them to want to learn. The first technology lesson in CEP 800 involved using audio technology in the classroom. As a homeschool mom, I do not have a classroom, so I had my 7th grader Holly help me out. The audio lesson involved asking my student some questions about a unit on hurricanes she had studied. One of the objectives was to try and understand a student’s understanding when asking face-to-face questions compared to evaluating students with written questions. Holly’s coursework on the unit led me to believe she had a thorough understanding of hurricanes, but when asked verbally she was unsure of her answers. From this lesson, it was clear that in order to engage my students and motivate them, I needed to attempt to understand them more. For a deeper understanding of how students learn, the course focused on learning theories. I chose to research the Social Cognitive Theory and the work of Albert Bandura. The theory stresses the acquisition of social behavioral patterns and environmental factors that can affect peoples’ behavior. Learning occurs in a social content and much of what people learn is through observational learning (e.g., from watching teachers, peers, videos, computer games). The student is supposed to given an example and should reproduce what was learned. I chose the Social Cognitive theory because Bandura maintained that there is a continuous interaction between behavioral, cognitive, and contextual factors. So the students’ desire to learn, his or her thoughts, and beliefs all affect learning. The student is actively involved in their own learning and the outcome. After researching our chosen theory, we were required to create a Digital Story Project that involved using technology to create a lesson (based on the learning theory we chose), a lesson plan and to teach the lesson. Once again, my daughter Holly was my student. The lesson I created was designed to teach Holly the writing process using the theme of scary stories. Throughout the lesson I implemented Bandura’s theories and chose a really fun technology tool that Holly used to showcase her scary story. The technology I used is Glogster. CEP 800 was truly one of my most successful courses!
Learning in School and Other Settings
Please click on the image to view the
presenation.
Please click on the image to view my Digital
Story Project, as well as other assignments for
CEP 800.
Inasmuch as I enjoyed Cep 800, another one of my favorite courses was CEP 818: Creativity in Teaching & Learning. Just as the title suggests, it was a course that focused on ways of becoming more creative in our work and educational environments. I was encouraged to find news ways of developing creativity in my lessons that would engage my students and make learning more fun. During the course we looked at the connection between humor, creativity, and play and how we could use technology in the classroom to develop creativity in our students.
Though technology lessons were stressed in CEP 818, we were also required to begin the course reading, "Creativity, Chapter 14, and Enhancing Personal Creativity." In this chapter, Csikszentmihaly attempts to help people avoid the obstacles he says prevents them from using their creative energy. These obstacles are: laziness, lack of discipline, too many demands, and being easily distracted. Csikszentmihaly states that the first area to focus on to help people become more creative is the acquisition of creative energy. The next is to focus on internal traits, which as I understand it, is to try to change the way we do things in order to become more creative. By change, I mean our habits and perhaps some personality traits. Finally, to become more creative one needs to explore the application of creative energy, and that is what we did in the course. While reading the book, we explored and tried many of the creative activities given and were required to keep a journal. The idea was to understand how to use our creative energy.
Another required reading for the course was Sparks of Genius by Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein. Sparks of Genius was the only book I had to purchase during my studies with Michigan State, but I am glad I did. In their book, Root and Bernstein list seven cognitive tools that can help students develop and acquire skills that can help them become more creative. These tools are: perceiving, patterning, abstracting, embodied thinking, modeling, playing, and synthesizing. The course requirement was to study the cognitive tools and within our contact area (mine is literature) use technology to create, creative lessons for our students designed around each cognitive tool. However, with each assignment, we first had to explain how we would teach the lesson in the traditional (old) way and then present it in the new exciting way that would hopefully engage students more. To submit our assignments we were required to create a Weebly and share it with our instructors.
To complete my creativity lessons for CEP 818, I chose to the topic of creative writing and the elements of plot, which I am currently teaching to my online students. Through, while I enjoyed and learned a lot from studying the seven cognitive tools and creating my lessons, there are some tools that for me stand out more than others.
The first cognitive tool we studied (and one of my favorites) was perceiving and using one of the five senses to help stir imagination and creative thought within students. I chose the sense of hearing to teach the elements of plot, using the play, “The Crucible.” By using hearing, I introduced the lesson with audio clips. It is my belief that by just listening to the play, my students will create visual images in their heads and experience literature in a new way. The traditional way has always been through reading the text, completing written activities, and finally watching a video.
Copy and paste the URL below to
hear the audio portion of my lesson.
http://macpyle.edu.glogster.com/english-3-the-crucible-audio-1/
http://macpyle.edu.glogster.com/english3-the-crucible-audio-1/
Perceiving Lesson
Modeling is another tool that I would like my students to understand. In my modeling lesson, I attempted to show students that they could use models to see familiar things in a new way. Through modeling students are able to go back and forth from 2 and 3-dimensional thinking and this toggling between dimensions can enhance critical thinking and imagination. To continue the study of the elements of plot in the old way 2-dimensional way in my lesson, would simply be through reading the play. For this lesson, my students used the game Sims, to create a visual world of the play and to show two elements of plot (setting and character). The purpose was to create a simulation that transforms literature into 3-dimensional models and help my students become more active learners, acquire new problem solving skills, and increase their creativity and desire to learn.
Modeling lesson
The last cognitive tool I found important is playing. Playing is important for adults and children. It helps us stay young and each keeps the imagination alive. We need to be able to keep the childlike sense of play so that we can discover news ideas or to see old things in a new way. Although, I believe playing could be included in the Sims world my students created, I chose to present playing by presenting the lesson to my students using a Voki avatar. By using a speaking avatar, I am starting my lesson in a fun way that will hopefully motivate my students. Next, I continued to introduce the lesson playfully to my students by using a poster glog that I made using Glogster. In my poster glog I use interactive activities to tell my students what they would be studying and to motivate them.
Playing Lessons
Please click on the image to
view my Voki.
Please click on the image to
view my assignment Glog.
Finally, the last course I must mention that stands out in helping me reach my goals of being a better teacher and inspiring and motivating my online students is CEP 820: Teaching Students Online. In CEP 820 I learned how to bring technology into the 21 Century classroom. I began the course reading research studies about the effectiveness of different online learning situations, such as: hybrid, blended, flipped, and fully online. I also studied the impact and future of online learning. The course required two components, keeping a Developer Notebook to record and track our progress in the course and to create a hybrid or fully online course with actual units for students to complete. The first step in creating an online course was researching three learning management systems (LMSs) and deciding on one to use. I researched Coursesites, Haiku, and Weebly. The one that I chose is Coursesites, mainly because it is what I use as an online teacher and I knowing it better will help me become a more effective teacher. After deciding which learning management system to use, the next choice was what to teach. Since I teach Language Arts and I love creative writing, I chose to teach the elements of fiction and plot structure at the 9th grade level. While creating my course there were many factors to research and consider. I had to decide what I wanted my course to look like (i.e., consists of units or modules, welcome page, teacher information, syllabus, colorful, engaging). Also, I had to consider many other factors, such as: how I would assess my students, what resources to supply, interactive activities, rubrics, discussion boards, other collaborate activities, synchronous and asynchronous sessions, communication, student expectations, and ESL students. Also, it had to be user friendly and easy to maneuver. Other important issues to consider were social, legal, and ethical ones regarding students’ participation in online courses. I have listed some below.
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Equal access for all students
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Diversity-people with diverse backgrounds need to have access
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Fairness
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Learning styles need to be considered
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Student with special education needs, need to be considered
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Inclusive collaboration activities for all students
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Safety- a safe environment/protecting students’ identity
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Cyberbulling-cyberbulling and harassment/threats cannot be tolerated
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Obscene language use cannot be tolerated
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Inappropriate behavior cannot be tolerated
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Sharing of personal photos must be preapproved
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Sharing of inappropriate or obscene photos cannot be tolerated
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Copyright laws must be respected
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Plagiarism cannot be tolerated
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Healthy habits to use while taking online classes must be discussed
CEP 818 concluded with requiring a serious final look at the decisions I made in the course. The first decisions I had to consider were the design of the course and choosing the right LMS. I am happy with my choice in Coursesites because I am now more knowledgeable about the system and better prepared to teach my online students. In addition, I had to make many pedagogical decisions. Some of my choices required considering my interactive and collaborate activities, both are important for student engagement and success. In the end, I have to say I am please with the course I made. I believe I created a course that will motivate my students and keep them engaged, as well as giving them clear expectations, a friendly environment, and a creates a sense of openness.
My Online Course
Please click on the image to view my course.
Username: Sandrato/Pasword: Beachdate1
In conclusion, I feel taking CEP 810, CEP 800, CEP 818, and CEP 820 were very important in helping me become a more knowledgeable and effective online teacher. I believe that I am more capable of motivating my students and hopefully I will be able to help increase the number of students passing. It is my desire to engage my students and make learning fun. Having said this, I found all the courses I took while working for my Master’s in Educational Technology degree very important in helping me reach my goals. In addition I have to add that I am also grateful for the final Capstone course, which is allowing me the time to go through and review all my courses as well as analyze where I started, how far I have come, and what the future will bring.
Synthesis Essay
Holly’s Story Glog