9-30-10

The first order of business today was discussing a potential class field trip to see the documentary //Waiting for Superman.// For those of you that don't know, //Waiting for Superman// is a documentary (by the same director of //An Inconvenient Truth//) about the modern school system and how it isn't giving kids the chance to really succeed. A trailer for it is located on the class Ning. Mr. Woj will be creating a poll (possibly on Doodle appointments?) to see who would be interested and when would work. The closest showing is in Minneapolis (hence the field trip). Be on the lookout for an email or a Ning post related to this in the near future.

The Video of the Day was a trailer for the Geothenic website we briefly investigated in the computer lab in a previous class period. This was intended to be a preview of what we would be looking at in the computer lab (but we did not get to, due to great class discussions).

The majority of class was reserved for finishing the discussion about Mia's TIP strategy. We discussed the final 4 phases of her plan with the following notes:

Phase 3: What are the objectives/assessments? Some notes about this phase:
 * 1) Improve attitudes towards cultures (class takes survey on how they feel about other cultures with a goal of 75% of the class improving their attitude).
 * 2) Knowledge of cultures (every student would score 90% on creating an informative brochure about a particular culture).
 * 3) Factual Knowledge (students score 80% or higher on a short-answer test).
 * The survey allows teacher to see growth and reflection for students (good)
 * Students could "play the game of school" and answer what they think the teacher wants (bad)
 * Other assessment options: Venn diagram, paper, short-answer exams looking at similarities (good)
 * Asking students what parts they liked or disliked to evaluate their opinions on the subject could measure how much students liked this way of learning (good)

Phase 4: Design Integration Strategies (Online Multicultural Project)
 * 1) Mia's new process (creating online pen-pals with students from another country with the goal of learning about a different culture) was considered "directed" which is a blend of objectivist and constructivist. The learning was mostly open-ended but the methods were directed in a sequential order with a few end goals in mind. But students would be able to ask the questions they wanted and give the information they chose.
 * 2) Mia decided on this approach because it was a fairly even blend of the two schools of thought.
 * 3) We decided Mia should have a few preassessments for her class. A computer proficiency assessment should be given before the project starts and a brief background knowledge of the countries the students would be working with would be discussed in the early stages of the project.
 * 4) To determine students' levels of computer skills, Mia could have a scavenger hunt on the internet, she could have the class play typing games or have each student complete a timed-typing assignment.

Phase 5: Prepare the Instructional Environment
 * 1) Mia would need a computer lab (with internet on every computer) and a projection machine to walk the student through her expectations for the project and how students could use particular resources.
 * 2) In order to maintain a level of safety, Mia would create guidelines for what should and should not be discussed with their online partners. Talking with parents (and letting them know the activity), creating a class-generated set of guidelines and walking through examples of how to react in certain situations are things Mia could do to help prepare her students for online conversation. Also, she could use a secure network and monitor what is being emailed to further protect the students.
 * 3) If there were problems (internet is down, network isn't working), the class could use their time to write out their future responses, Mia could check-in with her students to see how things are going or have a class-wide forum to see what each student has learned.

Phase 6: Evaluate and Revise Integration Strategies
 * 1) One area the students' final projects didn't live up to expectations is grammar. But using peer-reviews or turnitin.com to check common grammatical errors would help remedy this.
 * 2) To improve the overall results in the class, Mia should have a more structured environment so students don't waste time and so they know what knowledge they are expected to learn.

FOR NEXT TIME...

Next class period, we will be investigating how we may be able to integrate technology in our individual content area, much in the same way we evaluated Mia's example.

We will go through a TIP model and flesh it out, with links or websites or ideas. We each will be partnered with someone in a similar content area and evaluate each others' ideas. This will be done in a constructive manner, not simply saying "that's a good idea."

We will be using TIP examples from classmates in context for class on Tuesday, be prepared. And we all should have a completed TIP by Thursday.

Sorry this was so long. I hope it captured the essence and knowledge shared of today's class.