MTI 562: The Tech-infused Teacher

MTI 562 starts Monday, March 23, 2020 

The 21st century lesson blends technology with teaching to build a collaborative, differentiated, and shared learning environment. In this course, you will use a suite of digital tools to make that possible while addressing overarching concepts like digital citizenship, internet search and research, authentic assessment, digital publishing, and immersive keyboarding. You will actively collaborate, share knowledge, provide constructive feedback to classmates, publish digitally, and differentiate for unique needs. Classmates will become the core of your ongoing Personal Learning Network.

Assessment is based on involvement, interaction with classmates, and completion of projects so be prepared to be fully-involved and an eager risk-taker. Price includes course registration, college credit, and all necessary materials. To enroll, click the link above and sign up. Email askatechteacher at gmail dot com with questions.

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Ask a Tech Teacher has a new book out, Inquiry-based Teaching with PBL: 34 Lesson Plans. Inquiry-based teaching requires a mindset that makes curiosity a cornerstone of learning with lessons that value it. This book includes 34 lesson plans as well as discussion on inquiry-based teaching strategies:

The Inquiry-based Teacher

The Inquiry-based Classroom

The Socratic Method

Project-based Learning (PBL)

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Through the Midwest Teachers Institute, I offer four college-credit classes that teach how to blend technology with traditional lesson plans. They include all the ebooks, videos, and other resources required so you don’t spend any more than what is required to register for the class. Once you’re signed up, you prepare weekly material, chat with classmates, respond to class Discussion Boards and quizzes, and participate in a weekly video meeting. Everything is online.

Questions? Email me at [email protected]

Here are the ones I’m currently offering:

The Tech-infused Teacher: The 21st Century Digitally-infused Teacher

MTI 562

March 2020

The 21^st Century lesson blends technology with teaching to build a collaborative, differentiated, and shared learning environment. In this course, teachers will use a suite of digital tools to make that possible while addressing overarching concepts like digital citizenship, internet search and research, authentic assessment, critical thinking, and immersive keyboarding. Teachers will actively collaborate, share knowledge, provide constructive feedback to classmates, and publish digitally. Classmates will become the core of the teacher’s ongoing Personal Learning Network. Assessment is project-based so participants should be prepared to be fully-involved and eager risk-takers.

At the completion of this course, the learner will be able to:

1. Integrate and adapt blogs, wikis, Twitter, and Google Hangouts to collaborate and share. INTASC 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10
2. Research ways to safely and effectively search and research on the internet, including how to be a good digital citizen. INTASC 1
3. Appraise technology to support teaching and achieve Common Core Standards. INTASC 1, 7
4. Integrate keyboarding skills into classroom activities and prepare for yearly assessments. INTASC 8
5. Assess student technology use organically. INTASC 1, 8
6. Develop digital portfolios to store, share, and curate classwork and justify their inclusion. INTASC 8, 9
7. Develop and employ a Personal Learning Network. INTASC 2, 5, 10
8. Solve common tech problems that arise in the classroom.  INTASC 4
9. Try out multiple virtual classrooms.

Assessment is based on involvement, interaction with classmates, and completion of projects, so be prepared to be fully-involved and an eager risk-taker. Price includes course registration, college credit, and all necessary materials. To enroll, click the link, search for MTI 562, and sign up. Classes start soon!

Differentiation: How Technology Makes Differentiation Fast and Easy

MTI 563

April 2020

Differentiation in the classroom means meeting students where they are most capable of learning. It is not an extra layer of work, rather a habit of mind for both teacher and student. Learn granular approaches to infusing differentiation into all of your lesson plans, whether Common Core or other standards, with this hands-on, interactive class. Ideas include visual, audio, podcasts, movies, mindmaps, infographics, graphic organizers, charts and tables, screenshots, screencasts, images, games and simulations, webtools, and hybrid assessments.

At the completion of this course, the learner will be able to:

1. Analyze and critique the technology used to differentiate for student learning styles.  INTASC 1
2. Explain how differentiating content and presentation engages a greater proportion of learners. INTASC 3
3. Construct and implement measures that ensure the outcome of student learning demonstrates understanding.  INTASC 1, 6
4. Devise a variety of assignments to address all learners’ needs.  INTASC 6
5. Create an inclusive learning environment in the classroom.  INTASC 3
6. Integrate and adapt blogs, wikis, Twitter, and Google Hangouts to collaborate and share.  INTASC 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10

Assessment is based on involvement, interaction with classmates, and completion of projects, so be prepared to be fully-involved and an eager risk-taker. Price includes course registration, college credit, and all necessary materials.

Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-12 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, contributor to NEA Today, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.

Here are the most-read posts for the month of February:

1. Multimedia content personalizes learning
2. Random Acts of Kindness
3. What is Constructivism?
4. Tech Tip: My Internet Stopped Working
5. Tech Tip: Visit a Foreign Language Google 
6. 10 Great Virtual Reality Apps
7. How Online Learning Can Improve Your Teaching

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Thanks to easy access to internet resources and a serious lack of understanding on the part of many students about what online resources can legally be used, plagiarism has become a huge problem in schools. Students don’t have a clear idea about what media–like images, videos, text–are legal to use and what constitutes proper citations. SEO expert, Tara Troy with Copyleaks, explains where plagiarism often happens and then how to avoid it in your work (and she provides her suggestion for a reliable plagiarism checker):

5 Tips for Students: How to Avoid Plagiarism

A few well-know issues that diminish the standards of a students’ writing are listed below:

Method of citation: There are different styles for citing references. Students have to follow the method prescribed by the school or University.

Missing references: Making simultaneous notes for references taken down for a paper helps in the last-minute rush of inserting footnotes and/or endnotes in a paper.

Grammatical errors: Software aided checking services are highly useful in detecting and correcting grammar mistakes in an academic paper.

Spelling mistakes: Online spell checker detects spelling errors.

Plagiarism: Stealing information and references without correct citations cause the problem of plagiarism. One needs to check for plagiarism with an online plagiarism checker before submitting the paper. Copyleaks plagiarism checker for students is a free online tool that can be used.

Tips for Students to avoid plagiarism while writing

A few useful actions that help in eradicating plagiarism are discussed below:

• Initiate the research process early:

Writing everything in a rushed manner often leads to plagiarism. Individuals indeed tend to take down the information and paraphrase it for completing the project quickly. Genuine students are committed to their research activity and attempt to produce new knowledge through their research.

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Here’s a preview of what’s coming up on Ask a Tech Teacher in March:

• Upcoming college-credit online classes
• World Maths Day
• Easter websites and resources
• Tech Tip: Open a program maximized
• St. Patricks Day websites and resources
• 13 Pedagogies That Will Make You a Better Teacher
• Tech Tip: How to reset your homepage
• Why Teach Poetry?

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I met Dr. Bill Morgan through a shared interest in keyboarding for youngers (see this article on A Conversation About Keyboarding and this article on Preparing Young Students for Home Row Keyboarding: An Unplugged Approach). In each other, we found kindred spirits, both passionate about better ways to teach today’s learners.

When Bill offered an article on a new class he started that helps English Language Learners, I was excited. It’s an important issue with not enough solutions. His approach is innovative, original, easy to implement (with some effort), and effective. Read on and see if this would work in your district. He’s included contact information so you can reach him with questions:

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Computer Literacy for English Language Learners

“Typing by the Numbers”

Dr. Bill Morgan, Ph.D.

Over the decades I have added both Educational Technology and TESOL (Teaching English as a Second Language) endorsements to my elementary teaching certificate. My graduate studies focused on integrating technology across the curriculum.

Along the way I began volunteering with various organizations, working with immigrants from other countries. One evening a man from another culture asked me how to spell a specific word. As I spelled the word out loud we both realized that the sound I was using to name a vowel was not the same sound that he was familiar with. It must have been Spanish, where letter A “always says ah,” letter E “always says ay,” etc. When I used the letter A in the spelling of a word, he heard the letter E. When I used the letter E he heard the letter I. It was nearly impossible for him to take dictation from me.

He then asked me to write words for him to copy in his notebook. He laughed out loud and then said, “You write like a doctor!” I took that to mean that he could read my handwriting no better than that of a doctor who had given him handwritten notes to read.

From then on I brought my laptop computer to class. When an adult English learner asked me to spell a word I would type the word then enlarge the font that could be read by all in the room. I didn’t need a projector nor a large screen TV, I only needed a laptop sized monitor.

Thinking of how I might integrate technology with instruction, I gathered a group of bilingual community members and started, “Computer Literacy for English Language Learners, NFP.” Find us on Facebook!

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Online learning has become not only a common alternative to physical classes, but a well-regarded change maker in the education ecosystem. Not only does it eliminate the noise of who’s wearing what, disruptive students, and classes cancelled due to snow days, it is becoming the surest and easiest way to treat all students equally. The gregarious students no longer take over the class and the quiet ones are not ignored in their silence. The popular kid gets no more recognition than the wallflower.

If you teach online, you know what I mean. The ease with which it differentiates for student needs, focuses on what’s important (which rarely is a due date), and provides much-needed flexibility has changed the way many of us teach our physical classes. See if any of these traits sound familiar:

Model a Good Instructor

Good online instructors are what we always wished teaching would be. Here’s what Bobby Hobgood, online teacher since 1998, says about what he’s learned about teaching through the online modality:

“…the instructional design and instruction of my courses reflect a Community of Inquiry approach whereby engagement is fostered through thoughtful attention given to how I manifest myself throughout the course (teaching presence), how students engage in the content of the course (cognitive presence) and how, together, we interact to form a dynamic learning community (social presence).”

Ignore Innocent Mistakes

We all know the type of “innocent mistakes” students make in class. They use the wrong word or giggle at the wrong time which distracts everyone from the goals of the class. That doesn’t happen in online courses. Since most input is done prior to submittal, students have time to provide measured responses that they’ve edited to say what they want.

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Here are the most-read posts for the month of January:

1. #WorldReadAloudDay February 5
2.  Ways to Use AI-Powered Quillionz to Assess Student Understanding
3. 5 Ways Edtech Enhances Social Studies Lessons
4. 100th Day of School — Make it about Learning
5. How to Talk to a Tech Teacher (humorous)
6. Lessons Learned My First 5 Years Of Teaching
7. Plagiarism Checkers: The Benefits Students Fail to See
8. 10 Hits and 10 Misses for 2019
9. Top 10 Reviews of 2019

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Ask a Tech Teacher contributor, Josemaría Carazo Abolafia, is an educational researcher and teacher who lives in Spain–and doesn’t own a car! He has a Masters in Ed from Penn State University (any Nittany Lion fans out there?) and is working on his EdD. Josemaria and I share the belief that “…[technology] must be transparent, like a lens; otherwise, it hinders learning.” Here’s his take on the use of videos in education:

Multimedia content as a way to learning process personalization

People can learn more deeply from words and pictures than from words alone. It can be called the multimedia learning hypothesis (Mayer, 2005). My experience teaching with videos supports the idea that students not only learn more deeply but also faster. Consequently, the syllabus can be enlarged when classes take advantage of multimedia means -as it happened.

Moreover, multimedia content helps to individualize the learning process for every student, who really can learn at its own pace.

The multimedia content that I use consists of about 250 videos. Most of them are between 2 and 5 minutes long. Each video contains an explanation that happened during a real class, recording what students were watching -classrooms have a projector- and listening. They can be checked out at http://youtube.com/ldts1. It might be important to point out that my students are 17 years old and over.

However, using multimedia content to elicit learning does not lack inconveniences. The same problems that hinder learning when using textbooks occur when using videos. On the other hand, the same techniques can be useful in both cases. A constructivism insight and the cognitive load theory ground the solutions proposed to avoid those inconveniences.

Three difficulties when using multimedia content

I mainly found 3 difficulties when using videos as the main learning content format:

1. 1. Reception overload. More frequently than wished, the student doesn’t get the gist of an explanation on video format, and she or he has to re-watch the video 1, 2 or even 3 times. There’s no doubt, it’s frustrating for anyone.
   2. Lack of learner’s intervention. Passivity.
   3. Lack of variety -not related to the content but the format: video, text, website, lecture, and so on. 

Based on several learning theories, I focused on 3 ways to tackle these problems.

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