How Do YOU Teach About the AECT Domains/Standards?

Instructional Technology Educators,

Our Instructional Technology masters program at the University of Northern Iowa is aligned with the ECIT/AECT Standards/Domains. Consequently, learning about these domains is an integral part of one of our initial courses in the program.

We are interested in how you introduce these domains and what you do to make them meaningful to your students. Certainly, your students can read the Januszewski and Molenda book, but do you have videos or activities that you use when you teach the domains.

What do you do?  We would appreciate it if you could share your teaching techniques and tools. I promise to organize and share your responses.

Thank you,

Leigh Zeitz

Leave your ideas in the Comments section below.

Digital Portfolio Resources for You!

I have the privilege this week to participate in the University of Northern Iowa's all-day seminar on portfolios, The Learning Portfolio: A Tool for Student Engagement and Inquiry. They have invited John Zubizarreta, author of The Learning Portfolio: Reflective Practice for Improving Student Learning, to share his idea about how portfolios can be used for assessment and support of students' learning.

Dr. Zubizarreta will speak in the morning and then there will be a portfolio panel of UNI faculty. These faculty members include:

• April Chatham-Carpenter, Communication Studies
• David Grant, Languages and Literature
• Patrick Pease, Geography
• Donna Vinton, Office of Academic Assessment
• Leigh Zeitz, Curriculum and Instruction

While I only have 5 minutes to describe how we have been using portfolios in Curriculum and Instruction, I have a number of resources that you should find useful to learn more about using digital portfolios.

Digital Portfolios Made Easy in C&I at UNI

View more presentations from Leigh Zeitz.

• Digital Portfolios Made Easy in Curriculum and Instruction at UNI slideshow - the presentation slideshow that I used during my presentation. This is posted at Slideshare.com.
• Digital Portfolios Made Easy - this is my website that has been up since 2007.  It has a number of Google Sites portfolios templates that can be used to create digital portfolios. 
• Curriculum and Instruction Digital Portfolio Wiki -  this wiki page is the source for support materials for creating digital portfolios in the C&I program. I provides portfolio examples, instructional videos, a link to the UNI Teacher Education Google Sites template (along with a set of instructions), and a list of possible artifacts that might be used with each of the INTASC+1 standards.
• UNI Example Portfolio - an example of the type of digital portfolio that a student creates in our Educational Technology and Design course. This portfolio evolves into their final digital portfolio for their teaching program.
• Dr. Z on Digital Portfolios - interview with Dr. Z by Wesley Fryer in Philadelphia. Dr. Z reflects on his philosophy on digital portfolios.
• Digital Portfolios: Why Do We Do Them? - Dr. Z explores the backwards manner in which most portfolios are designed to fulfill standards instead of sharing what is important to the student or professional.
• Electronic Portfolios - Helen Barrett's website that supports using electronic portfolios and digital storytelling for lifelong and life wide learning.

How do you use digital portfolios? What additional support materials would you recommend for our readers?  

How Would YOU Save Money in Our College of Education?

The State of Iowa has been hit HARD by the recession.  Admittedly, it is nothing like what California or Michigan have seen, but it hurts none-the-less.  In mid-October, Iowa's Governor Culver announced that ALL governmental entities would have to cut their budgets by 10%.  This include the courts, governmental offices, AND schools.

Yes, our University of Northern Iowa (UNI) has felt the cut of the sword. The greatest expense in education is faculty and staff. Personnel compose at least 85% of the budget. Faculty will suffer an average of 6 furlough days (unpaid days off) which will mean a salary cut of probably $2,000 - $4,000. UNI has announced that they will reduce their contribution to our retirement accounts and our health premiums will probably increase.

The scene is not pretty. President Allen has even opened a Budget website where he is trying keep the public posted about how the budget is evolving.

To top it all off, our College of Education was just told that we need to return another $142,000 on a permanent basis by the end of December 2009.

What to do?  What would YOU do?

Time magazine ran an article, Colleges Find Creative Ways to Cut Back. It talks about mowing lawns less frequently and dumping free laundry services, but when it comes to academics it is always a matter of cutting people and programs.

Share your ideas.  Help us out.

Iowa Core Curriculum - Dr. Nadene Davidson @ UNI

The Iowa Core Curriculum (ICC) is a curricular program that provides guidance for educators in "delivering challenging and meaningful content to students that prepares them for success in life." This curriculum identifies the "essential concepts and skills for K-12 grade in literacy (read, write, speak, listen, and think), mathematics, science and social studies. It also identifies 21st Century Skills (civic, employability, financial, health and technology) that people must master to be successful in life. More than just identifying the content area, the ICC is designed to develop deeper learning engages students by "emphasizing interesting, robust, and relevant learning experiences."

The ICC is intended to be more than just another curriculum that is written by a group of specialists and then placed on a shelf to collect dust. The Iowa Legislature enacted Senate File 2216 that requires all Iowa school districts and accredited nonpublic schools to implement the ICC by 7/1/2012 (grades 9 - 12) and 2014-15 (K-8th grades).

This Iowa Core Curriculum is well researched and forward looking. It is still in the process of being developed. The Intent is there but the content/requirements haven't been completed. The key to success in learning and using the ICC will be in developing your knowledgebase.

In Spring of 2009, I taught a Selections and Integration of Instructional Technology Materials course at the University of Northern Iowa. I knew that I couldn't didn't know enough about the Iowa Core Curriculum to benefit my students so I asked Dr. Nadene Davidson, the Interim Director of Department of Teaching, to share her vast knowledge of the subject. Dr. Davidson has been an active participant in developing the ICC so she was able to provide the necessary insight.

I have linked to Dr. Davidson's 1 hour 40-minute lecture for your enjoyment. She does a wonderful job of describing the background for the Iowa Core Curriculum, its structure and the process of implementation. This video requires Real Player to watch. (Dr. Davidson's presentation actually begins 4 minutes 37 seconds into the video.)

Please review this presentation and share your comments.

Z

Skyping Guests into an ICN Room

How do YOU bring guests into your classroom?

I like to use Skype to provide a live discussion with experts from around the nation. This is simple when your students share the same classroom as you. You just need to project your computer screen onto the wall so that your students can see your guest and engage in the exchange.

How do you do it if your students are distributed all over the state of Iowa? THEN it gets to be a bit of challenge. This means that we need to Skype our guest onto my computer and then video conference it to my students throughout the state. This is challenging but do-able.

Iowa is blessed with a video conferencing system entitled the Iowa Communication Network (ICN). This is a state-owned fiber-optic network that connects 744 broadcast-capable classrooms throughout the state. Beginning in 1992, the ICN has been providing full-motion video to schools, hospitals, National Guard armories and federal/state government offices. The ICN has been quite useful in providing distance education opportunities (our UNI Instructional Technology program has been offering a 2-year masters program since 1994.) Unfortunately, linking Skype into the system so that my distant students can interact with a visiting guest is not built into our broadcast rooms at UNI. But this doesn't mean that we can't do it. It just takes some ingenuity.

Above, you can see how I (not as glum as I look) created this interactive system. Here is how we did it:

Hooked my MacBook into the ICN system so that the it was broadcast throughout the ICN. This means that I have patched in my video and audio into the ICN system. This would allow my students to see and hear our guest (Dr. Yvonne Andres from Global School Network).

We wanted to enable Dr. Andres to see the students. There was no direct video link from my computer to the ICN video broadcasting so I needed to get creative. I arranged my hardware so that the web camera in my MacBook was staring into the output monitor. This allowed our guest to see what is being broadcast over the ICN. The only problem was that it was difficult for her to hear my students. I often had to repeat many of the questions.

1. Although this is a little jerry-rigged, it allowed me to provide my students with an interaction with Dr. Andres that would never have been possible if we didn't have the technology of today.

What do you do to video link experts into you class? What do you use for video conferencing in a distance education situation?

Habitudes with Angela Maiers is a GREAT Success!!!!

I told you that Angela Maiers was going to share her work on Habitudes tonight at the University of Northern Iowa. It was FANTASTIC!!!!

I must admit that I don't have time to reflect on it right now, but Rob Galloway has posted all of the links to the streamed videos and archived chats.  I will add my opinions about this Habitudes experience later in the week.

Z

Habitudes for College Students - Angela Maiers

Are you ready for tomorrow? It's almost time. Time to put all the years of schooling and studying to work. Some students have already begun dipping their toes in the water. Some have already jumped into the pool called the life/workforce. Whatever depth you're at today, it's a good idea to take inventory. A self-awareness exercise to make sure you're ready to weather any possible storm, to equip yourself with mental ammunition to create and innovate into a world where the only constant is change.


What habits and attitudes - Habitudes will carry you to heights beyond your vision? Your success as a 21st Century student, worker, and citizen lies in your passionate:

• Imagination
• Curiosity
• Perseverance
• Self-Awareness
• Courage
• Adaptability
  

Join us for a Habitude conversation at the University of Northern Iowa College of Education and the UNI Educational Technology User Group (ETUG) at 7 p.m. Monday, March 30, in Schindler Education Center room 252 at UNI (virtual map).

I'll be co-presenting with my good friend, Andy Drish, a recent graduate who lives his life in Habitude abundance. Our presentation will focus on the differences between being creative on occasion and living each day creatively as a habit and attitude.

For more information about the event, contact Leigh Zeitz (zeitz@uni.edu), associate professor of curriculum and instruction at UNI. (319) 273-3249

The information is free and open to the public. Join us! Join us for a conversation about the Habitudes.

IT WILL BE STREAMING!!!!

We are happy to announce that we will be streaming Angela's presentation. You will be able to watch it live using Real Player.
You will also be able to interact with us through our live online chat.

You can access the presentation or the online chat at the our Habitudes homepage at UNI.

Are Screen Captures Copyrighted?

Image via Wikipedia

One of my students asked me a copyright question about screen captures recently that I couldn't answer.

After teaching them about how to make a screen capture and suggesting that this would be a great thing to use when creating tutorials. An educator could take screen shots of software while progressing through the software and then write accompanying instructions.

Here's the question "Aren't those screen captures copyrighted?" I didn't know the answer.

I would imagine that under fair-use guidelines, an educator could include screen captures that are used in the classroom.

The question lies in whether or not such a tutorial could be posted on the web for free distribution. At another level, what about selling the tutorial to others? Do you need to pay a copyright royalty to Microsoft if you use screen captures of Microsoft Word in a tutorial book?

What do you think?

Digital Portfolios Made Easy

Professional portfolios are designed to provide a medium for individuals to collect and share information about themselves. It is important to consider the audience that will be reading and evaluating the portfolio. Often these portfolios are aligned with professional standards. Unfortunately, people are misguided into believing that these standards are the most important part of the portfolio.

That is Totally Bogus!!

The most important part of a portfolio is the person about whom the portfolio is created!!! It is the collection of artifacts that describe the person's strengths and characterize the person as a professional. Envisioning portfolios in this manner will make the creation process relevant rather than drudgerous.

You can read more about my ideas on this at my previous posting entitled Digital Portfolios: Why Do We Do Them?

You can also read another of my postings, Optimal Portfolio Organization, to learn about my suggestions for creating a portfolio.

Middle School Digital Portfolio Workshop

I have had the opportunity to share digital portfolios around the country. I have had the opportunity to present some of these workshops with my DPME co-developer, Andrew Krumm, for a couple of years. Now I do these workshops by myself. For the past few years, I/we have presented a 2-hour workshop for the middle school teacher education students here at the University of Northern Iowa. We thank Dr. Jean Schneider and Dr. Donna Douglas for implementing this system in their program. Last October, we video recorded the workshop.

This semester, we are assuming that the students have enough technology savvy to learn how to create their portfolios by reading the outline while they are watching the recorded workshop. The semester is not over so we don't have any final information, but things are going well so far.

Here are the resources that you will need to do this:

Video of Dr. Z (Leigh Zeitz) giving a workshop on creating digital portfolio to a middle school teacher education students at the University of Northern Iowa. This workshop lasts 1 hour 45 minutes. (this video requires the RealPlayer add-on to watch it.)

MIddle School Portfolio Template website to copy into your portoflio - one screen at a time. This portfolio template is designed to align with the Iowa Teacher Education standards (INTASC + 1). You can find other templates at the Digital Portofolios Made Easy website.

Workshop outline (.pdf) that was used for the workshop. It is possible to use this workshop to follow along with the video.
I hope that you find this useful. Please leave some comments about what you are doing with these templates.

Dr. Z

How Twitter's spectacular growth is being driven by unexpected uses - Evan Willams at TED Talks

Just listened to Evan Williams, founder of Twitter, on TED Talks. In his 8-minute talk, he explained how Twitter was molded by how users used it instead of how the company designed it. Here are some highlights from the lecture:

• Defined Twitter as "Say what you are doing in 140 characters or less. People who are interested in you get those updates. If they are REALLY interested in you, they will get those updates on their cell phones."
• Twitter lets people share their lives - both the spectacular and mundane.
• He didn't anticipate how important Twitter could be in real time events.
• Information was shared during the San Diego fires.
• There are currently over 2000 apps for twitter including one that allows an unborn baby to twitter when it kicks or a plant to twitter when it needs water.
• Summize was a company that built a Twitter search engine. Williams liked the search engine so much that they bought the company.
• Some people in Atlanta used Twitter to find gas when it was scarce.
• People have raised tens of thousands of dollars for people in crisis over Twitter in a matter of days.
• Don't know what will happen next with Twitter, but when you give people easier ways to share information - more good things will happen.

Would you believe that at the end of his talk, the MC of TED searched Twitter to find about 50 tweets about Evans' talk.

Here is a man who is changing the world with his imagination. He invented Blogger as well.

BTW, if you aren't watching/listening to TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Talks, you are missing an opportunity to listen to the greatest minds in the world.

Follow Dr. Z on Twitter at http://twitter.com/zeitz

Using Web 2.0 Tools with University Students

Image by Lillou Merlin via Flickr

Vinnie Vrotny recently asked me about how I use Web 2.0 tools with my students. I teach Instructional Technology courses at the University of Northern Iowa. I teach an Emerging Instructional Technologies course where I use many of these tools but we integrate them throughout the rest of the courses as well. Here is a list of links to examples of how we use these tools.

Wikibook - Instead of students writing individual research papers for the course, we created an on-line collaborative wikibook. We used the actual Wikimedia software. It was interesting to see that we needed to address topics differently when writing online than when writing on paper. How to determine the length of the paper? (Not pages, but words). How to cite (Reference list? URL? Both?)

RWLDs - The information that you want students to discuss is not always in the book. We have developed Readings, Watchings, Listenings and Doings (RWLD) pages where students can find links to readings, videos, podcasts and things to do. We have found that more students do their homework with RWLDs because they are in a media form that is more appealing. I might point out that we post thes in a Blog form so that the students can subscribe to them like any other blog. Here is an example of one that I used in my Emerging Instructional Technologies course last Fall.
Google Forms - Google forms is probably the most exciting collaborative opportunity that I have found. Google has simplified the prociess of creating an online form to not much more than defining the headings on a spreadsheet. We create and use these forms to elicit student input during and after class. One application that I found interesting was using a Google form to collect evaluation information after I gave a digital portfolio workshop.

Digital Portfolios on Google Sites - Google Sites has made creating digital portfolios a snap. 5 years ago, Andrew Krumm and I created some templates for creating professional digital portfolios. These are housed at http://dpme.org (Digital Portfolios Made Easy). Originally, we made them using Word or HTML templates. Lately, we have created Google Sites templates and all of our Educational Technology and Design students create their digital portfolios using these templates. Here are some examples Example 1 Example 2 Here is a link to an hour and 45 minute workshop on creating a digital portfolio using Google Sites

CoverItLive - Recently we have been experimenting with using an open chat line during lectures. We have been using CoverItLive.com. It is moderated by another professor to ensure that discussion stays on-topic. See the next blog posting down below to actually see the transcript for one of the sessions.

Coveritlive in the Classroom

I am going to be presenting lectures today about Media Evaluation in our Educational Technology and Design here at the University of Northern Iowa. We are looking for new ways to use laptops/smart phones to make the class more interactive so we are going to incorporate Coveritlive.com so that the students will be able to discuss the materials in a back channel while I am speaking.

I created an account and am embedding the Coveritlive window here in my blog. I will have another person in the back of the lecture hall moderating the discussion while I am speaking.

You can follow along at 6:00 pm CST. We will be talking about Media Evaluation. I would love to have your input.