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Saturday, June 16, 2018

RWLDs - Readings/Watchings/Listenings/Doings: Textbooks No Longer Sufficient

Textbooks are not enough anymore . . . Use RWLDs
California has tried to address these needs using eBooks to replace their paper textbooks. but that isn't enough.

Our students are in the Multimedia Generation. These Millennials spend most of their waking hours Reading, Watching, Listening to, and Doing multimedia. This means that their brains are wired to acquire and assimilate information through multiple forms of media but most of our teachers still use paper textbooks.

Sooooo, how do we provide recent and relevant materials for our classes? Our answer is the RWLD. RWLD's provide the Readings, Watchings, Listenings, and Doings that will inform your students in their field of study. 

Readings: Just because you aren't reading from a textbook, it doesn't mean that your students won't be reading. It means that you will be able to direct them towards recent and relevant readings in the form of articles, books, and reliable websites. Just because I list the resources on the web, it doesn't mean that I don't assign books to them to read. In my last Emerging Instructional Technologies course, I had them read Disrupting Class by Christensen, Johnson, and Horn.

Watchings: These are the videos or vlogs that you want them to watch. These may be videos that are already available for you to use, or they might be videos or screencasts that you have made to help educate your students. While YouTube is probably the most popular resource for ready-made videos, there are many other resources that you can access. 
Here are some of the educational resources:
Listenings: Some of your resources will be auditory. These will primarily be podcasts. There is a huge selection of podcast resources online. The most complete directory of podcasts is iTunes. It doesn't matter if you are a Mac or Window or Linex user. iTunes is available on all of these platforms so you should be able to find them and use them.
     My dream for using the Listenings is that my auditory-learning students will be able to download them to their MP3 players and then listen to them as they walk to school or workout. The only problem that I have had is that not all of my students knew how to download sound files to their players. You don't necessarily know how to do that if you are a Digital Native. =-) It may require showing them or creating a screencast to instruct them on how to download these files.

Doings: These are the activities that your students will do. I have my students complete surveys, do online searches, create projects, or whatever. This is the section that includes the things that don't fit the other sections. 

Check Out These Successful RWLDs
Additional notes:
  1.  Notice that I create my RWLDs using a blog. This is the easiest way to get things on the web. Another advantage is that a blog will provide an easy RSS feed for students to capture their assignments on their PLN. Finally, it is even possible to feed the RWLD blog into their YouTube accounts - that means no excuses!!!!
  2. Include an image on each of the postings. Be careful about copyright - you are the model. You may find what you need using the Creative Commons selections at Flickr.com 
  3. These resources don't need to be ONLY teacher-found resources. I have opened up the RWLD to the students so that when they were taking over the class for a day, they could add their own RWLD resources.
  4. Another advantage to putting your RWLD in a blog is that you can reuse your postings. You just need to reset your postings to appear on scheduled dates at the beginning of the semester.
We have been using RWLDs for over 10 years now and they have been quite successful. What do you think?  Will they be useful to you?
photo: flickr.com/wohnai

Wednesday, June 06, 2018

30 Resources for Stopping Bullying at YOUR School

http://olivialauraryan.edublogs.org
What are YOU doing to stop bullying at your school?  

Bullying comes in many flavors. It can be angry gangs on the playground. It can be a punch in the shoulder or repeated namecalling in the school hallways as students move between classes. It can be "cool" girls making fun of others to add to their feeling of superiority. It can be "macho" boys intimidating their gay classmates. It can be a class of students standing around a special needs student calling him "Stupid." It might be kids (or parents) waging anonymous online wars against a classmate who "rubs them the wrong way."

Fortunately, the anti-bullying movement is actively engaged in a fight against this aggressive behavior in our schools and in the general public (online or not). The U.S. government has taken a stance against bullying and supported with the StopBullying.gov website and grants for fighting this problem. The most important thing is to be informed of what can be done.

Here are some resources that I have found you might find valuable in building your program:


Stop Bullying Songs:

Bullying Stories

 Stop the Bullying Programs

Stop Bullying Websites

Stop Bullying Articles

Stop Cyber Bullying

NOTE: This is based upon a posting I did on Stopping Bullying back in 2013.  After talking about it in class today, I realized that it shouldn't languish in old posts.  It needed a rebirth. I have added some resources.  
Do you have other stories of success, programs for fighting bullying or ideas about how to combat this unfairness?  If so, please provide your ideas in the comments below.
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Friday, November 03, 2017

Dr. Z Reflects on a Successful Lesson in Ed Tech that He Just Taught

This is a first for me.  In the past, I have internally reviewed lessons that I have taught.  I have made notes about how I might improve the lesson next time I teach it.  I have never shared any of these reflections with others - - - until now.  Dr. Z Reflects - for real!

This is an extemporaneous reflection on how I introduced our final project.  Instead of just beginning the session by saying "Today we are going to be learning about our final project for the semester."  Instead, I began by contextualizing the upcoming project by beginning with us reviewing an article I had asked them to read before class, Five Characteristics of Learner-Centered Teaching.  I broke them into groups by tables and had each group review a specific characteristic and discuss how the assignments we had completed this semester fit that characteristic. They all share good observations and they agreed that we had been following the characteristics.  I followed this with an explanation that this final project is the culmination of our learner-centered experience and I showed them some examples.  The students left completely involved in anticipating the upcoming challenge.  Watch the 9-minute video and it will complete my story.


Here is the reflection.  I have some more ideas and resources that I will post below the video.  I hope that you find this interesting. PLEASE provide feedback in the Comment section at the bottom of this post.




Here is the graphic for the "5 Characteristics" article that I asked our student (Emily Caylor) to create.

Motivating Achievement

I also tried something new with our students.  We have a couple of assignments that they are responsible to complete throughout the semester.  
  • One assignment involves having them create a Blog and write 4 blog posts about things they are learning or things that interest them concerning educational technology.
  • The other assignment challenges them to expand their Personal Learning Network.  This means that they connect with other educators through Twitter or Facebook or ???
The problem is that many of them keep "putting it off" and the end of the semester is rapidly advancing. Many of the students are sorely behind on this assignment.   Last night I was talking with one of my Instructional Technology masters students who is interested in research the effect that self-monitoring can have on students.  I thought that one way for my students to monitor their own progress on these two assignments by sharing their successful progress on these assignments.  

At the beginning of class today, I created a table on the whiteboard that asked them to post their name if they had worked on their blog or their Personal Learning Network. As they entered the room, I suggested that they might want to put their names on the board if they had worked on either of these projects.  Twenty of our twenty-eight students registered success.  It will be interesting to see if that number increases next Friday.



So what do you think?  Was this reflection meaningful for you (it DEFINITELY was for me.)  Do you think that you will be doing some vlogging on your blog?

Respond in the comments below

Friday, September 15, 2017

Happy International Dot Day and National Online Learning Day!!

Just wanted to wish you a happy International Dot Day.    

This is based upon Peter Reynolds' book, "The Dot"  It is a short picture book that celebrates creativity and helping develop the creative mindset.  Here is a 4-min read aloud of the book.  You will LOVE it!

I first found this book a few years ago at the ITEC conference in Des Moines.  They had Peter Reynolds as a guest speaker.  Peter spoke about The Dot book in his presentation and I immediately fell in love with the book.  I stood in line for an hour to get him to autograph a couple of copies so that I could give them to our grandsons.

My favorite part of this story began while he was drawing a picture related to the book in the front cover.  I asked him, "When you draw, do you have the picture in your mind and then work to represent it on the paper?"  He thought about it for a minute and replied "No, I see the picture on the paper and then I just need to connect the dots."  Fascinating!



Originated by an Iowan

International Dot Day was originated in 2009 by Terry Shay, music teacher at North Tama High School.  Last year, I had a student in my Ed Tech and Design class who had Terry Shay as a teacher. He said that Mr. Shay was an amazing teacher.

Wait, There's More!

Just found another video created by the author, Peter H. Reynolds, that explains how he creates wonderful graphics . . . all beginning with a dot.




BTW,

This is also National Online Learning Day.  This day "showcases how students of all ages are thriving with the ability to learn online—anywhere, anytime."
There is another webpage where you can read other students' online stories or share your own:

Follow the Twitter discussion today using the hashtag #onlinelearningday

Have a GREAT DAY!!

Z

Sunday, September 10, 2017

Hurricane-Affected People - Use Zello to Communicate

Hurricane-Affected People! Communicating with your families and friends can be a difficult thing to do in a disaster like Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. Texting isn't always enough and phone calls take too much bandwidth. 
I have been told that people are communicating using a walkie-talkie-like phone app called Zello. I found a link to a set of directions that were written as an article about how you can sign on and use it.
Since it is filled with ads, I have condensed it to a 3-page .pdf format. This could make the distribution simpler. (Please note that I have included a link to the original article.)

Our hopes are with you and your well-being.  Please contact me if there is anything that we can do to help you.  zeitz@uni.edu or through the comment section of this blog.

Saturday, September 09, 2017

Students Building their Personal Learning Networks

21st century learning is all about teachers and students being connected people and resources around the world. 

This is often discussed in teacher education classes but how often is it really experienced?  Do students' assignments include challenges that encourage them to find and contact practicing teachers or subject experts as part of the learning process?

Unfortunately, the answer is usually "No."

We teach the required Intro to Technology course for preservice teachers at the University of Northern Iowa.  This course, Educational Technology and Design, is designed to engage the students in learning about learning with the support of technology.

We introduce the concept of Personal Learning Networks (PLN) to our students and challenge them to find and connect with other educators, authors, and experts around the world. We have them draw a map of their PLN at the beginning of the semester and then a post-map at the end where they depict how their PLN has grown and reflect on the process. 

Here is a link to the assignment that we use. 

Building Our PLN through Twitter

Last week I was introducing this assignment to my students. We were discussing why it is useful to be connected to other educators as well as how we might do that.  I pointed out that if we wanted to connect with 2nd grade teachers, we could just search on the #2ndchat hashtag on Twitter and we would have a collection of tweets for those teachers.  We could use the same process to connect with 4th grade teachers (#4thchat) or 8th grade teachers (#8thchat).  (There are hundreds of other educational hashtags - you can find them here.)

Anyway - I suggested that we do a search on #2ndchat to find some 2nd grade teachers. We found scores of tweets from the primary grade teachers. Most of them were sharing
their strategies, experiences and fears about school starting. We scrolled through and found a posting with some interesting photos of a teacher's classroom (See tweet image above.)

I suggested that we send a tweet to this teacher. Many of my students (freshman to senior undergrads) said thought that making such a connection was a little creepy. I pointed out that the reason that teachers post things on Twitter is so that others can benefit from them and these teachers would be interested in talking with other teachers.

While in class I sent a tweet to this teacher, Hannah Hartman, to begin a conversation.



This kicked off an interesting conversation with Hannah Hartman from San Francisco that lasted over the Labor Day weekend. We even had another 2nd grade teacher, Shawn Reed, from Vallejo, California get into the discussion. Here are the tweets:





The day before I was going to meet with my students again, I asked @teacherhartman if she would be interested in Skyping with my students for 5 minutes on Wednesday. Hannah was excited about the opportunity and we decided to Skype at 8 AM (her time) and 10 AM (our time).

Unfortunately, some things came up with her 2nd grade students so we had to cancel the session but we plan to connect our classes in the near future.

Here are the classes that are engaged in this process (photos posted with permission):




Twitter IS a great way to build your Professional/Personal Learning Network. Find some interesting tweets and send a tweet directly to their authors . . . you will be glad that you did.

How have you been building your PLN?
Share your experiences with building your PLN in the comments section.

Saturday, September 02, 2017

21st Century Learning - a Zeitzian Perspective

What does 21st Century Learning mean to you?  In the late 1990s, this term had meaning. It was a brand of learning that was breaking the mold of the past century.  The opening of the 21st century came and went seventeen years ago.  The term 21st Century Learning is still here.  What does it mean?

21st century learning is not about a timeframe.  I don't know what else to call it, but 21st century learning involves creating learning environments that are student-centered active learning experiences.  Here is a short video that I recorded for Bob Greenberg's Brainwaves Video Anthology

What do you think?  Do you agree with these ideas?  How would you rename 21st Century Learning?



BTW, Bob Greenberg's Brainwaves Video Anthology is a significant collection of thinkers, dreamers and innovators in education. This series is meant to inspire and engage the viewer to dig deeper and learn more. In the words of Georges Melies, (The Invention of Hugo Cabret) "Now sit back, open your eyes and be prepared to dream."

Spend some time reviewing what he has collected and prepare to dream. Share your ideas on his comments and add them to this blog as well.