Another excellent Edublogs.org weblog

One of my greatest frustrations as a facilitator is meeting teachers who respond to teaching methods that integrate ICTs by saying:
“That’s all well and good… but it’s easier for you… in your subject area … with your access … with the kind of students you teach … etc … yadda yadda yadda … blah blah blah”
It’s my firmest belief that these teaching methods do not subscribe to the “buts” rather allow teachers to address the needs of all students across all curriculum areas. I have always tried to provide teachers with examples of how digital pedagogy can enhance their own classroom, but at times you hit a brick wall when it comes to the necessary motivation, inclination, imagination to change.  In my experience, many teachers need to be shown the digital pedagogy in use, and be provided with evidence that students outcomes are enhanced.
I am in the fortunate position of having two very disparate teaching backgrounds from which to draw the above evidence. It has been a long time coming, but next term I have been given the opportunity to teach our Year 8 Extension Maths class, so I will finally be able to provide Maths teachers with some examples of how digital pedagogy can fit within the Mathematics classroom.
As mentioned, on of my biggest frustrations is the “That’s all well and good” mindset and that frustration was enhanced by those Maths teachers who adopted the “Sure that works for you in English,  but you don’t understand how Maths works, and it just doesn’t fit into our teaching area…” Well, I did understand Maths, and I could see how it fit into the subject area, but didn’t have the concrete examples to provide, as I was loaded with a full English timetable.
Well now I’ve got the chance. Term Four baby! Yeah! Here’s what I plan:
Context:

The class I will be teaching is a trial of a 1-1 laptop programme, and they are high ability Maths students. Each student has their own Macbook that they will bring to class. Because of the lack of knowledge of digital pedagogy principles at my school, this technology has primarily been used as a publishing tool for the past three terms… these students have rarely used the technology to access connected learning environments, or web 2.0 technologies to enhance their learning.

Unit: The Geodesic Dome (Geometry)
Summary: This unit will explore traditional concepts of Geometry (Area, Volume, Scale, Dimension, Diagrams, Sketches, Plans) and give them real life applications (Building a Geodesic Dome, Creating a floor plan, building a 3D model). It also aims at drawing students’ attention to the learning process and what it means to think mathematically and build mathematical knowledge. This will be done through the use of a variety of digital pedagogy tools that will connect the learners with other learners and expose the learning process (Blogs, Wikis, Discussion Forums).

Learning Experiences/Activities:

Some general ideas:
Reference Wiki: The start of this unit is quite content heavy… so I thought I’d allow students to place their learnings in a wiki for reference later in the unit. Due to the nature of these students, I want to give them complete ownership of this tool, and only intervene with constructive feedback as it gets compiled. Focus here will be on how reference material is remembered and retained by the learner. Students, as authors, will get a chance to explore how we learn mathematically as they create a tool that supports the range of learners in their class.
Weekly Blog: One of the major tools we’ll use in this unit is a weekly reflective Blog. Because of the practical nature of many of the activities, this will be perfect for them to reflect upon their experiences and share in the experiences of others. As with the wiki above, I want these students to become comfortable in talking about the learning experiences and sharing thoughts, creations, successes, failures, difficulties, processes, teamwork, collaboration, etc.
Google Sketch-Up: The whole second half of the unit will involve students utilizing Google Sketch-up to create floor plans for their own house design, which will then lead to an entire 3D model of the dwelling. This will capitalise on the theory from the first half of the unit and place it in a real life context. It will also give the unit an end point; something that they have produced, something that they own. By the end of this unit, you will have produced a 3D model of your ideal house… drawn to scale… how cool is that!
Discussion Board: I’m going to use this tool in the form of a help forum as the class starts to use Google Sketch-Up for their design task. I’m no expert in the software, so I want them to become independent users of it, supporting each other and sharing knowledge. If they rely on my limited knowledge then what they produce will be limited to that. I intend to spend considerable time discussing how to access support to discover how to make the software work for them…
So there’s my ideas… what do you reckon? … I’m off now to write a unit plan, and shape them all into a cohesive unit of work…
I’m looking forward to seeing the dramatic affect digital pedagogy has in my mathematics classroom… will keep you all posted…

Hello,

Today I have been working with teachers from my school who are all going for their Digital Pedagogy Licence. For one particular activity I wished to show them a range of free web 2.0 tools that they could adopt easily in any context to enhance learning in their classroom.

I also decided to kill two birds with one stone and show them a web quest whilst doing it. In constructing this activity I decided to use jogtheweb.com as the tool to deliver the webquest.

With mixed results:

Successes:

• The split web interface looked great and was easy to navigate. My instructions were clearly displayed on the jogtheweb toolbar at the left of screen. The link from Bb worked well and was easy enough for anyone to navigate regardless of whether they’d seen the application or not. I will definitely be using this tool when I run computer lab sessions.
• I could have established the session and then left… the tool bar clearly outlined what was expected and progressed the learning experience. Whilst it took a bit to set up, it did mean my participants could work independently through the session at their own pace without my input.
• As part of the web 2.0 experience, the first stop was at delicious.com where participants set up an account… then as they progressed through the webquest, they added each site to their own bookmarks… this meant that at the end of the session they had a personalised resource they could then take off and build upon.

Limitations/Improvements needed:

• I built this webquest at home… didn’t think to check it on EQ machines… a few of my AWESOME web 2.0 sites were blocked which limited the participants experiences. They still bookmarked them, to look at later, but it would have been nice to have them experience them there and then so we could discuss/explore together…
• As with most of my DPL facilitation experiences, there was so much to get through in the day that much of the “play around”, “hands on” stuff had to be pushed through to meet time restraints… rather than have an hour for this activity, two would have been much more effective… but there are only so many hours in the day.
• When building the webquest, I had difficulties with some sites… eg. wolframalpha.com did not like the split web interface, so when I tried to add it as a leg of my jogtheweb path, it would abandon the jogtheweb application and just display its site only… in the end I gave up on this site, and ended up on ditching it for other applications that were more compliant!

Overall, the use of this tool was an extremely positive one… I will definitely be using it in the future with my English/Maths Classes as well as a facilitation tool.

I would love to explore the use of other users’ tracks as a research process… Would be great to see students find other students with similar learning contexts and use their tracks to find appropriate/relevant web resources.

Hmmm… ok so how did I do? First reflective blog entry… done! More to come…

Out.

What an exhausting day! I love presenting Professional Development where teachers are interested, keen and switched on and ready to have a go at whatever is thrown at them! With that said, at the end of the day I do feel massively exhausted. The up-shot is that I am now forced to start practicing what I preach… I’ve finally started a reflective blog… I’ve decided my first entry will be about my use of jogtheweb.com as a web quest tool in one of today’s sessions… the ball is rolling, I am blogging, and hopefully some people will share in my thoughts and learnings… Till my next blog, (about 5 mins away)… Out.