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Personal Goals: Knowing, making, and playing

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At the beginning of the semester I set the following 3 personal technology goals for myself. 1. Use my watch at least 5 times a week to monitor my workouts. 2. Learn and use Photoshop to edit an online photo album. 3. Create an online photo album. How did I plan to achieve these goals? First, I defined the goal and emailed it to the professor of the course. Then I thought about what specifically this would mean and how I would accomplish these goals. I chose the fitness tracker because I was in the habit of not wearing it while I worked out. I am pretty good about being consistent with my exercise, but less consistent with tracking my efforts. I decided to be more conscious of wearing my iwatch while I worked out. I captured a screenshot of my progress and then place them in a photo layout app on my phone that I sometimes like to use for photos. Here is the progress for the first goal. I think I did pretty well. The colored circles indicate that I completed a workout on that ...
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The role of teachers in an era of digital learning

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The list above represents a few of the trends in educational technology. These trends are reshaping how students learn and how teachers teach. As with anything there will always be people and institutions that resist change, but those educators and institutions who embrace change will see a dramatic reshaping of education. The main theme that I have taken away from the learning material this week is that the education community is moving away from knowledge acquisition to knowledge creation and application. The goal is for learning to be more collaborative and students to be more engaged in the learning process. The role of a teacher will change as a result of these trends. Teachers will move away from the expert role who imparts knowledge to more of a guide or facilitator who creates learning experiences, encourages social and emotional learning, and motivates students. The process is more creative and interactive for both teachers and students. Teachers will use assessment to gui...
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Importance of new literacies in an era of participatory culture

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A participatory culture is one where each member is contributing through creating and sharing their own creations with members of a community. In this supportive community, members feel that what they do matters and they care about what others think of their contributions. There is a passing down of information and skill from most experienced to less experienced members. There are different forms of participatory culture such as affiliations, expressions, collaborative problem-solving, and circulations. The "Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century" paper suggests that we should think about new media literacies as social skills, not necessarily personal expression of individualized skill. One of the best things associated with the participatory culture is the idea of belonging and contributing something meaningful to a group. In a classroom, encouraging group collaboration and participation can help with group cohesion and stu...
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Immersive Learning: Creating "an" experience

The central tenet of education from a Deweyan perspective is help students participate in “worthwhile experiences”. An ordinary experience is activity that happens over time without “ever developing”. These ordinary experiences occur without “coherence, development, or flow”. Conversely, an experience is the united sequencing of events that happens with flow and culminates with an ending that related to the preceding events. The distinguishing features of an experience versus ordinary experiences are the interconnectedness of the all the parts relating to the ending of the event and the anticipation that is evoked. He describes an experience as having a dramatic nature incorporating anticipation with a definite ending referred to as consummation.  The students become involved in the drama of the experience by interacting with the environment.  Dewey suggested that teaching should create anticipation in students through ideas, emotional connection, and that these ide...
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Wise Integration of Technology

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I am happy to report that in addition to learning about a couple different models for the wise integration of technology, I also learned how to include a powerpoint slide in a post. Progress! I think that the models are similar in their approach to understanding the incorporation of technology. I think that the main difference in the models is that the SAMR model focuses more on guiding based on the intended effect and the R.A.T. model focuses more on understanding the role of incorporating technology. 
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Position Statement on Media's Influence on Learning

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I tried to use a couple of different forms of media to state my position. I made a powerpoint, but was unable to upload it as a movie to this blog. Unfortunately, it would not play so I deleted it. I don't know if I was successfully able to articulate my reasons for the position that I have taken with this infographic. I believe that while methods of instruction are very important, media by itself can also influence learning. When reading Clark and Kozma's papers, I thought that Clark supported and presented his argument better. It was very clear what his position was. I didn't think that Kozma did this quite as well. Regardless of the strength of argument, in the end, I sided with Kozma because I think learning is an interactional process between individual and environment. I think learning can occur from media even if there has been no attempt at instructional method.
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Clark v. Kozma. The debate about the influence of media on learning.

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