Final VOLT Blog: Reflection

     When I first entered the VOLT program, I had some experience on the receiving end of on-line teaching, having taken a couple of blended classes in my career, but I had no real concept of how to develop a class of my own.  I had very limited experience with our school's LMS and no idea how to use it to provide content to students.  I always thought of it as a reasonably powerful force, but did not know how to access it.
     I have learned much during the past few months and I see places in my job where I can enhance my teaching by using some of it.  I am not in a situation where I see myself going through a complete change in style and using on-line or blended teaching as the majority of my class, but I do see myself looking for ways to bring the philosophies and practices that we learned and shared into play as a way to improve the overall experience for my students.  I can envision teaching units or lessons through the LMS and even keeping a supply of emergency lessons on hand which the students can access in my absence.
     I particularly found useful the first couple of units of the class where we were actively trying out new things and sharing websites and apps that we were able to instantly see use for in our classrooms.  From the very beginning, using Flipgrid to introduce ourselves, I could see value in what we were doing.  We also spent time learning about and discussing our learning environment and how were were going to present, discuss, and assess the content we were looking to deliver.  All of these things will remain with me as I seek ways to incorporate more technology in my class.
     While interesting and informative, I found the unit on Digital Literacies to be more theoretical than practical and not as instrumental in helping me develop curriculum.  I am sure, however, that all of the articles and discussions will be swirling around my brain as I make decisions about what to include and how to present it to my students.
     I was very interested in our final (for me at least) presenter of the program.  Michelle Picansky-Brock spoke about humanizing our classes and I suppose that I never really looked at it that way.  I always felt that to be a good teacher, you had to be present and available to your students, but I now will be extra careful to make sure that I am not only present, but obviously present so that I do not even give the impression that a computer is running this particular show.  Clearly, our instructors are aware of this situation and were excellent models of how to keep a class humanized.
     Through it all, I have tried to preach caution and selectivity when deciding to move classes on-line.  I feel that there is a great push to include more and more technology into classrooms and there are not enough teachers willing to say "Hey, wait a minute.  Are we sure that that is better than what I am doing now?"  Just because something is new and exciting does not mean that it is a better way to share knowledge.  I am in favor of using technology and would have a difficult time working without it, but the deciding factor for me it whether or not to add something new to my instruction is if I am convinced that it makes me a better teacher.  Technology will keep changing and schools will never be able to change as quickly.  The idea of fundamentally changing the way schools work in order to include today's concepts of what students will need in tomorrow's work force is short sighted.  Nobody knows what tomorrow's workforce will look like, but I bet that it does not look like what we think it will look like.  The most effective thing that we teachers can do is to continue to teach kids to read, write, calculate, and solve problems.  If students are really good at those things, they will be fine no matter what tomorrow looks like.

Kurish out.

Personalized Education

     I am a math teacher (have I mentioned that, yet?)  As such, I often find it difficult to find ways to personalize education for my students.  After all, math is a fairly impersonal subject.  I hardly ever hear the question "How do you feel about multiplying two by three, do you think that six is a good result, or should we brainstorm about the various possibilities?"  There are only a few ways to explain why two times three equals six.  If you choose a way that is not one of those few ways, then you are probably doing something that will cause problems for your students in the future. Math is very structured and step three cannot be completed until after step two.
     That is not to say that there is no way to make it somewhat personal.  One way to begin a discussion of a new concept is by providing the class with a problem that they can try to solve even though they do not have the exact mathematical skills to solve it. Then, after the class bounces ideas off of each other and comes up with their best attempt to answer the question, the teacher can provide the math skills that would make the job easier or more precise.  From a personalization standpoint, a teacher could choose problems from an area that might be interesting to the students.  Perhaps a problem related to sports would be interesting to some while a question about movie ticket sales would be interesting to others.  If a teacher could provide a choice of questions, all based on the same general concept, but related to different areas of interest, then more students might find that they are engaged in the class.
     Here is a problem, however.  At the level of mathematics that I tend to teach, which is algebra 2 and precalculus, it is very difficult to develop these problems on my own.  The best problems can be found on-line, and whenever a problem is found on-line, the answer can also be found on-line.  It seems to me, in my experience, that it is more likely for students to look for the answer on-line rather than to try to solve it on their own.  So I must battle that tendency.  I can certainly ask the students to work on the problem in class without the benefit of a computer, but that is not possible in a blended or on-line setting.
     So I have to be very careful about how I go about my attempt to take my classes into the 21st century.  Isaac Newton had it so much easier with his students.  He was one of only two or three people alive who knew the answer to his questions.  That really reduced the chances of his students cheating.

Technology Integration or Blended Learning?

     Wow.  It has been so long since I have accessed my blog that I actually had to use the link provided in Canvas to find it.
     Anyway . . . I am a big fan of the SMARTBoard in my classroom.  I use it everyday in my teaching.  One of the things that I most enjoy, and that I find effective for my students, is the creation of screen capture videos of math problem examples.  When I teach a new concept and one or more of the students in the class has confusion about it, they can ask me to create a video.  All that is required of me is that I press a few buttons and work through another example problem.  The result is that I have a video that includes what I am writing on the board and my explanation, much like a Khan Academy video, but better because it is me and I am more fun than Sal Khan.
     I then take that video and upload it into a Google Drive folder that has been shared with the students.  The students are able to access the video when doing homework or studying for a test or exam.  It is also available for the parents in case they want to try to help the students with their homework.
     All of that is, of course, technology integration.  It is not blended learning in spite of the fact that I am posting the videos on-line.  One way for me to turn this exercise into blended learning would be to post the videos in a space where students can access them and then have discussions about the concepts or answer further questions that I would generate.
     That is one of the things that I will be looking into for the coming year.  I will be teaching an integrated math class that includes some students who really struggle with math.  I will be trying to get them out of the usual math class routine and get them to discuss the concepts with each other.  A blended approach will also get them to write about math more often.  Both discussion and writing will help them to understand the concepts better.

Module 5 Week 2: Metadata

     The ugly truth is that I have no problem with the collection of metadata.  I do not care if someone out there knows what keystrokes I hit, or how long I stay on a web page, or how many games of Freecell I have played since December (950).  I do not care that a guy in Des Moines knows that on April 18th I viewed an online ad for Purina Pro Plan dog food.  If that helps them target advertisements to my needs, I am okay with that as long as I keep getting free services from google such as email and google drive.  I also get Freecell for free.
     The problem is that I know it won't stop there.  I have read enough dystopian literature to understand where all of this is heading.  Pretty soon "they" will have a camera in my living room to make sure that I heartily sing along with the national anthem when it comes on the television at 5:00. I am not sure the exact steps required to go from Purina to Big Brother, but my ignorance of the process is clearly part of "their" plan.
     I enjoyed the article by Audrey Waters.  I like her style.  She raises good questions and she doesn't pretend that she knows the answers.  She points out some fairly disturbing trends in data mining and information gathering.  The concept of having a camera in my classroom to determine whether or not I am an effective teacher is one of those disturbing possibilities.  Imagine being the person whose job it is to watch those tapes.  What an awful way to make a living.
     Of course, some of the concerns raised are not real concerns at all.  Whether or not Purdue University's Course Signals was as effective as advertised by the school does not concern me.  It does not appear that anyone was placed in jeopardy by the system.  No one is claiming that student performance deteriorated due to its use.  The only debates are level of effectiveness of the program and the confidence in Perdue's claims.  Neither of those areas impacts me.
     It all comes down to student data.  Again I declare that if it is guaranteed that no names or identification will be attached to the data reports and only group information will be disseminated, then I care not what happens to it or who gets ahold of it.  To me, there is a big difference between "Bryan Kurish posted 8 blogs during the VOLT program," and "Students in the VOLT program posted an average of 7.3 blogs."  The second one uses my data in a way that does not bother me at all.
     Now if you will excuse me, I have to attend the Two Minutes Hate.

Reactions, Week 3, Module 4

     Some very interesting reading this week.  I will begin by expressing my thoughts about the U.S. Department of Education review of research on the effectiveness of on-line learning as compared to face-to-face courses.  I am, frankly, surprised by the results of that review.  It has long been my expressed opinion that teaching someone in person is the best way to teach someone.  The teacher gets to know the student and then makes necessary adjustments to the curriculum to match the student's needs.  On-line courses only become a better option when, for whatever reasons, some of which we will get to later, students cannot access a face-to-face setting.  The job of on-line courses, then, is to try to be almost as good as face-to-face classes.  Not better. Almost as good.  The U.S. Department of Education report says that I am wrong.  Me.  Wrong.  I have difficulty accepting that outcome and I am not ready to acquiesce to it.
     Let's start from the beginning.  From the report: "The meta-analysis found that, on average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction." (p. ix)  That is a pretty clear statement.  To be accurate, the report established that these results were true in higher education settings and could not, due to a lack of data, be applied to students in K-12 settings where I exist.  So that's one thing.  I can still claim that face-to-face classes are better in high school.  No one has knocked me off that perch, yet.  Another notion from the report is also puzzling to me.  The authors found that blended courses are the best of the bunch. It seems strange to me that, if adding face-to-face time to online courses makes them better, going to all face-to-face would have a negative effect.  
     Another area of concern for me is that the reports says that students "performed better".  What, exactly, does that mean?  Does that mean that they learned the material better?  Does it mean that they got better grades?  Does it means that they self-assessed and claimed to have performed better?  I combed through the document and could find no indication of how performance was measured.  In fact, one of the caveats of the report is that "many of the studies suffered from weaknesses such as . . . potential bias stemming from the authors' dual role as experimenters and instructors." (p. xvii) The possibility exists, therefore, that the results of the some of the studies were tainted due to grade inflation because the instructor wanted the online version of the course to appear better.
     So, with all of those doubts, I am prepared to stick to my guns and say that online learning is a wonderful and viable option, sometimes the only option, but it is not yet better than sitting down with your teacher and learning from her.
     The other piece of interesting reading was the Killion et al. article Are Virtual Classrooms Colorblind?.  This article brought up some very important issues for me.  When I design my classroom environment, are my "on-line learning materials . . . developed primarily from an Aglo-Saxon perspective" (p. 4)? I never considered that question.  I understand that, by the very nature of a course being presented online, I risk alienating a sector of the population that cannot afford internet access, but I have not considered the nationality or race of my student population as of yet.  The idea that "Interface design elements may elicit a range of responses from different cultures related to format ( e.g. colors, icons, sounds), navigation through content, and communication channels" (p. 5) is entirely fascinating to me.  I now have new considerations in the design phase of my work.

Reaction, Module 3, Week 3

The readings this week were interesting, but I could find no significant thread that ran between them.  They both, however, were of use to me as I considered the learning environment for my practicum. 

I found much to agree with and to disagree with in the Mishra and Koehler article about Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge.  I agree with the general idea of the authors and believe that it is important to understand the interplay between technology, pedagogy, and content.  Each area on its own is worthy of study, but the dark grey area of the Venn diagram on page 1025 of the article seems the key.  I recognize in my own work that technology can inform content.  With the availability of websites such as Desmos where students can graph algebraic expressions and display intercepts and zeros of functions and vertices quickly and easily, is it necessary any longer to teach these concepts on paper?  Is there any advantage to knowing the math behind those points or should we just find them on the computer and see what we can do with them?  And from there, the content informs my pedagogy.  Is it better to have students discover the relationships between the expressions and the graphs, or is it better to instruct the students directly and then have them practice the techniques?  Of course, it all depends on the students in the class.  So only I, the mighty teacher, have access to all of those pieces and components and can make these big decisions.  That is why I get the big bucks!

I do, however, disagree with the authors on a couple of points.   When they elaborate on their ideas regarding teacher training in the area of technology, they opine that learning a technology tool outside of the context in which it will be used is “ill-suited” to produce the desired result for teachers.  I think that is wrong.  Teachers need to learn the entirety of the tools.  If you teach how to use it in only one context, you are undoubtedly going to not utilize various features of the tool that could be applied to a different setting.  As one of my colleagues is fond of saying “Trust your teachers, they are smart and creative and can do the job well.”  Teach them the tool and let them figure out how to use it in an appropriate way.  In the author’s example called Making Movies, the course taught both educational psychology and how to use a video production program.  Well, call me crazy, but if you take a finite amount of time and teach two different skills, then you are learning less of each skill than if you separated the skills into two classes.  I say teach a class on video production and then you can use that skill in future classes about anything you want. 

The quote of the day comes from the Mishra and Koehler article.  Actually the quote itself, “teaching and learning with technology exist in a dynamic transactional relationship,” is not what makes it special.  What makes it special is that the authors use a Dewey and Bentley study from 1949 as a reference for the quote.  1949! The only technology in 1949 was Marcus’ pencil.   

Reactions, Module 3, Week 1

There are two ways for me to enjoy the readings for our class.  One is to learn and take something away that I can apply to my own teaching or to some other aspect of my job.  Even if it just a great quote or a way of explaining something to my students, I walk away with a new folder in the filing cabinet of my mind.  The other way for me to enjoy an article is to read something that causes me to storm into another classroom room and say "Did you read what so-and-so said about this-or-that? And these people call themselves experts!" Then I am politely told to go away and I return to my work.

Suffice it to say that I enjoyed this week's readings.  Both gratification methods were represented.  The two articles on scaffolding were interesting to me.  While the two overlapped a fair bit, I found myself agreeing with Puntambekar and Hubscher over Tabak wherever they disagreed.   Puntambekar and Hubscher (P and H) began from the Wood definition from 1976 that apparently gave rise to the scaffold metaphor.  In that definition, an adult provided the support that was necessary for the student to be successful.  Of course, the ubiquitous hand of technology is causing everyone to rethink that definition and to include sources other than adults such as peers, learning environments, and on-line tools.  P and H caution that whatever you choose to call a support, the key feature of any scaffolding is that the student be able to perform the task by himself when the scaffolding has been removed.

Part of the P and H article was a discussion of the scaffold metaphor.  Scaffolding is, of course, the support system that is built around a building so that the workers can reach farther and complete tasks that would be out of reach without it.  The article also discusses the work of some experts who question the appropriateness of the metaphor.  these experts point out that when the scaffolding is removed, the worker returns to ground zero.  I think that they are missing the point entirely.  In the metaphor, the student is not the worker, the student is the building and the workers are the parts of the brain that build the understanding of the student.  That is why it is so important that the building stand on its own when the scaffolding is removed.  That feature of the metaphor is very important to me.  When P and H go on to say that "Merely providing students with a visual interface or structure for a process cannot be described as scaffolding unless the hints and prompts are contingent on an ongoing diagnosis of student learning," (p. 8) and, in fact, the entirety of the Tabak article on differentiated scaffolding, that feature cannot be overlooked.  Scaffolding is built for individuals for specific reasons.  There is no one-size-fits-all model.  All scaffolding, by definition, has to be differentiated.  It would be absurd to think that a construction company could build the required scaffolding off-site and then apply it to several different buildings.  It has to be constructed on-site to the specifications of that one building.  On-line tools, learning environments, and peer tutoring can all be used as scaffolding, but each must be crafted carefully to include feedback and malleability.

On the other side of my enjoyment coin was the article on "The New Literacies of Online Reading Comprehension . . ."  I disagreed with just about everything in that article.  I actually poked my head into one classroom and said "Literacy is now deictic? Really?"  I am sorry, but literacy is not changing.  What it means to be literate is not changing.  The definitions of literacy are still the ability to read and write, and competency in a specified area.  The only thing that is really changing is where the information is coming from.  The "New Literacies" article makes the point that, with the increasing importance of the internet as a source of information,  those who can recognize the important problems and find the best information and evaluate it effectively to develop the best solutions will succeed in the challenging times ahead of us.  That has been true since we were cavemen and cavewomen (when I was in high school.) The article also quotes other authors who say that "A critical component of successful Internet reading is the ability to read and locate information that meets one's needs." (p. 7) That was true 35 years ago when I went to the library to do my research for school.  Back then I even had to be careful to evaluate a source's validity and be aware of the author's bias.  None of that has changed.

And these people call themselves experts!