Culture. Learning. Technology.

Learning through Publishing: iBooks

Apr18
2012 3 Comments Avatar of Jessica A Hale Written by Jessica A Hale

So, I will admit it publicly:  I am an Apple junkie.  While I am drawn to any tool that will help my students learn through collaboration and creating, there is just something about Apple’s commitment to education and their focus on learning.

So when the new application ‘iBooks Author‘ was launched, I knew I had to find a way to use it in my classroom.  Using this tool meant my students could:

  • create!  Using the information we had covered in class, they could compile the information and create an original piece of work
  • publish!  They could share their original work with the rest of the world.

One of the classes that I teach is ‘Advanced Placement Comparative Government and Politics’ and there is not alot of study material out there for the course.  The grand plan is that we would create the ultimate study guide for the class that could be improved upon from year to year.  The features an iOS study guide that appealed to both the students and myself were:

  • Downloadable to their mobile devises, it could go anywhere with them!
  • Interactive it is not just text but, includes review questions, pictures, and vodcasts

As we set to work, the students were divided into three groups and were given two countries and a list of course themes to include in their portion of the text.  Each group had only one computer with iBook Author loaded (you need to have Lion in order to download the app).  Much time was spent on the research portion of the project so the resulting content was great but, the aesthetics suffered as a result.  Also, with the current version, there is no way to compile projects.  We ended up with three book rather than one ‘Ultimate Study Guide.’

This is a project that I will definitely stick with in future years.  The students were excited about creating and sharing their original content.  For more info on how we created our iBooks, check out more information below.  And, as always, feel free to: use, share, and improve!!

Project Specifics and Rubric

AP Semester Group Project 2012

PowerPoint for COETAIL Course Five

Hale, jessica coetail course five project

 

 

 

Posted in Course 5

Managing the 1 to 1 Environment

Dec13
2011 2 Comments Avatar of Jessica A Hale Written by Jessica A Hale

Just six months into our first year of 1 to 1 in the high school at Yongsan International School, I have been re-evaluating some of my classroom policies regarding the use of laptops.  As an early integrator, I thought I would be more than prepared to handle the challenges of laptop uses as I firmly believe that classroom management is challenging with or without computers.  I tend to get a little irritated with those who ‘blame technology’ for poor student behavior.  That being said, we should consistently be working to improve and make better our teaching strategies no matter what they may be.  So, the main challenges I have faced:

  •  Online testing: several incidents of cheating either with notes or the web.  Unfortunately, the schools response to this has been to discourage online testing rather allowing the cheater to be an example of what ‘not to do’
  • Time Management: quite possibly a situation beyond my control, we have online textbooks and the students are consistently complaining about the amount of homework they have in addition to the required reading.  I am convinced that they are surfing the web and on social media rather than focusing on their homework
  • Start of Class: perhaps the most simplistic and easiest to fix would be to have the students keep their laptops closed at the beginning of class.  At the start of each class, at least a third of the students are glued to their computer screen.

 I really do feel blessed to be teaching in a 1 to 1 environment.  It offers many more dimensions to the learning environment.  However, the advantages can be lost without proper management.  As our entire high school is experiencing similar challenges, it would be valuable to collaborate and even create a ‘best practices’ list for teachers to access.

 In the Classroom

I use the term ‘shields down’ to get the students to close their computers and look to the front of the classroom.  Also, we have utilized RemoteDesktop for the mac based systems.  Though the students often view this as ‘spyware’ I like to use it to showcase their work, PowerPoints, or even drop them files.  This way, they can see the advantages of the program as well.  Although, it does help when a few get ‘caught’ to keep the others on task!

Posted in Course 4

Learning in the Future

Dec13
2011 Leave a Comment Avatar of Jessica A Hale Written by Jessica A Hale

Speculating about education of the future can be quite exciting.  Though east Asia may be number one in standardized assessment scores, I do believe they have missed the boat when it comes to truly learning.  Does a standardize score truly gauge knowledge that has been acquired?  What about success?  Once we have received such scores or the diploma, does one stop learning?

Learning should transcend age

 Some of the most successful people in the world have been self-directed, independent, life-long learners.  As teachers, our jobs necessitates this.  So how does technology fit in?  It allows use to collaborate, broadcast, and share the knowledge and information that is taking place in our classroom.  Because we are being thrust from a one dimensional teacher-centered atmosphere into one where students can learn from their peers and the world at large, the use of technology requires a student to hunt, find, and vet the information they are coming across to find what is factual and true.  Even better, they have the opportunity to collaborate and create superior products and share it with the rest of the world to perpetuate learning.

A couple of personal ‘prophesies’ in regards to education of the future:

  • standardized tests will become a minor piece of the puzzle, if not obsolete
  • project-based learning will take more of center staged as students are given the opportunity to create with information they are learning
  • individualized and specialized learning will become more prevalent as internet brings all the appropriate tools to one place
  • skills will be more emphasized over content in the earlier years
  • content that is taught will be based on your interest and/or profession in the high school years
  • classroom teachers roles very well may change into a guiding role rather than an ‘expert’ in their field because there is a wider and more easily accessed body of information

 In the Classroom

A few ways I am making this happen in the classroom

Culminating Project:At the end of each quarter or unit, the students create a culminating group project.  It could be a video, website, or story map; but, the point is for them to collaborate and create

Blogs: Our school has set up blogs for all the students to be used as digital portfolios; we use these to showcase the work that they have completed in the course

Google:  Simply, when we come across information we are not sure of or students want to learn more about, somebody ‘Googles’ and we find out more at the same time comparing sources.

 

Posted in Course 4

Evaluating Reverse Instruction

Dec13
2011 Leave a Comment Avatar of Jessica A Hale Written by Jessica A Hale

As a teacher who is alway looking for more time in class, particularly to spend a individually with struggling students, the reverse classroom brings quite the appeal.  This strategy quite popular and, in my opinion, extremely effective in the maths and sciences.

So, you may ask:  What is a ‘flipped classroom’?

It involves completing traditional classroom activities at home, while saving the traditionally homework activities for the classroom allowing for more one-on-one work, collaboration, and correction by teachers.

Because I teach social studies, the flipped approach can be quite challenging as the students are assigned quite a bit of reading for homework and we save the classroom for lecture and activities.  For the last unit of my survey of economics course, I took a self-paced flipped approach.  You can read the full evaluation here. While I do not think that the full flipped approach is conducive to my classroom, there were some valuable perspectives I acquired in my trial run and some elements I have begun to integrate along the way

Perspective

  • Many students do not know how to be independent learners:  When given all of the tools, sometimes they will simply not build the boat because they do not know how to do so
  • Many students do not want to be independent learner: they are comfortable with receiving information and not doing anything with it.

Elements Acquired from the Flipped Class Approach

Vodcasting: Creating a video library of short lectures can be a valuable resource for students

Podcast/videos: Assign podcast/videos for discussion rather than using class time

Blogging: for social studies, this can be used for students to post their ideas and classmates evaluate and post response

Tips and Tricks

Join a network of others doing the same

Anticipate much work the first time around, planning an preparing is extremely time consuming

Stay actively involved, if you are trying to make more time in the classroom, utilize the time the students are in your room

It is messy!  Though it may seem unorganized and out of control, the students are truly learning not just content but skills for

How to be Independent Learners

Posted in Course 4, Flipped Classroom

What is Technology Integration?

Dec03
2011 Leave a Comment Avatar of Jessica A Hale Written by Jessica A Hale

In my classroom, technology integration centers around two things:

  • content standards that students are required to learn
  • 21st century learning skills that students should learn

Pretty much, any relevant technology that help a student accomplish these goals I am open to try.

As an early integrator of technology in the classroom and a teacher in a new 1 to 1 high school, I am struck by the fact that teachers are often confused by the term ‘technology integration.’  Is it use of the schools Learning Management System?  Is it the use of a classroom website? Is it the use of Web 2.0 tools?

A great tool whatever the grade may be, the Technology Integration Matrix, provides a self-assessment tool for meaningful integration in or classroom.  This addresses another fear for teachers struggling with integration, is it meaningful?  Am I missing something in the classroom if I choose to use a new way?

The major questions for teachers:

How do we define technology integration?

and

Why is it important?

 The Stratford Board of Education provides an applicable answer to both of these questions, “Integration is an instructional choice that generally includes collaboration and deliberate planning—and always requires a classroom teacher’s participation.”

 It is vital that a school help to answer these questions for teachers.  IF technology integration is important, it is vital that the school leaders answer the WHY and the HOW.  As schools are able to define these for teachers, then teachers can be free to use the implement in their individual classrooms.

In the Classroom

Tool Purpose
Vodcasting Delivery of instruction in lecture form; allows more class time for discussion and evaluation
Google Apps Primarily used for collaboration and communication
Website Platform for learning, showcase for student learning

Other sources

Stratford Board of Education, “What is Technology Integration?”

Edutopia, “Why integrate technology in the Classroom?”

Posted in Course 4 - Tagged , , ,

Successful Learning

Dec03
2011 Leave a Comment Avatar of Jessica A Hale Written by Jessica A Hale

There is no doubt that my number one passion when it comes toe the classroom is teaching social studies. But, what I love about teaching at this time in ‘history’ (pardon the pun) is all of the other skills that can be incorporated while teaching content matter. You see, I teach in Asia. The educational philosophy in Korea tends to center around rigid memorization and test taking. I find myself fighting this battle every day. But, as I tell my students, because information is so easily accessible they are going to need to learn skills beyond just recalling information.
The truth is, our job as educators is becoming increasingly complex. We must extended the skills we are teaching students beyond the content area centering around pencils and paper and reach into the sphere of technology. As David Warlick suggests in “What difference Might one ‘S’ Make,” students should be using computers to accomplish specific goals, for creating. because this generation has grown up with accessibility to computers, we are losing the need for a course that shows them how to ‘use’ it; we must show them what purpose it can serve.
The Partnership for 21st Learning provides a great model for integrating technology. With the core content as a foundation, we can use technology to integrate 21st Century Learning skills like that of critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and creativity. Technology being the medium of exchange when integrating these skills, we are still teaching the students the core content. However, an adequate understanding must be made

Additional Information
ISTEs http://www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-students/nets-student-standards-2007.aspx

In the Classroom

Tool

 Project/Activity Standards Met
Google Docs Group Project P21 Collaboration; NETs2d
FaceBook Global Event/Political Simulation P21 Critical Thinking, NETs 4a.c.
iMovie Culminating Video Project P21 Creativity, NETs 1.b.2.a.6.a.c.

Posted in Course 4 - Tagged , , ,

Integrating Visual Literacy in Social Studies

Nov12
2011 Leave a Comment Avatar of Jessica A Hale Written by Jessica A Hale

I think history most comes alive in two capacities:

 When we can understand it as a story

AND

When it can be visualized

I was really excited to begin incorporation the idea of visual literacy in my history classroom, particularly because I have younger high school students who I would like to get excited about history.  We all remember that history teahcer who made us work from our textbooks and bored us to tears, I strive every day to NOT be that teacher.  So, for this unit on Industrialization, I tackled the following skills to educate the students on visual literacy and the course content at the same time.

Seeing Visual Media: In researching periodically throughout the unit, the students were asked to evaluate the legitimacy of wesbsites based on aesthetics and layout as well as the source; they were also required to embed fair use photos in activities related to the topic.

Imagery and Communication: The students were required to find an image using creative commons and embed it in their Story Map.  Part of the rubric requires it to be aesthetically appealing.

Understanding Presentation Design: For one of the activities during this unit, we used ‘Fakebook‘ because it is familiar and organized.  I think it helped the students evaluate essential information.  Also, for the story map, many of them used Pages templates which helped them to organize the information in an aesthetically appealing way.

Digital Story Telling: Always looking for ways for students to compile and create using all of the information that they have learned over the course of a unit, I decided to have them create a story map based on Industrialization.  Though more details are posted below, the processing of organizing information, selecting applicable photographs, and organizing it all in appealing way taught them beyond the course content.

Posted in Course 3

Story Mapping in Modern World History

Oct26
2011 Leave a Comment Avatar of Jessica A Hale Written by Jessica A Hale

A couple of months ago a blog post on History Tech offered some cool tools on story mapping for social studies.  Teaching world history can be quite a cumbersome task with so much information to cover in an often not-so-long school year.  So, I thought what a great way to get students to collaborate and create using the material we are learning in Modern World this year!

Looking to draw more excitement from the saturated topic on of the American and French Revolutions, I broke the students up into groups and put them to work story mapping about revolutions of the era.  Using pages, the final product would be a PDF file that took the form of a book.  (We are hoping that iBooks will be able to support this capability in the near future). Here are some of the details:

Process

For each of events assigned, research the following information:

         The Setting: Character (s), Place, Time

 The Problem: what is the problem that one (or more) of the characters is facing

        The Goal: What is the goal of the character?

The Events:  What are the events that occur allowing the characters to get from the problem to the goal?

 The Ending: What happens at the end?  How does the character(s) solve their problem and arrive at the goal?

More details including formatting requirement and the rubric can be found on my class website.

The finished product was amazing!  See below what three junior girls accomplished.

MWH.D.enlighten Revolutions.susanna Yun, Yeji Lee, Yoojin Jung

 

Evaluation

I thought the students did really well with the project.  I think the biggest challenge was the collaborative nature.  I am constantly looking for creative ways to assess individual participation as there always seems to be a ‘free-loader’  I think next time I will do a Google form survey so that the students can evaluate their classmates participation.   However, we will continue to use story mapping periodically throughout the year to compile and create using the information they are learning.

 

Posted in Uncategorized

Appealing Presentations

Oct16
2011 Leave a Comment Avatar of Jessica A Hale Written by Jessica A Hale

Last spring, I was recommended the book “Presentation Zen” by one of my colleagues Mark Heil.  As a history teacher, I give ALOT of presentations.  Sometimes there is just no better way to cover teacher directed information with pictures than using a Keynote or PowerPoint.  This summer, I purchased the iBook and (ironically) it was the first one to be read on my iPad.   The book was really insightful and made me realize that I had be approaching the idea of ‘presenting’ all wrong.  Also, it gave me confidence in the creativity I could have in this arena.  So, I went to work.  Understanding that I could not revise all of my presentations at one time, I started with a few. The following concepts have really stuck with me when designing presentations for the class:

In the beginning:  Tell a story.  Brainstorm and organize the story before you even get started with the slides

During the Process: stick with a color theme, use larger fonts/color to emphasize words, do not overload the slides with words, eliminate bullets

For the Presentation: again, tell a story do not ‘read’ the words off the screen, engage the audience, leave your listeners with information in their hands (a brochure, flyer, etc.

 One of the presentations I created for my Modern World History class was on the transition from the middle ages to the renaissance.  By incorporating pictures, emphasizing font, and the use of borders and shapes it makes communicates the information more effectively than simply bullet points.  The presentation in more memorable to the students when I can couple the appealing visuals with the story I am trying to tell them about the emergence of the renaissance.   See the before and after below.

Before

After

In the Classroom

As an end-of-the-unit culminating project, I had my economics students create Microeconomic PechaKuchas.  They were to use concepts from the unit but, could choose the topic of their choice.  Below is one of the students presentation on consumerism.

 

Posted in Course 3 - Tagged , , ,

Visual Literacy in the Social Studies Classroom

Oct15
2011 Leave a Comment Avatar of Jessica A Hale Written by Jessica A Hale

In social studies, images often bring life to the subject. We have all had a teacher that at one point or another forced us to learn all the dates and events and relied so heavily on a textbook that we dreaded lugging home every night only to fall asleep as we attempted to read through the assigned homework. Utilizing images in history and government can bring vitality to a subject that many student find lifeless. It can also bring a deeper level of understanding and awareness of global issues. The ability to emotionally connect students to events in history through images will incite their interest in the topic and create life-long learners. Some of the ways I can see using images in my classroom:

Modern World History: pictures of individuals and events; have students select and organize pictures in an assigned project and display for the rest of the class to view and evaluate. This can be done via Google Presentations. An example can be found on my class website.

Comparative World Government: Raise awareness of global issues through pictures from the front line. Create a simulation based on the picture in which the students need to decide how their assigned country would respond based on the government administration and relationship to the picture/situation.

Economics: Select images that represents consumerism in different countries. How is it different? How is it the same? Does it look differently for a free market and a command economy?

I have always thought that displaying pictures for students in social studies is important for their connection to the discipline. However, in order for them to acquire the 21st century learning skills of critical thinking, communication, and creativity we can allow them to choose and apply the pictures themselves to the content that is being taught. This in-turn will give them ownership of their own learning. I know, I know, giving up control in the classroom…a challenge for us all. But, we will save that for another post.

In the Classroom
This year, I was given the task of teaching sophomores. Not exactly my cup of tea, I honestly prefer the older grades. But, it has proved to be a great adventure. Along with that, the course is new. We have split or world history into Ancient (9th grade) and Modern (10th grade) and I have been charged with designing the Modern World course. As we have just ended our second unit, the students did not do so hot on their test. They are frustrated and do not understand why they are not performing well. Now, there are some that are doing great. So, here is my challenge for them:

by A Askew, text mine

 Revival from a quote we discussed during the renaissance unit, take ownership of your learning! I will guide you, support you, provide you with information but, it your responsibility to know, understand, evaluate, and create with it! If you rely on me to feed you in the information, I am not going to do it. That would be a disservice to you and your future. Dare to Know! Make USE of your understanding!

Posted in Course 3 - Tagged , ,
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