Reflection 5: Ideas and Thoughts Of What I have Learned

One of the things I have learned in the course is to stay better organized with my notes.  I used OneNote to help me stay organized throughout this course and it has helped me considerably.  I found, I spend less time looking for my thoughts and ideas because they are all in one place.  As I was finishing my final paper, I noticed that I had missed two citations for two of my research findings.  Without OneNote and the internet I am not sure if I would have found where I had read these two studies.  Having the ability to use all kinds of different resources to build my paper and thoughts was inspiring and gave me great motivation to learn more.    

This thought made me think about what I did my research on for this course.  The focus of my research was that mobile technology can create learning and motivation to power one’s own actions and produced desired consequences to shape social and cultural environments.  Supporting individualized learning does not only need to be supported by our education system but by government and corporations too.  As a culture we have to create a better environment to stimulate the new age of learning and not be scared by it.  We all need to be a part of the community of learning and teach each other and mobile learning allows us to create this environment.  Having the ability to learn in all different environments is important.  One thing I find as a distance learner is that I don’t just sit at my desk for all of my learning in the EdTech program.  More often than not I am reviewing and reading on my lunch hour at a restaurant, sitting at the park while my daughter plays and/or having conversation about what I am learning with a friend.   The freedom I have learning online is allows me to direct my learning and environment which allows me to apply it to my own life. 

I am not sure if my definition of education technology has changed much over the course of this class. I think with the reading and research is this class, it’s made a better case to support my extended definition of Januszwki’s definition of educational technology.

Januszewski's definition is [ “Educational technology is a complex, integrated process, involving people, procedures, ideas, devices, and organization, for analyzing problems and devising, implementing, evaluating and managing solutions to those problems, involved in all aspects of human learning" (Januszewski, page 78.] (Januszewski, 2001). I think that Januszewki’s definition is pretty close to how I feel that Education Technology should be defined.

My stated definition of Educational Technology:

Educational technology is a complex, integrated process, involving people, instructional design, ideas, devices, and organization, for analyzing problems and devising, implementing, evaluating and managing solutions to those problems, involved in all aspects of human environment of learning and motivation.

Good instructional design, good learning environments that supports all kinds of learners and motivation to explore new options in technology is the future of education.  After this class I still am in line with what Albert Bandura (2001) believes, that humans can use learning and motivation to power their own actions and produce desired consequences to shape their social and cultural environments.

Reflection 3: Understanding Individuals' Learning Experience with Mobile Technology

 

“The effect of supporting teachers during technology implementation through a community of practice remains an important area for continued research.  Teachers in the current study were apprehensive and concerned about their own performance at the start of the study; to have left them to their own devices to learn the technology and its potential uses may not have generated the same enthusiasm and success (Tovar, Hansen, & Puckett, 2011).” My focus of this reflection is on the research that I did for understanding individuals’ learning experience with mobile technology.

After reading the study about lived experience two points seems very important to me.  One that the study indicated that students are actively seeking opportunities for informal learning and use new media support this, but if they don't like the technology they find something better.  Second, the study considered it to be important to find the students' preferences for the use of the new media to be valuable information for the teacher prior to teaching.  This seems so simple, but is that simple for teachers in school districts?  Do school districts have teachers work with the products prior to buying the product? Is there a pre-test to using the product to make sure the teacher has the skills to work with that type of technology and figure it out?  Is that role of a teacher to figure out the application prior to teaching? 

I continue to think about this as I further my education in the EdTech program.  We struggle with the same type of dilemma in my own company.  Very often we have people who know there job and understand it better than anyone but when you add new technology to their work they feel overwhelmed with the task.  We do our best to manage that by providing training in classroom or online.  However, the outcome is not always perfect because they still have questions.  That is why we are on call to answers questions or walk them through how to proceed if they are unable to complete their work.  I will admit that this is very difficult to use this as the best situation when they are busy and don’t have time to call us.  I would assume this would be the same complaint that teachers would have if they had some onsite to help them with technology.   Technology must consider the societal goal it intends to address, the social environment, the cultural values, cultural norms and cultural influences of the intended users not to say just the students but the teachers as well (Male, & Pattinson, 2011).  Could mobile learning bridge the gap between technology and teacher, teacher and student, and technology and student dilemmas?

The mobile learning is a trend that is rapidly growing and continues to influence teaching and learning in the classroom and society in all cultures (Male, & Pattinson, 2011). The authors, at Open University and Nottingham University, UK explored a student’s personal inquiry through activities for students and the teacher based on technology that used scripting. The personal inquiry that was study was understanding the students’ ability to ask questions (or hypothesize) about the natural and material world, and to plan, carry out and interpret the outcome of activities to answer those questions,  based on de Jong’s definition (see, e.g. de Jong 2006a). The software they focused on for the study was called nQuire, enables you to design and run science inquiries at school, at home, or outdoors on mobile devices seemed to achieve teachers and students own goals (Scanlon, et al., 2011).  The research could be proved as an exciting new approach of learning for students, but the research is limited and at this time does not work well for young students’ first learning. The possibility for students to use products like nQuire and mobile technology seems to meeting the goals for teachers and students based on the research findings (Scanlon, et al., 2011).

The authors, at Arizona State University and Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College conducted a study using handheld mobile technology as a progress monitoring tool specifically to gather pre-reading DIBELS Initial Sound Fluency data. Three kindergarten teachers participated and used mobile technology in small reading groups to strengthen phonemic awareness for fifteen kindergartners identified most at-risk in their classrooms. Overall findings revealed that participants including teachers and student need support during the technology implementation through a social network or community in order to have good technology integration (Tovar, Hansen, & Puckett, 2011).  In light of these findings, future research should take a closer look at technology integration to ensure teachers expertise are being monitored just as much as the student especially it’s when technology is interconnected with in students curriculum.

As I have stated in a previous course…. “I think a strong component to our business, is we do require professional development trainings for our employees. That is part of my job, is creating professional development trainings for employees to gain more skills to get their daily job done more efficiently. However, I know it hard to get teachers out of the classroom to get the skills they need. It too bad, we cannot have Network Trainers for teachers where they can sign up for classes once or twice a month for training. I would love to see that are local teachers could attend WebEx’s training on their computers so they could all be on the same page as we do in a business world (Hagedorn, 2011).”  As I find with more research this might be more possible with mobile phones.  Teachers can learn across the world to become better with in their own subject matter.  However, as a culture we have to create better environments to stimulate this new age of learning and not be scared by it.  We all need to be a part of the community of learning and teach each other.

References

Hagedorn, L. (2011, March 14). Teaching Professional Development Models « Lindy

Hagedorn: EDTECH Learning Log. Retrieved April 28, 2012, from http://lindyhagedorn.wordpress.com/2011/03/14/teaching-professional-development-models/

 Male, G., & Pattinson, C. (2011). Enhancing the quality of E-learning through mobile

technology: A socio-cultural and technology perspective towards quality E-learning applications. Campus-Wide Information Systems, 28(5), 331-344. http://search.proquest.com/docview/964175007?accountid=9649; http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/10650741111181607

Scanlon, E., Anastopoulou, S., Kerawalla, L., & Mulholland, P. (2011). How technology

resources can be used to represent personal inquiry and support students’ understanding of it across contexts. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 27(6), 516–529. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2729.2011.00414.x

 Tovar, A., Hansen, C., & Puckett, K. (2011). From Paper To Pocket: Using Technology To

Inform Literacy Intervention In A Kindergarten Classroom. Journal Of Literacy & Technology, 12(2), 2-27.

Reflection 4:  Emerging Theories and Strategies

We have to be knowledge seekers in this generation in order to survive the constant changes that happen daily.  My focus of this reflection is on understanding the difference between Transactional Distance, Social Cognitive and Connectionivism theory. 

“Essentially, research evidence shows that in spite of the many efforts that researcher and educators invested over the years in preparing teachers in the educational uses of technology, teachers still lack the skills and knowledge needed to be able to teach with technology successfully” (Angeli & Valanides, 2009).  This thought has been a constant thought since I have started the EdTech program.  After thinking about this topic for year and half now, it still seems clear to me that we need to allow the students to teach teachers and that schools need a real IT application departments.    In order for transactional distance to be meaningful to the learning experience, teacher must have dialog and/or interaction between their learners and have a good design instruction and autonomy.  Autonomy means to work alone and still understand meaning with little input.   Is that what students need to learn?

The authors, Rita Kop and Adrian Hill, conducted a critically analysis of the Connectivism theory and the approach to teaching students.  They analyzed if web applications would enhance learners experience with collaboration and communication related to the theory of Connectivism. Connectivism is thought as a [“learning process is cyclical, in that learners will connect to a network to share and find new information”] (Kop & Hill, 2008).   I found this article to be in aligned about my thoughts about Social-Cognitive theory.  However, do not think Connectivism and Transactional Distance theory can stand alone as a theory for learning. 

 I believe social-cognitive theory allows for creating individual learning.  “Social-cognitive theories emphasize that teaching and learning are highly social activities and that interactions with teachers, peers, and instructional material influences the cognitive affective development of learners (Kim & Baylor, 2006).” 

Learning can be done a variety of ways for any student, but it’s important that as teachers, we understand that people learning style is always going to be different based on if we are auditory, visual, tactile, or kinesthetic. That why having teaching has to allow for highly social activities and interactions with peers of the same learning style.

 I also, believe if schools had their own IT application department it would meet the needs of Transactional, Social Cognitive and Connectivism theories.    The more I find out about how little our education system spend training teachers on new technology it does not amaze me that children are flying by them with a better know how.   In the business world the vendor spend so much more time with the staff to make sure they understand the application.  Many of my classmates in this program have informed me they never even see the vendor in their schools.  Why is that? 

This really makes me re-think about why I feel more business should be involved with our education system.    Not promoting food and drinks, but taking the time to educate our teachers and students on the technology they work with in the field.  It seem like if our companies just had one employee take a day to go teach to a group of kids would do wonders for the teachers in our communities and students.  We don't need the best of the best of the business world teaching our students we just need knowledge people with valid insight communicating about the little things they use to improve their jobs.  I am always amazed how we all use Word every day but in the scheme of things we know very little about all the bells and whistles.   Just last semester, I have learned how to build table of contents that works with all my page numbering.  Yeah, it problem something I learned five-years-ago but I had forgot it overtime.  Creating an environment of learning and modeling based off the Social Cognitive theory for the future leaders is better for our culture as a whole in the long run.

 Lindy

References:

Angeli, C., & Valanides, N. (2008). A Social-Cognitive Framework for Pedagogical Agents as Learning Companions. Computers & Education, 52, 154–168.

Kim, Y. & Baylor, A. (2006). A social-cognitive framework for pedagogical agents as learning companions. Educational Technology, Research and Development, 54(6), 569-596.  Retrieved February 18, 2012, from ProQuest Central. (Document ID: 1211218511).

Kob, R., & Hill, A. (October, 2008.). Connectivism: Learning theory of the future or vestige of the past? Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/523/1137

Reflection 2:  Philosophy of Education: Epistemology and Learning Theory

I learned many things in writing my Learning Theories paper.  Using OneNote to compile my thoughts and notes made writing my paper a lot easier.   I am really starting to get how to organize my notes to make them more meaningful to write a paper.  I think my Process of Learning and Motivation is Crucial paper turned out pretty good. 

I documented quite of few questions and terms for during my learning process for writing my paper in OneNote. 

 People are not blank slates but begin with models and knowledge of the world and learn and exist in a social context of great intricacy and depth (Anderson & Dron, 2011).  This thought is what I based much of my reading and research about.  It was interesting to me that in the reading the Seels and Richely pointed out effectiveness often implies efficiency when it comes to technology. But in real life technology is not always effective and efficient.

 The article by Phillips stated something quite interesting to me "human development and to what degree this process is flexible and hence can be influenced or manipulated; the tension between liberal education and vocational education, and the overlapping issue of which should be given priority—education for personal development or education for citizenship " (Spring 2009). My first thought, is this what our districts leaders think needs to happen in our schools? We need to focus more on citizenship instead of a well-round liberal education.  In some ways, that is what I think at work.  However, when it comes to my daughter, I think, she should be well rounded and not have one focus area in education.   During the course of reading about this article I was sitting in a Girl Scout meeting with some other parents waiting for our daughters to finish a project.

 A discussion came up if children should learn how to cursive right anymore.  At first I was shock because, I would think, is a valuable thing to learn.  The first thought came to my mind; will children know how to sign important documents in the future if they don't how to write in cursive?  As I was thinking about this, a parent speaks up and said kids don't need to learn cursive they need to learn how to type.  Half of the guys I work have poor typing skills because they never learned how to type in school.  It made me sit back and think about this article.  Teaching cursive would make a child more rounded in the arts of writing but in the long run the child needs to know how to type.  I am still not sure what my stance is but it did give me much to think about. 

The thought about education system made me think about the results by the OECD 2010.  Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), 2009 Results by the OECD 2010 Stated “The best-performing education systems embrace the diversity in students’ capacities, interests and social background with individualized approaches to learning.  This thought also from the Philosophy of Education by Phillips meant a lot to me “We never would say that students had been indoctrinated by their teacher if he or she had fostered open inquiry and discussion, encouraged exploration in the library and on the net, allowed students to work in collaborative groups, and so on. However, if the teacher did not allow independent inquiry, quashed classroom questions, suppressed dissenting opinions, relied heavily on rewards and punishments, used repetition and fostered rote memorization, and so on, then it is likely we would say the students were being indoctrinated ( 2009)."  I really think the first model of thought is what we in our society at first but I could see why the second theory of thought was used for so many years and it some aspects today.   Teachers use to be the sole owners of educational knowledge but now with the internet and technology we have a world of teachers without degrees behind their names.   Not to say they all can facilitate the learning experience but I do believe they can help teacher bridge concepts for students.  That is why explored the Social Cognitive Theory for my paper. 

Albert Bandura (2001) believes that humans can use learning and motivation to power their own actions and produce desired consequence to shape their social and cultural environments.    As quoted from Anderson & Dron, "teachers do not merely transmit knowledge to be passively consumed by learners; rather, each learner constructs means by which new knowledge is both created and integrated with existing knowledge"(2010).  If the student’s engagement should not be an inevitable consequence of the environment but an engagement of learning and motivation that help the student get to the clear goal (Feist & Feist, 2002).  

 The process of learning more about the Social Cognitive theories still just makes me concluded more that I support this thought of using this theory to support learning and technology.   I would have to say that I have support this theory most of my adult career but learning more about how it being used in research to understand education technology make me optimist about how might educational system will support all kinds of learners:  visual, auditory, tactile  and or kinesthetic in the future. 

Lindy

References:

 

Anderson, T., & Dron, J. (2010). Three generations of distance education pedagogy. The International Review Of Research In Open And Distance Learning, 12(3), 80-97. Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/890

 

Feist, J. & Feist, G., (2002) Bandura: Social Cognitive Theory.  In J. Karpacz (Eds.), Theories of Personality, Fifth Edition (pp. 299-326). New York: McGraw-Hill 

Phillips, D.C., "Philosophy of Education", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2009/entries/education-philosophy/>.

Seels, B., & Richey, R. (1994). Instructional technology: The definition and domains of the field.  Washington, DC: Association for Educational Communications and Technology.

 

U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Technology. (2010). National educational technology plan, 2010: Executive summary. retrieved from http://www.ed.gov/sites/default/files/NETP-2010-exec-summary.pdf

Reflection 1: Educational Technology

My thoughts about Educational Technology might be different than some students in my class.  I am not a K-12 or higher education teacher.  All of my teaching is done a corporate level in healthcare.  So my perspective is a bit different, but I would say that we have some of the same ideas and goals.   Goals and motivation seem to be my most outstanding thought that I have about educational technology.   Improving performance, I think, is the goal of any educational technology but in most cases I sometime wonder if anyone every asked the question what the goal of the performance should be.  I struggle with this concept in my own field when a technology is introduced to my end users.  I am always wondering if the goal of the outcome was to just have them use a new application or was it to improve patient care.  I know the answer is patient care but the goal getting there is not always as clear as one would think.  One thing that is important to understanding technology and education is to make sure we understand what motivates the learner to learn and only then, will we improve performance.

 I read a great article last semester from Gray Hamel that make great since to me about corporate training.  Hamel’s article made a very good point about business, they often sends an e-mail to a group and believes the word “training” in the subject line means that training is complete.  This made me think, as stated by Hamel possible the cause of for number of organizational initiative failures every year, is because of the “lack of attention to individual’s learning needs” so it does not only happen in K-12 but in large organizations as well (Hamel, 2009).  This made me think about theories done about technology and education, do they only look at young adults learning when they are doing these studies.  How often do universities use older adults for learning studies?  In most of the studies I read as undergrad in psychology tend to only have freshmen in the studies.  I have to admit that I learn a lot different now than I ever did in high school and even my freshmen year.   

One thing that I found to be interesting by one of my classmates is he let his students use cell phones in the classroom. I really like the fact that more teachers are not look at technology as a cheating tool for students.  The business world uses cell phones every day to conduct business, why would we not teach students how to balance both worlds as well?  It just something I found to be very interesting. 

The knowledge I have gained from learning a better definition about education technology is that we have to make sure that we keep the process of learning and technology a group effort as is learning from each other as well as making sure we still manage the complex issues.  I feel that my experience in learning more about the definition of technology helps influence those around me.  I want to make sure we understand the goals and the motivation of what makes a learner meet performance.  I know, this will always be a struggle for me because often times those in leadership only see one way people learn.  I think that is something that I now understand from many of my classmates, people making the decisions about education sometimes only see black and white learning but the teachers who teach are colorful.    I just hope with this process of understanding more about the education technology and the decisions that are be made I can enlighten those who we need to be open to the learning needs of our students, parents, educators, and business people learning.  We all learn different and for good reason because we all have something to contributes to our culture to make it a better place.  Training should not be centered on technology, but on the way the human mind works using the technology (Atkinson & Mayer, 2004). 

I think that Januszewki’s definition is pretty close to how I feel that Education Technology should be defined.  This might how I would state it:

        Educational technology is a complex, integrated process, involving people, instructional design, ideas, devices, and organization, for analyzing problems and devising, implementing, evaluating and managing solutions to those problems, involved in all aspects of human environment of learning and motivation.

 Lindy

References:

Atkinson, C. & Mayer, R. (2004). 1 2 3 4 5 Five ways to reduce PowerPoint overload. Retrieved from http://www.sociablemedia.com/PDF/atkinson_mayer_powerpoint_4_23_04.pdf

Hamel, Gary. (2009) Moon Shots for Management – Harvard Business Review. (n.d.). Retrieved September 21, 2011, from http://hbr.org/2009/02/moon-shots-for-management/ar/1

Januszewski, A. (2001). Educational Technology: The Development of a Concept. Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited, Inc.

Januszewski, A., & Molenda, M. (2008). Chapter 1: Definition. In Educational technology: A definition with commentary (pp. 1 – 14). NY: Lawrence Erlbaum, Inc.

Note:  I put all of this together using OneNote.  It worked out very nicely because I could have all my thoughts in one place.  Still did have to do some printing for note taking on the articles I used.  Still on the learning curve for that.

Intro to my 504 EdTech Blog

This is a place for me to track my reflections for my EdTech 504 Theoretical Foundations of Educational Technology class. The reflections are designed to better understand the reasons for my actions in the aspect of teaching based on the theories, I learn about in class. I will use this tool in such a way to document and track my progress and my work during the course of the class. We have been given the following guidelines for our reflections in class:

• Where are you now, in teams of your own teaching and professional practice and the inclusion of educational technology in that process?
• What kind of change do you hope to see as a result of this class?
• How might your knowledge and experiences influence the actions of those around you?

I have started a new process this semester by using OneNote to track my thoughts and notes during this class. One of things, I tend to struggle with in the EdTech program is keeping all the information, I have learned, in one place to refer back to. I tried using paper folders, notebooks and screenshots. However, I find myself still printing and digging through piles of paper in my office to find the quote or handout I need.

So far, OneNote allows me to put links, videos, and references all in one place and it’s been pretty easy to find things with in the program after I have saved them. I wished it worked with Zotero.  It has something like it but it just not as good as Zotero.  As I learn more I will make sure to share with all of you.   

I am not going to say that I have completely let go of my paper world yet, but it has decreased quite a bit. I know, I am taking school online but that does not mean those of us who are online learners still don't love paper. My husband finally moved my office upstairs because he could not handle my paper piles anymore. I am a pile organizer and when he moves my papers, I go crazy. The new office is working out better for the both of us.  My hope as I become more knowledgeable about the OneNote application I want to create my paper world to be complete mobile.  The great thing about using OneNote is that it works on my smart phone. 

Lindy