SITE 2010 – Digital Writing, Digital Teaching

Notes from Thursday Afternoon Sessions at SITE 2010

A smorgasbord of sessions from SITE 2010 with the notes I was able to catch from each (some more than others)… enjoy!

Technology Enhanced Collaboration – Schools and Teachers Engaged in Professional Development

Tim Frey, Kansas State University

Context
- Two districts that are 65 miles apart and both rural
- 20 teachers, K-12 (web cam and stipend)
Online facilitation through KState Online
- Primarily used video postings
Project-based professional development
- Series of relevant tasks that serve as a stimulus for critical thinking and knowledge building (Howard, 2002)
- Relatively long-term, problem-focused, and integrate concepts from previous learning
Design of TEC-STEP
- Structured a step-by-step intervention project
- Collaborative learning community
- Extended engagement in activities
Project examples
- Using webcam to improve reading fluency
- Student created video for parent/teacher conferences
- Students recording stories to be “read” to preschool classroom
- Peer tutoring videos in math via VoiceThread
- Teachers recording lessons and allowing students to view them as podcasts
- Using video projector to add to content presentation
- Social skills modeling and role play
- FFA recording for presentations
Preliminary results
- Developed collaborative relationships across districts
- Creating a supportive group of professionals who are willing to take risks
- Most teachers chose to use the web cam as a part of the project
- Most projects were student-centered
- Even minimal project reports were inconsistent and seemed challenging

Developing a Framework for Teacher Professional Development Using Online Social Networks

Kinnis Gosha, Clemson

The main point:
- To develop an application that enhances professional development by harnessing teacher connections on online social networks
Current PD process:
- Required by admin, options given by admin, self-initiated, hybrid
Challenges:
- Teacher diversity and different interests
- Teacher feedback is inconsistent
- Milestones vs. Opportunity — some see it as something they have to get through, others see it as a real opportunity to learn and grow
- Various teacher groups within and across districts
Online social networks (OSN)
- How do I make it? From scratch? Customize existing networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube
- Do teachers really use online social networks? Do they use them for personal reasons, or professional ones? Would they be willing to participate and give feedback in an OSN?
Survey results
- Many used Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and YouTube, but in different ways
- Only about 50% likely to give feedback, and split on comfort level in participation (35% willing, 35% not willing, 30% said it depends
- Teachers don’t trust Facebook
Goals:
- Fill in domain gaps
- Learn more regional PD trends
- Distinguish pre-recession and post-recession PD procedures
- Recommendation of tool features

Mobilizing Educational Technologies in a Collaborative Online Community to Develop a Knowledge Management System as a Wiki
Nancy Copeland and Anne Bednar, Eastern Michigan University

Link to wiki
Communities of Practice

Digital Storytelling Viewed Through a Post-process Lens

Martha Green, Texas A&M

Educational context
- NAEP Writing Assessment showing 33% proficiency at 8th grade
- Integrating technology into all methods classes
Post-process theory: Writing is public, interpretive, and situated; communication is a cultural activity; reading and writing is an active construction
- Seeks to use life experiences that students bring into the classroom
- Places interest in the meaning of the work at the core of the experience
- Trimbur — university classes have lost the view on the “circulation of writing”
Connecting post-process to digital storytelling
- Adaptation of oral storytelling
- Intentionality, reflection, self-evaluation, and revision
- Written to be shared; private to public
Methodology
- Culminating project of the semester
Observation
- Sharing their stories was an important part of their experience
Results
- Pre-service teachers felt empowered by the process of reflecting on a past event and constructing a digital story about it
- Would use digital storytelling in their own classroom
Digital Storytelling Resources from WorldRoom Website

Effectiveness of a Hypermedia Video Case-Based Library for Inservice Teachers’ Professional Development
Mary Cockburn, Purdue

Hypermedia resources for pre-service teachers have shown documentd benefits
Ten preschool teachers had access to 100 video cases of best literacy practices
All teachers felt positive about the use of hypermedia; there was no current resource available and “… it was much better than having to search through Google to find teaching strategies.”
Implications
- Improving in-service PD via hypermedia may be effective
- Minimal training is required
- Familiarity with computers is not a prerequisite
- More research with a larger and more diverse sample is needed

Preparing Teachers to Purposefully Plan Technology Integration that Encourages Curiosity, Creativity, Independence and Collaboration
Dina Rosen, Kean University

What does it look like when you are using technology to really encourage creativity and collaboration?
- Using an iPod Touch with 8 Year Old Students
Four key characteristics of quality tech integration
- Learner centered
- Representation centered
- Community/real-world centered
- Build on existing practice

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Notes from Two TPACK Sessions at SITE 2010

Testing a TPACK-Based Technology Integration Assessment Rubric

Judi Harris, Neal Grandgenett, and Mark Hofer

Looking at the work of TPACK over the past five years
- Much exploration of the construct — what does it look like?
- About two years ago, more work about how to help teachers develop TPACK
- Now we are interested in finding out more about assessing TPACK, both for pre-service and in-service teachers
Testing instruments for reliability and validity
- Most of the instruments have been self-reporting instruments
  - This is important as their sense of their own knowledge is crucial
  - Yet, we need to triangulate their own assessments with external measures
    - Observation
    - Interview
    - Artifacts
    - Self-report
  - We still strongly believe that we need to do some or all of these in order to have the optimal approach to measuring TPACK, but we know that is not always possible
- Wanted to create an instrument that would help external reporting of TPACK
Search
- We did find one external assessment of teachers’ lesson plans, but it didn’t quite work well for a larger picture
- Adapted the Technology Integration Assessment Instrument (Britten and Cassady, 2005)
Design
- Informal feedback from experienced teachers
- Formal feedback from TPACK researchers
- Revised rubric based on that feedback
Technology Integration Assessment Rubric — licensed under CC AT-NC-ND
- Construct validity from 6 expert reviewers
- Face validity from 14 experienced teachers
- Reliability Analyses with interrater reliability, internal consistency, and test-retest reliability
- We can recommend it to be used with pre-service teachers’ lesson plans, and we would like to test it with experienced teacher’s lesson plans
  - Also, by using interviews with experienced teachers
  - Develop an observation instrument

Aspiring to Reach 21st Century Ideals: Teacher Educators’ Experiences in Developing Their TPACK

Mia Kim Williams, Keith Wetzel, and Teresa Folger

Teacher educators prepare their students for the future of education, yet the world keeps changing
- Need to include technology, develop processes for teacher to learn skills and transfer to their practice, and change the way we teach
- Wanted to develop projects that would help teachers transfer ideas about technology use, 21st century tools, and project-based learning to their classroom
Professional development model
- Working in a face-to-face setting while learning web 2.0 tools
- Revise a unit that they taught in their pre-service courses
Research questions
- What innovative characteristics exist among faculty?
- How did faculty build technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge through the workshop experience?
Findings
- Thinking about technology promoted pedagogical change, but no change in content knowledge
- TPACK increased through the curriculum development process, but there is still a long way to go
- Some did take on new strategies with a changed approach; did appreciate the collaborative approach
- Are the pre-service teachers actually improving their TPACK?

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Notes from Lisa Dawley’s “The Evolution of Teacher Education in a Digital Learning Era” at SITe 2010″

The Evolution of Teacher Education in a Digital Learning Era: Transforming Knowledge in the Global Network

Lisa Dawley, Boise State University

The Unavoidable Evolution in Teacher Education
- Travels around the world, others saying that American students are creative; yet, still calls for reform, especially in teacher education, keep happening here in US
- New US EdTech plan, too
Growth in Online Education
- Over 1 million K-12 kids learn online; 47% increase in the past two years
- Fall 2007, 20% of college student were enrolled in an online course
- 45 states offer some kind of state supplemental program online, as well as fully online K-12 programs offered as charter schools
- Idaho K12 virtual schools — 14,000 students enrolled last year
K12 Online Options
- Moving along a continuum from traditional integrated tech classroom to hybrid course to online tech enhanced schools to full-time virtual schooling
- Other hybrids exist, including options that are in brick and mortar schools and homeschools
- iNACOL – The International Association for K-12 Online Learning
Effects of online learning report
- The effectiveness of online learning is tied to learning time, curriculum, pedagogy, and opportunities for collaboration
- Gives learners control of their interactions with media… move, use, remix, edit, build, chance, click, interact, change…
- Online learning can be enhanced by prompting learner reflection
- What doesn’t impact learning
  - Incorporating online quizzes
  - Media combinations don’t matter, but control over them does
- Henry Jenkins and participatory culture: MIT TV clip
Pedagogical Framework from Dawley: Social Network Knowledge Construction
- Identify
- Lurk
- Contribute
- Create
- Lead
How do we design programs to rethink teacher education?
- At Boise State, it is only graduate degrees and certificates
- Fully online for past seven years; students throughout the world
- Moved from Blackboard to Moodle, integrating web 2.0 tools into portal
- Integration of videos from YouTube, TeacherTube, WatchKnow
- Avatar creation through Voki and SitePals
- Graphic blogs through Glogster
- 3D learning games such as Conspiracy Code
Open source and free content
- iTunesU
- 3D virtual worlds: Opensource metaverse, croquet
- Moodle learning management systen
Mobile learning
- Educational apps
- Texting
- LMS access
- Multimedia
- GPS-based curriculum
- In three years, mobile devices will become the main interface used to browse the internet
Exergaming
- State-wide online tournaments for gaming
Innovative courses, participatory networks
- Using WordPress and LinkedIn for portfolios — students own and keep their content
- EDTECH Island in Second Life
- Cool Teacher Podcast
- 3D GameLab for Teen Leaders
- Partnerships with local, state, national, and international agents
Help lead the teacher education revolution

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Notes from Erin Reilly’s “Remix Culture for Learning” at SITE 2010

The Gap Between Life and Art: Remix Culture for Learning

Erin Reilly, University of Southern California

Project New Media Literacies

Context of remix culture
- One in four online teens remix content that they find online (like songs, text, and images) and remix them into their own artistic creations
- Remixing media is a part of participatory culture; teens meaningfully connect in ways that combine media
Music culture
- Remix and mashups of songs, combining melodies from two songs to make a new one
Video remix
- Using preinstalled software or other web-based programs like jaycut
- Recut — take one of your favorite movies and cut it into something new (Shining)
- Political remix — Racial Equality for $29.95
- Machinima — Global Kids (using the practice of remixing to create new content based on content studied)
- Fan Vidding
Participation Gap
- Access to tools like Wikipedia, YouTube, and networks for collaboration changes the game
- We in teacher education, K-12 classrooms, and other educational settings need to encourage learning in a participatory culture
- We need to work in the gap between life and school
- We are now reading a transmedia story, writing across networks, participating in games
- Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century (Jenkins et al., 2006)
To develop a remix…
- The creator must consider how the original source is related to a new context
- Edutopia: Digital Generation Project (Nicole Pinkert’s project: Digital Youth Network)
- Geeking out, messing around, and hanging around (Ito et al)
- McLuhan — media as an extension of ourselves
How do I get started?
- Trying to think about the logistical and ethical challenges of creating new media: Media Makers Challenges
- Transmedia characters, such as the ones from Heros (video of Heroes creator Tim Kring on transmedia storytelling)
- How to do this in the classroom? Invite your students to create character profiles on Twitter, invite them to create new texts from the characters’ perspective
- Begin by learning about these ideas for self-education, then moving into classroom and after school programs
- Be conservative in content, but radical in approach
  - What’s essential, what can be transferred into a new medium?
- Reading a remix strategy
- Communities of Practice to Join
Notes from Q&A
- New Media Early Adopters Group in New Hampshire
- Reading in a Participatory Culture
  - It is very important to have a community of practice, and if we leave students and teachers out of this community they will not gain as much.
  - The process is messy; we need to recognize and embrace this.
  - We are so tied to the idea that things have to be perfect, but they do not. We need to know that things can be messy.
- Henry Jenkins’ idea of transmedia storytelling is now appearing in a major federal grant
- CAST from Harvard – UDL Bookbuilder
- Play as a new media literacy
- Thinking about 21st century assessment with Jim Gee’s project
- Dan Pink’s book, Drive — autonomy, mastery, and purpose as motivators
- Authorship, ownership, copyright, and fair use
  - New media literacy of appropriation, and how to deal with that — three modules on the new media literacy library deal with this
  - People don’t understand the context of fair use — check out Renee Hobbs and the Temple Media Education Lab
- Study from Matt Levinson on laptop integration, From Fear to Facebook
- Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard

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Notes from “Blending Online and On-Site Spaces and Communities: Developing Effective Practices”

Niki Davis, Julie Mackey, Ann Mcgrath, Donna Morrow, Lawrence Walker, Nicki Dabner, University of Canterbury, New Zealand

E-learning blends to discuss
- Blending physical and virtual spaces
- Blending teacher’s online learning communities and local communities of colleagues
- Blending teaching practice online with teachers redeveloping K-12 education
Online learning?
- Learning with and through digital technologies
- Online courses and resources for teachers, students, and the wider community
- Online and blended learning is more effective
- Creating learning communities
Characteristics of a learning community
- Common cultural and historical heritage — build heritage with mediated artifacts
- Interdependent system — sense of shared purpose and identity
- Reproduction cycle — moving in and out, legitimate peripheral participation
Context of the two studies
- Teachers participating in a graduate course, geographically dispersed across New Zealand
- Took the ideas from the class back to their local classrooms, communities, families — need to think about how to value their local communities and classrooms in a way that lets them talk about the process that gets them to the point of participating in the online course
- Blended learning, then, is a combination of the online class and the communities in which the participants are situated
Blending physical and virtual using Web 2.0
- Doing more with less
- Maintaining quality and integrity
- Enriching the students’ authentic experiences
New Imperatives
- Move to larger classes
- Effectively model ICT as a tool
- Wanted to model what may be reality in school
- E-learning lab
Pedagogy re-thought
- Creating a physical space that allows for large group, small group, and individual work that is collaborative
- Screens around the room can display various screens from students, teacher, or multiple sources
Portfolio assessment — not connected to university network, students are able to use it outside of school
- Grading the meaning that students have made from the process of creating the portfolio

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Notes from “Pre-Service English Teachers and Web 2.0” from SITE 2010

Notes from “Pre-Service English Teachers and Web 2.0: Teaching and Learning Literacy with Digital Applications”

Luke Rodesiler and Lauren Tripp, University of Florida

Helping pre-service teachers re-imagine what it means to be literate
- Tools including VoiceThread, PBWorks, and Xtranormal
- Theoretical framework including social constructionism, interactional elements of effective literacy instruction and how texts are constructed
Primary research questions:
- What understandings of technology do prospective English teachers receal when they are describing their technology use in public school classrooms?
- How do prospective English teachers understandings of technology change as they become familiar with Web 2.0 applications?
- How do prospective English teachers understand the role of Web 2.0 applications in teaching?
Data sources:
- Surveys with open and closed ended questions to gain understandings of their technology use in the classroom
- Classroom observations of student teachers in context
- Artifacts of student work, including assignments and reflections
- Focus group interviews at the end of the semester
Data analysis
- Quantitative analysis of survey data
- Qualitative analysis of classroom observations, student work, and focus group interviews
Findings
- Student teachers were using technology in narrowly conceived ways
  - Accessing web content to search for and/or enhance lessons
  - Using Power Point to present information
  - “When I was in my internship, YouTube and Google was all I thought of using…”
- Understanding how Web 2.0 technologies could foster collaboration and support teaching and learning where enhanced
  - Recognized collaborative tools
  - Their own facility with technology
  - Own discourse about teaching
  - Future organization and distribution of student work
- Collaborative effort — how this experience could work as a method for professional learning
- Made connections between the affordances of Web 2.0 applications and literacy practices valued in English language arts
  - Potential for student collaboration, revision of student writing, engaging students
Conclusions
- Many students were unaware, yet were nudged toward more nuanced views of technology, texts, and literacy practices
- We saw a shift in perception from “web-for-consumption” to “web-for-production” (using wikis, for instance)
Concerns
- Lack of computer and internet access in schools
- Expanding definitions of literacy
- Personal use of technologies vs. professional use
Further questions
- How can we support pre-service teachers in recognizing the availability of the tools
- How can we expand their notions of literacy outside of technology
- How can we help them build their personal learning network