718+Mobile+Learning


 * 718 Blog 7**
 * Sunday, July 1**

The Course

This course has been an interesting and frustrating one at the same time, and


 * 718 Blog 6**
 * Sunday, June 24**

Processing the Process

The instructional design process for the online module that we are building has been an incredibly frustrating one at times, so I am grateful to have a partner with whom I feel I work well. I think that for me, I didn’t initially understand that what we were doing was trying to simulate the process that people who professionally design online modules go through. Because I was missing that big picture / purpose component, I had a really hard time seeing how everything fit together. Also, the IDA’s that we were doing were often very uncomfortable because they were unfamiliar—I was transported back to the days when I was in my first master’s program and we were designing unit and lesson plans. The terminology and format were new, and so I struggled. However, after completing the IDA drafts, I feel a little more comfortable with the final product that we are working through.

I think what is interesting about this process is that I am learning more about what kind of processer and learner I am. For example, I’ve learned that I really like to draft things out by hand, using pen and paper, before I go on to a computer. By the same token, when I am looking at a major project, I like to have the requirements before me on paper, and I enjoy marking the paper with my notations. I am learning that I really enjoy working collaboratively, but it is especially fulfilling when working with s omeone who is “on the same page” as I am. I am learning that, even though I think scaffolding and breaking things into small pieces is important, when I work on a project, I like to see the big picture and work backwards from there. If I cannot see the big picture and get an idea of what the final product needs to be, I quickly become frustrated. I am realizing that I would rather sit and stare into space for five minutes than begin a piece of work that I will be unable to finish significantly. (This is an especially significant realization for me because I now understand why so many of my kids refuse to work when there are “only” five minutes left of class. I’m going to begin structuring the ends of class differently if we happen to have time to spare.)

Regarding where we are in our creative process, I feel that I understand what we need to do, but I am also a little apprehensive about getting it all done. I recognize that completing the actual module will take quite a bit of time, and I am concerned that we won’t have enough time to finish it. Because we are at a point where what is left is a large unit of work that we need hours to finish, I am hoping that we will be able to find large blocks of time to work so that we don’t need to start, stop, restart, stop, etc. I am glad that I decided to partner with Tiff for this module, because I see that it will be truly useful for her students, and I really did not feel that the IDA’s that I set up were culturally appropriate for an online module. I’m grateful that she agreed to work together for this, and I think that what we are moving towards is something that her students will really enjoy next year!


 * 718 Blog 5**
 * Thursday, June 21**

What Stays the Same

As I watched the “In Da Club” Crash Course and read through “Living and Learning with New Media,” the thought struck me: The life we lead now, with the advent of the internet and mobile technologies, is still very much like the life we’ve always led when it comes to things that are important. Hank’s crash course on cells was interesting, engaging and easy to follow. But why? Because it was on youtube? Because I could access it at two in the morning if I wanted? No. While those things are important and useful, what made the video enjoyable, something I might recommend, something that taught information in a manner that was easy to follow, is the way that the information was broken down and delivered. Granted, the changes in scene background, the fun music and clean diagrams were good—but it was **what** Hank was saying and **how** he was saying it that made the video interesting. It was the **delivery** of the message, the **pedagogy** that was demonstrated in grabbing the learner’s attention with interesting scenarios, highlighting important words and concepts, providing metaphors to present new information (the wall of a cell is like a night club bouncer?), and then moving up to giving concrete examples of what he was saying. If Hank was my science teacher, live and in person, without the background changes and fun animated diagrams, I would still find his information interesting, engaging and easy to follow. Perhaps that, then, is the test. When it comes to delivery of information online, the creator needs to ask him or herself: Would the meat of this message be just as tasty offline? If one is relying solely on fancy animation and blinking lights to make something attractive, it probably won’t work. Much in the same way that a boring lecturer gets tuned out, a boring online module, even if it does have blinking lights and 3D animation, will not be effective. By the same token, young people who participate in online activities find themselves in a position similar to young people who are trying to navigate the social circle live and in person. Like any culture, while the standards and norms may be different, the importance of following proper cultural protocol and following the “rules” of online societies is the same. Online, however, there is the added danger and potential of the world seeing your actions and your actions being recorded for posterity. Which brings me to the realization that we still need what we’ve always needed: teachers who understand kids and what engages them and adults who care and are willing to help them navigate this open world we now live in.


 * 718 Blog 4**
 * Tuesday, June 19**

Expert Expertise

As we have been going through class, discussing different websites, apps and other tools available for educators and us as students, I have come to the conclusion that sometimes too much information is…too much. I have been developing the idea that, as the potential develops for everyone to become an expert about anything they desire, the demand for experts in fields will actually increase. Why do I say that? Well, there was a moment in class yesterday during our guest speaker’s presentation that I felt a flutter of excitement. Darren posed the question of how, as a teacher, he could prepare his students and monitor their online postings to best reflect the school that they were from. His concern was that what the students wrote was a reflection on the school community. To me, this is a very valid concern and one that educators surely struggle with. I felt that butterfly of excitement because that would be one of my chief concerns, extending beyond the school community to the larger question of, “How do I train my kids to represent **themselves** well in a digital environment?” My hope was that our guest speaker would have some very concrete sources that we could turn to. I was disappointed initially when her response was, basically, if you google “digital citizenship,” there are many good resources out there. In that moment, I thought to myself, “I don’t wanna google digital citize nship!!! Tell me the answer!!! NOW!!!” As an expert in the field, I expected that she would instantly be able to give us expert advice—concrete, specific and immediately useful. Of course, she did go on to narrow down the scope of her answer, but my initial response was one of great dissatisfaction. Which brings me to my thought that as our access to all forms of knowledge increases, experts will be MORE in demand than ever before. Why? Because with a million sites to peruse when trying to answer a question, it is the expert who is able to sift through all of the answers and come up with one that we need. While people are willing to go to the internet to answer many of their questions, there will continue to be times when expert advice is needed—and it is those who are //truly// expert in their fields that we will turn to. For me personally, what does this mean? It means that as a teacher of Hawaiian & Pacific Literature, it would behoove me to truly delve into these literatures and become as well-versed as I can be. By focusing on these literatures, I can serve my school community by providing information that others can then use in their classrooms. By strengthening my strengths, I can carve a niche for myself and use my "expertise" to enhance the curriculums of my colleagues.


 * 718 Blog 3**
 * Sunday, June 17**

Our Poor Kids!

I feel sorry for kids today. I really do. When I was growing up, life was simple. Teachers gave us pieces of paper to read and assignments to do. They wrote our homework on the board and expected us to write it down in a planner. We went home and did the work (or not), and we saw Teacher again the next day. When I did my third grade research project on spiders, I used the card catalog in our library to look up all the books on spiders. I don’t remember how many books there were, but I’m sure it was a managable number. I read the books, took notes, and hand wrote my report. I turned it in in a plastic cover and tried to erase the pencil marks I’d made on the cover page to make sure my title was straight.

Today, when kids leave the classroom, they are not necessarily done with the teacher. There are blog entries from classmates to read and comment on, emails to check, Edmodo updates sent to their cell phones, and postings on their teacher’s Facebook Fan Page that they are expected to see (subscription to said fan page mandatory—make up an identity if mom and dad don’t want you on Facebook, or just make sure you’re in the loop without an account, good-luck-figure-it-out). Doing a research project on spiders? Start with a Google search. Ten million results in .15 seconds. Then there are databases to look at to find “credible” information, and then, as if you ever get there, books and encyclopedias to peruse. But not just the books and encyclopedias at your local library—no, with the clicking of several keys, you can gain access to books all over the world or have books from the library on another island sent to you.

Our kids today have access to millions of resources, and they are expected to use them. Bonk catalogs some of those resources in “We All Learn” (32, 4) as they pertain to education. The possibilities are mind boggling for me as an adult educator; I cannot imagine how kids must feel today.

What I keep coming back to as an educator is that now, more than ever before, teachers are crucial in the education process. With all of the information available to kids today, with the world being open for education and mobile devices holding the ability to answer pretty much any question you can ask, from “What’s the best Mexican restaurant in Kailua” (981,000 results) to “What kind of person should I marry” (67+ million results), kids need to be trained in not only how to navigate through so much information but also how to assess it and decide if it is truly useful for them. Bonk’s assertion that “Technology by itself will not empower learners. Innovative pedagogy is required” (33) is heartening, because this belief lies at the core of my personal philosophy.

The days of Teacher-free hours from 2:30 in the afternoon to 8:00 in the morning and card catalogs delivering 20 books on spiders are over in many parts of the world. Our kids have access to a world of information, and they are expected to use this access. It’s a difficult thing we are asking of them; what they will need in the years to come are teachers who are committed to helping them navigate the new world that they are entering.


 * 718 Blog 2**
 * Thursday, June 14**

What's a Teacher To Do?

We live in the information age “on steroids,” as Jeff Piontek says. Kids have access to all kinds of information, and they have the potential to be linked to a million other people in the world through a device that fits in their pockets. Laptops, smartphones, iPads, and other mobile devices have become ubiquitous today. But what is a teacher to do with these resources? And what is my personal philosophy about how these tools should be used?

I have been struggling with these questions since the day cell phones started appearing in my classroom. At one point several years ago, I had “Hale Kelepona” on each pod of tables in my classroom. These “Telephone Houses” were actually recycled boxes that originally housed chargers for student laptops. They were shiny and black, and they had the advantage of sliding open and shut. At the start of class, students were to silence their phones and put them in the houses. The houses stayed shut until the end of class bell rang.

Philosophically, I believed (and still pretty much do believe) that when a child is in my classroom, he should be fully present. We have 80 minutes together every other day; it’s not a lot of time to get things done. Granted, restricting access to a cell phone does not by any means guarantee that a student is “fully present,” but it at least removed one major distraction. My mantra to students was (and still is), “Truly important people are not available 100% of the time. Make yourself inaccessible!”

Interestingly enough, as time has passed, the need for these Hale has pretty much disappeared. Students are trained in cell phone etiquette, and their phones pretty much stay in their bags.

However, I find myself dealing with an issue much larger, as students have now progressed to 1 to 1 laptops at our high school. Now, students can be distracted not only by their cell phones, but by a whole world of information and entertainment available to them. I see technology as a tool that has so much potential, but what I am seeing over and over is that, as Patrick Fahy says, “computers alone cannot transform the learning experience” (168). Simply using technology to communicate our message is not enough. Sound pedagogy and well-designed modules and websites are key to encouraging learner success.

As we prepare to develop our online module, I was heartened to find some very useful advice in Fahy’s article “Characteristics of Interactive Online Learning Media” (Anderson Chapter 7). The article identified some very important principles as far as how to design multimedia projects, whether online or face to face, and based on the information provided, I see some ways that I can improve my information delivery to my students.

What follows is a list of useful tips that I gathered from the article that I plan on keeping in mind when designing my module for this class.


 * Place corresponding words and pictures closer to each other on the page or screen.
 * Graphics and pictures help students more than just words alone.
 * Animation and narration are more helpful than animation and text.
 * People can only process so much visually at one time, so sometimes more is NOT better (i.e., animation and narration are better than animation, narration and text).
 * Unnecessary detail can add to learning time
 * Sometimes beautiful graphics are not more helpful—a line drawing might be better than a photograph when trying to teach a concept.
 * Color is key when considering design; blue, black or red on white and white, yellow or green on black are very effective combinations.
 * Color should NOT be used simply for emphasis.
 * Important information should go at the top left of a screen, where the eye naturally begins reading.
 * ALL CAPS OR ALL LOWERCASE ARE NOT AS EASY TO READ AS A COMBINATION OF UPPER AND LOWERCASE.

While we may be entering a whole new technological era, there are still some things that remain true. A well designed web page will help students in the same way that a well designed worksheet will. While students may love to go online, a poorly designed module might hinder their learning process. By the same token, paying attention to the simple tips above can make significant gains in improving student experience and understanding.

It is tips like those above that are slowly helping me to answer the question “What is a teacher to do with these resources?” Granted, these answers are very basic at the moment, but they provide, for now, a very concrete way to answer a very difficult question.


 * 718 Blog 1**
 * Tuesday, June 12, 2012**

Ideal Life...and Real Life

Davis, Little and Stewart’s article “Developing an Infrastructure for Online Learning” was full of information to which I responded with a, “Well, yeah! Duh!” Interestingly enough, though, my personal experience is that many of the things which Davis & Co. are proponents of are elements that are ignored or skipped when moving towards online learning.

When our school moved towards one to one laptop computers, it seemed that the end in mind was to have students who carried computers around. There was not a clear sense of the “needs of the intended learners [or] curriculum to be offered” (121). Rather, we were told that laptops would be given to students, and we were offered various training courses that identified ways we might choose to incorporate the use of technology into our curriculum. Teachers were given a great deal of autonomy regarding how much they integrated the use of technology, and goals for student learning regarding laptops were not clearly articulated.

This highlights the difference between “ideal” and “real” situations. While it would be nice to have all of the desired outcomes clearly articulated before implementing new technology or issuing computers worth hundreds of dollars to bumbling adolescents, the reality is that so often we don’t know what we want our students to be able to achieve because the possibilities are constantly expanding, and we as teachers are still trying to figure out what is available and possible. There are core skills and qualities that students should have, but these exist even in the absence of technology: the ability to be critical thinkers and compassionate citizens, to problem solve and contribute to larger communities, to manage time and fulfill responsibilities. Whether students are participating in online or face to face learning, these traits are desirable and teachers work toward developing them.

What I have learned by observing the way technology use has evolved on my school campus is that, truly, “constant change [must be] understood to be the norm” (140). Teachers are responding to issues with technology on a daily basis, and administrators are developing policies and guidelines as problems or challenges arise. Usually, by the time a policy is developed, it is too late--teachers have found their own ways of dealing with things and making life online work for themselves and their students. While it would be nice to have everything laid out beforehand, it seems that this situation rarely exists. Whether this reality is a good or bad one is determined by the individual teacher and how he or she chooses to respond to the situations that arise. However, it is worthwhile for all involved in developing online learning to at least be aware of what an “ideal” situation could look like. If nothing else, it serves as a reminder of what is possible…maybe…