Houses Around the World
Description
Glogster provides the ability to create posters on-line to express your individuality, to show understanding of a concept or issue covered in class or anything that your imagination can dream of. The technology allows visual graphics, pictures, text, and sound to be used to create a product. There are some graphics and images that are available on the site that can be used, but I found that many of these tended to be very modern looking. This makes sense as the middle school and high school audience is considered, but I found it limiting as I thought about what adult language learners might feel comfortable being represented by.
The Glogster poster I produced is fairly simplistic based on the fact that it is heavily images and contains only the heading: Houses Around the World. I didn't want to identify countries because I realized that some of the housing that I chose to use was dramatically piece-meal and might not represent typical housing of the country. Housing composed of a few sticks and shawls or a structure made of sticks and plastic tarps is more likely to be crisis housing. Korean high-rise apartments and Asian-looking single family homes to Mexican bright multi-colored houses lined up or calm, cool separate adobe homes were shown. The contrast is shown with Somalian mud brick homes or piece meal homes in Somalia or Sudan are placed side-by-side with the modern dwellings. The Somalian and Sudanese homes included also show typical grass homes designed to last for ten years or until a big wind storm or well-produced mud brick homes. Shocking elements are included to show subsistence housing, but well-thought out homes using resources of the area give an opportunity for pride and discussion between students.
If I decide to print a copy of the Glogster poster and display it in my classroom I may rethink having desperation housing included. If the "hovels" are included this might bring a certain sadness to the reflection of the students and may hinder discussion. Perhaps the way to give students the opportunity for prideful conversations is not to allow examples of desperation housing placed next to native housing traditions next to modernized countries housing. This is a point that I still will need to consider in thinking about an honest portrayal but not shaming or leading someone in the direction of too sad of reflection.
Implementation
I used a trial offer and it was very simple to sign in and start creating. Their are more advanced memberships that offer more options, but I found the basics sufficient enough to get me started. I think that some students could get very excited about using all the options available, but I also envision some less creative or less technology savvy students being able to produce a nice end-product that meets their goals without all the bells and whistles or sound clips that the site does offer.
Rationale
Personally, I would not have thought of this technology option for my adult language learner students until recently when we had in-class presentations. Due to time constraints I had asked some of my more technology comfortable students to work with a couple of my students with limited or no technology useage in their background. One student would work with another in reviewing Google Images to pull pictures to include in a power point to support their verbal classroom presentations. I found that I had a young high school cheerleader from Mexico helping a refugee from Sudan, and realized they were sorting pictures of emaciated people shown in front of what my our American standards were hovels. They also were reviewing traditional Sudanese houses and a lot of discussion started about mud bricks and how grass houses could stand for ten years, if doors and windows were part of houses etc. The later presentations of high-rise Korean apartments or modern homes in Mexico contrasted sharply with the traditional African homes. Though the housing built in desperation in refugee camps wasn't shown in anyone's power points, I knew that they had been in the Google Images that the paired students had reviewed, and it made me think that a poster showing contrasting images of housing around the world could be very informative for all my students. My students that come as refugees have amazing backgrounds and have survived amazing challenges, and I often worry about how to help the students from more modernized and easier backgrounds understand what the others in their group come from. I continue to look for ways to facilitate greater understanding and appreciation between the diverse populations that come to my classrooms, and this type of poster might be one beginning step towards that goal.
I could see making small groups and having them produce graphic examples of housing, schools, clothing, or household items from multiple countries or from around the world to allow students to compare and contrast and use their end product to present to the whole class on their topic.
Bloom's Taxonomy
This project allows a student to use all of the taxonomies from highest to lowest. If the high school student is being asked to represent a certain character and/or concept discussed in a novel in an English Literature class or other mainstream class they will need to recall the details and ideas and be able to show their understanding of the ideas and concepts by summarizing them and applying them graphically or with some text on their Glogster product. They may need to compare and contrast and definitely will need to organize their ideas and will need to evaluate and critique their choices in what is going into their final creation of their poster.
Struggles
I could see that there could be some short-lived issued in use of the program based on my current audience of adult students. This audience is probably reflective of what a middle or high school group of language learners might have in terms of knowledge and comfort level with technology. Some students have no clue how to copy and paste items, how to drag items to where they want them placed or other fairly early steps of using a computer such as comfort with the basic keyboard commands. I also know that my adult classes generally have both young and old students who have much greater comfort with computer and technology useage. If the class mix has some with limited or no knowledge and some with middle to high level knowledge then pairings or small groups would probably work out in shared project production.
One issue that I faced that I did not expect that when I went back to the site to polish up my example product I could not gain entry. Glogster stated that they were currently beyond capacity, but they were working on it and would be back shortly. I checked thirty minutes later and was able to get in. This would be monumental, though, if you had a middle or high school group of students that you planned on using the technology during a set class period. I am not sure if this happens often or was a random occurrence, but I could imagine the stress that a teacher might feel if faced with this.
Biases/Trade-offs/Limitations
This technology offers a heavy dose of graphic and visual representation of an idea which does balance the standard heavy text representation that we expect of students when we assess them about their understanding of an idea or concept so it can be seen to be an alternative to more traditional assessment methods. I would think that a learner who was not visual or graphically oriented or exceptionally creative would feel stress if they were faced with this technology as the one choice to show their knowledge. This might be an excellent option to present a student with in addition to other more standard assessment choices. Technologically frightened students could be overwhelmed, but they could produce a product with additional initial assisstance and might find that it allowed them freedom of expression that a more text heavy method would not. It does seem oriented to a fairly young audience as there isn't a huge range of options in terms of text font, frames and other supporting materials so that a more mature or serious student may not find the options they would be most comfortable with representing a serious topic.
Teacher Standards
Standard 4, 6, and 8: - Glogster used in the K-12 classroom shows that the instructor is usisng multiple strategies in teaching students including fostering critical thinking, problem-solving and performance skills. The instructor using this technology demonstrates that they are allowing verbal, non-verbal and various media communication opportunities as well as collaborative work if the students work together as I envision my ELL students doing. Even if pairs or small groups were not assigned a collaborative environment could be fostered by encouraging students to assisst each other in areas that some were not as comfortable. The Glogster platform could be used as formal or informal assessment mechanism to evaluate how studies and discussion in class can be demonstrated in this graphic production. This poster could provide a lasting record or their performance, work, responsibility, and progress in their knowledge. Teachers will meet the ISTE standards of showing growth and leadership, promoting and modeling digital literacy and responsibility and will model digital work and learning by utilizing a technology such as this in the classroom. By showing this option to students they will enable students to grow in creativity and knowledge using a more modern method.
Student Standards
The technology offered by Glogster will allow and encourage creativity and give the students an opportunity to design and develop a product. The students can communicate and collaborate on joint projects or be allowed to help out others that are not as comfortable in this area. They will need to show skills of researching (choosing images, sound additions, text that is appropriate) and be knowledgeable about information fluency. They will also have the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge of digital citizenship by realizing the limits of what they can place in their products as well as show critical thinking, problem solving and decision making as they need to make decisions about how to best represent their topic with the tools at hand.
Citations and Research
Kent referenced useage of Glogster in a South Korean higher education facility and reported that the international and Korean students enjoyed the work and worked together. The international students utilized English and local terminology in their end products. Critiques of the research method, also mentioned in the article, are that the group studied was small in size and results are limited due to that. In additino, the group that used it was composed of less motivated and lower self-esteem students which again may have skewed the results. The research showed that while the students were enthused about using the technology their end product did not result in a high volume of English practice. This could either sway you from using Glogster or not faze you based on what your intent for learning outcomes. If collaborative learning and exposure to learning about other students in their classroom as well as learning about a new technology were the classroom goals then this issue brought up would not be a problem. If the learning goal was to demonstrate develoment with English skills then the technology as used by Kent would not be sufficient. Stanley incorporated ideas about the effectiveness of implementing new technology into classrooms to liven up learning. The students are more open and interested and don't have a filter that limits the productiveness of the learning environement. Stanley offered good ideas about adding freshness to the classroom.
Kent. David. Bradley (2010). Exploring the Perspective and Potential of Incorporating Glogster into the University EFL Classroom. AWEJ, 1(1). Retrieved from http://www.awej.org/awejfiles/_21_13_article6.pdf.
Stanley, G. (2006). Podcasting: Audio on the internet comes of age. TESL-EJ, 9(4). Retrieved from http://www-writing.berkeley.edu/tesl-ej/ej36/int.html.
Friday, December 16, 2011
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Voice Thread for English Language Learners Life Stories
http://voicethread.com/share/2559507/
Description
Voice Thread is an online sharing mechanism. Video, photos or simple verbal items can be shared. You can invite people to look at the information and make comments or open it up to a wider audience.
Rationale
The program has been used by ELL teachers to give recorded comments to students about their written work and issues or ways to improve on it. This can be amazingly helpful for students that may not have been able to make enough sense of quick written comments on a paper, or quick verbal comments by a teacher. The comments can be referred back to over and over if the student has a need. Students that have been able to make use of this technology in an ELL writing class have found it invaluable to understand writing issues and improve their work. In addition, students of all ages and backgrounds can use the program to share ideas and get comments from others. One possible use of the technology is to have individuals record their stories or ideas about their life or issues and others can learn from hearing about the experiences. I did this with just one student this semester and had him share his experiences about life in Fignido Refugee Camp. We had done in-class presentations and I decided to have him try this technology to share the same information. The program will also be an excellent addition to online courses allowing instructors to give the same type of personal verbal comments that help ELL students and would be just as valuable for distance learners.
Implementation
Initally getting signed into the program was very simple and quick. The program was fairly self-explanatory as I worked through using it on a simple level. No cost involved and a user can do as much as their imagination will allow. The project that I worked on with a Sudanese student is not as polished as it could be, but I am glad that now having tried it once I know that it isn't out of my range. I could see that this type of project is one that I will try to do in small groups next semester with my adult students.
Bloom's Taxonomy
Since Voice Thread can be used in many different ways it may touch on many different levels of Bloom's Taxonomy based on the project it is utilized in. The 2 methods I readily envision Voice Thread being involved in would have students creating a product, evaluating and critiquing what elements to put in the project and analyzing elements of their life story to determine how to organize and compare and show contrast within their own story. The lower levels of the taxonomy would be part of the project as well as the students would need to recall and remember parts of their life, and summarize and explain things that others might have no background knowledge of such as the term refugee or refugee camp. They would then need to apply the information about their life story and use their knowledge of English to work on their life story project.
Struggles
Sometimes the students with the most intriguing life stories are the ones that have had the least exposure to technology and are the most skittish of it. The act of speaking into a recording device is intimidating to many. I have students use headset microphones and that could be more uncomfortable possibly than speaking into a microphone. Accents or lack of clear pronunciation might be an issue with some individuals recordings on Voice Thread, but the authenticity of the recording is very clear if the accent is rather heavy.
Biases/Trade-Offs/Limitations
One of the issues could be that any individuals that are nervous about technology might be bothered a little by this technology but the process is really rather simple. Speaking into a microphone is one of the limitations as that is also an element that can unnerve some people. Lack of immediate feedback from an audience of listeners might also limit a speakers energy in their presentation, but it also can serve to make a speaker more comfortable if they are unnerved by facing their audience. An additional issue is that the audience of Voice Thread won't be able to see the speaker and watch body language and non-verbal clues as they would if they were face to face.
Teacher Standards
Teacher Standards 4, 6, and 8 are addressed with this project because the use of Voice Thread is example of one more intructional strategy that can be used to either facilitate a student's understanding of their paper critique. If Voice Thread is used to record a life story the technology is used to develop critical thinking and performance skills. The life story project allows students to take on responsibility for locating and developing resources to flesh out their life story such as images, sound files or photos or realia that support their descriptions. In this process the instuctor would need to fulfill many roles: traditional teacher, assisstant in developing their story with technological assisstance depending on student needs and as the audience. Additionally, if the technology is used in writing critique it can be a very supportive assessment tool that the student can refer back to multiple times. The critique can be a record of the work. If this program is used in a life story project it would serve as a different method of judging English skills, presentation skills and the ability to use their own strengths and seek help for their weaker spots. The project can help build social and community building within the classroom as other students view the life story of another. This can lead to greater intellectual and social development.
Student Standards
This program really will allow a student to be very innovative and creative, they will recognize many possibilities after a little exposure. This tool will allow communication world wide and collaboration. They will have greater exposure to information fluency and research options. Because they will need to make decisions about how to best represent their speech topic with visual aids they will need to be able to think critically, make decisions and problem solve as they gather their background information together. In addition, they will realize the importance of having good digital citizenship as they realize that they need to post only appropriate materials. The students will see the instructor promoting and modeling responsibility and digital citizenship and will model their behavior. The students will see the teachers engaging in growth and leadership in trying new technology. As the instructors broaden their horizons with learning new ways to provide learning-experiences and to use this tool for assessment they will be an example for their students.
Research and Citations
Research has been done on Voice Thread stating that the program will allow individuals a voice that may not normally have had a good opportunity to voice their point of view. Brown and O'dell represented that some populations need to have the chance to speak and may be as good at doing so in front of people. The article referenced autistic individuals, but I see a similarity with language learners. Romeo references using Voice Thread with young people in a writing program to develop language writing skills. This author has been influential in pulling students in writing skills.
ERIC #: EJ621237
Title: Lighting Fires from a Spark in the Middle: Reading and Writing Workshop Alive and Thriving at Green Intermediate School.
Authors: Romeo, William J.
Publication Date: 2000-00-00
Pub Types: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Journal Name: Ohio Reading Teacher
Journal Citation: v34 n1 p45-48 Spr 2000
Publisher:
URL: http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/detail?accno=EJ621237
Descriptors: Elementary Education; Instructional Innovation; Language Research; Motivation; Reading Instruction; Writing Instruction; Writing Workshops
ERIC #: EJ751027
Title: Constructing an Autistic Identity: AS Voices Online
Authors: Brownlow, Charlotte; O'Dell, Lindsay
Publication Date: 2006-10-00
Pub Types: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Journal Name: Mental Retardation: A Journal of Practices, Policy and Perspectives
Journal Citation: v44 n5 p315-321 Oct 2006
Publisher: American Association on Mental Retardation. P.O. Box 7065, Lawrence, KS 66044-7065. Tel: 785-843-1235; Fax: 785-843-1274; e-mail: AJMR@allenpress.com; Web site: http://www.aamr.org/Periodicals/index.shtml
URL: http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/detail?accno=EJ751027
Descriptors: Autism; Discussion Groups; Internet; Identification; Clinical Diagnosis
Description
Voice Thread is an online sharing mechanism. Video, photos or simple verbal items can be shared. You can invite people to look at the information and make comments or open it up to a wider audience.
Rationale
The program has been used by ELL teachers to give recorded comments to students about their written work and issues or ways to improve on it. This can be amazingly helpful for students that may not have been able to make enough sense of quick written comments on a paper, or quick verbal comments by a teacher. The comments can be referred back to over and over if the student has a need. Students that have been able to make use of this technology in an ELL writing class have found it invaluable to understand writing issues and improve their work. In addition, students of all ages and backgrounds can use the program to share ideas and get comments from others. One possible use of the technology is to have individuals record their stories or ideas about their life or issues and others can learn from hearing about the experiences. I did this with just one student this semester and had him share his experiences about life in Fignido Refugee Camp. We had done in-class presentations and I decided to have him try this technology to share the same information. The program will also be an excellent addition to online courses allowing instructors to give the same type of personal verbal comments that help ELL students and would be just as valuable for distance learners.
Implementation
Initally getting signed into the program was very simple and quick. The program was fairly self-explanatory as I worked through using it on a simple level. No cost involved and a user can do as much as their imagination will allow. The project that I worked on with a Sudanese student is not as polished as it could be, but I am glad that now having tried it once I know that it isn't out of my range. I could see that this type of project is one that I will try to do in small groups next semester with my adult students.
Bloom's Taxonomy
Since Voice Thread can be used in many different ways it may touch on many different levels of Bloom's Taxonomy based on the project it is utilized in. The 2 methods I readily envision Voice Thread being involved in would have students creating a product, evaluating and critiquing what elements to put in the project and analyzing elements of their life story to determine how to organize and compare and show contrast within their own story. The lower levels of the taxonomy would be part of the project as well as the students would need to recall and remember parts of their life, and summarize and explain things that others might have no background knowledge of such as the term refugee or refugee camp. They would then need to apply the information about their life story and use their knowledge of English to work on their life story project.
Struggles
Sometimes the students with the most intriguing life stories are the ones that have had the least exposure to technology and are the most skittish of it. The act of speaking into a recording device is intimidating to many. I have students use headset microphones and that could be more uncomfortable possibly than speaking into a microphone. Accents or lack of clear pronunciation might be an issue with some individuals recordings on Voice Thread, but the authenticity of the recording is very clear if the accent is rather heavy.
Biases/Trade-Offs/Limitations
One of the issues could be that any individuals that are nervous about technology might be bothered a little by this technology but the process is really rather simple. Speaking into a microphone is one of the limitations as that is also an element that can unnerve some people. Lack of immediate feedback from an audience of listeners might also limit a speakers energy in their presentation, but it also can serve to make a speaker more comfortable if they are unnerved by facing their audience. An additional issue is that the audience of Voice Thread won't be able to see the speaker and watch body language and non-verbal clues as they would if they were face to face.
Teacher Standards
Teacher Standards 4, 6, and 8 are addressed with this project because the use of Voice Thread is example of one more intructional strategy that can be used to either facilitate a student's understanding of their paper critique. If Voice Thread is used to record a life story the technology is used to develop critical thinking and performance skills. The life story project allows students to take on responsibility for locating and developing resources to flesh out their life story such as images, sound files or photos or realia that support their descriptions. In this process the instuctor would need to fulfill many roles: traditional teacher, assisstant in developing their story with technological assisstance depending on student needs and as the audience. Additionally, if the technology is used in writing critique it can be a very supportive assessment tool that the student can refer back to multiple times. The critique can be a record of the work. If this program is used in a life story project it would serve as a different method of judging English skills, presentation skills and the ability to use their own strengths and seek help for their weaker spots. The project can help build social and community building within the classroom as other students view the life story of another. This can lead to greater intellectual and social development.
Student Standards
This program really will allow a student to be very innovative and creative, they will recognize many possibilities after a little exposure. This tool will allow communication world wide and collaboration. They will have greater exposure to information fluency and research options. Because they will need to make decisions about how to best represent their speech topic with visual aids they will need to be able to think critically, make decisions and problem solve as they gather their background information together. In addition, they will realize the importance of having good digital citizenship as they realize that they need to post only appropriate materials. The students will see the instructor promoting and modeling responsibility and digital citizenship and will model their behavior. The students will see the teachers engaging in growth and leadership in trying new technology. As the instructors broaden their horizons with learning new ways to provide learning-experiences and to use this tool for assessment they will be an example for their students.
Research and Citations
Research has been done on Voice Thread stating that the program will allow individuals a voice that may not normally have had a good opportunity to voice their point of view. Brown and O'dell represented that some populations need to have the chance to speak and may be as good at doing so in front of people. The article referenced autistic individuals, but I see a similarity with language learners. Romeo references using Voice Thread with young people in a writing program to develop language writing skills. This author has been influential in pulling students in writing skills.
ERIC #: EJ621237
Title: Lighting Fires from a Spark in the Middle: Reading and Writing Workshop Alive and Thriving at Green Intermediate School.
Authors: Romeo, William J.
Publication Date: 2000-00-00
Pub Types: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Journal Name: Ohio Reading Teacher
Journal Citation: v34 n1 p45-48 Spr 2000
Publisher:
URL: http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/detail?accno=EJ621237
Descriptors: Elementary Education; Instructional Innovation; Language Research; Motivation; Reading Instruction; Writing Instruction; Writing Workshops
ERIC #: EJ751027
Title: Constructing an Autistic Identity: AS Voices Online
Authors: Brownlow, Charlotte; O'Dell, Lindsay
Publication Date: 2006-10-00
Pub Types: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Journal Name: Mental Retardation: A Journal of Practices, Policy and Perspectives
Journal Citation: v44 n5 p315-321 Oct 2006
Publisher: American Association on Mental Retardation. P.O. Box 7065, Lawrence, KS 66044-7065. Tel: 785-843-1235; Fax: 785-843-1274; e-mail: AJMR@allenpress.com; Web site: http://www.aamr.org/Periodicals/index.shtml
URL: http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/detail?accno=EJ751027
Descriptors: Autism; Discussion Groups; Internet; Identification; Clinical Diagnosis
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Wordle Word Clouds Facilitate Learning in a Graphic Way
<a href="http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/4567937/Thankful_for._._._Saturday_ESL_Class_Responses"
title="Wordle: Thankful for. . . Saturday ESL Class Responses"> <img src=http://www.wordle.net/thumb/wrdl/4567937/Thankful_for._._._Saturday_ESL_Class_Responses alt="Wordle: Thankful for. . . Saturday ESL Class Responses" style="padding:4px;border:1px solid #ddd"></a>
Description
Wordle is a program that allows you to type in or cut and past any text and produce a graphic display of those words. The words used most often will be in larger print and those that occur rarely will be smaller in size. I saw examples of this when an educator ran their syllabus or their course objectives in Wordle and they were surprised and a bit appalled that the words occurring most were not ones that they would like emphasized in their classrooms. I viewed many blogs where educators shared their uses in the classroom. Some of these include: a display of the students' names in a new classroom, an early elementary class photo with all the students' names presented in a graphic display, spelling words, or a word wall, famous speeches pasted into Wordle display the common themes. I thought ahead to Martin Luther King and entering the "I Have a Dream" speech to show my adult learners who are new to the country to help describe what his focus was on. For something like this you could choose to delete out words that do not appear more than whatever number of times you choose. Other ideas that I saw presented by educators were using it to introduce a reading so that the common themes were visually apparent before reading. The themes could be previewed and defined and then the whole text could be read, and a helpful idea was to use Project Gutenberg to access copyright free text and see commonalities and differences between various texts. Another contributor suggested using it pre and post reading to look for common themes and main ideas, hopefully post reading and discussion would yield the best on-target responses. This site also pointed out that younger children could be polled about their favorite food or color and then could see the visual results of that poll. I did this as my first way of introducing Wordle to my adult language learners and then we quickly moved to our project idea.
Once the words are keyed or pasted into the field you can select color ranges that you want used and have a canvas created. If you don't like the graphic display given you can choose to click randomize and allow the system to create another choice. You can select vertical, horizontal displays and various text fonts. The canvas can be saved as a private view only or placed on the public wall. When you do save the canvas you get the information you need to be able to go back and work with it more or delete it.
Implementation
The program has no cost to the user so an educator wouldn't have to worry about budget issues. The cost involved would be if students were going to be allowed to print out their individual productions. This word cloud program was easy to learn and use, but I was a little confused about how to keep certain words together such as phrasal verbs like fed up, look into etc. I found the tip I needed through the collaborative site mentioned above. By simply placing a tilde ~ between two, or more, words you want to keep together you are able to have the program produce a graphic display with fed up placed side by side. The wordle site has a FAQ section which was helpful to read through and I was able to see that I could have the option of choosing to have minimally used words left off the graphic project. The students created their own work and were able to quickly understand it. They seemed to really be energized by the items I created for them and their own.
As mentioned earlier, we started with doing a group poll of favorite colors and foods just to show what the end result of the program would be. The next project that we did as a class was to discuss what Thanksgiving meant in the United States, and how it was celebrated in the past and currently. Of course food, football and napping were some of the things we spoke about, but I also introduced the words thankful, grateful and appreciation. I told the class that many Americans took time at this holiday season to reflect on what they were thankful for and that some would share one idea each before eating the holiday meal. I asked the students to write down five to 10 things they were thankful for and gave some prompts to get them started and to help with any spelling questions. Common ones in the group were: God, my children, a home, safety, freedom, America, family, education, English classes, teachers. Before I got my class started on this I had decided that it was such a timely project that I wanted to try to share it with as many English language classes as possible at the school. I offered it to the other instructors and had my students introduce the idea and take a paper poll with even more prompts and supports for lower level learners. Amazing and touching results came in including some of the following: God's mercy, clean water, electricity, food, safety, a good government, a country that took them in, and parents, brothers, sisters, wife, husband among many other wonderful responses. I did this later with a different class site with adults that all came from the same country with limited educational opportunities, great dangers all around to the minority groups and got responses including: availability of pencils, pens, paper, escaping from their country, educational opportunities, learning and helpful people. They also said that they were thankful that the American people didn't seem so foreign and scary now that they lived here.
I have entered all the data for both sites and created a Wordle which I have printed and posted at the 2 class sites. I anticipate using it for target vocabulary for my low level learners to give them something interesting to take home and use for further reinforcement of newly presented words. With the low level students I recognize that the words would need to be in a horizontal setting only so they can use the resource comfortably. This technology is something that I know the K-12 schools are using, and I think that it will be nice for the low-level adult students to have something they can take home and hang up and have their school age children see also.
In my daily class I also used it as a classroom visual representation of their weekly spelling words as well as displaying the information in a more standard fashion.
Struggles
As mentioned in the above entries there were very minimal struggles, to begin with. The first one I had was related to trying to keep certain words together and then how to handle minimally occurring words in a text that I did not want displayed. I found that using the tilde was my answer and that I could just eliminate less important words.
One additional glitch I encountered was counter to what the whole Wordle program advertises itself regarding that the most common words are printed the largest. The student group I polled are largely refugees or immigrants and many of them would place God as the most important thing that they are thankful for. They think of God when they think of how they escaped their country or death or torture and they thank God for helping them be allowed into the United States and have the freedoms and safety that we all take for granted. Consequently, God showed up on about 90% of all the student respondents but when I plugged it in and then pushed the button to create I found that any mention of God had been eliminated. Either the Wordle program had atheistic tendencies or there was a glitch. I used the FAQ section on the Wordle home page to do my research and found that the answer given was that sometimes if a word was entered many times they system would start to read it is an unimportant word or punctuation mark and eliminate it. I dealt with this by entering in more entries of God's Mercy or God's Grace and also tried to enter God but just not as many times. It seemed to work then, but it wasn't always consistent. Sometimes I was successful in just typing the word God and having it represented on the final project and sometimes God simply disappeared. The Wordle site itself has great resources and other users have posted ideas and tips that help one smooth over any glitches. Even students who were nervous about computer use were able to fairly easily try this out and their greatest issue was simply knowledge of the keyboard.
A final struggle I had was in realizing that if I was typing in the data I wanted to create a Wordle from that I didn't really want to type it directly in Wordle as once the create button was hit no changes could be made to the text. I found that it was better to type the words in a word document and then cut and paste it to Wordle. If upon looking at the created Wordle graphic I saw a flaw I could easily go back to the word document and make changes and repaste to Wordle. I always visually reviewed the word document, but I might suggest that running a spell check might be good as a backup. When I was creating a Wordle under time pressure I mistyped the word English. Respondents had said that they were thankful for "my English teacher" and "English teachers" and on one of the entries I wrote "Enlish teachers" and then printed multiple color copies of the Wordle to post in classrooms which was disppointing as all copies had to be destroyed.
Rationale/Bloom's Taxonomy
I have used the program in several ways, but I will analyze the higher English level individual thankful and group thankful projects for this section. The students were able to display knowledge and remembering and understanding of the vocabulary and concept of the terminology thankful. They were able to create an end product with a graphic display of their individual words as well as the production of a class poll graphically produced. Other uses of it could show what a student remembered or understood about a topic to opportunities to evaluate or analyze an issue or idea. The whole product allows for creativity in many regards.
Biases/Trade-Offs
As with any technology, a teacher would need to make decisions about how relevant using a technology would be in each situation. Is the technology just being used because it is a fun graphic entertainment? Some students might get caught up in the creativity element in choosing colors, fonts and layouts and lose sight on the content. Probably the potential for loss of focus would stand out as the biggest problem. Students with very low comfort levels with computers might feel overwhelmed by needing to make a product in this nature although there are relatively few glitches that can occur that can't be easily remedied. If a student wasn't a graphic or visual learner then too much reliance on this graphic production might not allow them to take in information in their preferred learning method, but generally this product can be used to allow for balanced learning methods with some graphic presentation, some verbal discussion and some physical typing of data so that learners can have a learning experience on many levels.
Teacher and Student Standards
Standard 4: Multiple Instructional Strategies -Use of a word cloud, such as Wordle, partnered with more traditional teaching methods shows variety of instructional methods. Visually seeing heavily used words in a chapter and leading discussions about what appears to be more dominant allows learning to be done on multiple levels. By having students create their own Wordle products they are developing critical thinking, needing to use problem solving with any issues that might arise and to an extent utilizing performance skills if they are asked to comment on their word cloud creations.
Standard 6: Communication and Technology -As stated in the paragraph above using a visual technology such as Wordle paired with other teaching methods such as discussion about the prevalence of some words or explanation about one's own Wordle creation can allow learning to go on at multiple levels and allows the class to connect together. A class could make a collaborative class Wordle about what they thought was important in a story or in any unit of study or they could do so in smaller pairings to show what their small group thought most relevant.
Standard 8: Wordle could be used as a pre and post assessment to allow students to reflect about what they know about a topic or issue or value the most. After a pre assessment Wordle creation the teacher could address either what the students thought most interesting or problematic about an issue or address the weakest areas of knowledge and then use the post Wordle creation to see how the teaching helped fill in any gaps.
ISTE and Student Tech Standards: The Wordle program allows for creativity in the choices of design offered and in providing a graphic display of learning or interest in a topic. It can be used as an assessment tool, a study device or an opportunity to just experience a different way of learning using digital age technology. As the teachers demonstrate their knowledge and useage of their digital literacy, continued growth and respectful useage of the technology their students will model their behavior on their teachers. Students will also be given the opportunity to learn that appropriate use of Wordle is a way that they can show their digital citizenship and make correct decisions about what is considered proper to put out on public canvases. They can be given the opportunity to be independent in their creation of the product or work collaboratively with partners, small groups or collectively with the whole class coming together in one creative endeavor.
Research Citation & Evaluation
I found the Wordle journal article by Hayes to be interesting and informative, but it was definitely more of a fan mail type of entry. The plusses about the technology were pointed out, but there were no critiquest of this technology. While the author listed ways that she could envision using it she did not point out any limitations of this tool. The article showed up in a section of the journal called, Technology Toolkit, and it did inform the reader about an option and how to use those options and while providing some tips and cautions did not go beyond that. Still, I found it interesting to see ideas presented by anothe user, and it made me want to look at other editions of this journal to reoccuring entries in the Technology Toolkit section about other technologies. I was interested in a couple of articles that covered Wordle useage outside of the classroom. A couple of articles I read explored it for library useage and one in particular, the article by Foote in the School Library Journal, was interesting and informative. This article like the Hayes work focused on informing about the positive sides of the technology and did not include a critique, but I thought that the ideas that the librarian came up with were interesting and showed that this program could be used in different ways. I also found it helpful that she included a few ideas from other users, including one that Diane Laufenberg, who teaches at a high school in Philadelphia did with her class. At the beginning of the school year, the class was instructed to produce 10 adjectives that came to mind describing America. Wordle was used to produce a visual of what the views of the students were. I found this interesting and may do it as an intro to the beginning of a new semester with new students in my ELL adult classes. Foote also added in some helpful sites that she encountered to aid other users in implementing Wordle. The final article, by Hakuta reviewed an alternate word cloud program called, "WordSift" that he used in researching academic language development in school science texts for ELL. The importance of academic language development for language learners is a much discussed topic in recent years, and I found this interesting to explore. The article used a program that alphabetically sorts words and the research showed that review of important text previewed prior to the unit showed only slight improvement in scores in the early research findings in 2010. The research also showed only minor differences in results for girls as compared to boys tested in the effectiveness that the use of the word sorting had on their understanding of the text in their science books. I was disappointed that the research had only early results and that the results couldn't be said to be conclusively showing that word cloud programs helped language learners. It would have been nice to know, definitively that the program could benefit students.
Foote, Carolyn. (2009). It's a Mad, Mad Wordle: For a New Take on Text, Try This Fun Word Cloud Generator. School Library Journal, 55(7), 332-34.
Hayes, S. (2008). Wordle.
Voices from the Middle, 16 (n2), 66-68.
Hakuta, Kenji. (2011). WordSift: Supporting Instruction and Learning through Technology in San Francisco. The Senior Urban Education Research Fellowship Series (Volume IV). Council of the Great City Schools. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED518092).
<a href="http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/4567937/Thankful_for._._._Saturday_ESL_Class_Responses" <a href="http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/4567937/Thankful_for._._._Saturday_ESL_Class_Responses"
title="Wordle: Thankful for. . . Saturday ESL Class Responses"> <img src=http://www.wordle.net/thumb/wrdl/4567937/Thankful_for._._._Saturday_ESL_Class_Responses alt="Wordle: Thankful for. . . Saturday ESL Class Responses" style="padding:4px;border:1px solid #ddd"></a>
Description
Wordle is a program that allows you to type in or cut and past any text and produce a graphic display of those words. The words used most often will be in larger print and those that occur rarely will be smaller in size. I saw examples of this when an educator ran their syllabus or their course objectives in Wordle and they were surprised and a bit appalled that the words occurring most were not ones that they would like emphasized in their classrooms. I viewed many blogs where educators shared their uses in the classroom. Some of these include: a display of the students' names in a new classroom, an early elementary class photo with all the students' names presented in a graphic display, spelling words, or a word wall, famous speeches pasted into Wordle display the common themes. I thought ahead to Martin Luther King and entering the "I Have a Dream" speech to show my adult learners who are new to the country to help describe what his focus was on. For something like this you could choose to delete out words that do not appear more than whatever number of times you choose. Other ideas that I saw presented by educators were using it to introduce a reading so that the common themes were visually apparent before reading. The themes could be previewed and defined and then the whole text could be read, and a helpful idea was to use Project Gutenberg to access copyright free text and see commonalities and differences between various texts. Another contributor suggested using it pre and post reading to look for common themes and main ideas, hopefully post reading and discussion would yield the best on-target responses. This site also pointed out that younger children could be polled about their favorite food or color and then could see the visual results of that poll. I did this as my first way of introducing Wordle to my adult language learners and then we quickly moved to our project idea.
Once the words are keyed or pasted into the field you can select color ranges that you want used and have a canvas created. If you don't like the graphic display given you can choose to click randomize and allow the system to create another choice. You can select vertical, horizontal displays and various text fonts. The canvas can be saved as a private view only or placed on the public wall. When you do save the canvas you get the information you need to be able to go back and work with it more or delete it.
Implementation
The program has no cost to the user so an educator wouldn't have to worry about budget issues. The cost involved would be if students were going to be allowed to print out their individual productions. This word cloud program was easy to learn and use, but I was a little confused about how to keep certain words together such as phrasal verbs like fed up, look into etc. I found the tip I needed through the collaborative site mentioned above. By simply placing a tilde ~ between two, or more, words you want to keep together you are able to have the program produce a graphic display with fed up placed side by side. The wordle site has a FAQ section which was helpful to read through and I was able to see that I could have the option of choosing to have minimally used words left off the graphic project. The students created their own work and were able to quickly understand it. They seemed to really be energized by the items I created for them and their own.
As mentioned earlier, we started with doing a group poll of favorite colors and foods just to show what the end result of the program would be. The next project that we did as a class was to discuss what Thanksgiving meant in the United States, and how it was celebrated in the past and currently. Of course food, football and napping were some of the things we spoke about, but I also introduced the words thankful, grateful and appreciation. I told the class that many Americans took time at this holiday season to reflect on what they were thankful for and that some would share one idea each before eating the holiday meal. I asked the students to write down five to 10 things they were thankful for and gave some prompts to get them started and to help with any spelling questions. Common ones in the group were: God, my children, a home, safety, freedom, America, family, education, English classes, teachers. Before I got my class started on this I had decided that it was such a timely project that I wanted to try to share it with as many English language classes as possible at the school. I offered it to the other instructors and had my students introduce the idea and take a paper poll with even more prompts and supports for lower level learners. Amazing and touching results came in including some of the following: God's mercy, clean water, electricity, food, safety, a good government, a country that took them in, and parents, brothers, sisters, wife, husband among many other wonderful responses. I did this later with a different class site with adults that all came from the same country with limited educational opportunities, great dangers all around to the minority groups and got responses including: availability of pencils, pens, paper, escaping from their country, educational opportunities, learning and helpful people. They also said that they were thankful that the American people didn't seem so foreign and scary now that they lived here.
I have entered all the data for both sites and created a Wordle which I have printed and posted at the 2 class sites. I anticipate using it for target vocabulary for my low level learners to give them something interesting to take home and use for further reinforcement of newly presented words. With the low level students I recognize that the words would need to be in a horizontal setting only so they can use the resource comfortably. This technology is something that I know the K-12 schools are using, and I think that it will be nice for the low-level adult students to have something they can take home and hang up and have their school age children see also.
In my daily class I also used it as a classroom visual representation of their weekly spelling words as well as displaying the information in a more standard fashion.
Struggles
As mentioned in the above entries there were very minimal struggles, to begin with. The first one I had was related to trying to keep certain words together and then how to handle minimally occurring words in a text that I did not want displayed. I found that using the tilde was my answer and that I could just eliminate less important words.
One additional glitch I encountered was counter to what the whole Wordle program advertises itself regarding that the most common words are printed the largest. The student group I polled are largely refugees or immigrants and many of them would place God as the most important thing that they are thankful for. They think of God when they think of how they escaped their country or death or torture and they thank God for helping them be allowed into the United States and have the freedoms and safety that we all take for granted. Consequently, God showed up on about 90% of all the student respondents but when I plugged it in and then pushed the button to create I found that any mention of God had been eliminated. Either the Wordle program had atheistic tendencies or there was a glitch. I used the FAQ section on the Wordle home page to do my research and found that the answer given was that sometimes if a word was entered many times they system would start to read it is an unimportant word or punctuation mark and eliminate it. I dealt with this by entering in more entries of God's Mercy or God's Grace and also tried to enter God but just not as many times. It seemed to work then, but it wasn't always consistent. Sometimes I was successful in just typing the word God and having it represented on the final project and sometimes God simply disappeared. The Wordle site itself has great resources and other users have posted ideas and tips that help one smooth over any glitches. Even students who were nervous about computer use were able to fairly easily try this out and their greatest issue was simply knowledge of the keyboard.
A final struggle I had was in realizing that if I was typing in the data I wanted to create a Wordle from that I didn't really want to type it directly in Wordle as once the create button was hit no changes could be made to the text. I found that it was better to type the words in a word document and then cut and paste it to Wordle. If upon looking at the created Wordle graphic I saw a flaw I could easily go back to the word document and make changes and repaste to Wordle. I always visually reviewed the word document, but I might suggest that running a spell check might be good as a backup. When I was creating a Wordle under time pressure I mistyped the word English. Respondents had said that they were thankful for "my English teacher" and "English teachers" and on one of the entries I wrote "Enlish teachers" and then printed multiple color copies of the Wordle to post in classrooms which was disppointing as all copies had to be destroyed.
Rationale/Bloom's Taxonomy
I have used the program in several ways, but I will analyze the higher English level individual thankful and group thankful projects for this section. The students were able to display knowledge and remembering and understanding of the vocabulary and concept of the terminology thankful. They were able to create an end product with a graphic display of their individual words as well as the production of a class poll graphically produced. Other uses of it could show what a student remembered or understood about a topic to opportunities to evaluate or analyze an issue or idea. The whole product allows for creativity in many regards.
Biases/Trade-Offs
As with any technology, a teacher would need to make decisions about how relevant using a technology would be in each situation. Is the technology just being used because it is a fun graphic entertainment? Some students might get caught up in the creativity element in choosing colors, fonts and layouts and lose sight on the content. Probably the potential for loss of focus would stand out as the biggest problem. Students with very low comfort levels with computers might feel overwhelmed by needing to make a product in this nature although there are relatively few glitches that can occur that can't be easily remedied. If a student wasn't a graphic or visual learner then too much reliance on this graphic production might not allow them to take in information in their preferred learning method, but generally this product can be used to allow for balanced learning methods with some graphic presentation, some verbal discussion and some physical typing of data so that learners can have a learning experience on many levels.
Teacher and Student Standards
Standard 4: Multiple Instructional Strategies -Use of a word cloud, such as Wordle, partnered with more traditional teaching methods shows variety of instructional methods. Visually seeing heavily used words in a chapter and leading discussions about what appears to be more dominant allows learning to be done on multiple levels. By having students create their own Wordle products they are developing critical thinking, needing to use problem solving with any issues that might arise and to an extent utilizing performance skills if they are asked to comment on their word cloud creations.
Standard 6: Communication and Technology -As stated in the paragraph above using a visual technology such as Wordle paired with other teaching methods such as discussion about the prevalence of some words or explanation about one's own Wordle creation can allow learning to go on at multiple levels and allows the class to connect together. A class could make a collaborative class Wordle about what they thought was important in a story or in any unit of study or they could do so in smaller pairings to show what their small group thought most relevant.
Standard 8: Wordle could be used as a pre and post assessment to allow students to reflect about what they know about a topic or issue or value the most. After a pre assessment Wordle creation the teacher could address either what the students thought most interesting or problematic about an issue or address the weakest areas of knowledge and then use the post Wordle creation to see how the teaching helped fill in any gaps.
ISTE and Student Tech Standards: The Wordle program allows for creativity in the choices of design offered and in providing a graphic display of learning or interest in a topic. It can be used as an assessment tool, a study device or an opportunity to just experience a different way of learning using digital age technology. As the teachers demonstrate their knowledge and useage of their digital literacy, continued growth and respectful useage of the technology their students will model their behavior on their teachers. Students will also be given the opportunity to learn that appropriate use of Wordle is a way that they can show their digital citizenship and make correct decisions about what is considered proper to put out on public canvases. They can be given the opportunity to be independent in their creation of the product or work collaboratively with partners, small groups or collectively with the whole class coming together in one creative endeavor.
Research Citation & Evaluation
I found the Wordle journal article by Hayes to be interesting and informative, but it was definitely more of a fan mail type of entry. The plusses about the technology were pointed out, but there were no critiquest of this technology. While the author listed ways that she could envision using it she did not point out any limitations of this tool. The article showed up in a section of the journal called, Technology Toolkit, and it did inform the reader about an option and how to use those options and while providing some tips and cautions did not go beyond that. Still, I found it interesting to see ideas presented by anothe user, and it made me want to look at other editions of this journal to reoccuring entries in the Technology Toolkit section about other technologies. I was interested in a couple of articles that covered Wordle useage outside of the classroom. A couple of articles I read explored it for library useage and one in particular, the article by Foote in the School Library Journal, was interesting and informative. This article like the Hayes work focused on informing about the positive sides of the technology and did not include a critique, but I thought that the ideas that the librarian came up with were interesting and showed that this program could be used in different ways. I also found it helpful that she included a few ideas from other users, including one that Diane Laufenberg, who teaches at a high school in Philadelphia did with her class. At the beginning of the school year, the class was instructed to produce 10 adjectives that came to mind describing America. Wordle was used to produce a visual of what the views of the students were. I found this interesting and may do it as an intro to the beginning of a new semester with new students in my ELL adult classes. Foote also added in some helpful sites that she encountered to aid other users in implementing Wordle. The final article, by Hakuta reviewed an alternate word cloud program called, "WordSift" that he used in researching academic language development in school science texts for ELL. The importance of academic language development for language learners is a much discussed topic in recent years, and I found this interesting to explore. The article used a program that alphabetically sorts words and the research showed that review of important text previewed prior to the unit showed only slight improvement in scores in the early research findings in 2010. The research also showed only minor differences in results for girls as compared to boys tested in the effectiveness that the use of the word sorting had on their understanding of the text in their science books. I was disappointed that the research had only early results and that the results couldn't be said to be conclusively showing that word cloud programs helped language learners. It would have been nice to know, definitively that the program could benefit students.
Foote, Carolyn. (2009). It's a Mad, Mad Wordle: For a New Take on Text, Try This Fun Word Cloud Generator. School Library Journal, 55(7), 332-34.
Hayes, S. (2008). Wordle.
Voices from the Middle, 16 (n2), 66-68.
Hakuta, Kenji. (2011). WordSift: Supporting Instruction and Learning through Technology in San Francisco. The Senior Urban Education Research Fellowship Series (Volume IV). Council of the Great City Schools. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED518092).
<a href="http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/4567937/Thankful_for._._._Saturday_ESL_Class_Responses" <a href="http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/4567937/Thankful_for._._._Saturday_ESL_Class_Responses"
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Lesson Reflection
Our lesson covered language communication issues related to elements of grammar such as phrasal verbs, idioms and slang and the confusion that English Language Learners can experience. We chose to expand on our original idea of simply doing an English lesson to make it more interesting and relevant for future educators, and we worked to develop the awareness of our fellow students of some of the challenges ELL students can have and a few of the ways of how they can be supported in the classroom.
Content Delivery Organizer - INTASC #5: We used MindMeister as a content planning organizer, and I found this interesting to experience for the first time. This content organizer made it easy to adapt and make changes as different choices were made. Additional points would be the ease of potential for collaboration and sharing of information. We organized our lesson to allow our students to be physical and interact with each other, to use technology in several different methods to share ideas and interact together, and to verbally share ideas and reflections from the experiences in the lesson. By having our classmates experience some of the confusion and awkwardness of limited communication skills felt during the "N word" exercise they had the opportunity to see things from the perspective of an ELL.
As I mentioned earlier, this was the first time that I used MindMeister or any digital graphic organizer and although I felt awkward with it at first and used more surface features this time I could envision myself using MindMeister or something similar in the future. It certainly allowed for greater ease of change than a paper and pencil visual planning system.
Lesson Delivery - INTASC # 8: As stated above, the students physically were up and interacting and then were interacting more passively via technology and verbal sharing. They had to think of phrasal verbs and produce a sentence correctly using that phrasal verb via our shared Linoit bulletin board Some students had a difficult time thinking of phrasal verbs which actually showed how deeply ingrained they are in our language and actually proved our point that language learners are bombarded with confusing language and not always offered the support, via rephrasing or explanation, that they might need to understand situations. Our classmates were offered the challenge of the "N word" exercise in which they had to have low-level and high-level conversations while avoiding any word with the letter N in it. By feeling the frustration themselves they were able to more deeply make connections with the frustrations that language learners in their classmates might experience. The class also viewed a video of language learners sharing the issues they had in classes and so were able to see firsthand accounts of struggles. My partner and I did a pre-assessment via Google docs and a post assessment via the shared Linoit bulletin board with both available for all to view on the classroom projector. While we had our lesson plotted out there were also times that we had to adapt or go with the flow and make slight modifications. I learned that I was comfortable with adapting and working with another in a co-teaching situation, and though small glitches could occur in lesson delivery finding methods to continue on were key. I also realized how meaningful it was to know information that my partner and myself were relaying might pay off with greater support being offered to ELL students in these future educators classrooms.
Digital Data Collection Assessment - INTASC # 6: Our classmates were offered a Google docs link a few days before the class to check prior knowledge of phrasal verbs and were assessed mid-lesson via Linoit postings for phrasal verb knowledge and useage after a very brief lesson. After the "N word" exercise students tweeted about their reactions and feelings to limitations placed on their expressiveness. Their post-assessment was again via Linoit where they were asked to reflect on what they could take from the lesson or how they could apply knowledge gained in future encounters with language learners in their classrooms. Based on pre and mid-lesson assessments we were able to guide the discussion and incorporate participants knowledge and reactions to events. I learned that it definitely added an energy and sense of timeliness to a lesson to use real-time sharing with technology (as with Linoit and Google docs). We all could see the postings of other students and realize that almost everyone was in the same boat in terms of lack of knowledge and then frustration because of the "N word" exercise. I realized that being able to see immediately and concretely that you were not the one lone confused person could be a comfort for students and I feel that this is something that I would apply in the future.
Content Delivery Organizer - INTASC #5: We used MindMeister as a content planning organizer, and I found this interesting to experience for the first time. This content organizer made it easy to adapt and make changes as different choices were made. Additional points would be the ease of potential for collaboration and sharing of information. We organized our lesson to allow our students to be physical and interact with each other, to use technology in several different methods to share ideas and interact together, and to verbally share ideas and reflections from the experiences in the lesson. By having our classmates experience some of the confusion and awkwardness of limited communication skills felt during the "N word" exercise they had the opportunity to see things from the perspective of an ELL.
As I mentioned earlier, this was the first time that I used MindMeister or any digital graphic organizer and although I felt awkward with it at first and used more surface features this time I could envision myself using MindMeister or something similar in the future. It certainly allowed for greater ease of change than a paper and pencil visual planning system.
Lesson Delivery - INTASC # 8: As stated above, the students physically were up and interacting and then were interacting more passively via technology and verbal sharing. They had to think of phrasal verbs and produce a sentence correctly using that phrasal verb via our shared Linoit bulletin board Some students had a difficult time thinking of phrasal verbs which actually showed how deeply ingrained they are in our language and actually proved our point that language learners are bombarded with confusing language and not always offered the support, via rephrasing or explanation, that they might need to understand situations. Our classmates were offered the challenge of the "N word" exercise in which they had to have low-level and high-level conversations while avoiding any word with the letter N in it. By feeling the frustration themselves they were able to more deeply make connections with the frustrations that language learners in their classmates might experience. The class also viewed a video of language learners sharing the issues they had in classes and so were able to see firsthand accounts of struggles. My partner and I did a pre-assessment via Google docs and a post assessment via the shared Linoit bulletin board with both available for all to view on the classroom projector. While we had our lesson plotted out there were also times that we had to adapt or go with the flow and make slight modifications. I learned that I was comfortable with adapting and working with another in a co-teaching situation, and though small glitches could occur in lesson delivery finding methods to continue on were key. I also realized how meaningful it was to know information that my partner and myself were relaying might pay off with greater support being offered to ELL students in these future educators classrooms.
Digital Data Collection Assessment - INTASC # 6: Our classmates were offered a Google docs link a few days before the class to check prior knowledge of phrasal verbs and were assessed mid-lesson via Linoit postings for phrasal verb knowledge and useage after a very brief lesson. After the "N word" exercise students tweeted about their reactions and feelings to limitations placed on their expressiveness. Their post-assessment was again via Linoit where they were asked to reflect on what they could take from the lesson or how they could apply knowledge gained in future encounters with language learners in their classrooms. Based on pre and mid-lesson assessments we were able to guide the discussion and incorporate participants knowledge and reactions to events. I learned that it definitely added an energy and sense of timeliness to a lesson to use real-time sharing with technology (as with Linoit and Google docs). We all could see the postings of other students and realize that almost everyone was in the same boat in terms of lack of knowledge and then frustration because of the "N word" exercise. I realized that being able to see immediately and concretely that you were not the one lone confused person could be a comfort for students and I feel that this is something that I would apply in the future.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
ComicLife (Hmong Heritage, Skating Interjections, Nouns)
Description and Rationale
This technology is titled in such a way that it seems obvious that everything would be very graphic and cartoon-like, but I realized in looking at one example that a website offered that while it could be comic oriented as the name implies it also could be used in a much wider range. One example that I saw showed the life cycle of a tadpole. A first grade class had to show the developmental cycle of this animal that they studied.
When I used this technology at first, I focused on trying not to uses images of people, especially with faces showing. I reviewed images that I had and focused on items that I could put together that would allow me to honor privacy. I had Jerrid's comments about permission needed before putting images out on the internet. With this idea in mind, I just pulled images together showing items from a cultural heritage show. I didn't alter the images at all. Later on, I kept playing and started using images showing people and using the other half of the available features that are offered in Comic Life. I was able to make images graphic and "pixelize" (?) the images to various degrees. Instead of making things look like emoticons or Snoopy and Charlie Brown images they looked like images from a graphic novel or old-style dramatic comic strips. Colorizing and making interjections or short text additions were also things that I tried.
I could see this form of technology being used in English as a Second Classrooms for students to make autobiographical presentations or time lines for their own selves. If they are refugees that don't have or possibly never had photos of relatives or cultural items representing their heritage then they could either use a school camera to take photos of relatives that were around them and then upload the photos and work with those and/or pull images off the internet that would accurately portray their family life and heritage. If they didn't have photos and it wasn't feasible to take photos of relatives that were currently far away or no longer alive or they didn't want to take photos then they could use Comic Life to create their autobiographical history using more "comic" images. Instead of a recognizable woman as mother they could have a generic feminine figure.
One of the articles I read referenced using the creation of comic strips in the classroom and that the students were, "
Implementation
I was able to download a trial offer for 30 days at no cost. This contains the basic offerings of 7 font forms, 178 templates and 78 styles. For usage at home I could purchase this for $29. There is a deluxe version available that basically triples all the options available and costs only $15 more. Schools could purchase the Comic Life for $1000 and upgrade to Comic Life 2 with a discount, cost about $2500 for 1000 seat license with a discount for volume purchases. There is a graphic tutorial as well as a lengthier tutorial available.
Both a MAC and a Windows version are available
The process was very simple to download and start to use and for a student the downside would probably be just that they might start to be more entertained and could start to be distracted by all the options.
Biases, Limitations and Trade Offs of the Technology
This type of technology allows a student to be very creative and limited only by their vision and thus a student who has creative abilities would highly enjoy a task using this technology. A student who is not as confident about their creative abilities might find it a little more difficult but could definitely produce results.
A limitation would be that the finished product is one-dimensional and as some students are best able to fully comprehend by touching and interacting they might not do as well with this form.
It is biased towards student usage that are more visually or graphically oriented.
How does this project meet the INTasc and ISTE Teacher and Student Standards
INTASC Standards:
#4 Application of Context: This type of project would meet this standard because it is a way that the teacher can have the student apply knowledge that they have learned in the classroom in a creative manner. The student learning about nouns, interjections, or the life cycle of a frog could be asked to use comic life to show their understanding of the material presented. The students, either working individually or collaboratively, could produce a collection of images showing they know what a noun is. They could produce images illustrating the life cycle of a frog. Whereas students might also be asked to produce drawings or paper charts or collections of magazine images showing evidence of their understanding when the teacher would bring in ComicLife and expect the students to produce a product showing their knowledge then the teacher would be able to engage the learner who might be hooked by technology use compared to the old school use of paper images, scissors and a glue stick.
#6 Instructional Strategies: This standard is met by a Comic Life project because the teacher is having the student show knowledge in multiple ways. They have to produce knowledge of the material covered in class and show that they have followed and understood how to use the technology. This could be one of the ways that the teacher would expect the student to show their knowledge. Recitation and producing definitions show knowledge at one level and having to critically think about the material to produce a product shows a deeper understanding and use of the information.
#8 Assessment: By producing a Comic Life product the student can show their understanding of the material presented by the teacher. A student can show their knowledge of parts of speech or the life cycle of a frog or produce something that shows what they did and learned on a field trip or presentation. A student could recite the meaning of a noun or write the definition with some examples and/or they could physically search for images that demonstrate a noun and produce a final product that reflects their knowledge. In this fashion the teacher is able to monitor the understanding and progress of the student, a student may be more engaged by the use of technology to show their comprehension and their success or failure at producing a good product can help the teacher and student understand if the material needs to be studied or reviewed in greater length.
ISTE Standards for Teachers and Students: This project would illustrate that the teacher is able to help and inspire the student with learning and creativity because the teacher will show examples of Comic Life products that they have made and will be able to challenge the student to think of how they too can produce similar items. The student will have too learn how to use digital tools as they either take their own photos and use them or search for and pull images off the internet that fit the project requirements. They may have to work collaboratively with others to brainstorm ideas and to plan how to develop a product that fits the project requirements. If images of people are to be used and not blurred then the student will understand that there are guidelines that will need to be met in terms of gaining permission for the use of a person's likeness. By gaining this knowledge, the student will learn about being a responsible citizen using technology and digital information. In addition, the teacher can show that they are being a lifelong learner by moving past the scissors, glue stick, and crayon method of showing knowledge of a concept. If an English as a Second Language teacher was collaborating with a history or science teacher in presenting material to the whole class the teachers working together fulfill community building, and development of technology and leadership skills in other individuals.
Comic books and the creation of comic strips either by pen and paper or with computer programs is something that has been explored as a way, "to forge an alternative pathway to literacy via the visual arts," (Bitz, Michelle). The Comic Book Project done in New York City schools in 2002 found that students, "were not interested in making art and certainly not interested in fuilding literacy skills. Rather, they wanted to create comics, share their final designs, and witness their work displayed in schools and online," (Bitz, Michelle). In this manner, students are building their literacy and creating a product that enjoy making and overlook the fact that they are learning at the same time. It is a little bit as if someone is sneaking the vegetables to them disguised as a special treat.
A journal article by Lasisi Ajayi, referenced a California junior high school class of ELL students who used their English in school but outside of school only got English practice through television and some reading of comic books. The class project involved viewing and analyzing a very visual cell phone ad with some print. The article author made points about how ELL students could be exposed to different types of text, font in the classroom by studying things they might encounter in their real life such as an advertisment. When the students had to produce their own ads by using pen and paper they experienced the choices of what viewpoint, graphics, printed words and text to use. The author went on to say that, "Such materials from diverse text types have the potential to motivate, excite and engage all learners because they cretae opportunities not only to explore and interpret texts using multi-modal resources but also to relate textual experiences to their own social-cultural experience and perspective," (Ajayi, 2008) Ajayi further went on to point out, "In addition, multi-modal texts are a powerful means for teaching critical thinking," Some of the skills that the author pointed out the students would develop were to analyze, to interpret and to critique materials that they might have presented to them such as advertisements for products or political candidates. This article helped me think of Comic Life from a different perspective. Just as in the project that the article covered, students could view an ad and break down the elements produce their own multi-modal ad through Comic Life making use of different font types that can often confuse ELL students of all ages. Through this article's information I deepened my appreciation of how Comic Life could be used to tie in many skills that all students are required to develop.
After I had played around with using the Comic Life that I had downloaded and produced several items I searched for additional ideas and found many sources. One site, Suite 101, had material presented by Joanna Szeto which gave an example of a graphic novel that she had generated as well as giving additional ideas of how the technology could be used ranging from graphic organizers, to memory books for classroom or family experiences, to issues covered in class such as science or bullying. Szeto pointed out that the comic does not have to be long, a one-panel comic can be sufficient.
Ajayi, L. (2009). English as a Second Language Learners' Exploration of Multimodal Texts in a Junior High School. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 52(7), 585-595. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
The Comic Book Project: The Lives of Urban Youth
Art Education
Vol. 57, No. 2 (Mar., 2004), pp. 33-39
Published by: National Art Education Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3194113
Szeto, Joanna (2009, August 20). Using Computers to Make Comics in the Classroom Quick and Easy Ways to Use the Comic Life Program With Kids.
www.suite101.com/content/technology-in-the-elementary-classroom-a140487
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
First Day of Class
I have found that the answer is most definitely a NO. User names and passwords have to be one of the most irritating things to create and remember! The class seems interesting and helpful. Nice to know that there are so many others who are brand new to Drake but also a mix of others that are further along in their studies - good people to pick for info about the program and the classes etc.
First Day of Class
First day of class and I have now created so many sign ins and pswds that my head is spinning! The big question is will I remember any of them?!
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