Blendspace

As part of my Teaching with Technology course, my cohort was asked to investigate one of three online resources to help organize our online lives.  My assignment was Blendspace - an online instructional tool that enables teachers to blend their classrooms with digital content by creating dynamic, interactive lessons.  Unlike some of the other resources assigned, I had never heard of this tool, but I am so glad I was given the opportunity to find out.

Blendspace helps students who are both visual and audio learners, giving them the opportunity to be engaged with content through almost unlimited media choices – videos, images, audio, text, PowerPoint, customizable quizzes, and more.  As the content plays, students (and teachers) can provide feedback on the fly.  The format is incredibly fluid allowing the creator to arrange their digital lesson in almost unlimited ways.  After just a few minutes of creating my content, I knew this would be a big help to me – and others – in future classrooms.

I also believe Blendspace has other interactive uses: 1) Teachers can use this resource to ask students to build their own lessons.  I believe this would be an effective way for my students to increase their learning and teach them responsibility.  It would also be a great way for interactive presentations on topics the class as a whole would be learning, and 2) Teachers can utilize BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) with Blendspace.  For students with a smartphone, they can access the Blendspace content using a shared link.  This link can be shared at the beginning of the lesson, written on the whiteboard.  Additionally, laptops (if available) can be passed out for students who do not have a phone that can easily stream the content.  The purpose of allowing secondary devices is to allow engagement with the material.  Students can annotate within Blendspace and write comments on each video they’re watching.  They can also rate the content as it’s playing.  Finally, incorporating BYOD and school laptops will allow each student to complete quizzes efficiently at the end of the lesson.

As part of the assignment, my cohort was placed into small groups of three.  Each of us had the responsibility of teaching the other two students in our group about the tool we were given.  This format was very effective and I felt more confident about each of the resources I was taught.  I also feel much more knowledgeable about my tool, Blendspace, than if I was simply told by the instructor to learn about it on my own without the responsibility of transferring my findings to another student.  I enjoyed speaking to my small group, constructing a handout for them to use outside of class to set up their own digital lessons, and engaging with the tool since.  This is definitely a “win” for all teachers and I encourage its use wholeheartedly.

Branches of Power

Branches of Power is a web-based video game developed by iCivics, founded by Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, whose mission statement is:

We envision a nation where all young Americans are prepared for active and intelligent citizenship. To support this vision, iCivics provides engaging and effective on-line educational games and curricular materials for students and teachers.

My favorite part of the above mission is right up front – preparing young Americans for active and intelligent citizenship.  A noble cause.  The question is: Does Branches of Power serve this mission?  Yes, it does.

The game is a real-time simulation format, designed similarly in structure to FarmVille or The Sims.  The goal is to use all three branches of government – Executive, Legislative, and Judicial – to seek out issues citizens care about and grow them into laws.  To win, you must convert all ten game issues (e.g. Terrorism, Health and Safety, etc.) into laws before time expires (30 minutes!).

This game is addictive.  The design is fun (cartoon-based) and the gameplay is intuitive.  I enjoyed responding to prompts asking me to control the President, especially.  With him I was able to hold a press conference to put issues on the national agenda (such as Outer Space; awesome!) and answer questions from the press to begin cultivating the issue toward future legislation.

Once you answer the questions “right”, your Legislator moves in to conduct a town hall session.  Similarly to the experience of a national press conference with the President, you gather support for your issues by answering questions – this time from supporters.  Once the issue is sponsored, this is where the magic happens – deliberation within Congress!  The game makes sure you know that, just as in real life, you need 50%+ support of both houses and to aim for a 2/3 majority to override a presidential veto.  Once the law is passed, the President reviews the bill and then:

Victory!

The game is not only addictive because of the gameplay, but because of the content.  It walks you through everything (for the most part) that goes into creating a law and scaffolds the player with information such as the requirements noted above.  I can absolutely see using this as a tool in the classroom environment, especially a Civics course, and believe options like these should be used whenever possible.  The engagement an educational game like Branches of Power can bring to students, bringing required text to life, is immense.

How can we properly assess student learning?

This is a hard question to answer and, quite frankly, I don’t have the solution.  I am of the opinion that writing assessments are they are the best way to assess learning.  For teachers, however, they may be the hardest to manage.  They definitely take a lot longer to grade than running a bubble sheet through a Scantron machine to spit out a score.  But what about students who are anxious about writing essays, who don’t write particularly well, or need some form of scaffolding to prompt their memories or at least offer problem solving options (i.e. multiple-choice, where some students can minimize the risk of a wrong answer by properly discarding incorrect choices)?

Can one assessment format work well for everyone?  Are performance-based exams (playing a musical instrument, participation in group work, more complex, structured assignments such as term papers, etc.) or personal communication assessments (oral exams, journals, blogging, etc.) better?  I’m not sure.  The most logical answer (to me) is that each has its place.  That might be OK in the classroom, but what about standardized readiness assessments?  I’m not sure.  What about teachers or test makers who design their assessments to try to “out-guess” students?  Should the goal of an exam be to confuse or introduce roadblocks to understanding?  I think not; however, I believe this happens.  A lot.

The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium has been tasked by the U.S. Department of Education to accomplish the goal of a “better” test – a “high-quality assessment system”.  This exam will be facilitated by computer and is a “learning” exam (computer adaptive technology) that adjusts its future questions based on the response of past questions (incorrect answers get easier follow-up questions, correct answers get harder follow-up questions).  In Michigan, the transition will begin for the 2014-2015 school year; however, all schools are not yet able to meet the technology requirements and therefore a paper and pencil option will still be available.  Will students who take the computer adaptive exam score similarly to those who do not?  Would these students have scored similarly on the paper and pencil exam?  Can two different test formats be properly aggregated, compared to, or ranked against each other?

One area I contend that teachers and test makers can work on is to proactively build better tests.  The goal should be to write great questions - questions that gauge understanding and allow educators to see a student’s thinking.  If the questions, in any format, are easily understandable and allow the test taker a true opportunity to show his or her knowledge, not contain it within the test maker’s frame of reference, we will be closer to answering the question of assessment value?

Learning by doing

“Learning is a process of enculturation.  Experience does not occur in a vacuum.” – John Dewey, 1938

John Dewey, an influential educational reformer from the late 19^th-mid 20^th century, is considered the father of “learning by doing” and, according to Rich and Reeves (John Dewey: A significant contributor to the field of educational technology), his work influences modern-day efforts of technology integration in the classroom.  I agree.

Support comes from Dewey’s own words in his work “MyPedagogical Creed”, published in 1897.  In this article, Dewey outlines his beliefs on teaching and education, including the following within his section centering on schools:

• I believe that the school must represent present life - life as real and vital to the child as that which he carries on in the home, in the neighborhood, or on the play-ground.

• I believe that, as such simplified social life, the school life should grow gradually out of the home life; that it should take up and continue the activities with which the child is already familiar in the home.

• I believe that much of present education fails because it neglects this fundamental principle of the school as a form of community life. It conceives the school as a place where certain information is to be given, where certain lessons are to be learned, or where certain habits are to be formed. The value of these is conceived as lying largely in the remote future; the child must do these things for the sake of something else he is to do; they are mere preparation. As a result they do not become a part of the life experience of the child and so are not truly educative.

While Dewey most likely did not anticipate the type of technology available to students 60 years after his death, I believe he would still agree that school should be representative of “present life” – the life students lead outside of their school walls.  For many, if not most, students this includes varying uses of technology.  In my limited classroom experience teaching this summer in Middle School, this includes smartphones and social media.

In the point/counterpoint article, “Should students use their own devices in the classroom?”, an example is given of a teacher who was teaching from an online lesson when her school-based wireless internet access failed.  Instead of stopping the lesson, she asked her students to use their personal smartphones to access the information and continue the discussion.  She didn’t set aside this opportunity, but seized the moment bring personally relevant technology into the classroom.  Dewey, I believe, would have been proud.