Case Study 2

Case Study 2

Blogs:

What are the benefits of using blogs for educational purposes?

According to Will Richardson in his book BLOGS, WIKIS, PODCASTS, and Other Powerful Web Tools, a blog is an easily created, easily updateable Website that allows and author (or authors) to publish instantly to the Internet from any Internet connection.   (Richardson, 2009, pg. 17)  Blogs can enhance and deepen learning.  They can be used as class portals, online filing cabinets for student work, e-portfolios, collaborative space, knowledge management, and even school Websites.  Blogs also enable students to read more critically, think about that reading more analytically, and write more clearly.  The use of blogs also helps to build relationships with peers, teachers, mentors, and professionals within the blogging environment (Richardson, 2009, pg. 20)

What is the role of blogging in building a virtual learning community?

Blogs are not built on static chunks of content.  (Richardson, 2009, pg. 17)  Instead they are comprised of reflections and conversations that are constantly updated.  They ask readers to think and respond.  They demand interaction.  (Richardson, 2009, pg. 18)  There is a difference in blogging and journaling.  Blogging engages students and adults in a process of thinking in words, not simply an accounting of the day’s events or feelings.  (Richardson, 2009, pg. 20)  Learning specialists Fernette and Brock Eide’s research shows that blogging in its truest form has a great deal of potential positive impact on students.  They found that blogs can:

• Promote critical and analytical thinking
• Be a powerful promoter of creative, intuitive, and associational thinking
• Promote analogical thinking
• Be a powerful medium for increasing access and exposure to quality information
• Combine the best of solitary reflection and social interaction (Eide Neurolearning Blog, 2005)

Describe what you have observed in the class blogs and the interactive process of blogging and responding in our class learning community and how the blogging has been used to build this learning community together with readings, forum discussions, etc.  Please provide specific examples of your observation to support your statements or arguments.

I was re-reading our classroom discussions from last week on Desire2Learn, and was amazed by how far the conversation evolved over the course of the week.  After posting our initial answers to your questions, asking questions of our own, and responding to these questions, I could actually see the depth of knowledge increase with every post.  I feel that I have a much deeper understanding of the weekly reading assignments, both the chapters and the handouts, by discussing them with my classmates, even if I did not read the same chapters that each of my classmates read. 

I admit I had a hard time getting into the blog.  The initial journaling over the readings are long, and trying to go through all 10 of my classmate’s writings proved to be daunting.  However, when you broke it down into commenting on only two or three other posts, it became a little easier to keep up with.  (I even found making sure I commented on everyone’s questions on D2L a little overwhelming)  I think I like posting on D2L better.  That program tracks what has been read and so therefore, I am not reading and re-reading the same posts over and over as I tend to do on the blog site. 

With a specific instructional or training context in mind, how can blogging be used to promote knowledge construction, collaborative learning or building virtual learning communities?
There are many pedagogies that leverage the constructivist theory. Most approaches that have grown from constructivism suggest that learning is accomplished best using a hands-on approach. Learners learn by experimentation, and not by being told what will happen. They are left to make their own inferences, discoveries and conclusions. It also emphasizes that learning is not an "all or nothing" process but that students learn the new information that is presented to them by building upon knowledge that they already possess. It is therefore important that teachers constantly assess the knowledge their students have gained to make sure that the students' perceptions of the new knowledge are what the teacher had intended. Teachers will find that since the students build upon already existing knowledge, when they are called upon to retrieve the new information, they may make errors. It is known as reconstruction error when we fill in the gaps of our understanding with logical, though incorrect, thoughts. Teachers need to catch and try to correct these errors, though it is inevitable that some reconstruction error will continue to occur because of our innate retrieval limitations. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_ (learning_theory))

In most pedagogies based on constructivism, the teacher's role is not only to observe and assess but to also engage with the students while they are completing activities, wondering aloud and posing questions to the students for promotion of reasoning (DeVries et al., 2002). (ex: I wonder why the water does not spill over the edge of the full cup?) Teachers also intervene when there are conflicts that arise; however, they simply facilitate the students' resolutions and self-regulation, with an emphasis on the conflict being the students' and that they must figure things out for themselves. For example, promotion of literacy is accomplished by integrating the need to read and write throughout individual activities within print-rich classrooms. The teacher, after reading a story, encourages the students to write or draw stories of their own, or by having the students reenact a story that they may know well, both activities encourage the students to conceive themselves as reader and writers. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_ (learning_theory))

• First, Blogs are a truly constructivist tool for learning.  (Richardson, 2009, pg. 27)  The content that students and teachers create on the Web is content that becomes part of a wider body of knowledge.  It is searchable; therefore people find it and use it.  (Richardson, 2009, pg. 27)
• Second, blogs can expand the walls of the classroom using e-mail and chat groups.  Classrooms in different geographic regions can conduct experiments, share results through text, picture, audio, or video; invite experts into the process to reflect on the results.

• Third, blogs archive the learning that teachers and students do, facilitating all sorts of reflection and meta-cognitive analysis.  The ability to keep histories of work in an organized, searchable, easily shareable space is an important development.
• Fourth, blogs are a democratic tool that supports different learning styles.  Everyone has a voice in the conversation and all ideas, even the instructor’s, are given equal presentation in the blog.  This provides the students’ ownership which can lead to more participation.
• Fifth, blogs can enhance the development of expertise in a particular subject.  Normally, blogs focus their reading and writing on one topic, which helps bring about topic-specific expertise.
• Finally, blogs can teach students the new literacies they will need to function in an ever expanding information society.  (Richardson, 2009, pg. 27-28)

According to research on the effects of  blogging in K-12 classrooms, students at all levels show more interest in their work, and their ability to locate and reflect upon their work is greatly enhanced, as are the opportunities for collaborative learning, when blogs are used in the classroom.  (Richardson, 2009, pg. 28)

Webcast Technologies:

First Impression/Experience
State what tool you have chosen and what site(s) you have visited. Describe your first impression and experience of using the tool/site and respond to the following questions.
I chose to visit IMovie at http://www.apple.com/ilife/imovie/.  I had a video recording of my son singing in the Corn Bible Academy’s Men’s Ensemble at a Sunday night church service that I wanted to embed onto my wiki page at http://tracy-henry.wikispaces.com/Tracy%27s+Videos.  I transferred the recording into an IMovie file and edited the entire concert into two, two minute clips.  I then downloaded the clips onto You Tube and embedded their url files onto my wiki page.
 

What does it do?
iMovie is a proprietary video editing software application which allows Mac users to edit their own home movies.  iMovie imports video footage to the Mac using either the FireWire interface on most MiniDV format digital video cameras, the USB port, or by importing the files from a hard drive. From there, the user can edit the video clips, add titles, and add music. Effects include basic color correction and video enhancement tools, and transitions such as fade-in, fade-out, and slides. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMovie)

What are the features?

iMovie '09 (Version 8.0) was released January 2009 as part of the iLife '09 package.  It includes basic video effects (such as fast/slow motion and aged film) and image stabilization as well as travel map functions for marking locations where a video was shot. iMovie '09 also introduced simple implementations of more advanced features such as picture-in-picture and green screening. It also improved editing (with a precision cut editor and a clip trimmer), improved support for hard drive based cameras (Such as the Flip Mino), added some new titles and transitions, and added full iDVD. IMovie also added a Full-Screen Library Browser so that you can find and browse all of your videos in one place. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMovie)

What are the intended purposes of the developers?

iMovie on the Mac is for editing your unedited movies that you may have filmed on a video camera. You can cut out parts, and add some things and then you have a great movie from the movie you already had. (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_iMovie's_uses)

What are some of the possibilities for enhancing learning, knowledge construction and virtual learning communities?  What are the educational advantages of the tool under investigation and particularly for designing and building a virtual learning community? Suppose you are going to design a learning community or teach an online course, how can you integrate the tool in your online instruction?  What educational objective do you intend to achieve through its use?

Teachers can video tape lessons and upload them to a site so that students have access to lecture or activities if they are absent or need more time to go over the content.  (Urben, Ban, & Castaneda, 2009, pg. 106)  Students can use iMovie to create digital movies and publish them to a website or blog almost instantly.  (http://www.apple.com/education/teachers-professors/digital-content-creation.html) Using videos in the classroom allows numerous approaches for conveying, acquiring, and assessing structural knowledge, while simultaneously detailing the prevailing research on such methods.  (Jonassen, Beissner, & Yacci, 1993).  There are multiple mindtools (tools for improving or enhancing cognitive functions or performances of the learner) and techniques that instructors can use to represent knowledge in visual ways and that learners can use to display to instructors what they have learned or are in the process of learning.  Such techniques and tools include advance organizers, categorization schemes, concept mapping and mind mapping.  (Urben, Ban, & Castaneda, 2009, pg. 123)

Your Search or Creation Activities
You may be engaging in at least one of the two activities:  search, create, or both.

If you choose to create something, like creating and publishing a podcast, describe your creation experience with that tool, or even better showcase your creation by attaching a sample or a link to the website.

In the previous section I detailed how I created and embedded a video of my son onto my wikipage.  Please follow the link to see the video.

 http://tracy-henry.wikispaces.com/Tracy%27s+Videos

Educational Use

Are there issues that we, as instructors or instructional designers, need to address when integrating such a tool for instructional or training purposes?  You may contextualize the discussion in your specific instructional setting (e.g., professional teacher development.)

Apple offers many professional development opportunities for both teachers and students to learn to use iMovie effectively in the classroom.  The following list names just a few of the tutorials offered online at http://www.apple.com/education/leaders-administrators/professional-development.html. 

Professional Development
The Apple Professional Development team works with schools and universities to help faculty members apply technology in innovative ways to any discipline or subject. Educators can choose from several hands-on workshops that will not only help them master the latest digital tools, but also guide them in developing media-rich content, curriculum ideas, and student assignments. All workshops address ISTE National Educational Technology Standards. Led by former educators, the workshops are tailored to build on your team’s current skill level and can be held onsite at your institution.

Funding
A variety of funding is available to help your school purchase the Apple hardware, software, and Professional Development services you need to build the digital learning environment you want.

More ways to learn
Professional Development workshops are just the start. Apple makes it easy for your faculty to grow more confident with technology in a number of ways, including:

·      Video tutorials on Apple.com, which share useful tips on everything from making a movie to creating a pod cast.

·      Education tutorials on Apple.com, which walk you through the powerful features of the Mac and show how they can help in the classroom—from simplifying classroom work flow to sharing student work to seamlessly integrating rich content from a variety of media.

·      One to One personal training, available at the Apple Retail Store, provides focused and affordable instruction on any Apple application and can help educators put together digital media–based assignments or classroom presentations.

K-12 Curriculum Collections
Apple works closely with educators to select the best third-party applications for learning math, science, language arts, and other core subjects. These new collections of educator-endorsed products are thoroughly vetted by Apple to save you the time and cost of sorting through all the choices by yourself. The applications are chosen for their ability to help you individualize instruction, address a variety of learning styles, and create highly interactive classrooms.

Early Learning
This suite of applications helps students in the primary grades develop beginner’s skills in reading, math, science, research, and geography. It also includes products that can inspire student creativity and help students who are learning English to develop language and reading skills.

Upper Elementary
For students in grades three through five, this collection of applications helps develop fundamental math skills, strengthen reading and writing abilities, build an understanding of science concepts, and boost creativity and critical thinking.

Middle and High School Language Arts
These applications help students improve their writing skills and reading comprehension, increase their vocabulary, and publish their written work.

Middle and High School Math and Science
This collection of applications helps students develop conceptual knowledge of higher mathematics. It also promotes science inquiry and problem solving. A variety of research, organizational, and communication tools are included.
(http://www.apple.com/education/leaders-administrators/professional-development.html)

Make sure you refer and cite the relevant chapters from the textbooks, and additionally, other reading materials I have provided or you have found.

References

Apple - Education - Leaders & Administrators - Professional Development. (n.d.). Apple. Retrieved March 9, 2010, from http://www.apple.com/education/leaders-administrators/professional-development.html

Apple - Education - Teachers & Professors - Digital Content Creation. (n.d.). Apple. Retrieved March 9, 2010, from http://www.apple.com/education/teachers-professors/digital-content-creation.html

Ban, R., Castaneda, M., & Erben, T. (2008). Teaching English Language Learners through Technology (Teaching English Language Learners Across the Curriculum) (1 ed.). New York: Routledge.

Bonk, C. J., & Zhang, K. (2008). Empowering Online Learning: 100+ Activities for Reading, Reflecting, Displaying, and Doing. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Constructivism (learning theory) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (n.d.). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved March 8, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_(learning_theory)

DeVries. (2001). Developing Constructivist Early Childhood Curriculum: Practical Principals and Activities (Early Childhood Education, 81). New York: Teachers College Press.

Devries, R., Edmiaston, R., Hildebrandt, C., Sales, C., & Zan, B. (2001). Developing Constructivist Early Childhood Curriculum: Practical Principals and Activities (Early Childhood Education Series (Teachers College Pr)). New York: Teachers College Press.

Eide Neurolearning Blog: Brain of the Blogger. (n.d.). Eide Neurolearning Blog. Retrieved November 5, 2005, from http://eideneurolearningblog.blogspot.com/2005/03/brain-of-blogger.html

Richardson, W. (2008). Weblogs:  Pedagogy and Practice. Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms (Second Ed ed., pp. 17-28). California: Corwin Press Inc.,U.S..

WikiAnswers - What are iMovie's uses. (n.d.). WikiAnswers - The Q&A wiki. Retrieved March 9, 2010, from http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_iMovie's_uses

iMovie - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (n.d.). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved March 9, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMovie

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