Thanks for checking out my video for my final design project. It was recorded using Screencastomatic and was probably one of my favorite projects I have done so far in my master's degree. I can't wait to actually teach this course! Please ignore my momentarily crying baby in the background at the 1:30 mark. Full-time job, student, and mom are a constant juggling act!
I so enjoyed learning with you all this semester and look forward to "seeing" you in more classes.
For our fourth and final design experiment, we will take a look at PBWorks, which provides a broad set of collaboration products that help collaboration be more effective and efficient. Millions use PBworks each month for partner/client collaboration, new business development, project management, social intranets, and knowledge management.
At the beginning of this project, I was not at all familiar with this system, so I was excited about the opportunity to learn more about, especially because I love to be efficient when collaborating with others! In this blog, I will break down my thoughts into four pieces. The first will talk about the technology behind PBWorks and then its affordances. Next, I will compare PBWorks to WikiSpaces and lastly, I will talk about what theoretical approaches and lessons I would use the resources in the classroom. Technology behind PBWorks
The first thing I noticed about PBWorks was the simplistic, almost too simple on the surface, design of the page and the ease of signing up for an account on the website. The website itself is very user friendly and has a very simple user interface. The second thing I noticed was how similar the user interface is to Wikispaces, which I was already familiar with. In fact, I had planned to use it to create my final course design project.
PBWorksprovides a simplistic layout that is very intuitive and user friendly from both the student and instructor's perspective. You are able to embed videos, images, use HTML code, and customize the layout to your liking. One problem I ran into was that it took me three tries to actually get my workspace created. It kept giving me an error message, which was frustrating. This could have been a fluke site issue on the day I created my workspace, but I felt it was worth noting. After trying it several different times, I did run into several slow save glitches and a few issues, but nothing to keep me from using it. The UI could probably be a little "prettier", but it gets the job done in an efficient, simple manner.
Affordances of PBWorks
The first affordance of PBWorks is that it provides a collaborative space for students to post questions, thoughts, and discussion items with their classmates and teacher. This allows students to learn how to communicate better with their peers and teachers. Second, PBWorks allows students to look through all of the course components, files, logos, etc. and set their expectations for the course from the beginning. Lastly, like the other systems, it teaches students accountability by giving easy, clear access to a list of assigned due dates for assignments, posts, and other work. These are life skills that are imperative to being successful as they get older.
PBWorks v. Wikispaces
After thorough review of PBWorks in comparison to Wikispaces, I decided to chose PBWorks over Wikispaces. While on the surface they are nearly identical, PBWorks just had a slightly simpler user interface and clicked better for me. I like the icons on Wikispaces more, but the usability of PBWorks was better for my purposes.
Implementing PBWorks in the Classroom
Marketing Skills quiz:
Technical Knowledge: The wiki itself is MS Word compatible, but also allows you to edit HTML and embed YouTube videos. It is a very simplistic, but very useful. The weighted marketing skills will test their ability/preparedness for meeting recruiters, networking, and delivering a strong personal commercial. Pedagogical Approach
With the marketable skills lesson, I would apply a learning by investigating teaching method and assess the learning through a quiz (created in Google Forms and then embedded into the Wiki) at the end and a reflection paper assignment. Since you can track a student’s submission of the quiz through Google Forms, I would assign them a 2-3 page reflection paper on what they learned and how they will improve or implement their skills into their career plan. I will be able to see their strengths from the assessment and know they truly understand the results and how they are applicable.
Career Facility Tours & Presentations:
Technical Knowledge: I will use the PBWorks system to embed Google form polls for students and online research tools to find the appropriate field trip locations and professionals to call on to present.
Pedagogical Approach: The approach I would take to incorporate PBWorks into my classroom would be first through debate and discussion. I would create a poll in Google Forms and embed it into the module page for students to vote on what kind of facilities they would like to visit and what professionals they would like to meet! The winners will be what our class believes they would most benefit from. Then, I would coordinate a field trip to the most popular location and have a professional present via Google Hangout from the second most popular. Since the professionals will be presenting live, students will be assessed based on their classroom participation. To further assess their knowledge, a quiz will be created via Google Forms and embedded into the Wiki module page at the conclusion of all of the field trip and web cast. Overall, I think PBWorks has some wonderful qualities and can improve efficiency across the board. I would definitely use it for a course going forward. It is so simple and I enjoyed tweaking the system to meet the needs of my course.
While these are my opinions, I encourage you to check it out for yourself!
This week we took a look at MIT OpenCourseware (MITOCW) and Khan Academy. MITOCW is a web-based publication of almost all MIT course content. In short, you can take MIT courses, for free, online at your own pace! It is a very impressive tool provided by a top-notch university. Khan Academy (KA) is similar in it's offerings. KA provides interactive exercises, instructional videos, and a personalized learning dashboard that empower learners to study at their own pace in and outside of the classroom. KA also partners with MIT and other universities to provide their content.
When I began this design experiment, I was intrigued because I was familiar with MITOCW, but had not been exposed to KA. I knew I could learn more and possibly even bulk up my math skills while I was learning about the system. An area I can definitely use some brushing up! :-)
In this blog, I will break down my observations into three pieces. The first will talk about the technology behind MITOCW and KA and then their affordances. Last, but not least, I will talk about what theoretical approaches and lessons I would use to implement a career development course using the resources in MITOCW and KA.
Technology behind MITOCW
The first thing I noticed about MITOCW was the extensive course listings. Courses range from high school leadership to graduate level computer science. The courses are easily searchable, both by category or collection. You can search through course subjects or collections. The collections were quite impressive because you can look for courses with online textbooks, video courses, etc. The website itself is very user friendly and has a very simple user interface. The second thing I noticed was how real it felt. I watched several videos and felt like I was really in an MIT classroom, which, to be honest, was pretty enlightening, but also a little overwhelming!
Some of the problems I ran into with this system were that while the course list is expansive, it didn't have the more entry-level type courses I am looking to implement for my classes. I also felt like the average student could immediately get intimidated by some of the more complex courses and feel defeated.
Technology behind KA
The first thing I took note of when reviewing KA was the user-friendly interface and the extensive course listings, with a particular emphasis on math and science. Courses range from SAT Prep to computer programming to early math. The system also provides an excellent checklist for educators to work through when developing and learning how to develop courses. You can even view it from the student's perspective, which is very helpful in course planning.
Another part I thought was so helpful was the option to take an already created course and modify it to fit your needs or start from scratch and build it yourself. It has lots of options that don't pigeon hole you into one way of teaching - which I believe would prove quite beneficial. Lastly, you can watch a plethora of videos of from other teachers and review the success statistics prior to deciding to implement this in your teaching. One thing I did find interesting is that the majority of their success stories were not from the US, mostly from Ireland. Not a problem - just interesting.
Affordances of MITOCW
The first affordance of MITOCW is that it exposes students to a level of coursework and prestigious professors who they may not be able to access otherwise. Second, MITOCW allows students to take the courses at their own pace, which teaches the student personal responsibility and time management. Lastly, just like many of the systems we have reviewed thus far, it teaches students accountability by giving assigned due dates for assignments, posts, and other work. These are all life skills that are imperative to being successful as they get older.
Affordances of KA
The first affordance of KA is that it provides students the opportunity to learn anywhere, anytime. Second, KA allows students to have access to systems that may not have previously had access to, such as SAT Prep or AP Exam review. I remember in high school my parents paid for me to go through SAT Prep courses and would have been thrilled to have this free online option. Lastly, in similar fashion to MITOCW, it teaches students accountability by giving assigned due dates for assignments, posts, and other work. These are marketable skills that are imperative to being successful in the future.
Implementing KA & MITOCW in the Classroom through the use of third-party applications
MITOCW lesson: Leadership - where do we go from here? Technical Knowledge
This course is designed to rely heavily on student's personal experiences and contributions. This course requires that student's attend, participate, and help others have a meaningful first-year experience. While the course does contain pre-prepared lectures, this is only to provide the course with some structure. The course will include some classroom based sessions, a leadership retreat (we will do something different than the live portion of the original course - our retreat will take place on campus at the ropes course), Leadership Lunches (these will take place on campus as well with professors and important campus leaders of the student's choosing), and lastly, small group discussion sections. These discussions will take place online via Google Groups.
Pedagogical Approach
With the MITOCW lesson, I would apply the seminar style environment as the course suggests, to enhance the student's leadership abilities. The Leadership Course (Fall 2014) in MITOCW improves the leadership capabilities of first-year graduate students. The initial leadership retreat on-campus at the ropes course will build trust, encourage teamwork and enhance communications. Readings and assignments emphasize the characteristics of effective leadership. Important campus faculty and leaders will attend and participate in the "Leadership Lunch" story-telling series to share their experiences and to provide recommendations for students with reference to future leadership opportunities. Discussions help explore and further probe leadership development. The learning experience culminates in a personal leadership plan the student can implement in the future, either in their education or their professional life.
This course could be used in conjunction with the career course I would like to implement possibly. I thought it was amazing that they also had a similar course for high school students! That course wasn't exactly what I needed, but it would be great for high school educators.
Khan Academy: GMAT Preparation Technical Knowledge
The creators of the GMAT have given Khan Academy exclusive access and advice to build a personalized FREE practice program for anyone, anywhere. These tools are available now for every student to take ownership of their learning and their future.
Pedagogical Approach
The approach I would take to implement GMAT preparation into a senior-level career course would be through learning and exploring. Students progress will be assessed through the completion of practice courses and followed up with discussion of types of questions in class.
While these are my opinions - Bill Gates has a few too on MITOCW!
Check out this video on Khan Academy too from CBS.You will notice that Bill Gates supports this one too! Is Khan Academy the future of education?
Overall, I think MIT OpenCourseware & Kahn Academy have some good qualities but is more focused in the math, science, and education. It has many entry-level, advanced, and senior level courses and is definitely something that would benefit distance and online educators and learners.
Now you can be the judge - which one do you choose? For me, it's Kahn Academy, but MIT OpenCourseware is a very, very close second.
This week we took a look at Edmodo, a course management system that is "dedicated to connecting all learners with the people and resources they need to reach their full potential."
When I began this design experiment, I was excited because I was not familiar with this system and I knew it would be a project that allowed me to soak in a lot of information and come up with new plans for my courses. In this blog, I will break down my thoughts into four pieces. The first will talk about the technology behind Edmodo and then its affordances. Next, I will compare Edmodo to Pearson Learning eCollege and lastly, I will talk about what theoretical approaches and lessons I would use to implement a career development course using the resources in Edmodo. Technology behind Edmodo
The first thing I noticed about Edmodo was how easy it is to sign up for an account on the website. The website itself is very user friendly and has a very simple user interface. The second thing I noticed was how similar the user interface is upon login to Facebook. There have been a lot platforms going to a user interface design that is similar to social app style because developers believe students will be more engaged in a familiar style of system. Edmodoprovides a number of classroom rollout resources to assist in the implementation of the courses for the teachers. It also works in conjunction with Google Drive and Microsoft Office. Some of the problems I ran into with this system were that it was not overly intuitive and appears user friendly, but it, in my opinion, was not as easy to use as other systems which I have used such as Pearson ecollege and Google Apps. I was looking at the integration of their third-party applications and not just the tools offered Affordances of Edmodo
The first affordance of Edmodo is that it provides a collaborative space for students to post questions, thoughts, and discussion items with their classmates and teacher. This allows students to learn how to communicate better with their peers and teachers. Second, Edmodo allows students to experience what a social network is like in a safe and controlled environment. Using this at a younger age, before getting Facebook or other social media profiles, can teach them social media responsibility. Lastly, it teaches students accountability by giving assigned due dates for assignments, posts, and other work. These are all life skills that are imperative to being succesful as they get older. Edmodo v. Pearson eCollege
After thorough review of Edmodo in comparison to eCollege, I would definitely choose eCollege over Edmodo. While on the surface it seems extremely user friendly, many of the embedded applications do not work correctly and the course system does not have, that I could find, a set of available resources for college educators. When you go to implement apps, there is an option to filter them by grade level and the only options are K-12 options. While this is great for a teacher in those grades, it would not work for the kind of courses I hope to implement. Although Edmodo is more user-friendly on the student side, the difficulties I had getting a course set up for my specific audience, this would lead me to choose another course management system such as Google Classroom or Pearson eCollege over Edmodo. Implementing Edmodo in the Classroom through the use of third-party applications
Virtual Job Shadow lesson:
Technical Knowledge: The virtual job shadow app (free and paid) in Edmodo allows students to view more than 1,000 videos associated within the different career clusters. This a the perfect resource to help students plan for their future, whether it be for college or career readiness. The affordances of this are engaging videos that allow the students to experience all the benefits of a live job shadow without leaving the classroom. The videos contain advice from employed professionals in the field and there is the ability to quiz the students at the end of the videos. You can also track student activity so it is a great tool to add to an online class. Pedagogical Approach
With the shadow lesson, I would apply a learning by exploring teaching method and assess the learning through a quiz (within the job shadow application) at the end and a reflection paper assignment. Since you can track a student’s usage, I would assign them to watch 3 videos and complete the related quizzes. Then they would submit a 2-3 page reflection paper on what they learned and how it is applicable to their future career path. Nepris lesson:
Technical Knowledge: Nepris helps you connect your students with industry professionals from around the world to bring real world relevance to your classroom and lessons. There is a library of available topics Let us know what your topics your teaching or a project your students are working on and we'll find the professional with the right skill-sets and connect them virtually with your classroom. Pedagogical Approach: The approach I would take to implement Nepris into the career course would be through debate and discussion. Nepris allows you to connect via live webcast with industry professionals (or pre-recorded, but in our case we would connect with several live professionals over a 3 week time span.) We would have the students determine, through guided discussion and debate, at the beginning of the course, what kinds of professionals they believe would most benefit them. We would use the polling option in Edmodo to start our discussion and see what kind of professionals our class believes they would most benefit from. Then, I would coordinate the professional speakers through the Nepris application. Since the professionals will be presenting live, students will be assessed based on their classroom participation. To further assess their knowledge, a quiz will be assigned in the Edmodo application at the conclusion of all of the different professional’s webcasts. Overall, I think Edmodo has some good qualities but is more focused for the K-12 classroom than higher education. It has many useful (and free!) applications and is definitely something that would benefit distance and online educators and learners.
While these are my opinions, I encourage you to check it out for yourself!
When I started this assignment, I was excited because I knew I would be able to use a lot of the applications with little trouble. I am very familiar with Google Apps because I run a small business solely using the "business" apps provided by Google. I was surprised at some of the functionality I learned about as I did more research and look forward to putting my new found knowledge to use in the near future with this course and my business! I utilize gmail personalized for my domain name (www.lonestarwebgroup.com), the calendar, and contacts on a daily basis to maintain my client communication, meetings, and work tracking. In order to save money and not purchase Microsoft Office, I also use Google Docs & Sheets to write client proposals, create invoices, and track web statistics and timelines. I store all of my documents, images, proposals, and records in Google Drive.
In the rest of this post, I will describe some of the ways in which Google classroom could be utilized from an educational standpoint and how I would implement a career training course using the full suite of Google Apps. It should be noted, however, that I was unable to fully access Google Classroom and was only able to review the demo literature, videos, and research available about this system.
Google Classroom
The Google Classroom app was very new to me and I found it fascinating. I wish I would have been able to dive more into class development, tool usage, etc. From my reading and research on Google Classroom, it seems that courses are very simple and user-friendly from a student and teacher side. It looks as though papers and assignments would be easy to submit, grade, and manage through the use of Google Drive. My research showed that with courses you can also utilize Google Groups to create a discussion forum, much like the one we use in ecollege, but it seems even more simple than ecollege from a teacher and user perspective. Google is a very forward-thinking company and is constantly adding new functionality to Google classroom. Some of the newest functionality includes the ability for teachers to poll students using multiple choice questions, updated functionality on Android & iOS applications, integration of third party applications to create assignments. Putting Google Apps to Work in the Classroom
For this post, I will discuss how I can use Google Apps to create a four module class I would like to develop and implement as part of the services provided by my office, Career Development, at Texas A&M University - Commerce. To start, let's list the four modules which would be a part of our course and the Google app that would be used to implement them. This would be a 12 week class with each module lasting three weeks. **It should be noted that at the beginning of this course, all of the students will go through a Career Counseling session and take the "MyPlan" career assessment to help them start contemplating their long-term career goals.**
Module 1: What is professionalism? (Google Sites)
Module 2: Building your best resume (Google Forms w/Flubaroo)
Module 3: What not to wear (YouTube Live)
Module 4: Mock Interviews (Google Hangouts)
Module 1: In this module, I would use Google Sitesto develop an interactive website about what it means to be a professional and WHY you need to have professionalism in everything you do. This module would touch on workplace professionalism, maintaining your social media posts for your career (what not to post, how to set up limited profiles, etc.), and other professionalism topics. These sites will contain embedded videos, quizzes, downloadable handouts, and more. This information will be presented to the students using the sites and lecture style discussions. I will present the information and students will take notes and ask question as we work our way through the material. At the end of the module, students will post discussion posts using Google Groupson how they define professionalism and reply to one another with feedback. This will help them learn and also verbalize what they know about the subject. Verbalization of knowledge and skills is another key component to career success. If you can't tell someone what your career goals are, how can they know you are a fit for their job? This also leads into the next step, which is resume development. Module 2: In Module 2, students will learn the components necessary to create a top-notch resume through reading from the text, sample resume reviews, and quizzes. Students will use the handbook from the Career Development "Make the Connection" guide to create a resume appropriate for their career goals. They will learn about different types of resumes (chronological, combination, & functional) and take quizzes, developed in Google Forms, one right after the other in an assigned time frame. It will treat them as if they are the resume editors. The questions will be pieces of resumes with errors that need to be corrected. The quizzes will be multiple choice and they must select the error in the resume. I will use the Google Form add-on Flubarooto be online during the quiz time and give them nearly automatic corrected answers. They will be required to take the quizzes until all of the errors on the resume have been correctly selected for full assignment credit. This piece will require careful timeline planning and ensuring all students know from the beginning of the course that they will required to be available to take the end of module quiz. Module 3: Module 3 is one I am very excited about, but haven't quite worked out all of the details on at this point. Billy Eichner is the host of a show entitled "Billy on the Street". He runs up to people on the streets of New York and asks them random trivia questions and basically does a lot of yelling. [See examples here: www.youtube.com/user/billyonthestreettv. Please note that he is a little more PG-13 than we would be in our videos :-) ] I want to use YouTube and do it in a Billy on the Street style video about what not to wear as a professional. I, or more likely a very helpful outgoing student leader, will on camera run up to people dressed nice and say "THIS! This is a great suit to wear to an interview. Great job!" and then to those in less appropriate attire say "This! This is good for the pool. NOT for work. Have fun!" We will view several pre-created videos throughout the module and discuss why each outfit was professional and not professional. A group project will be assigned where students will create their own "Lucky on the Street" video using each other as the what not to wear and what to wear. It will put their knowledge of professional attire to practical use and teach them about teamwork, communication, and project management at the same time. Student who do not have access to professional clothes can acquire appropriate professional attire from the Career Closet provided by Career Development at Texas A&M University-Commerce. Module 4: The final module in this course will be mock interviews. In the first week, we will learn about different types of interview questions, the STAR method of answering them, and how to prepare for an interview. In the second week students will work one on one with each other practicing interview questions in preparation for their final project. The final project will be to do a real mock interview with a professional in their industry using Google Hangout. The professional will be chosen by the professor based on the results of their career counseling assessments. The chosen professionals will all ask the questions and be given a grading rubric to ensure all students are graded the same. At the end of the four modules, students will be required to submit a 2-3 page blog, usingBlogger, about their chosen career path, what they learned about professionalism, and the next steps they will take after the class to ensure they stay on track in their career.
I believe that the Google Apps suite is an excellent tool that integrates multiple applications that are applicable and useful for the classroom. Using these apps in an online, or face-to-face course, will make your course more engaging and ultimately help your student learn, and retain, your subject.
