Zotero Assignment (06-30-2012)

This is one of the assignments in Edtech 501 which we did in june 2012. I must update my blog even if it is late. Here we got to learn about a new research tool Zotero.

Zotero is like a personal research assistant, inside your browser. It only works with firefox though. It includes the following features which we got to use

• Automatic capture of citation information from web pages
• Storage of PDFs, files, images, links, and whole web pages

School Evaluation Summary

This week we had to conduct a evaluation of our school to see where we would place our educational institution in the Technology Maturity Model. We had to perform a detailed analysis to arrive at this conclusion.

First we had to rank the level of maturity in each of the five key areas of the organization : Administrative, Curricular, Support, Connectivity and Innovation. The ranking had to be done based on the bench mark given below for both types behavioral and resource/infrastructure.

1) The Emergent Stage
2) The Islands Stage
3) The Integrated Stage
4) The Intelligent Stage

Once we were able to rank all the areas then we were able to arrive at our conclusion based on facts gathered.

This project was a lesson in analytical thinking and evaluation based on criterion-referenced measurement standard 5.2 and formative and summative evaluation 5.3

Please find below my survey sheet

My Evaluation Summary

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Technology Use Planning-Overview

Technology use planning is basically the planning done in any school, school district or any other educational institution to narrow the gap between existing standard practices and newer technology driven methods which are appealing to today’s learner to produce positive outcomes. This has to be implemented at the grass roots level, meaning every small school should have their own technology use plan and implement it even if it means achieving little goals. Then we can move on to school districts and larger institutions and then implement it on a national level. All this put together can bring about the positive change of effective technology use and propel us forward towards the presidents vision

“By 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.”
—President Barack Obama, Address to Congress, February 24, 2009

Technology use planning and implementation is a several step process. It has to be executed meticulously keeping in mind the budget, resource and mindset constraints. A proper plan can help measure how much you have progressed towards your goal and how far you are from your destination. This is what the National Education Technology Plan has tried to do to get the ball rolling and measure accountability. It is a guidebook and map to start thinking differently and start implementation. The NETP breaks it down and emphasizes five essential areas in learning powered with technology: learning, assessment, teaching, infrastructure, and productivity. The plan also talks about R&D problems that should be funded and coordinated at a national level.

The NETP (refer paragraph below) asks every educator to think out of the box as the future of learning is through engaging and empowering.

“The challenge for our education system is to leverage the learning sciences and modern technology to create engaging, relevant, and personalized learning experiences for all learners that mirror students’ daily lives and the reality of their futures. In contrast to traditional classroom instruction, this requires that we put students at the center and empower them to take control of their own learning by providing flexibility on several dimensions.”

The same view is expressed by John See (1992), Technology Integration Specialist, Minnesota Department of Education in the article Developing Effective Technology Plans

“television production is one type of application which doesn’t get much attention. I don’t understand why. Is it because its fun and education can’t be fun? Is it because it takes two weeks longer to do a video than write a report?”

In the same article he has mentioned several steps for effective technology plans mostly short term as technology keeps changing and we don’t want to invest in something which will be redundant tomorrow. I agree with those views but I feel that we should have some long range ideas written in the short term plan for a futuristic vision. When time comes for implementation it can be modified to suit current conditions. He also suggests that effective technology plans should focus on applications and not on technology. This approach gives importance to the outcome rather than the input. I agree on this point as we can customize the technology to get the desired outcome instead of a one size fits all scenario. This makes it cost effective and useful at the same time.

The graduate students of the TKT 8763 Seminar in Planning for Instructional Technology (1996) offer an effective plan which can be used like a template for formulating a technology use plan.

Start->Technology mission statement->Analyze current data->specify Goals and objectives->implement with timelines->Monitor and evaluate.

They emphasize that the person who is actually using the technology (stakeholder) should be a part of the planning process. This empowers each and every one of us educators.

Technology use plan implementation at my school is still limited to computers, hardware, software, networking and other physical components. As regards teaching methods, we still use standard practices. Recently they have started online instruction and are exploring new ways of producing positive learning outcomes. Now that I have some knowledge of the technology use plan I hope to contribute some ideas. After all as educators we all have a responsibility and need to step up to take teaching and learning to the next level and enable our students to remain competitive in this global economy.

References
Graduate Students at Mississippi State University. (1996). Guidebook for developing an effective instructional technology plan. Retrieved from: http://www.nctp.com/downloads/guidebook.pdf
See, J. (1992, May). Developing effective technology plans. The Computing Teacher, 19, (8). Retrieved from: http://www.nctp.com/html/john_see.cfm
U.S. Department of Education Office of Educational Technology. (2010). National education technology plan. Washington D.C: Author. Retrieved from: http://www.ed.gov/sites/default/files/netp2010.pdf

AECT Standards
5.1 Problem Analysis
5.4 Long Range Planning

Digital Inequality Assignment

I enjoyed working with our Lambda group on this Digital Inequality Assignment. Initially I was a little apprehensive about working in a group with people in different time zones. But looking at it today I can say the presentation has turned out well. I am also pleased to see that as a team we have accomplished our key goals of effectively using collaboration tools and presenting our recommendations based on authentic research. The different time zones worked in our favour because we complemented each other. We could pick up from where the others left off and get the work done.

Each team member assisted and helped the other to stay on track and on target to meet their goals. We had a strong leader who was willing to step up to lead from day one. Despite some push back from members, his persistence kept the team on track. We used collaboration tools like Google Docs to pitch in all our research and ideas and finally created a joint presentation on the topic of Digital inequality in California and our recommendations to bridge the gap.
We used tools like google hangout, G-chat for our meetings. We communicated constantly through email and our work space doc and were able to arrive at time allotments to get the content in the presentation which helped the team progress. The final hurdle that we had to cross was of uploading the presentation after recording into authorstream. Though we had some hiccups here, thanks to the perseverance of one of our team members we finally got this done in time to share the URL with everyone.
In retrospect I have learnt a lot about collaboration tools and given a chance I would love to work with Lambda group all over again and experience the joy of collaboration and joint accomplishments.

Horizon Report Tech Trend 07-02-2012 to 07-09-2012

This week we explored the Horizon Report, a yearly publication of the New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. According to the report the six trends which are going to be in the forefront in education are Mobile Apps, Tablet Computing , Game-Based Learning, Learning Analytics, Gesture-Based Computing and Internet of Things.

In this assignment my focus is on the Internet of things and NFC or RFID technology. I was fascinated with this technology that NFC allows the virtual and physical worlds to come together.

For example, if the physical object has a NFC tag, then when you tap it with a NFC device, the virtual world opens up within the smartphone! By tapping one NFC device against another, you can setup the profile for connecting them. After the initial handshake the NFC sets up the Bluetooth profile for connecting the devices. Then files can be transferred from one device to the other.

This opens up lots of avenues for us educators.

• Imagine how easy it will be to direct the content like a video lesson on our iPod or mobile device to the TV to play with the touch of a button or
• transfer a whole lesson or assignment from our smartphone or mobile device to the students smartphone with one click.

Technology trends mentioned above is definitely going to reform the way we teach and learn. As educators we should try and incorporate these trends in our lessons. This is my attempt at putting this theory into practice in a futuristic lesson plan.

I have chosen to integrate the technology trend ‘Internet of things’ and ‘game based learning’. This adheres to 2.4 Integrated Technologies ways to produce and deliver materials which encompass several forms of media under the control of a computer..and 3.3 Implementation and Institutionalization using instructional materials or strategies in real (not simulated) settings.

Computer Hardware treasure hunt

For this activity all students can be taken on a field trip to Fry’s Electronics or Best Buy. This can also be conducted in a lab setting. Each student has a smartphone or mobile device which is NFC or RFID enabled.

In the lab certain hardware components are NFC tagged and placed at different locations. The tag has a brief description of the component and also clues to go to the next object.
Students are divided into groups. They are asked to touch their phones to an NFC tag located at the entrance to the lab. This gives them a brief explanation of the treasure hunt activity on their mobile device i.e. to find twenty different hardware components and they also get their first clue. similarly when they find the object they have to touch their phone to the NFC tag on the object to get information for their notes and then they get their next clue and so on..

The first team to find all twenty hardware components and who compile a summary of all their tagged notes and send to the teacher’s NFC enabled device is the winner.

Please find below a simple lesson plan for introduction to computer hardware.

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