Memes on Cybersecurity

Sometimes the best way to explain a complex idea is through memes! In this post, I use three memes that relate to the issue of cybersecurity. They may be viewed below.

ThingLink for Writing Boards in Classrooms

The purpose of this ThingLink is to demonstrate how writing boards in education have advanced in technology over the years. To show this advancement, Everett Rogers' Diffusion of Innovation theory is used.

ToonDoo for Using Educational Games

This comic strip was made to demonstrate the utility and the fun that can be found in using educational games in the classroom.

What is TPACK and How is it Useful for Educators?

TPACK is a 3-part framework for understanding how to merge technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge into a cohesive school that will impact students’ education for the better. The technology would consist of laptops, scanners, programs, websites, applications, iPods, phones, and more. On the other hand, content would be what the teacher taught while pedagogy would be how they teach that content. Through these three components are overlaps where the framework intertwines within itself.

The easiest connection to understand would be content and pedagogy. There is a clear distinction between what is taught and how it is taught; this is why a mastery of both components is required to be a good teacher. An individual who only has mastery of content in science, for example, may be a really good scientist, but if he hasn’t also mastered pedagogy, he would be
poor at explaining the science to anyone outside his field (i.e. students). Conversely, an individual who only has a mastery of pedagogy in communications, for example, may be a really good communicator and keep the interest of his audience, but if he hasn’t also mastered content, he would explaining a whole lot of tantalizing nothing (an experiment was done with this in mind where a really good talker taught a class without any degree or significant knowledge in the subject he was teaching;  however, the students said in reviews that he was very good at explaining the subject to them even though the smooth talker did not know what he was talking about; they were completely oblivious that the talker actually had no real content knowledge in the given subject). Clearly, both content knowledge and pedagogy are required as a cohesive whole in order for a teacher to teach a subject properly. Therefore, all teachers should be familiar with both fields and how they connect to each other as opposed to studying them in isolation.

Two harder connections to understand would be when you infuse technology and content, and technology and pedagogy. For technology and content, the combination would enable teachers to use technology such as computers and websites in conjunction with one another to provide a wealth of information and illustrations (i.e. content) that would otherwise not be available. This would be a demonstration of a mastery of technology and content. However, not all teachers have infused technology with their content. For example, an elementary school teacher who uses computers at home may refuse to use computers in her classroom in fear of making her young students “addicted to computers”, thereby depriving her students of basic computer knowledge and how to access online information. Such an unfortunate situation would disparage the value of the teaching that the students would be receiving. Therefore, it would be better for the students’ sake that technology is incorporated in the classroom in meaningful and pragmatic ways so that the content learned is enriched, enhanced, and expounded upon.

For technology and pedagogy, the connection is more readily apparent for those used to classes in higher education. The use of technology such as slideshows and projectors would aid the pedagogical methods of the teacher – that is, lecturing, in this example – in order to help the students to better understand the material being taught. Students would be able to visualize the information and read off notes in ways that would not be possible without the technology. If the teacher did not use these technological aides, it would be more difficult for the students to fall along with the teaching. Therefore, the infusing of technology with pedagogy is necessary as it creates new, more efficient pathways for information to travel from the teacher to the student.

While all the previous connections discussed surely are useful, the “sweet spot” would be incorporating all three of them together. Infusing technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge would create the best learning experience. Pedagogy and content would be connected to provide a understandable avenue of teaching. Meanwhile, technology would infuse itself with pedagogy to create advanced learning aides, and it would also infuse itself with content to increase the wealth of information that can be accessed and understood. Using these components as a framework rather than isolated fields creates a fluid system of learning for the students and a fluid system of teaching for the teachers. It’s not easy to combine all these components into a holistic apparatus, but when they are combined, students learn better and teachers teach better. Easy to learn but hard to master, TPACK is not without its difficulties, but the benefits it provides for both students and teachers is crucial in our ever-changing world of technology.

----> Think you know TPACK? Try out this fun Kahoot! and see how you stack up to the competition.

Making Schools More Engaging and Relevant

Currently, schools are having problems with being engaging and relevant. Many students feel the knowledge that they learn in their classes is either not useful in the real world or just not very interesting in the way it is presented. There are three concepts that can rectify this problem of low engagement and relevance.

First, laptops. Almost everyone has one at some point in their life. According to the book, many teachers, students, parents, and policymakers view "1-to-1" computing - which is the allowance of laptops for all students and teachers - as an effective, useful, and more engaging tool in the learning process compared to traditional pencil-and-paper methods. It increases organization for teachers and students, it increases efficiency in writing, submitting, and grading assignments, and it increases the methods available for teachers to instruct the students. I have personally found laptops to be essential to my education. My writing ability grew because I was able to make quick revisions, my communication skills grew because I was able to discuss with peers about topics, and my learning grew because I was able to access up-to-date and relevant information across the web. Since I have found much benefit in laptops, I would also like to see my future students to be using laptops. One instructional method I could use is having my students write short stories and essays periodically throughout the school year and then have each student peer review other students' work in order to make them better critical thinkers and writers.

Another concept that can help schools to be more engaging and relevant is social networks. Facebook is the big one out right now. It offers people a way to connect online that would be unfeasible offline. According to the book, social networks are a great way to have students collaborate with each other on school projects, or to give students a voice who are normally quiet in person. In other words, it levels the playing field so that all students can interact with each other in a safe, neutral, and encouraging environment. In my experience, social networks have been very useful for me. From staying in touch with distant friends and relatives to debating in online discussion boards to creating learning communities with my colleagues, I have been able to use all sorts of social networks to accomplish the simple goal of interpersonal immediacy and teamwork. It is my hope as a future teacher that my school will have its own social network that the students can use to make friends, collaborate on assignments, and discuss ideas and concepts. And if the school doesn't have one, I may be able to convince the principal to create a grassroots version via a self-created online forum with the help of the school's tech support.

Lastly, educational games are an effective way of making schools more engaging and relevant because they offer students a method of interacting directly with the material that they are learning, whether that's a digital dissection of a frog in biology class, a hypertext string in language arts class, or a Minecraft excursion in physics class. The book states that even the U.S. government is finding educational games (aka "serious games") as useful, such as for military applications. It is clear that there is a very broad use for educational games in the modern era. From my personal experience, I have found great use for educational games. When I was younger, I played games like Math Blaster, Typing Tutor, among others that really engaged me with what I was learning. Sometimes I would even inadvertently learn a lot from a game that wasn't purpose built for education, such as Civilization V, where taxes, international diplomacy, city managing, national history, war strategy, and land development are a common occurrence. As a future teacher, I plan to use games like these (in moderation) to help students figure out concepts about reading, writing, and most importantly, critical thinking.

These three concepts - laptops, social networks, and educational games - have been a great asset to me and to many others in our educational careers. I believe that as an aspiring teacher, I will be able to use these assets to make my school curriculum more engaging and relevant to the students because they will be able to learn, interact, and explore educational concepts in ways that they could not do before. While future technologies may be vastly different than today, one thing is definitely certain: students love technology. And the faster that teachers appropriately apply this technology to their classrooms, the faster the students will learn!

Technology Integrated Matrix and the Advent of Podcasting in the Educational Environment

The TIM video I explored was called "Podcasting" in 5th grade Language Arts. It involved Transformative technology at the Constructive level. In this example, the technology - podcasting - involves the creation of a digital audio file that can be downloaded by others for listening. The students in the video did this using their Apple computers and an audio recording program. Some used GarageBand while another student recorded her analysis on a short story she wrote.

The advantage of using podcasting is that it gives the students the ability to store information - in this case, audio - for use at a later date or for dissemination to other people. Without a digital recording, students would not be able to access what they said at another time, nor could they show their lecture to students who were not present at the time they gave the lecture. In other words, podcasts reduce the perishability of audio-based data.

All in all, the TIM video showed a Transformative technology because the students were able to do things they couldn't do previously, such as storing audio and sending it to other individuals. Additionally, the video showed a Constructive method of instruction because students had to be active in their pursuit of information rather than passive. They had to connect their knowledge of audio and lectures with the knowledge of recordings and downloading. In other words, they expanded their knowledge in the language arts because of the infusion of the audio concept of podcasting.

RAT Framework and How to Identify the Use of Technologies in the Classroom

The RAT framework is a theoretical framework that evaluates the use of technologies in education based on whether they Replace, Amplify, or Transform the learning environment. My class in Expository Writing that I took a few semesters ago has many examples for each of these.

In Replacement, for example, the teacher would sometimes use a PowerPoint for a lecture when it was not needed. Usually it was unnecessary because the lecture was short or because there were no illustrations involved. In this case, the teacher used technology to have a different means to the same end. This would be an inefficient use of technology.

Fortunately, the teacher mostly used Amplification instead. One example is when he would require all students to type out their essays using word processors. While a given in most colleges, this technology-based assignment is still an amplification of what came before it - type writers and handwritten papers. Word processors increase the efficiency of reading papers because the typography and format is standardized and easy-to-follow, and it increases the efficiency of writing papers because it provides the ability for easy revision or viewing changes between drafts.

My favorite part of my teacher's instruction, however, was when he would use Transformative technologies. An example of this transformation is when he had portions of writing from his grad students on a projected screen connected to his computer. The assignment tasked to us was to revise and change sentence structure, words, phrases, and connections in real-time by asking the teacher. The purpose of this assignment was to help us learn how to consolidate information and create flowing sentence structure that was logical and coherent. Through the task, our cognitive processes on how to revise work were changed, and the method by which we enacted these cognitive processes also changed because we were editing other people's work collaboratively and in real-time as opposed to independently and asynchronously.

Each of these examples - PowerPoint, word processing, and real-time group editing - show a different aspect of the RAT framework. The former were less effective than the latter at improving education based on how the teacher used the technology. By evaluating examples, we are better able to understand why the RAT framework is important and how we can distinguish Replacement technologies that are inefficient with Amplification technologies that are efficient; and, if we so dare, we can also identify Transformation technologies that we can use in our classrooms that will not only increase efficiency but also increase learning.

Screencast Recording on Terrace Community Middle School

Below is a Screencast Recording on the website for Terrace Community Middle School. The purpose of this screencast is to inform the viewer how to access the website. It also serves to demonstrate the use of an educational technology.

Connecting Bloom, Maslow, Backward Design, and Madeline Hunter to My Educational Path

Bloom’s taxonomy includes a cognitive component where six mental processes are categorized for learning: (1) knowledge, (2) comprehension, (3) application, (4) analysis, (5), synthesis, and (6) evaluation. I can personally relate with all these different processes. For example, in my previous major, Marketing, I gained quite a bit of knowledge on how different businesses work and how the brains of customers work. To gain this knowledge, I had to comprehend by paying attention to the readings and lectures. Sometimes it was easy, sometimes it was quite difficult. It really depended on my level of interest. After comprehending the information, I was sometimes tasked to apply it such as in my group projects where me any my teammates had to make marketing plans upwards of 50 pages or more. To do such a project, a lot of analysis on current trends was necessary. Then, when selecting a marketing choice based on the trends, I was required to evaluate all the information and make a decision on which budget and choice would give us the most bang for our buck. At the end of the semester, our long hours of work end up creating a great marketing plan that was well-researched and well-articulated.

However, the plan was definitely not easy. I had to pick up a lot of slack, so the drains on my physiological needs were quite overbearing. This relates to Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, which states that Physiological needs are the most basic needs followed by Safety, Social, Esteem, and finally, Self-Actualization. In my personal experience, I never had to account for safety, but I did have socialize with my group members (mostly through email) in order to do the project. The more work I put in, the higher my esteem was as a result, even though putting one’s esteem in grades is quite dangerous. Lastly, once I completed the project, I realized I didn’t want to be a marketer. This was when I discovered something deeper about myself that took me awhile to figure out. Although marketing is fun in some ways, my desire for a greater social good as well as job security overshadowed any of the benefits. Therefore, by the completion of this project, I made my decision to do Education instead.

This change in major and in my career path could be said to be a result of Backward Design. First, I identified the results that I wanted. In this case, I wanted a job that I would love to do, that would make an impact for the social good, that would be related to my previous experiences in volunteer work, and that would have good security. Teaching fit all these criteria, and therefore seemed like the soundest choice to pursue. To evaluate these criteria and determine whether they were important, I had to determine the acceptable evidence. For me, the acceptable evidence were my desires for a career and my past work experience. After I determined this, I then began planning how I would learn and be instructed in order to accomplish my career goals. The obvious solution was to get a bachelor’s degree in English Education, since I have an aptitude for writing.

But to get a degree, I had to first take the prerequisite courses required to be admitted into the College of Education. One of these courses was EDF 2005, an observation-heavy class. Based on Madeline Hunter’s Lesson Plan Template, my information was as follows: for the objective, I was to observe a few schools and see what teaching looks like in the real world; for standards, I was required to do several procedures such as getting an intern badge and dressing professionally during my observations. Next, for my materials, I had to use an observation card that had to be signed by the school staff in order to record my hours. As for the duration, the observation portion was to last about a week at 15 hours in total. During my observation, I saw what teaching was like by watching the teachers in action in their natural habitat. I observed how the teachers would engage the students by showing them how to do problems and work through group assignments via guided practice. Then, the teachers would close the lesson by saying what the students should expect in their independent practice, such as studying for tests or completing homework problems in their workbooks. These steps constituted the majority of the teachers I observed. Therefore, I believe the template itself is quite logical and useful for any future teachers as well.

PowerPoint on Key Educational Goals

PowerPoint: Educational Goals

Click the link above (or watch the embedded item below) to listen to a narrated PowerPoint on modern Educational Goals.