Category: Social Media & PL

I Know Where I’m Going???

July 25, 2019 / ctrades

Jamie Saw on Unsplash

If you consider working remotely for the first time when starting an intensive 23-day study program, may I caution you to reconsider? The choice was thrust on me due to computer failure, and even though I am comfortable working without a paper backup, not having access to my regular filing system as well as the lack of consistency of tools across the four computers I used definitely caused additional difficulties that were unnecessary. It did point out what a creature of habit I have become in my computer use and therefore forced me to reconsider my use of online tools.

As a part-time administrator, I have not taught a course for two years, and this year I picked up half an overflowing course in October. I learned Google Classroom (n.d.), exploring quite a bit its bells and whistles and played Kahoots (n.d.) with my students. We used Desmos, an iPad Rotating Sphere Clinometer (n.d.) app, and assorted online tools for what could be boring practice. Our room was vibrant and noisy as we interacted and contributed to each other’s understanding. I utilized structured, controlled, and guided inquiry, with some students taking the opportunity to do free inquiry and present their findings to the class. Our philosophy was “the answers are in the room” and that learning did not require the teacher – though often the questions started from me because the students did not know where to go because of insufficient background.

This summer’s courses have been presented the same way I teach, except on a grander scale. The questions start from the instructors, with some guidance in the readings and presentations, and the rest of the work takes place at home as we research further, documenting some of our work in blogs (and some more privately in notes). My private notes have a number of highlighted areas for further research, my Feedly (n.d.) has some great blogs to read through (and read backwards through) and my Tweetdeck (n.d.) has a number of threads I want to backtrack through. I think it is at least an August’s worth to just catch up! The two courses have set us on the path of gathering information from both traditional sources (books, journals and articles) as well as current sources (blogs and Twitter) so we have a balance between solid academic research articles and fresh ideas being presented by practicing educators. Some of the sources I can discredit based on my experience, but the evaluation technique explored and the methodology understanding I have gained through EDCI 515 have provided me with more solid tools with which to appraise both the traditional studies as well as the contemporary resources. Looking at the Researcher, the Research, the Researched and the Reader applies to blogs and Twitter links as you can see anomalies: the researcher is pushing a book based on a particular company’s product, the researched have nothing in common with the situation you are addressing, or the research is based on some strange bias.

In my own research towards a master’s project, I am going to be wading through studies on appropriate presentation methods for success in online learning environments. Once we learned about action research, I was sure my research would focus in that type of study. I have read a few articles in those areas. Having reached the end of the course, I realize that if I want to include the indigenous perspectives in the tools that I may be curating and creating, I may need to look at other types of studies as well. Research methods more suited to indigenous students may not be action-research based

My ideal goal is to collect and create a body of mathematical resources, organized by the British Columbia Ministry of Education (BCEd) grade 9 through 11 pre-calculus course requirements, for an online math student community of learners who do not need a teacher, only a moderator; basically, a one-room classroom but digital and without a teacher. This means there may need to be a significant number of resources available. Considering I have quite a few myself after having taught Math 9 and 10 a number of times over the last twenty years, it could be doable as one project. My colleagues may be interested in contributing because a successful project could ultimately benefit the students in their classrooms. We have worked hard to establish an open Math Help Centre at school and an Online Math Help Centre with different tools could contribute positively.

Part of my research may also be for good, free, non-copyrighted tools or tools that may be available for an extended period of time. Students should have the opportunity to develop inquiry skills to prepare them for future math courses. Finding a tool or method to preserve some student anonymity while allowing for building a community while not under the protection of a school system may be too much for my current level of expertise. I may need to limit student access, at first, to those enrolled at our school and therefore under the protection of the security offered by our technical support team maintaining our systems. Although I do want it to be open access, I want it to be safe for students as well. I have ruled out the possibility of using Twitter because it is too public for students. I do not want to own student data, so even the use of a website or a WordPress (n.d.) site is questionable. Yet, where could I have the information hosted so that both the students and I are safe (and safe from each other) and the privacy policies adhere to Canadian law? Big question and more research to go.

I came into this summer of courses thinking I knew what type of project I wanted to have as a capstone to my master’s degree. After a few weeks of classes, my scope is much larger as I realize my original idea did not include the development of a learner community, which is something I value, the research I think I should do has snowballed based on learning more about the types of research there is, and the list of things I need to learn how to do has become much longer. How big am I willing to let this be? How much time am I willing to put in and then, once it is created, how much time am I willing to spend maintaining the creation? In this type of project, where it is something that stands alone but is not static, it would be irresponsible to let it go like a helium balloon on a string (which is also irresponsible). After I spend more time researching, will I need to let this idea go and move into something smaller and more manageable? Well, I have not been one to play it safe, so research adventure, here I come!

Bibliography

Chambers, C., Hasebe-Ludt, E., Donald, D., Hurren, W., Leggo, C., & Oberg, A. (2008). Métissage: A Research Praxis. In J. Knowles & A. Cole, Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research: Perspectives, Methodologies, Examples, and Issues (pp. 142–154). https://doi.org/10.4135/9781452226545.n12

Ellis, C., Adams, T. E., & Bochner, A. P. (2010). Autoethnography: An Overview. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 12(1). https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-12.1.1589

Engin, M. (2011). Research Diary: A Tool for Scaffolding. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 10(3), 296–306. https://doi.org/10.1177/160940691101000308

Graham, L. & Roberts, V. (2018). Sharing a Pragmatic Networked Model for open pedagogy: The Open Hub Model of Knowledge Generation in Higher-Education Environments. International Journal on Innovations in Online Education, 2(3). Retrieved from http://onlineinnovationsjournal.com/download/166ed2992d9a3c9d.pdf

Gu, P., & Lee, Y. (2019). Promoting Students’ Motivation and Use of SRL Strategies in the Web-Based Mathematics Learning Environment. Journal of Educational Technology Systems, 47(3), 391–410. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047239518808522

Johnson, H. L., Hornbein, P., & Bryson, D. (2016). Designing Online Playgrounds for Learning Mathematics. The Mathematics Teacher, 110(4), 298–303. https://doi.org/10.5951/mathteacher.110.4.0298

Kim, C., Park, S. W., Cozart, J., & Lee, H. (2015). From Motivation to Engagement: The Role of Effort Regulation of Virtual High School Students in Mathematics Courses. Journal of Educational Technology & Society; Palmerston North, 18(4), 261–272.

McAteer, M. (2013). Action Research in Education. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781473913967

Office of the Information & Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia. Cloud Computing Guidelines for Public Bodies. (2012). Retrieved from https://www.oipc.bc.ca/guidance-documents/1427

Pete, S. (2017). Idle No More: Radical Indigeneity in Teacher Education. In F. Pirbhai-Illich, S. Pete, & F. Martin (Eds.), Culturally Responsive Pedagogy: Working towards Decolonization, Indigeneity and Interculturalism (pp. 53–72). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46328-5_3

Tessaro, D., Restoule, J.-P., Gaviria, P., Flessa, J., Lindeman, C., & Scully-Stewart, C. (2018). The Five R’s for Indigenizing Online Learning: A Case Study of the First Nations Schools’ Principals Course. 40, 125–143.

Weller, M. (2018). The Digital Scholar Revisited. The Digital Scholar: Philosopher’s Lab, 1, 52–71.

Resources

Desmos. https://www.desmos.com/

Feedly. https://feedly.com

Google Classroom. https://classroom.google.com/

Kahoot. https://kahoot.com/

Rotating Sphere Clinometer. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/rotating-sphere-clinometer/id1190844563

TweetDeck. https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/

Twitter. https://twitter.com/home?lang=en

WordPress. https://wordpress.com

Where do I go from here?

July 21, 2019 / ctrades

“Doors”by susanvg is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

I have been a mathematics and computer teacher for almost as many years as I have been a music teacher. I have wanted to do a Masters for a long time, but could not find an area for a thesis or research project that was interesting yet was not already well developed. It has become clear to me recently that although there are many online resources for students, it is difficult for students to find what they need in terms of exercises because they do not know what they need! They can google a Khan Academy (n.d.) video and do multiple choice exercises, but they need to know the correct mathematical terminology for what they are looking for, and that can be a difficulty. These resources are just another lecture-style explanation, with no interactivity, limited motivational factors, no skill building in recognizing patterns or looking at habitual mathematical errors, and no relevance to using mathematics in real-life situations. There are some wonderful online mathematical resources, but most sites require membership to either access questions or to track progress. The majority of the sites do not adhere to British Columbian privacy laws (OIPCBC, 2012) and/or require a monetary contribution.

We have many international students coming to our schools whose curricula do not follow the same layout as ours. In mathematics class, they either repeat a significant amount of material or they flounder without sufficient background in some areas. Some of these students are very motivated, but their English may not be sufficient for the videos at Khan Academy, plus the American system does not organize its courses with mixed mathematics as we do. At school, we have students that would like to accelerate their mathematics in order to complete both Pre-Calculus 12 and an International Baccalaureate (IB) Mathematics 12 course. Their maturity level may have prevented them from successfully accelerating in Middle School and therefore doing some extra math during the year or during the summer would help them accomplish this goal. I currently have a dozen students working on math this summer who are supposed to contact me with problems, but there has been radio silence. Is this because they are doing well or is it because they are doing nothing or is it because they do not want to bother me? At the end of summer, they are going to show me the print resources they have worked through and then challenge a math course based on our school and British Columbia (BC) Education requirements (see BC ministry of Education, n.d.).

I have been reading and blogging about different articles about online math courses, motivation and self-regulation in these courses, and opportunities in interactive online math activities (“It’s Like Scrabble” and “Action Research”). I found an entire “Mathematics Teacher” journal published by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (n.d.) on Teaching Math Online (2016). The article I chose for this blog is Designing Online Playgrounds for Learning Mathematics by Johnson, Hornbein, and Bryson (2016). In our grade 6 though 10 courses, as an IB Middle Years Programme school, we regularly involve our math students in investigating patterns and applying mathematics to real-life situations. They can be as simple as a five-minute pattern recognition or a three-hour pattern investigation or real-life problem solution. I was hoping this article could provide ideas on how to develop these as interactive tools.

Figure 1: Webpage for the American National Council of Teachers of Mathematics

The article was written by an associate professor of mathematics education (Johnson), an IB high school teacher (Hornbein), and a middle school math teacher (Bryson), all from Colorado. The two teachers participated in a fully online mathematics education course designed and taught by the associate professor. “Johnson developed online playgrounds— instructional experiences with multiple entry points—incorporating three types of playground equipment: online interactive tools, video conferencing, and social media.” (p. 299) The teachers then began incorporating them into their classrooms. When using online interactive tools, they required students to take multiple screenshots of their work to share reasoning methods as well as errors and how to recognize them. Zoom (n.d.) videoconferencing was used to create a video record of a conversation about an assignment, and then edited to hand in as an assignment. Videoconferencing was later used, with Zoom’s shared whiteboard as well as an online interactive tool, for one of the teachers to help a student individually. Students subsequently used the shared whiteboard feature to collaborate to solve homework problems, taking screenshots along the way. Hornbein also used Twitter (n.d.) to interact with students. Some students really enjoyed Twitter conversations, but considering the privacy requirements in Canada, this is likely not a possibility for our students.

The articled references PBS Education (n.d.), but all the activities are behind a login and their privacy settings do not adhere to an acceptable Canadian level. Although, it could be a good source of inspiration. The article also references Desmos, an online graphing tool with lessons available behind a login, and it has much stricter privacy settings than PBS Education. Even without signing in, Desmos has good access for graphing use.

Figure 2: Desmos interface

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics has an activity page and a blog which may be useful or, again, at least a good source of inspiration for activities. The site listed that had the most potential for creation of activities is no longer active, and the java set of files appeared corrupted.

From what I can see, the problem is the lack of curated engaging free activities for math learners. Even the BC Education website only connected to the BC Educational Resource Acquisition Consortium (ERAC) (n.d.) which had a short list of print resources (accessible after a membership fee was paid).

Where I would like to go with my project is:

Diagnostic tools for elements of BC curriculum mathematics skills required by course, particularly Foundations of Mathematics 10 and Pre-Calculus 11, where students can find out what elements they have mastered which course they are ready for. What is out there? What do I need to create as an online tool? Or is a print tool sufficient for a diagnosis?

Curate/create a list of videos, interactive exercises, and real-life applications that are not behind costly or sites with questionable privacy settings. Ideally, most would have the opportunity for translation into other languages. These would be linked
- - from the mathematical content areas from the diagnostic tools
  - from a list of mathematical content by course
  - from a list of competencies
  - from a list of big ideas
  - from a list of curricular competencies
Where would the tolerance level of privacy be set? How could a parent make a choice about their student’s access to a site where my recommended level of tolerance is not met? Do I want to even go there? I need to learn more about reading through privacy settings.

Find a safe online community so students can communicate with each other and with mathematics teachers to clarify, get help, or commiserate with others. We have found the value in a personal professional learning community and our students in face-to-face classes have a classroom and school community. How can we foster this community for online learners?

Ensure there are motivational elements:
- a student can track their improvement and use of all resources (and keep it in Canada)
- there are puzzle challenges to improve pattern recognition
- there is linking to what they already know well
- there is application to real-life problems including ones they will experience (ever try to figure out how to split a restaurant bill and tip?)
- there are authentic links to Indigenous cultural content and Canadian settler cultural content.

As mentioned in a previous blog, “It’s Like Scrabble,” I want to include the types of questions found on our BC Education Numeracy Assessment which is now required of students graduating in BC. The cultural basis of some of the questions excludes our international students from experiencing success (although I have limited data). This new graduation assessment should not require preparation, but those new to BC or Canadian culture find some of the situational questions posed are inaccessible.

Could I extend it to include areas students may want to explore? Like Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry except with suggestions because most students don not know what is fun about math?

I can not create a Canadian Khan Academy, but I want our students to be able to diagnose the areas they need to work on, find good interactive resources without having to sign in, be able to track their work simply for evidence (will look at WordPress multi-site (private to network) with both instructor and learner blogs and perhaps a Buddypress plug-in), experience enjoyable math activities that spark their interest, and find a community of math helpers the way our face-to-face students have found in the classroom and in our Math Help Centre.

Bibliography

British Columbia Department of Education. (2019). Course Challenge. Retrieved from https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/education-training/k-12/support/graduation/getting-credit-to-graduate/course-challenge.

Suggested Resources

BC Educational Resources https://bcerac.ca/?s=Math

Desmos https://www.desmos.com/

Desmos Privacy Policy https://www.desmos.com/privacy

Khan Academy https://www.khanacademy.org/

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Resources https://www.nctm.org/classroomresources/

PBS Learning Media: :https://www.pbslearningmedia.org/subjects/mathematics/high-school-algebra/

PBS Privacy Policy: https://www.pbslearningmedia.org/help/privacy-policy/

Peidi Gu’s Dissertation, from which the article is an excerpt: dissertation

To Cloud or not to Cloud

July 19, 2019 / ctrades

“Macbook Pro 17 21”by Luiz Claudio Monteiro is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
Gif created in EZgif

That IS the question! When cloud computing first came out, I was EXTREMELY skeptical. I was really going to put all my data out there? Where anyone could get it? Looking back, it is how my parents first reacted to gift cards. What? I am going to put money on a card? Why not just use cash?

Until this year, I have scrupulously backed up my computer every week to a separate hard drive. Even though work also backed up my computer to their server, I didn’t trust it. And there were a few times over the last 12 years where my backup came in use because their’s failed. It means they have gotten used to me being responsible for my own data. Last year, the school put us all into the cloud for automatic backups, which is why a year later, I gave up on backing up. Backups are useless when the tech department decides to no longer purchase the application for documents you have backed up. So I switched to updating all my documents to the cloud apps with backups to the cloud.

Forward to this weekend, when the intermittent freezing of my computer became more consistent while I was, of course, in Vancouver. Yes, I could get all my cloud backed up documents on my daughter’s computer, but she was needing to use it! Since mine was a school computer, I couldn’t do the diagnostics on it that I wanted to because I didn’t have that type of administrator control. I limped along till I returned to Victoria and took ‘lappie’ in to the office where it was confirmed, her trackpad and keyboard were going into cardiac arrest. So now, I have a loaner computer, with a personal computer in the mail, slowly separating my school files and my personal files into their separate cloud storage spaces. Thank goodness for the cloud, because I wouldn’t have been hauling my backup with me to Vancouver

Being in the cloud and away from home is convenient. And I have nothing really personal stored in the cloud – no budgeting or banking information, few pictures, and limited personal information. My educator hat is there. I have had the lovely experience of having my bank and credit cards stopped because of identity theft and have had to shut down 3 different credit cards taken out in my name. And I traced the situation to a particular card that I use only when working as an IBEN educator which I used in Los Angeles back when they still took your credit card away from you to put it through a machine. Lesson learned.

But in my work as an IBEN educator, I can never rely on internet access or people having the skills to deal with a Google drive. I bring multiple flash drives with the drive information on them so participants can share. But they are adults and are supposedly informed about their cloud usage and sharing decisions. They have the choice to share through Google drive or through the flash drives. Yet, what about work with students?

Our school asks parents and students to sign permission forms which detail the programs we use and where the information is stored. If I want to start using another program with my students, it has to go through our Risk Management and another permission form needs to be signed. If, as part of my research project for my masters’, I am going to use any social media platform, online app or the cloud with minors and not go through a school, I need to research the platforms and the personal legal implications: Trello, Twitter, Feedly, Slack, WhatsApp, BlueJeans, FlipGrid, EverNote, even the hosting server. It is my responsibility to ensure the safety of the students accessing the resources I am considering curating, creating and monitoring, as well as the safety of their personal information. As well, I need to find apps that are established enough that they do not become defunct soon and find a way to track student work that students will enjoy following – I like the suggestion I was given of a wordpress site .

I would really like whatever I create to have experiences in the inquiry model. I firmly believe that it is a great motivator, even when students may not feel particularly gifted in a subject area. Between Trevor MacKenzie‘s visit and Jeff Hopkin‘s visits to class, my interest in making some online math interest connections are stronger. I also found some interesting reads in the November 2016 edition of “The Mathematics Teacher”. What might be the most helpful is the dissertation written by Peidi Gu, one of the authors of the article I found for Edci 515, Promoting Students’ Motivation and Use of SRL Strategies in the Web-Based Mathematics Learning Environment. The whole thing may just be too much of a dream, but I have to start somewhere.

Dreamer, by Roger Hodgson, was first recorded by SuperTramp on the album Crime of the Century, 1974. Note: audio is in compliance with fair dealing under the Copyright Act and with the SoundCloud site.

Action Research

July 15, 2019 / ctrades

“Do I Need to Cite This?”by tengrrl is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Researcher

The reading for discussion was by Mary McAteer, who earned her Doctor of Philosophy in 2000 after completing her Bachelor of Education in 1979 and her Masters of Science in Educational Management in 1993. Between earning her Bachelor’s degree and her doctoral degre, she held a range of classroom teaching and senior management roles in a number of schools in Northern Ireland. Following her doctorate, she started work at Edge Hill University, which was granted the power to award degrees in 2005. McAteer completed a Post-Graduate Certificate in Research Supervision at Edge Hill University in 2010. More recently, she worked as an author at SAGE Publications, who published her book, as well as the Director for MaST programmes for the United Kingdom’s Advisory Committee on Mathematics Education. McAteer is a respected educator, teaching master’s courses in education enquiry and professional learning as well as specialist primary mathematics practice. Her guest lecture and conference experiences extend to the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences Schools Enrichment Centre as well as the United States. She is active as an external examiner for master’s and doctorate work focusing on action research and other close-to-practice research while continuing to supervise PhD students. As a researcher, she has written 40 articles since 2000, and is a reputable source of knowledge for action research in education based on her experience.

Research

Mary McAteer’s book, Action Research in Education, was aimed at the beginner in educational research. “Chapter 2: Getting to Grips with Perspectives and Models” gives clear explanations, describing action research as a systematic and planned process of data collection, analysis of the collected data, and theory generation and testing. A teacher’s regular daily reflection is more focused on providing formative feedback to students and developing strategies to differentiate learning outcomes to students. Action research is more critically reflective, looking for alternative perspectives and considering classroom or pedagogy limitations as problems which require solutions. Action research suggests that reflection on practice should be:

Descriptive, in that it is personal and retrospective.
Perceptive, in that it has an emotional aspect.
Receptive, in that it relates personal views to those of others.
Interactive, in that it links learning to future action.
Critical, in that it places the individual teacher within a broader ‘system’. (McAteer, 2013)

Action research projects are suitable for teachers looking to improving their practice. The project could be rooted in areas in which the teacher has control rather than looking for solutions to institutional problems, unless the institution is the instigator of the project. Good projects allow for testing of personal, professionally important hypotheses and exploring explanations that could be related to a more extensive theoretical base and are relevant to others in education. Action research is a mixed methods form of research.

The Action Research Project Cycle is similar to the design process cycle. The four stages are plan, act, observe and reflect. There could be multiple iterations of the cycle within a project. When starting a project, it is challenging to only collect data at the beginning without affecting the student outcomes. For teachers, it is difficult to remain unbiased if an activity is not producing the anticipated results. They need to stay observant, particularly for small changes. This example of the Action Research Cycle was available in the Creative Commons.

“Action Research Cycle for improving instruction”by w.robkoch is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Researchers of Contrasting Article

The article not using action research was by ChanMin Kim, Seung Won Par, Joe Cozart and Heywon Lee. ChanMin Kim earned her Bachelor of Arts in 1998 in Korea, going on to earn two Masters of Education in Korea (2003) and in Boston (2004). Her doctorate was completed in Florida in 2007. Kim is a mathematics and technology researcher who has written 64 articles since 2004. Although Seung Won Park was not listed in Google Scholar, but had a listing on Research Gate. She has earned her doctorate and is currently in the Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong after studying Educational Psychology at Pennsylvania State University and Instructional Design at the University of Georgia. Park’s articles are in the technology field. Joe Cozart has a very limited online presence, but has contributed to 10 articles since 2011. Heywon Lee has no information in Google Scholar and only this article listed on Research Gate. Based on the expertise of Kim and Park, I expected this article to be legitimate.

Contrasting Article Research

In “From Motivation to Engagement: The Role of Effort Regulation of Virtual High School Students in Mathematics Courses”, Kim et al. chose to only study quantitative data. The final study had data from 100 online learners that filled out surveys at three times during their semester long online mathematics course. At the beginning of the semester, the middle of the semester and the end of the semester, students rated value statements on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from (1) “Not at all true of me” to (7) “Very true of me.” The study was investigating “How do high performers and low performers differ with regard to their changes in motivation, regulation, and engagement throughout the course?” (Kim et al., 2015) The value statements students responded to are displayed in the chart below from page 264 of the journal.

Implications of adding Action Research

As educators, I expect Kim et al. could collect the reflection data objectively as they were not the teachers of their subjects. In order for this study to use action research, the team would have needed to be involved in affecting the teaching resources or have the ability to change the support students were offered. They also would have needed to commit more time to the study or may have needed to have a larger team, possibly including the teachers in charge of the online students. The organization offering the online courses or its principal would likely need to be part of the team so that the changes could be implicated easily as nine courses were involved. The data collected could have been totally different if they were successful in planning and enacting strategies to motivate the students.

There are two ways this could have or still could be turned into an action research project. In the first possibility, the initial reflection by the students could have been used as the data on which to base the reflection. A decision would need to have been made whether to address all students with all possible motivators or interventions planned, or to just address the students experiencing difficulties in any of the areas. Some possibilities could be providing exercises to build confidence, providing interactive lessons to build confidence and positive attitude, interaction with a teacher in real-time through Skype or something similar, adding study ideas to the lessons, or linking students to help each other. The second possibility is to use the current complete study as the data to establish a plan to affect a different group of online mathematics students.

Changing the method of the study would have meant, if they had found successful ways to improve motivation and self-regulation, students may not have dropped the courses and they would have had more students complete all 3 surveys. From a students’ point of view, this would have been a great alternative.

The reader would have learned possibilities for improving their own online courses instead of just confirming the understandings and shortcomings of online education as traditionally presented. A reader could still use this data as the base for an action research project themselves.

Conclusion

Educational research lends it to action research. The reason behind educational research is almost always to increase student achievement. Any quantitative or qualitative study can be used as the first step in an action research project. After completing or reading this study, how could educators not want to take the next step of trying to test methods to improve the results of the students? The largest obstacle to action research is conforming to the regulations required by ethics boards as well as acquiring continuous consent from all involved parties. Institutions, parents and even students have to agree to allowing the information to be shared and studied in order for documented action research to take place, and this can be a complicated and constantly changing situation.

Bibliography

Alberta Teacher’s Association. (2000). Action Research Guide for Alberta Teachers. Retrieved July 10, 2019, from https://www.teachers.ab.ca/sitecollectiondocuments/ata/publications/professional-development/actionresearch.pdf

Edge Hill University. (n.d.). Mary McAteer. Retrieved July 14, 2019, from https://www.edgehill.ac.uk/education/about/staff/mary-mcateer/

Google Scholar. (2019). ChanMin Kim. Retrieved July 14, 2019, from https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en&user=D6EEp0UAAAAJ

Google Scholar. (2019). Joe Cozart. Retrieved July 14, 2019, from https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en&user=CFjNHv0AAAAJ

Google Scholar. (2019). Mary McAteer. Retrieved July 14, 2019, from https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=g_72zXcAAAAJ&hl=en

Koch, Rob. “Action Research Cycle for Improving Instruction.” Flickr, Yahoo!, 3 Aug. 2015, www.flickr.com/photos/133494837@N03/20084505839.

McAteer, M. (2013). Action Research in Education. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781473913967

McAteer, Mary. (n.d.). Posts [LinkedIn Page]. Retrieved July 14, 2019, from https://www.linkedin.com/in/mary-mcateer-0a7615b/

Research Gate. (2019). Seung Won Park. Retrieved July 14, 2019, from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Seung_Won_Park

Tengrrl. “Do I Need to Cite This?” Flickr, Yahoo!, 9 Nov. 2015, www.flickr.com/photos/83528664@N00/22467851468.

Community

July 13, 2019 / ctrades

Gif created by ctrades. Person image free at Clipart Library

I had always thought tweeting was weird. And blogging, well, I’ve read a few blogs written by travelling friends but most of the blogs I go to are recipe blogs and I just want the good stuff – the recipe. It never occurred to me that tweeting could be a way to mine information or that blogs could actually be a source of educational inspiration. On top of that, it’s a way to connect with educators you don’t know yet. I didn’t understand that there was an educator/learner culture on social media. Kind of like Tinder for learners. And to belong, you have to tweet and blog to read others’ tweets and blogs because they are doing the same thing – looking for inspiration and connection with like-minded individuals. If you don’t tweet or blog, you will lose that connection.

Once you start, there is just SO much information coming through. Like reading a newspaper – you don’t have to read every little thing, but you need to scan to look for the ‘good bits’ for where you are right now. TweetDeck and Feedly were easy to set up and use as an organization system. Hootsuite will get consideration next week even though I am happy with my current two systems. I am starting to find a voice on Twitter, and I am working on my voice in blogging. If some future (or current) MEdTech student finds my blog helpful, great! If not, it doesn’t matter because I am finding it helpful. Putting my thoughts in writing has always been useful for me but blogging about it makes me consider my word choice a little more carefully and makes me be a little clearer. Something interesting is that the quote I retweeted from another educator (below), I decided to research today. Weirdly enough, it is an internet quote with no background! No one can track down the originator, so it has become somewhat of an internet urban myth. Another lesson in research and attribution. Should I have contributed to the confusion by retweeting and not attributing properly?

THIS!!! THIS is how I (try to) teach AND why I am finding the start of my Master’s (finally) to be both exhilarating and exhausting, right #tiegrad? This is how we are being taught, and it is a journey of discovery. #inquiry https://t.co/OWOW003Gqc “The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don’t tell you what to see.”
― Alexandra K. Trenfor

— ctrades (@ctrades2) July 12, 2019

And of course, you need to make your blog pretty, so I spent about an hour making a gif I wanted for my last blog. I used the Creative Commons to find editable scrabble pieces (though there wasn’t a ‘C’), edited the ‘G’ and ‘M’ to a ‘C’ through Photoshop, made 32 images in InDesign, and then used an online gif maker, EZGif, to create my scrabble gif. I wanted to use the logos of the social media in a gif, but I checked the brand guidelines for Twitter and it states you cannot animate it. Actually, the brand guidelines for even the use of the Creative Commons were very restrictive, so I decided to err on the side of being too careful and did not include them on my blog. Too bad, so sad, but rules are rules. (And then, I couldn’t let this post aimed at my Social Media course be without a gif, so I spent half an hour making this one.)

My last (long) post was about all the connections I’ve been making based on our Research methods course. After a quick meeting with Valerie on Friday, I had another connection made. So much of my self-directed learning has been through experimentation and online tutorials and videos found primarily on YouTube and a school subscription to Lynda. I was really using those websites as a learning community but in the static, traditional lecture style where teaching and learning stay on their assigned separate sides. At school, our students are good networkers within our classrooms during class and through email and through google docs and classroom when outside of class. They also make use of online tutorials and sites they find or we direct them to. Could I curate and moderate (with help) an online learning platform where teachers AND students contribute? Create a learning community that would connect our students with incoming students (an area where I have concerns, particularly in mathematics), and perhaps students outside our school community? Our classes already have online teacher resources, but could we get the students to share their work, especially those with errors that would help others? Could I get teachers to share their work outside our organization? The site structure around concepts/content/skills would be complicated, and then there would need to be some specific diagnostic tools created as well as some motivational interactive learning tools, specifically made to develop mathematical inquiry skills and to use math in real-life problems. Altogether, that could potentially be a Masters Project. Hmmmm.

Underestimating Big Time!

July 3, 2019 / ctrades

“Mantelpiece Clock”by Ian Fuller is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

The amount of time to get through the assigned readings was more than what I expected, having forgotten the idea that each hour of class probably requires two hours of preparation. Plus, my ability to analyze and evaluate needs a substantial amount of actual ruminating as what I have read percolates through my accumulated knowledge. Therefore, it takes more time than anticipated – new skills for estimation of time to complete a job are required!

I appreciate that our first set of readings included a movie to set the questioning tone for our degree. Why technology and project-based learning and why now? Yes, the movie left much unsaid by focusing on just a few students, but it is a movie; when watching it as a documentary, you have to question what is behind the scenes that could be filmed to prove the totally opposite points. Similarly, the two readings presented opposing extremes of teaching methods while referencing the same study of medical students and interpreting the data to support their position. The truth likely lies somewhere in the middle.

The movie, Most Likely to Succeed, was presented in a way to convince the audience that project-based learning is the teaching method of the future. Some essential truths presented were:

– Education systems created for the industrialized age do not necessarily apply to our technology/information age.
– When you DO it, you remember it because you were involved. (which actually works well when you consider the apprenticeships that took place in the Medieval period and are still in place as an education method today).
– Problem-based learning develops soft skills (competencies) needed for moving forwards in a world where knowledge can be researched in an instant and basic skills can be completed by a robot.
– Problem-based learning encourages growth mindset, and can build perseverance, resourcefulness and resilience.
– Actually creating a final product results in the satisfaction of having done something new and helps students with learning to deal with stress (Stress is a very real problem in our current workplaces. At school, we can, hopefully, provide students with more tools to manage and cope with stress.)

Our two readings, Teaching for Meaningful Learning (Barron & Darling-Hammond) and Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work (Kirschner, Sweller & Clark). My primary disagreement with the Kirschner et al. article was its limited definition of learning “as a change in long term memory”. The Merriam Webster dictionary defines learning as

1: the act or experience of one that learns – a computer program that makes learning fun
2: knowledge or skill acquired by instruction or study – people of good education and considerable learning
3: modification of a behavioral tendency by experience (such as exposure to conditioning)

The Oxford Dictionary defines learning as

“The action of receiving instruction or acquiring knowledge; spec. in Psychology, a process which leads to the modification of behaviour or the acquisition of new abilities or responses, and which is additional to natural development by growth or maturation; (frequently opposed to insight).”

Both of these definitions reference behaviour and behaviour modifications as a part of learning and the Kirschner et al. article downplays the importance of this. Even when describing crossing the street, Kirschner et al. only alludes to the importance of “information in long-term memory (which) informs us how to avoid speeding traffic, a skill many other animals are unable to store in their long-term memories” and does not include the requirement of trying out that information multiple times in a real-life situation in which more information is gathered until you do not have to think about the information and your behaviour in most crossing-the-street situations is automatic. How successfully would a person cross a street if they only relied on memorized information? And I am not talking about crossing at lights, but at an uncontrolled area that was busy? There is a need for both gathering information as well as real-life opportunities to use that information.

Kirschner et al. also states that all information stored in working memory is lost in 30 seconds and only a few (2-3) new pieces can be retained, but items in long-term memory can be brought in over and over. According to the article, inquiry-based instruction does not support the limitations of working memory. Yet part of project-based learning is the requirement for students to communicate and make lists of ideas, information gathered and approaches tried, so they will be bringing in the information multiple times in order to get it stored in working memory. This is no different than bringing in the new bits of learning multiple times by having students hear it or practice it multiple times.

“balance” is licensed under CC0 1.0

In my opinion, we need a happy medium; a balanced approach. Variety is good for students to be excited and not become stagnant. Some drill is helpful to speed up recall and develop behaviours that are automatics. Exploration is helpful to test basic knowledge and connect what you know with what you are learning. No one method is ‘the best’. Even Kirschner et al. quoted other studies while referring to the practice at medical school where students experience problem-based learning:

“as students are grappling with a problem and confronted with the need for particular kinds of knowledge, a lecture at the right time may be beneficial . . .participants trained in PBL retained the backward-directed reasoning pattern, but did not seem to acquire forward-directed reasoning, which is a hallmark of expertise.”

As Barron and Darling-Hammond’s chapter states:

“When teachers don’t fully understand the complexities of inquiry-based learning, they may simply think of this approach “unstructured,” and may, as a result, fail to provide proper scaffolding, assessment, and redirection as projects unfold.”

Successful education of the students in front of you is never the same from group to group and therefore we should base our educational practice in a broad mix of instructional techniques. We should not underestimate what type of educational style will be the ‘proper’ one to reach our students.

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