Category Archives: Module A

Meritorious Post – Module A

Week 1 Discussion: Auto e-ography

Context:

This was a threaded conversation in response to my original post. I had shared a quote from one of my associate teachers and hinted that sometimes technology doesn’t have a place in all our lessons; we need to consider the benefits of the educational value and the costs from implementation. This created a larger conversation around frameworks for selecting technology like SAMR and SECTIONS. In this reply to Ram, we were discussing the SAMR model and using technology for multiple representations of learning.

Post:

Hi ____,

I think I would classify that more at an Augmentation level because now the inclusion of technology has a pedagogical purpose.

For greater context, my associate teacher’s example for where technology was a substitution he didn’t want to use was connected to algebra tiles. He didn’t think using algebra tiles was useful because his usual methods would be just as or more effective and algebra tiles would introduce more challenges (because of the zero pair) for his specific demographics of students. As well, using algebra tiles doesn’t link students to developing digital skills.

For the movie making and alternate forms of assessment that use technology, I’ve always been hesitant with this because of the potential for grade pollution and the challenges of trying to get students to learn the digital skills. To be fair, I’m not a practicing classroom teacher anymore and when I was, I didn’t have the opportunities to implement some of the ideas I had, so I don’t know if these ideas will be practical. However, these are my concerns and suggestions:

Grade pollution: Are we marking the product or the content? I can see challenges with unearthing student learning if it’s masked by a different medium and especially if it’s one that they are unfamiliar with. Regardless, this is always a challenge with any form of assessment.
Learning digital skills: Super important for sure, but challenging depending on the teacher’s own skills set. What happens if the teacher isn’t familiar with movie pre-production, production, and post-production? Is the teacher interested in these phases, or does the interest lie solely in using software? I don’t know how feasible this might be in your school, but connecting to a media arts or communications technology teacher would be really useful here. It would be really cool to team teach this. If not, I think the usual path I’ve seen teachers take is to tell the students to figure it out on their own.
Addressing students’ feeling of learning: I didn’t realize how important this would be until I further reflected upon Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory.. Essentially, if students don’t realize they are learning or feeling that they are unable to take control of their learning, they will not self-regulate and miss out on the learning opportunities. From the teacher perspective, I would like to implement tiered assessments:
- Encourage students to try demonstrating their learning through different media through expectations and assignment weight values: Throughout the term, students will have X number of assignments. Some assignments will have higher weights, while others will have lower weights. For a higher weighted assessment, students have free choice over the medium (e.g,, essay, presentation, movie). For a lower weighted assessment in this group, students are NOT allowed to choose a medium they have previously used (especially one that they are more comfortable with; this is negotiable with the students). Hopefully the lower weighting takes the pressure off and encourages exploration.

From writing this, I can see that I have a very teacher-oriented approach. This is a result of my current personal learning theory and experiences with students. Having students take free reign over learning new media is definitely great, but it would depend on your specific group. I believe that structure and experts are important and it would be helpful for students.

Outside of this specific assessment medium conversation, digital skills and technology resources are so important! I think the selection of these tools and resources will stem from a deep understanding of the discipline and its pathways.

Reflection:

I think this was my meritorious post because of the conversation it was connected to. This post was very important in helping unearthing a variety of underlying assumptions about teaching, learning, and technology:

Personal learning theories
Frameworks for selecting, designing, and applying technology
Concerns about assessment, grade pollution

Personal learning theories: As I reflect upon this post, I see more and more of my teacher-oriented approach to teaching and learning. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s important to identify this underlying assumption. It’s clear from my future discussions and posts that I often think of technology as what a teacher uses, what a teacher does, and how students are impacted. In these cases the teacher is an active agent, but the students are acted upon.

In unearthing these underlying assumptions, I know that this comes from my experiences as a supply teacher and university teaching assistant. The lack of control and time have caused me to prioritize and efficiently use direct instruction. This has led me to a more behaviourist and cognitivist bias in my teaching. My preference is to transition from behaviourist to cognitivist to constructivist approaches. This scaffold fits well with Bloom’s taxonomy as long as it involves modelling, shaping, and fading.

It’s important for me to be aware of my personal learning theory because it influences how I select, design, and apply technology.

Frameworks: Choosing technology within a framework is important as it grounds us in pedagogy. I am still trying to wrap my head around my ETEC 524 instructor’s comment on dismissing the Substitution from the SAMR model, but it’s challenging. I do prefer the detail of the SECTIONS model, but will use the SAMR model as a quick test.

Assessments: My current bias is to engage students through assessment. Since marks and feedback are valued and are used to shape behaviour, I am often thinking about how the structure of assessments are used to encourage learning. Assessment and evaluation is a tricky topic because it’s hard to tell what a student knows. Of course, we can get a window into this through multiple, frequent, varied, valid, and transparent assessments, but this is easier said than done.

Regardless, it’s important to engage students in assessments that help them develop digital skills and technical skills as aligned with the discipline.

Week 3: Interview Reflection Post

From the interview discussion thread, the overall themes that I’ve seen arise are:

There isn’t enough time or training for using technology in the classroom
- Funding and rapid changes with technology make it difficult for schools to keep up
Technology can be a distraction
- There are challenges with the everyday vs. academic use of technology
Teacher attitudes towards technology impact its integration in the classroom
- If a teacher is resistant to technology and doesn’t see its utility, then it will be poorly integrated if at all
- Peers who have posted about integrated PD and mentorship have mentioned that they are poorly used. This is due to competing priorities with the need for prep. Given a busy teacher schedule, technology and new pedagogy are often lower priority than the immediate classroom survival.
Technology enables multiple representations of learning and discipline specific use
- From using technology in assignments to get students to develop digital skills and engage in a platform to practice digital citizenship, technology leads to opportunity
- When materials are scarce or specific experiences are not possible, VR, video, and other digital archives/worlds are important

Change in understanding of issues

What I’ve been seeing from the discussions so far is that technology isn’t always the topic. Connected topics, like training, pedagogy, and access to technology, are often what comes up instead.

I wonder if these conversations are partially reflections of teacher attitudes:

it’s too hard to do this alone
there are too many competing priorities, we need to focus on surviving

There is a desire to improve teaching and learning with technology, but the lack of training, time, and funding seem to limit the implementation.

It’s also important to consider the context in which most of my colleagues are discussing. Many are working in the public sector in elementary and secondary schools. In these contexts, there may be less choice in what a teacher can do (e.g., the curriculum is set, technology is selected at the board level) and there are many responsibilities put onto one person. In my context, we are very lucky to have a teaching team and staff to work on supporting our course. With this brings different reporting structures and the transition to get support, but there are many steps in place. The funding available for technology is also different. I find that at a large post-secondary institution there are more avenues to get access to technology that may not be as available for others.

I’m curious as to how the role of outreach between institutions and schools can be better leveraged. This could be a nice connection to inform everyone’s practice, but I recognize that this is difficult and depends on location and funding.

Interview Excerpts and Analysis

Excerpt

Analysis

How do you think your students perceive the use of technology in a science classroom?

I feel like when I used Padlet specifically, there is a lot more engagement. I found that these days you just ask students “what do you think about this?” or “what do you think the answer is?”, there’s always only two three students who actually participate and voice out their answers and say what they think. But if it’s something that allows them to be anonymous, and not show that they made a mistake or don’t know about something, then they will participate more. It gets rid of the whole burden of being embarrassed about not knowing something.

Technology’s helpful in getting students to participate and amalgamate data. A student response system like padlet can be used to highlight specific responses (e.g., misconceptions, model responses, interesting ideas) to support discussion.

Questions like “what do you think about this?” and “what do you think the answer is?” seem like they dominate in a teacher-oriented class. As well, they appear like weaker activities that are done during whole-class instruction.

With technology and different forms of assessment, students have alternate methods to express their understanding. There’s also comfort in low stakes formative assessment.

What challenges have you faced when using technology in the classroom?

I find that students get a faster idea of how to use technology because they have more experience with using multiple different types of technology. It comes with their age group or generation, but they get distracted easily. They try to multitask a lot which doesn’t work all the time.

Technology can present distractions. Our students have greater access to technology and this can make them more familiar with basic technical skills. However, technology and phones are often designed for entertainment and to keep users engaged. Multitasking, devices, and the given tasks all compete for student attention.

How do you deal with these challenges?

With younger groups, I try to make sure they know when they’re allowed to use their devices and when they shouldn’t be. I try to also let them know about, like, oh it’s better if you write certain things down physically than to type everything out because you’re engaging more with the content.

Co-regulating the use of devices by setting up norms and expectations can help students recognize responsible/appropriate and irresponsible/inappropriate use of technology.

Connecting distractions and technology use to how people learn is important. Highlighting cognitivist principles can emphasize how learning works, how attention works, and how our behaviours influence these.

How have your students used technology in the classroom?

If one student doesn’t write notes very well and there’s one student that does take notes very well, they’ll do the Google Docs thing, where they’ll share/combine everyone’s notes into one Google Doc and just share it with the class. So there’s a collaborative element that I’ve been seeing more of.

Students can use technology in novel and unexpected ways. This collaborative note-taking is an interesting way of filling in gaps and resource pooling.

Connecting with our students about their technological preferences, uses, and experiences can give us insight into how they tend to learn.

Re: use of technology in the classroom

I just find that there are so many [chemicals] that are banned now. You just can’t do it in the classroom anymore so a lot of the time you have to resort to showing it from the internet. I’m trying to do certain experiments, and then I find out the chemicals are banned and then I’m like, well what’s my alternative?

When real experiences become limited, one way to keep them is through a digital archive. Although this is a bit artificial and we still want our students to develop the requisite skills connected to a hands-on experience, our assessment tasks need to change.

Week 3: Case Study Reflection

Something I’ve been noticing from our course discussions so far, that has been really highlighted in the Case Study thread, is that we aren’t talking about technology. Of course, there is discussion around technology and tools that people are using, but a lot of the discussion is really connected to pedagogy and training.

So far the larger themes that have emerged from the conversations are:

Training
Skepticism surrounding use of technology
The changing role of the teacher

Training

There’s been a lot of commentary about how there isn’t enough training on how to use technology in the classroom. A challenge that many have been highlighting is that it takes a lot of time for the teacher to learn how to use the technology, how to use it for teaching, and then implement it into the classroom. From the sounds of it, many of our classmates have been experiencing teacher as DIY lone rangers.

From a public high school perspective, I can understand what the sentiments for better training. As a newer teacher, I know that my teacher’s college experience didn’t provide a ton of training on technology. We did have a really useful workshop on technology with different breakout sessions. I don’t know if there’s a way for teacher’s colleges to present everything teachers would ever need to know. At the same time, something that a professional teacher needs to demonstrate is professional knowledge and the willingness and commitment to ongoing professional development. In the mind of a pre-service teacher, directly applicable skills and the how-to are so important. Pre-service teachers need this context and sometimes the more theoretical aspects of teacher’s college can be lost. There really needs to be a balance between these competing priorities.

Linking back to technology, there are so many moving pieces. Even if a teacher candidate is “trained” with a specific device, it doesn’t necessarily mean that a public school has access to this technology or the same model of the device.

Learning how to be a teacher doesn’t end at teacher’s college. Future formal and informal learning opportunities are required to hone our practice. A really interesting suggestion from a classmate was that teachers could be required to take specific courses to be re-certified after a specific time period. I don’t know if I agree with this because this could be very expensive and I don’t know how this could be implemented. In some ways, it looks like an added layer of responsibility being added to what teachers must do.

I’m all for learning about technology and pedagogy and their implementation in the classroom, but I wonder about the push back and how this could impact informal learning. I wouldn’t want these mandatory paid courses to negatively impact the perception of training and continuing development. Instead, I think a strong culture of community of practice would be very helpful. This helps to maintain the academic freedom for teachers, while encouraging teachers to learn and develop more. The community of practice could also be integrated within the existing culture and transition into professional teaching. Perhaps newer teachers are paired with mentor teachers. The pairing could be done based on interests and include a school community of practice.

Skepticism around technology

There’s been commentary around the reliance of technology and technology as a substitute.

For example, the case where graphing calculators are shown to students and used before students learn how to graph was seen as problematic. In this case, there were concerns about students not actually knowing what they were doing and are just using the calculators to get the answer. Here I wonder if the learning objectives have really been achieved if students don’t know what they are doing. I think the calculators can be useful in supporting students in their zone of proximal development (e.g., solving harder problems, and focussing upon the logic). However, a counter argument could be that students always have access to technology.

In terms of technology being a substitute, it can be difficult to see what its role is when we look at a lesson from a reductionist perspective. Yes, technology can make things faster, it can simplify tasks, and in some cases, it does look like it’s merely there. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean we should discount its utility and role in the classroom. From a pragmatic perspective, technology is here to stay and students should learn how to work with and around it.

Something that I’m noticing is that although the activities we do may be more technology enhanced, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the products that students produce are changing. Perhaps this also needs a re-think.

The changing role of the teacher

I wouldn’t say that technology makes everyone an expert, because there are discipline specific skills and knowledge that may not be picked up by a novice. Instead, technology can help anyone access an expert. With this, the teacher role can shift to more of a facilitator. If an activity leverages collaboration and peer-to-peer instruction, the teacher could check in on the groups.

In the most ideal case, I don’t think a classroom is full of only teacher-instruction or peer-instruction, instead I think learning will cycle between the two.

End of Week 2: Unpacking Assumptions

This discussion seemed a bit weaker than the Conceptual Challenges thread. The challenge with online forums is that I never know if people aren’t commenting because they agree with the post, if they have nothing to say, or they cannot relate to the post.

From re-reading everyone’s posts, I noticed the following trends:

Technology’s primary perceived uses are tied to teacher-content and student-content interactions: Although there were posts that mentioned how technology could be used to get students to work together, this was not as well explored. Technology, in the form of AR/VR and animations was suggested as a way to present content and allow students to explore phenomena. Although there is the potential for inquiry, there is an underlying tone of individuals as independent observers. The perception here could be that science is something that is observed primarily by the individual, but potentially in conjunction with others.
The inclusion or integration of technology is weighed to be pragmatic: The selection and application of technology depends on the cost (monetary and time), ease of use, and student needs. If the benefits do not outweigh the cost, technology is not used.
Technology plays an important role in multiple representations of content: This can be very useful in highlighting alternate conceptions.
Technology can motivate students: This was an interesting point. It was suggested that technology could be used sparingly or in specific contexts to engage students. I don’t know how I feel about this, but I know it would depend on the individual’s classroom and students. However, I think the use of technology in multiple representations and ability to connect to inquiry and doing, can facilitate active learning.
Teachers may feel resistance to using technology: Since technology can be used to support inquiry and independent learning, the role of the teacher changes. This may cause discomfort for both teachers and students. Teachers may not be used to not knowing the content/applications as well. Students may not like the added responsibility of independent learning and perceive having to take the initiative with less support from the teacher as not learning. These feelings of teaching and learning will need to be addressed.

Overall, I’m wondering if our assumptions about the use of technology in math and science classrooms comes from the disciplines themselves. Of course we are not dealing with just content misconceptions, but misconceptions about teaching and learning.

Week 3: Case Studies

Case 6: Teacher G

Teacher G is an engineering professor who uses clickers in the classroom. I sympathize with the challenge of gauging what students know and getting them to participate. The challenge of a large classroom is the inability to connect with students on a one on one basis. In post-secondary institutions, it often seems like we’re in a race against time to jam content into our students, but it just leaves us all exhausted.

In Teacher G’s case, he used clickers to get students to participate and then uses the response distribution to decide if a concept needed to be taken up or not. He appears to have leveraged peer-to-peer instruction during the clicker sessions.

Somethings that I wonder about in watching Teacher G’s lesson are:

How are the clicker questions made? From one of the vignettes, I realized that he might be creating the questions himself based on student misconceptions he has seen in the past.
How does he get students to buy in/participate? Teacher G mentioned that in student evaluations, there were students who really liked the clickers. He didn’t mention any data about students not liking them. To me, his class looked small, about 75-250 students. In the course I support, we have about 500 per lecture section and using the classroom response system (Mentimeter or Kahoot! depending on the activity), we might get anywhere from 80-350 unique participants; we can’t tell if students are actually paired up for activities. Do students have pre-lecture tasks? How does he approach readiness and feelings of learning?
How are clicker activities structured within a lecture? The section with the student testimonial seemed to suggest that professors were using PowerPoint presentations and overheads, while Teacher G used clickers, possibly in addition to these methods. However, it’s unknown if the clicker activities are done before, after, during direct instruction or another form of instruction.
How are clicker activities structured within the syllabus? Are these for marks?
What support is available to instructors who are using clickers? From the way the students were dressed, this was probably in the 90’s-00’s and it seemed like clickers were something Teacher G was lone rangering.
What types of support are available to students who are struggling with the content? It looked like only Teacher G and the students were in the room. Does Teacher G circulate during clicker time to speak to students? What happens to students who are struggling; are they identified?

What doesn’t shock me about this case study is that Teacher G’s class is very similar to what post-secondary classes today. Our post-secondary classrooms are designed to be theatres to listen to someone present. Even if the architecture of the room is put aside, what we’re really seeing is that there isn’t a lot of teacher to student support. In the large engineering course I support, we have an additional 4-8 members of the teaching team present who will circulate during activities. Not everyone is reached, but the support is present.

Case Study 1: Teacher M

It was hard to hear what was being said in this videos, but it looks like Teacher M et al are using project based learning and inquiry. Peer-to-peer instruction is also leveraged. The projects and inquiry work well in contextualizing the content within STEM. There was also really good leveraging of open access resources for students to develop auxiliary skills. The teachers also discussed outreach between high school and post-secondary education to benchmark. I laughed when they said this because when I was teaching high school, our administration would show us these extreme examples as evidence that we shouldn’t be doing what we are doing (e.g., to show that we shouldn’t do multiple choice: a physics test from a different school where the options are paragraphs, the correct answer would be found if students notice that “desert” is spelled as “dessert”. This was clearly an invalid assessment; students misattributing stress from writing exams from being in the room they are writing in = we cannot have exams in the cafeteria because it is scary, instead we should write in our classrooms where there aren’t enough tables and chairs). When teachers in university-prep courses said we were preparing our students for university, we were told that we weren’t supposed to do that.

Something that surprised me from this clip is that technology wasn’t necessarily applying to computer programs or apps. It was applying to specialized tools the discipline uses (e.g., probes).

Similarities and Differences Between the Case Studies

What I’m noticing between the case studies is how the station and project activities that are typically done in elementary grades start to disappear as students go to secondary and post-secondary. Tests are typically what get emphasized more and projects start re-appear in the end of post-secondary when the relevant skills have either stagnated or never developed.

The projects and inquiry being done in Teacher M’s high school are important. I wonder how the students were supported in the transition into this type of learning. Having to take responsibility for one’s own learning is often a cognitively dissonant experience. As well, it’s tricky for the teacher to shed the traditional teacher persona. I think the questions that arise from the inquiry and constant engagement in the new tasks can help bring out developing misconceptions. The teacher will need to check in frequently.

Another topic that comes to mind is the high school experience of group work. I know that some students might think that peer-to-peer instruction is bad because it involves “the blind leading the blind”, but the teacher is still present and can facilitate/correct learning. However, some students may be concerned about freeloading group members. The other challenge of these group work activities in Ontario, is that they are hard to assess. We can’t really tell where a specific student put in the work, and try to get them to submit their own individual components and the end team product is a very small percentage. I don’t think an individual mastery policy is possible, but this is what the engineering course I support does:

Team Assignments, Attribution Table: Students submit an attribution table to show the allocation of work. After the TA awards a grade for the product, individual penalties are applied to students for undercontribution
Individual Mastery Policy: We have individual and team based assignments. If a student is unable to earn at least 60% in their individual assignments, then they do not get any of their team assignment marks. So if a student has an average of 55% in their individual assignments and an average of 90% in their team assignments, their final course grade is 55%.

Overall, I’m having difficulties seeing how these strategies can be applied. Perhaps the part that surprises me the most is that the case studies discuss how students are using technology. Upon reflection, I realize that this was missing from my Unpacking Assumptions post. I think I need more time to mull over this.

End of Week 2: Conceptual Challenges

This week we have two discussion threads, from the thread on conceptual challenges, I am re-thinking language, visuals, and assessments.

Academic vs. Colloquial Language

There were great discussions connected to shortcuts. Something that was pointed out was the use of “lazy language”. I don’t know if I agreed with this word choice, but essentially it could include cases where students and teachers use colloquial (everyday) language to explain academic concepts that require technical and discipline specific terms. Colloquial language can be problematic because its context is not always technical or can fit in contexts that are inconsistent with a discipline’s context.

Math and Science Examples of Academic and Colloquial Language

Academic Language	Colloquial Language
Reciprocate the fraction	Flip the fraction Invert the fraction
This is the favoured orientation for this molecule because it maximizes stability.	This is the favoured orientation for this molecule because it is happy like this.
This substance slows down the rate of reaction, it is an inhibitor.	This substance slows down the rate of reaction, it is an anti-catalyst.

The above examples of academic vs. colloquial language are some that I have used before. After speaking to other colleagues, they pointed out that some of our word choices impact topics that they teach later (e.g., reciprocate vs. invert: using “invert” later causes confusion with “inverse functions”).

Strategy to approach the use of colloquial language

Shortcuts and colloquial language are not inherently bad. Starting with colloquial language to engage students can be a useful entry point. However, teachers need to remember that the end goal is to get students to recognize and use academic language. Colloquial terms and incomplete academic language may be linked to other parts of a students’ schema, which can impact the development of alternate conceptions.

Like with English Language Learners, I don’t think it’s appropriate to stop the learner at every point they make an error. Instead, it would be more effective to:

Ask for clarification about what a student is trying to say
Model academic language by paraphrasing the colloquial language into academic language
Praising students when they use academic language
Use praise and scaffolding to shape behaviour
Make connections between colloquial and academic language and how they are different

Using colloquial language as an entry point and as an analogy can also be helpful:

Domain: for this function, where does it live? What x values can the function take?

Visuals and Examples

Another area that was discussed was the examples that are seen by students and how technology can facilitate multiple representations of content and exploration. There are no perfect visuals when trying to represent abstract concepts. In the Private Universe, it was pointed out that the alternate conception about seasons being formed due to the distance between the sun and the earth partially comes from the perspective drawing of earth’s orbit. In addition to this perspective drawing, it’s important to show the orbit from the top view, highlighting that the orbit is approximately circular, and by using animations. These multiple representations are important to highlight the flaws in some representations and to develop a better understanding of a concept.

Similarly, it’s important to carefully select examples. A variety of examples is important in contextualizing that the concept is not an exception. As well, the examples should highlight the skills necessary in understanding the concept.

Assessments

Assessments are where students make their learning visual. Even if students have access to great scaffolding and modelling for academic language and a wealth of strong examples and visuals, they may still form their own alternate conceptions. Students need to practice strengthening their schema, discarding incorrect conceptions, and creating connections between schema. This can be done through assessments.

There were some really excellent examples of assessment questions that would reveal if students have a deep understanding of the topic. These included determining the climate of an unfamiliar place based on ocean currents, longitude, and latitude, and explaining in what circumstance squirrels with yellow feathered feet would increase in population.

Unpacking Assumptions

The good use of technology depends in the framework in which it contributes to. We can examine the technology we select through SECTIONS so that we consider the students, ease of use, cost, teaching function, interaction, organization, networking, and security (Bates, 2016). The technology choice in the classroom (rather than for a wider spread integration), should examine the students, ease, of use, cost, teaching function, and interaction between students, technology, content, and teachers. This shortcut to the SECTIONS framework grounds the use of technology within social and pedagogical goals while being mindful of the on-boarding required to transition and engage users.

Using the SECTIONS framework, technology isn’t always needed. I have to consistently remind myself that if technology is the answer, I might not be asking the right questions (or at all).

If we connect back to the educational goals of the lesson, I think technology’s role could be to:

Teach digital skills: This could be useful if we are trying to get students to learn specific software and the technical skills that come with it.
Leverage technology’s affordances: at a very basic level, this could be for research. For science and math, this could be for visualization. Particularly in sciences, technology can be used to test out ideas and conduct virtual labs/simulations.

Classroom technology can be supported through a model. Especially at the high school level, face-to-face learning is important. For this reason, I am interested in a blended model. to support how technology works within a larger learning framework.

It would be really cool to have a flexible workspace for math and science classrooms. This would look a little different based on the class because science classes have/need lab space. In the sketch I’ve provided, a lot of the space has been modelled around what I’ve seen in active learning classrooms at the post secondary level. The orange-yellow ovals in the floor plan represent where projectors would be placed. The walls of the room are white boards. Of course, the implementation of this technology is going to be very very expensive. I believe a small size active learning classroom can cost about 1 million dollars.

Something I realized when I sketched the room is that this space is based on the Flex and Station blended models. I like the idea of students being able to choose the space they work in while the teacher can direct different types of activities through stations. The zoning of spaces brings out an architecture of collaboration which can be further enhanced by technology. What the flexible workspace emphasizes is the potential for collaboration and highlighting that process work should be shown. Whether technology is used in this space or not, the architecture of the room facilitates activity.

In the space I sketched, I imagine that overcoming alternate conceptions in a science class would be linked to:

Collaboration and discussion with peers: The use of white boards and projections can support annotation, research, and observation. Overall, it’s hoped that the students’ thinking is made visible
Access to labs = Experimentation: If one of the big ideas of science is to get students to think like scientists, then they’ll also need to try out their ideas. Whether it’s access to a wet lab, dry lab, or a digital lab, students can experiment with their personal theories and examine their shortcomings. The digital component is also helpful in visualization of the microscopic and abstract. As well, students can compare their personal theories, what is physically observed, and what is simulated. This can lead to rich conversations about the limitations of simulations and how they may contribute to misconceptions.Through cycles of dis(equilibrium) and scaffolding/shaping from the teacher and others, students will learn.
Facilitation and direct instruction from the teacher: I imagine this space being used in cycles of direct instruction and activity where the teacher circulates and facilitates. I don’t think this is necessarily a space where one teacher is present, but many. Different kinds of groupings can be leveraged depending on the activity.

References

Bates, T. (2016). Teaching in a digital age. Retrieved from https://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/part/9-pedagogical-differences-between-media/

Conceptual Challenges

Heather’s misconceptions stemmed from applying colloquial understanding for key terms (direct vs. indirect rays) and the misattributing a textbook figure. I cannot comment on the conceptions about the moon phases because I’ve never learned astronomy before. As I watched the video, I wondered if Heather’s teacher engaged the students in formative or summative assessment. From the video, perhaps the teacher’s method of formative assessment was to ask, “Do you understand?”. What appears to have happened in this case is that the students each formed their own ideas and assumed that that is what the teacher also thought.

As Confrey (1990) explains, students’ conceptions form as per Piaget’s theory of assimilation. When forming schema, students are basing making connections based on their past experiences and prior knowledge. They individually construct these alternate conceptions and come to an equilibrium when they accept these information. However, if students are exposed to experiences that do not match their schema, they experience disequilibrium (Yilmaz, 2011). Students may:

disregard (accretion) the experience and continue with their conception
accept the experience as an exception (tuning) and continue with two conceptions
form a new theory (reconstruction) to explain the contradiction (Yilmaz, 2011)

Without any meaningful assessment, Heather and the other students constructed their own understanding but did not engage in cycles of (dis)equilibrium to shape their understanding to match that of an expert.

In ETEC 524, my unit of learning was based on misconceptions in Chemistry and how teacher candidates could use constructivist methods to overcome them (you should be able to see the course, if not please let me know and I’ll adjust the settings.). One of the activities I made was based on self assessing one’s own alternate conceptions. It’s interesting to hypothesize the origins of some of these alternate conceptions:

All liquids contain water (Jarvis et al, 2005).
- Water is probably the most common liquid students see. Due to its ubiquity, it’s likely the most common example and makes students think that it’s in all liquids.
- “Liquid” also has a colloquial use. Students miss the complete picture of substances and mixtures (academic language). For instance, some students might realize that milk contains water and think that milk is a pure liquid. However, it is a colloid.
If you leave a glass of carbonated water out and the bubbles leave it, the mass will stay the same (Jarvis et al, 2005).
- Students may think of their own experience where the mass feels similar and any difference feels negligible to them. As well, they might think that gasses are very light and think that this means they do not have a mass.
- Using the previous alternate conception, students might attribute a change in mass to evaporation of water.

To overcome some of these misconceptions, constructivist methods can be used to elicit, identify, and correct them. In the course I made, some suggestions and technology that could be employed included:

Web tools from the Royal Society of Chemistry: There are specific tools like concept cartoons, models, and animations. For something that already includes guiding questions, ExploreLearning Gizmos are often used. The idea here is help students visualize what is happening at the molecular level (in some cases) and for them to explain their private theories.

Outside of this, it’s important to consider how we engage students in assessment. Something that I’ve used/modified is a multi-tier multiple choice. This can be used to identify a misconception, why students think it, and the strength of the misconception (Caleon & Subramaniam, 2010). If using three tiers like Caleon & Subramaniam (2010):

Pick the answer
Why did you pick that answer
What is your confidence level that that is the correct answer (basically guessed to absolutely confident)

the idea here is that the confidence level gives an insight into whether students have an alternate conception (high confidence) or if they are guessing (low confidence).

References

Caleon, I., & Subramaniam, R. (2010). Development and application of a three-tier diagnostic test to assess secondary students’ understanding of waves. International Journal of Science Education, 32(7), 939-961. doi:10.1080/09500690902890130

Confrey, J. (1990). A review of the research on student conceptions in mathematics, science, and programming. Review of research in education, 16, 3-56.

Jarvis, T., McKeon, F., and Taylor, N., (2005), Promoting conceptual change in pre-service primary teachers through intensive small group problem-solving activities. Can. J. Sci. Math. Technol. Educ., 5(1), 21–39.

Yilmaz, K. (2011). The cognitive perspective on learning: Its theoretical underpinnings and implications for classroom practices. The Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas, 84(5), 204-212. doi:10.1080/00098655.2011.568989

End of Week 1: How do our Personal Learning Theories and Frameworks impact Technology in the Classroom?

The auto-eography discussion has been generating a lot of diverse experiences with technology! It’s been so interesting to read about how some of my colleagues have transitioned from little to no technology when they were young learners to where our world is now.

I’ve become more aware that I often think of using technology as how can the teacher, rather than the students, use technology. In the discussion connected to my original post, there has been a lot of healthy discussion about technology as a substitution and if/how technology should be used. I think our personal learning theories and frameworks have a strong impact on how we want to include technology in our classrooms.

Technology as a substitution

If we examine just direct instruction, technology has many roles, but I don’t think that the cost is worth the effort if the learning effectiveness is at the same level. This cost may come from the technology, learning how to use it, and the amount of time it takes to orient students to it. I use the SAMR model as a shortcut to decide if technology would be useful in a situation or not. If it only results in a substitution, it’s not worth it.

“In terms of SAMR model, I would not dismiss the substitution. Everything has its place, even when we buy a new sofa because of the colour, it does have its purpose, although not fundamental.”

— Natasha Boksic, ETEC 524 course instructor (Summer 2019)

This commentary about the potential use of substitution from Professor Boksic has been challenging my original thinking. Perhaps I’ve been neglecting how using technology impacts learners and their feeling of learning. Regardless, the SAMR model is not my preferred framework for the selection, design, and application of technology. I much prefer the SECTIONS framework because it facilitates a more nuanced and critical approach to justifying the use of a tool.

Technology integrated into assessment

Some of the most recent discussion is tied to using technology in assessment to build digital skills. This is definitely important and I wonder about how the big ideas of a discipline impact these choices.

As an example, I’ll share what I think would be two big ideas and technology choices in a Careers Exploration course:

Career development is lifelong: in Ontario, this course is open so students in it may be interested in a variety of pathways. Regardless, there may be a time when students are not affiliated with an educational institution and will not have access to the same resources.
- Leverage resources that are available to the public (e.g., open education resources, MOOCs, library resources, government resources)
Orientation and transition to post-secondary education can start earlier: a challenge I’ve observed that students have is that they aren’t sure what resources are available to them when they are in post-secondary education. As well, the resume and cover letter activities I’ve seen (in 2019) are the same as what I got as a student. When my students showed me their resume assignments, I was so annoyed that they had not been given examples of resumes or access to useful resources!
- University and College career centres often have great resources. A task could be to get students search: [post-secondary institution] career centre / resume resources / cover letter example and see what comes up
- This can help students recognize that there are resources available at this level that can also be freely accessed

Tiered assessments

With the push for authentic assessments and having students engage in multiple methods of expression, I’m still leaning towards tiered (by weight) assessment. I’ve never had the opportunity to implement this, but I imagine it working something like this:

Higher weighted assessments – students can choose the method of expression: Students can stay in their comfort zone while working on whatever the assignment is.
Lower weighted assessments – students must choose a method of expression they would not normally pick: The lower weight encourages exploration and should emphasize that trying new things is positive.

A challenge with multiple methods of expression is the teaching and learning of the digital skills. Not everyone has a production background or access to specialty software. In this case, it would be really helpful to leverage the community (e.g., media arts or communication technology teachers) as well as the internet.

Current thoughts

I’m excited for the Week 2 discussions because we’re exploring alternate conceptions. This will be a good opportunity to think about the big ideas in Chemistry and Mathematics and how that informs technology tool selection. Moving into Week 2, I want to think more about what technology looks like in the classroom (what the teacher does, what the students do, how students engage in activity/assessment) and how my personal learning theory and frameworks connect back to this.