Experiencing Group

Over the past few weeks, my Tech For Teaching and Learning class was split up into groups and assigned a research project. We were to use online resources to prepare a presentation about the 21st century education-related topic of our choosing. It was filled with every bit as much edge-of-your-seat excitement as it sounds like it was.

In all seriousness, I think this was a productive project that helped familiarize me with some important technological resources. Google Drive, the mechanism through which our groups collaborated outside the classroom, allows documents to be remotely accessed and edited by all designated group members, even at the same time. This is equivalent to being able to reach into the classroom from home with a super-long arm, working pencil-and-paper with three others who are doing the same, while also being able to see what everyone is doing. It's a radical technology that blurs the boundaries of the classroom - does it really even hae a beginning and end anymore? Fascinating stuff!

not quite, but close.

The content we researched dealt further with the use of technology as a facilitator of education  in the social studies classroom. Our research yielded many intriguing results, and I learned about a number of free online resources that are tailored for classroom use, including Google Earth For Educators, free content provided by the Smithsonian Institution and Library of Congress, and Sandra Day O'Connor's iCivics. This information will surely help me once I'm in the field, although by then I'm sure there will be even more useful and advanced technology to keep up with. It's important that I (and every other teacher) can stay on top of their game and ride the exponential curve of technological advancement in a way that can benefit students without becoming overbearing, useless, or obsolete.

The group experience itself was positive, for the most part. By collaborating, we were able to focus our individual research on narrow areas in such a way that our combined product contained great detail rather than simple overview. I feel that sometimes it was tough to coordinate group activity - to an extent, lack of face-to-face interaction seems to reduce personal accountability, leading to some sub-assignments falling through the cracks - but in general, online collaboration seems like a positive idea and a great new convenience. The "confererence room" is no longer confined in 4 walls - it is global and unlimited!

Powerpoint (Terrific)

In my Tech for Teaching and Learning class (which you are almost assuredly also a part of, if you're reading this; otherwise, you have way too much free time on your hands), students were asked to create a PowerPoint presentation that could be used to help accomplish one or more of Pennsylvania's curriculum standards. We were also encouraged to take risks with the project by including hyperlinks, embedded audio and video, or by hosting the video online. I've made a considerable number of PowerPoints in my time, but I had never been asked to create one with a specific instructional purpose before. This directive challenged me to make sure I had a good grasp of the information I was conveying with the presentation as well as mastery of its technological workings.

I decided to create a Jeopardy!-style review game, as my high school teachers often used such tactics to help reinforce study material or occupy the class with a game for a period so they didn't actually have to exert any effort in teaching. I'd call that a win-win! Since my major is Social Studies education, I chose the topic of Ancient Rome, since I know a lot about it and could use the information to address the standard about identifying how groups and individuals affected the course of history.

Rather than using an online template, I decided not to be a wuss and made one from scratch. I created a bunch of slides for the questions and answers, and held them together to a main game board slide with a series of hyperlinks. To keep things interesting, I decided that two of the slides would be "Daily Double" questions, which I prefaced with the Daily Double images from the actual Jeopardy. I embedded sound effects on these slides and set them to play automatically when the slide was displayed. I also included a Final Jeopardy slide, which featured embedded "think music" from the TV show that played on-cue when the icon was clicked. I ripped the audio files from youtube using Garageband, which I'm pretty sure is illegal to do, but I would hope that Alex Trebek or whoever else holds the rights to Jeopardy would be nice enough to appreciate my use of their license for educational purposes.

What is "not being buried with copyright litigation because of your boundless mercy???"

I was successful in my project; I managed to create a fairly professional-looking powerpoint that worked exactly how I wanted it to and was guided toward the appropriate standards. I was comfortable giving my presentation because I checked and double-checked to make sure every hyperlink was correctly connected and that my presentation was free of annoying spelling/grammar mistakes, and I was able to adequately explain everything I had intended for the project. I enjoyed seeing the types of presentations that my peers created, partly because I didn't have to think too hard about it and I was just plain sick of thinking at this point, and partly because the presentations I saw were very appealing, creative, useful, and different from mine. Hooray for variety! 

During this project, I learned many different ways that Powerpoint could be used to support and improve all parts of the classroom instructional process, beyond just being used to display information passively. It's important not to use technology as a crutch for lazy instruction - rather, we should use technology as a logical extension of excellent instruction.

I tried uploading my presentation to Google Docs so you could see what I did, but for some reason, doing that breaks all my hyperlinks and makes the presentation pretty much useless. So here's my narrative template, in case you'd like to see that for some reason! Hey, I'll take the bonus, for sure!

Narrative Template