Reflections on expanding on use of technologies in the classroom and move toward "flowware"

Some of my blogs lately have followed a pattern of: the plan, the implementation, what I learned. For this blog, I would like to highlight the digital risks I took this semester and list some digital accomplishments.

I got a real scare when the unit plan I had submitted to the Coetail wiki was blank. It helped me sympathize with students who even now are having frustration when we require them to use technologies they don't fully understand.

Being away from all this for a few weeks when I had to return to the US, I was surprised how much skill I lost for doing some basic technological things. I was making and storing voice threads when I left and I lack confidence in that area now.

I focused parts of lab lessons on properly referencing sources of digital information. I was surprised how weak some of my students still were in this area--even this week after I had specifically assigned products related to this.

During the beginning of this semester we discussed the validity of web resources. Students found some food web Internet resources with errors. I wrote the webmaster of one of these (US government) web sites and the site has been corrected and I received a letter from the webmaster of the site. I had asked for volunteers from the clas to do this, but none did). I shared this action and result with the class.

Unfortunately, they did not remove the site from the Internet before it had spread further into the cloud. A quick search just now found another site that uses that same image, is referencing the original source, and has a "topic editor" "reviewing and approving" it.

The students did collaboratively produce a common written product in the values of a resource unit, but I did not get them yet to publish to the world.

With numeracy being a goal for our department and with students having weaknesses in using and analyzing graphic information the units of population dynamics simulations and gathering Internet demographic information and developing a demographic transition model for two countries was ideal for addressing numeracy, student weaknesses, the IB Environmental Systems and Societies syllabus, and global citizenship. (Addressing globalization and numeracy standards were additional goals I mentioned in my Coetail Course 4 project preparation plans.) I am still grading the products, but initial results are encouraging.

Some of my students still lack skills in properly labeling their graphs with titles and axes labels. I offered regular Monday help sessions to address this, but weak students fail to come if they are not required.

Students really responded well to the computer 3-D animation of the parts of a DNA structure. I believe this really assisted the learning of some spatially oriented learners.

Editting on wikipedia was a bold and rewarding move for me. I guess this is the 'next step' in my preparing my students to become global publishers. I was pleased to find wikipedia specifically referencing research I did before I came to ISB and directly linking introductory content to an article I co-authored. I still have not met my goal of writing a new entry for wikipedia.

The unexpected benefit of having students use cell phones, as well as data logging equipment, was a leap in my understanding.

And, of course, the confort with trying out new things on PantherNet to expand student understanding is the most obvious way technologies have impacted student learning in my classes. My SmartBoard presentations are regularly part of my PowerPoint and are assisting students who are frequently absent this semester. Embedding videos and their links are becoming more and more frequent in my PantherNet pages with time.

This semester pushed me to move more toward the flowware that I discussed in a previous blog--seamlessly moving between optimally effective and appropriate technologies to provide students a richer learning environment.

Thank you to Dennis and Jeff for their expertise and patient support throughout this process.