Teaching with Technology Blog—Using Technology to Foster and Assess Student Learning

Pinterest & Flickr

Pinterest is a useful tool, as we really do "put a pin" in "interesting" finds on the Internet.  To foster learning, I usually go onto Facebook and skim through links, news feeds, and suggested sites.  Those searches lead to useful memes or articles, especially on scientific finds, where I can share information via Pinterest.  Websites typically contain Pinterest icons, this way I can direct students to anything from top technologies for college students to world news.  I find learning to be informal yet informational when I can tell students that there is a real world application, and then we can discuss the content and apply it to classroom theory (Shellenbarger & Robb, 2013).

Flickr can be used for more than storing and sharing your iPhone pictures.  Flickr provides students with a photo-narrative learning scheme (Kawka, Larkin, & Danaher, 2012).    As with pinned images and sites, Flickr provides students with a visual of how theory and real-world applications merge.  Students can learn image similarity, and therefore by grouping images together, they receive visual examples  of a lesson.  For example, if I am teaching about microscopic views of fungi, I can group these images I capture in class and place them online.  It is like a picture library once I group together all of our visuals, and this can serve as a review to exams that are practical in nature.

To engage students, I would create a Pinterest and Flickr account for the course and monitor the activity.  Pinterest is useful for engagement because students can "pin" any source that they feel aids their learning and share it with the whole class.  Chances are, they will select a site that teachers and other students didn't think of.  I would enable students to collaborate and add images to respective Flickr collections.  However, having students caption their images helps them to understand what they are actually seeing.  For example, if there is a picture of an amoeba, label the pseudopods.  

To access learning using Flickr, I would create a visual/ image-based test.  I already use images on exams, therefore Flickr Photo Quiz can be used as a sort of Jeopardy.  Pinterest can be used to aggregate quizzes, like personality quizzes.  Therefore, I would use Pinterest to house different sites that contain interactive quizzes.  The objective of interactive quizzes are to provide the students with instantaneous feedback, and with that feedback, students keep attempting the assessments for higher scores and understanding (Xi, 2010).  This repetition hopefully aids in long-term memory storage.

References

Kawka, M., Larkin, K. M., & Danaher, P. (2012). Creating Flickr Photo-Narratives with First-Year Teacher Education Students: The Possibilities and Pitfalls of Designing Emergent Learning Tasks. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 37(11). http://dx.doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2012v37n11.4

Shellenbarger, T., & Robb, M. (2013). Pinstructive Ideas: Using a Social Networking Bulletin Board for Nursing Education. Nurse educator, 38(5), 206-209. doi: 10.1097/NNE.0b013e3182a0e5e7

Xi, X. (2010). Automated scoring and feedback systems: Where are we and where are we heading?Language Testing, 27(3), 291–300.  Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.

Sustaining Technology Use- Doc Cams

Whether instructors use Skype, other video conferencing technology, a television, or projector screen in a lecture hall, a document camera is essential to science.  From experience, while Skyping students living on the opposite side of Florida or in Japan, a document camera was essential in showing students in real time how to perform pertinent mathematics. Similar to Khan Academy and mini lectures on YouTube, with a document camera I can speak and write, use different colors, and students are free to jump in and ask for clarification. 

Challenges were evident with technical difficulties, Internet connection, and orientation of the document camera.  For me to see the distance students’ calculations and correct them with each step, they would need a document camera. Cost is a challenge, as such technology could run $60 to $70. In person, the challenge is really to fund having the teachers’ document camera in the classroom, equipped with a projector.  This technology worked well for me when my chemistry teachers solved problems, way back in 2005.

To foster engagement, I would use this technology for online students as a whiteboard. For example, my Biology students are learning about Punnett squares; I could show them where to write the letters of genetic traits and how to pair them up. For Anatomy and Physiology, I would draw how blood circulates or how water flows in and out of red blood cells. From experience, sure PowerPoints are appealing, but students grasp the concept when they see me writing or drawing in real time, and they've expressed this.  In a larger class, like when I was a a student in a chemistry course with 200 people, a document camera enabled everyone to see the teacher’s sketches, and the teacher could indicate alternative ways to solve problems; plus, a microphone can be used so the ones in the back could hear (Bogard & McMackin, 2012). 

To sustain this technology, I need access to a document camera and the ability to connect it to a computer and projector, so the IT department would be consulted on the setup. During the lecture, I would conduct an informal discussion or survey of my class and see if writing out the procedures helped more than a PowerPoint. I would invite my dean to see the class dynamics. For my online students, I would conduct a virtual office hour session, use the document camera to aid in a video conference. I would solve problems, draw out concepts, etc., and then report it to my dean for our weekly updates.  I would collaborate with other designing faculty on how to sustain this as a technique on further courses, thus revamping office hours, where I just wait for students to email me.  By communicating with other professors and IT, we can teach each other and brainstorm ideas and troubleshooting techniques, thus moving away from resistance to an older technology that is still not always used, still seen as relatively new, and may be feared (Laureate Education, 2013).

References

Bogard, J. M., & McMackin, M. C. (2012). Combining Traditional and New Literacies in a 21st-Century Writing Workshop. Reading Teacher, 65(5), 313-323.

Laureate Education (Producer). (2013). Dr. Tony Bates: Overcoming resistance to technological change and sustaining change [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu