Theories on Adult Learning

Class four is complete! Theories on Adult Learning was a great class and totally applicable to what I do for a living. However, I am a little apprehensive about the next block of courses - Research Methodologies (ugh) & Intercultural Education (sounds interesting)

Today was really weird and everything felt off since the majority of my day was not taken up with class work. I am so accustomed to getting home from work and hitting the computer to work on these graduate classes that I felt somewhat lost! - not that I'm complaining!!!

3 down and 9 to go

Summer is winding down and I have officially wrapped up my first 3 graduate classes. I feel so accomplished! Taking classes during the summer has been one of the most productive uses of a vacation I have ever experienced. The graduate elearning program at TAMUC is ideal for any student who is interested in accelerated learning. Granted, organization and motivation are key components for success and if you lack either you are TOAST. Finishing in one year is the carrot on a stick that keeps me focused and on-task. By Christmas I will be half way done - and that is only after starting in July!

My students are in for a surprise when it comes to me providing a sympathetic ear for all their deadlines for written assignments. I would venture to say that I have written close to 30,000 words this summer - all in APA formatting, mind you, and with plenty of reference material to back up any conclusions I might have drawn. I am very excited about the content for the grad courses yet to come - I have already learned how to use several different tools that will be of benefit to my students this next year.

So much writing!!!

I knew that graduate school would involve some writing. I had no idea! Yikes. Thankfully I do not struggle with writing too much. I am usually forced to cut back rather than add more when it comes to writing and have to go back for many revisions. Can anyone say superfluous? Good writing is a challenge and I admire those who can make difficult content seem simple. A well turned phrase earns immediate respect in my book. I have a new appreciation for authors and poets.

Content Area Objects and Tools

I chose to investigate content area objects and tools because I want to make the best use of my time in this course. If I cannot use it in my classes I find it hard to justify the amount of time required to learn about it. Content defines who you are when you teach at the high school level. If I were not intensely interested in what I teach I would get another job. I love sharing my passion with my career and tech students. I think my excitement must rub off on them because they are often showing me pictures of their culinary experiments at home. 

The first question I asked myself was, "what kinds of intellectual tasks would my students perform that might be better accomplished with the use of technology?" To begin with, technology has been in the commercial restaurant for years and its use has expanded with POS (point of sales) systems that most businesses use today. More than ever before a technology system must be utilized to help food service businesses effectively track orders, inventory items, create schedules, make customer orders, manage (customers and employees), and train. Virtually no hospitality business can operate without one of these systems. By exposing students to how these systems operate while they were still in high school, I would be helping them transition. The kicker is: these systems are tens of thousands of dollars to purchase. Since I teach at a small 3A rural school this is not an option for me. Not to be deterred, I contacted several representatives of these companies: POSitouch, KitchenBrain, and Aloha to find out if a less expensive, pared down version might be available for my school. (I did this last year and hit a brick wall.)

In the meantime, I also checked out some ipad tools that are for system management (just not with commercial applications in mind) - How to Cook Everything, All Recipes Dinner Spinner and Epicurious. I determined that all three would be worth investigating so I downloaded them to take them for a trail run. Epicurious has a nice feature that allows a person to sync recipes from anywhere on the web for free and it also has a voice activated command mode. This is very important to me because of food safety issues and the danger of hands cross contaminating food and equipment. 

How to Cook Everything looked good originally and I loved the graphics, but it has a very limited number of recipes to access (compared to Dinner Spinner, which has about 15 times as many.) Bottom line: I will have to play with them some more to figure out all the applications that I might use them for in class. Off the top of my head, I can see using the tutorial component of How to Cook Everything to demonstrate techniques before heading to the kitchen labs. I can also see using the nutrition feature that Dinner Spinner offers when we analyze recipe ingredients to calculate fat, carbohydrate, and protein percentages. 

If I hear back from a POS sales representative I will post the gist of my conversation with them on this blog. If a system is not available for students to use for free or very low cost I will be back at square one for now...  

The second question I asked was "how does this help me meet the TEKs in my classes?" Certainly a POS system would help me meet the TEKS for Culinary I:

(7) The student uses technology and computer applications to manage food service operations. The student is expected to:

(A) use technology tools appropriate for the industry;

(B) operate technology applications to perform workplace tasks;

(C) explain the use of point-of-sale systems;

(D) demonstrate knowledge in computer programs used for food production;

As it stands now, I have been meeting these requirements by showing visuals on how they work, demonstrating how the school cafeteria system works, and pointing out how where the system is located, connected, and used when we go on field trips! Fortunately a few of my students see these systems already at their part time jobs, so they are familiar with them. As you can see, it has been difficult to meet these requirements...I hope those reps have good news for me!

Ultimately if we had our own POS system it would really bring to life all the aspects of a full scale restaurant operation. It would immerse them into the hospitality industry's use of technology. The apps I uploaded were nice, but they aren't a POS and they never will be. Their purpose is different. There are so many areas of the hospitality field that a real POS systems manages that it would help the students see the usefulness of the tools available (and there are many such systems to choose from.) My students would be able to manage our micro-business much easier than the spreadsheet system we have been using for ordering, calculating costs, managing product loss, and predicting profit. They would be learning by using a real world tool and "doing" what a culinary professional would do in the real world... Always a bonus in my book.

So many apps! So little time!

So many apps, so little time...

This week's exploration has only served to demonstrate how many options exist for me/my students to express ourselves and learn using technology. I attempted to find apps that I thought would be appropriate for high school students to use. The selection is incredible. It is so daunting that without a recommendation, it is almost impossible for me to choose something to practice using. Knowing that I might be able to use these apps in class - if I choose wisely, doesn't help to make this task easier.

 

I received an ipad mini at the beginning of the 2013-14 school year, but have just now had the time to actually learn how to use it for more than taking roll and uploading grades into powerschool. I received an itunes giftcard at the same time so that I could purchase apps, but am just now getting around to actually purchasing something. (Giving technology to people does not necessarily guarantee that they will have the time or inclination to use it - hence the year long gap.)

For this week's lesson I purchased the wolfram alpha app, on the recommendation of a friend, and have found it to be delightfully usable. The way I phrased questions made a huge difference in the type of answer I got - but boy, did I get answers in spades....and on practically anything I wanted. Some questions I asked were tabled with a..."this area is under consideration for development."

I liked the fact that my students could learn as much or as little as they needed from the answers they received. On the learning pyramid, wolfram alpha is near the middle since it does not require as much creative thinking on the part of the learner. With that said, however; the learner must establish a springboard or basis of knowledge before beginning creative endeavors and wolfram alpha would definitely provide that. For classroom application my students could potentially use it for research into nutrition topics before beginning a creative project. I would also like for my culinary students to create their own set of training videos to be used as a teaching tool for middle school students .

I believe that I will continue to reflect on how to use this tool, in conjunction with another creative tool (if I can find one I like) to achieve learning goals in my classes. The pedagogy of this approach would allow students the freedom to search and explore(for example: different grilling techniques, optimal temperatures for grilling, health effects of grilling with charcoal vs. gas) and then select which method (video, live demonstration, a mix of the two, audio only etc.) of how to communicate a nutrition concept or a culinary technique to another person(middle schoolers). The background information would have to be mastered first (content) and wolfram alpha and a video app (animoto) or audio app (audioboo) would incorporate the technology.

I did notice that many of the higher quality apps required a monthly or yearly fee such as animoto and  imovie --if you wanted the full version. There were cheaper "freebies" but they were very limited in scope. I loved animoto and it was so easy to put together a quick video of a dessert competition that my culinary students had this last spring. I also threw in pictures from a field trip we took to Stephan Pyles restaurant. I was disappointed that I could only view 12 of the 50+ pictures I took. I couldn't arrange them in the order I wanted either. The video was only 30 seconds long with the free version! Who makes a 30 second video??? - Not me! I need at least a minute. Not my students! Have you seen their albums? I was really hopeful that I could use it as an end of the year video clip to promote my classes among the freshmen and sophomores. Disappointment. My students could use it to showcase what they have been doing and learning to friends and family or demonstrate/teach what they learned. They could investigate with wolfram alpha and then put together a video of what they discovered on animoto. I would just have to get the yearly subscription. The question remains as to whether all of them could use it or just one.

Another app I investigated was viz (short for visualize). The demo video looked amazing and I was really excited to play with it. Reality check - it was entirely too buggy. The app kept closing when I attempted to use some of the customizations/modifications. That was completely frustrating and would drive my students insane. They would not have the patience to work with something like that and would ditch it in a heartbeat. I checked online and other people have had the same issues. Thank goodness it was free. That would have been wasted money.

Interestingly I found the app zite, which was listed near the top of the Bloom's taxonomy for ipads (in the evaluating section), to be a smart or learning app that was a newsfeed/magazine. I did not expect that. I'm also not sure how that makes it an evaluation tool for students. If they are using an app that filters news content based on their interests, that makes it a poor basis for comparing and evaluating anything.

I loaded popplet (the free lite version), but it was entirely too simple for the majority of my students. It was listed on the taxonomy chart at the analyzing level. I am using the TPACK model with my students to achieve a high level of learning already, using basic excel spreadsheets. They use the Chrome books or the microsoft suite of tools on the PCs in the labs to analyze and organize data. They put together spreadsheets demonstrating food cost analysis using microsoft excel. They compare costs of products, make adjustments based on their findings and create new products. Then they go through the evaluation process all over again. The only thing I could see that it did was simplify and bulletize information for splashing up a graphic for others to see. I did not want to pay $5 for an app that does something my students can already do (and do better) for free. Unless someone tells me the full version of the app is significantly improved, this one will remain in the app store.

All in all, these apps have demonstrated to me that there are new choices coming available almost daily - some very good, some bad. Many of them do offer the ability to create amazing projects, which is currently lacking in the experience of many of the students I teach. More than a few would say they can't or they don't know how to create when I ask them to create a project..perhaps it has been the affordability of the tools I have been using. They certainly dislike almost any tangible project they are assigned whether it is a poster, a demonstration, or a presentation.

Apps are things that my students relate well to. They will spend countless hours on their devices if I let them. One teacher I know had them load 4pics1word as a vocabulary/spelling reinforcement tool and they absolutely could not put it down. They even had me going for awhile. My students are perpetually loading new apps onto their phones. I will continue to test apps for the remainder of the summer because I have the luxury of time, which I never have during the school year. Hopefully I will find some gems! If you know of some that you would highly recommend please let me know :)

Educational Technology Investigations

These are some of the proprietary tools and websites I investigated for my graduate level educational technology class and my thoughts regarding each of them as potential hosting sites for an eportfolio.

Evernote is a virtual notebook that could be used as an eportfolio. It can be taken anywhere someone could take a real notebook or portfolio. Data can be conglomerated and shared with others. Like many other sites, the platform offered some advanced options with a paid premium service ($5 per month or $45 per year) - which are necessary if data is going to be shared or photo and video content saved. There is a degree of protection of data within the system, however, as with all electronic media a person would do well to have backup copies of everything. It does require a person to download the software and the software is compatible with many operating systems, even mobile devices. Evernote does reserve the right to change their software at any time, of course, potentially causing problems for those who wish to use this tool. On one hand I did not particularly like the selling point of dependence upon evernote for all my information. Security concerns are an issue for me plus I prefer to keep much of my data private. On the other hand, I do like the central nature of this site, especially for organizationally challenged students - who seem to perpetually lose everything I hand them. Digital copies that would allow them to edit and save work would help them keep track of things. I imagine that some are using similar mobile apps already. Evernote does synchronize across devices.

Digication was a proprietary site I investigated and the cost to host an eportfolio is reasonable for a teacher at $34.95 per year. It was advertised as providing unlimited storage space and looked like a potential contender but I did not sign up for the demo. It operates in a protected environment that could potentially used by students. One drawback to me was that it seems plain and not really as customizable as some of the other sites such as weebly, wix, or sites.google.com. It was also not free.I cannot see very many of my students using this tool because it is somewhat lacking in what I think would be visually appealing to them.

Yola is another free site that could accommodate an eportfolio. Unfortunately, you get what you pay for. Free = 2 choices of design styles and limit of 3 pages total. Upgrade options ranged from $5.95 to 24.95 per month with data limitations of 5MB on the low end and 150MB on the high end. I would venture that most teachers would not want to pay $300 per year to showcase a portfolio, even for the purpose of finding a job. They might pay $72, but I doubt it since there are other free sites for professionals that offer more choices and do not require such fees. The stock design choice was very disappointing, especially compared to wix and weebly(which I investigated last week and posted about in my blog already). Affordance for uploading images, video, and written content was much more straightforward with yola than some of the other websites and I was disappointed that I was going to have to pay if I wanted more options. I really liked the minimalistic clean look of this site, but not the limited number of choices in design. I do not think my students would pay to get more options, especially when free sites offer similar services.

Sites.google.com was a platform I addressed briefly in my blog last week. It could host an eportfolio as well. I played with the tool again and I was reminded of why I dismantled a previous website I hosted for my students. The interface is still not user friendly and I tried for hours to put together a site that was taking me just minutes on other platforms.  Ugh! No.Just No.

The hosting site I eventually chose for my eportfolio was wix.com. If I were going to ask my students to create a portfolio I would request that they strongly consider this site as a host service for their creations. First of all, it is free. Second, it is very user friendly and can be made into whatever you need - a business website, an eportfolio, a vlog, etc . It can be upgraded if necessary, however; the many free options would probably be ample for the novice website owner, student, or education professional in need of a hosting site for their eportfolio.

What I like most about wix is the unlimited number of pages and subpages that I can craft. My site looks customized even though I selected from one of the hundreds of stock templates as a starting point. There are more than adequate numbers of color schemes and backgrounds already provided or I can upload and create my own. The font selections are more limited but still agreeable. There were clear instructions for adding text, pictures, video content and apps. All of the icons I mouse over tell me exactly what they do - user friendly! The editing tools for the text are similar to the ones in the Microsoft Office suite, with which most people are familiar. All in all, the platform looks professional and unique, like I crafted it myself from code that I wrote. The biggest bonus is that for absolutely no cost it helped me create something that I would be pleased to call my own and it did not require me to know html to do so! 

Here is the beginning of my eportfolio site: http://shonamck.wix.com/foodforthought 

It is live, but it is also a work in progress and I do not have any artifacts loaded yet. Please share your thoughts  and experiences with eportfolios, I would love to hear about them!

Reconciling Efolio Issues

Eportfolios can be a truly useful tool for the classroom and for life. Being able to showcase evidence of learning that is lifelong has the potential to benefit anyone who is willing to put himself on display for all the world to see. However, that very same display of a life's work also carries with it the potential for damaging, negative, and even vindictive opinions when "evaluated" by those who do not understand the purpose of a portfolio--growth in an individual over time.
Another issue that I cannot get past at this point are the privacy and ownership issues that have been raised by the nature of technology. When discussing undergraduate portfolios completed at a university, who owns what and for how long? Who is allowed access and will the platform be accessible once the student graduates? Who pays for it?
As a teacher I must consider the regulations associated with digitizing student work and all the necessary permissions that must be granted. What about liability concerns for minors? These are some thorny questions that I am wrestling with before I can wholeheartedly embrace eportfolios for my students.  Have you reconciled these considerations? Are the potential risks offset by the potential benefits?

Technology Options for Educators

A blog is an online forum for sharing the thoughts and ideas of an individual or group of individuals. They can be configured in a variety of formats that are only limited by one's imagination and intended application. There are options that can be enabled by the blog owner(s) to allow others from the web community to provide commentary, if they so desire.

One of the more well known blogs, wordpress, offered impressive and possibly expensive options for professional bloggers who have the time and initiative to learn some of the tools and familiarize themselves with the seemingly unlimited customizations available. They did have a completely free option for those who are new to blogging, but it became difficult and time consuming for me quite rapidly because I was unfamiliar with many of the operations.  I moved on quickly to other less challenging options because of my frustration. The amount of time I was using to set up a practice blog gave affordance new meaning when interacting with wordpress. My husband has no trouble working with it, but he's an engineer.

Another of the more well known blogging sites that I investigated was tumblr.com. I have taught many students and young adults who use it, but the site's appeal has been lost on me in the past.  I had set up an account about three years ago, but I was even less technologically literate back then. I think I had been attempting to treat it like twitter instead of a blog site. I had to reset my password and dust off my account just to investigate. My daughter correctly pointed out that perhaps I had not given it a fair shot or even gone through any tutorials, so I took another look.  I had complained about the scroll forever nature of the site to her, then I noticed a handy little arrow in the top right hand corner that immediately took me to the top.  I could also control the feeds that I received down to how many per day and the time I wanted to receive them by editing the appearance.  The blog also allowed a quick hyperlink setup, audio and video linking. One thing I did not find that would offer affordance is a hovering option that would tell me the function of an icon when moused over so I didn't have to click on it to find out. Overall my skills are much better than they were several years ago, or else tumblr has gotten easier to use.  I think the former... I may resurrect my previously unused account this fall and post some things to see if my students indicate any interest.

Another option I looked at was blogger. It seemed intuitive and user friendly when I set up an account. Many of the icons told me what they were when I moused over them and the page allowed me to preview it before publishing.  I was reminded that I was looking at a preview via a banner splashed across the corner of the page. The mobile interface is clean and uncluttered and it showed me exactly what my post will look like from a phone, which is a bonus due to the fact that so many people use their mobiles for web related activities.  It is completely free and was reminiscent of the google sites application that I have used in days past.

After my initial post I found another site that I liked almost as well - weebly. The drop and drag options will appeal to those who have become accustomed to the ever popular iOS operating systems and touch screen technology. I played with it for several hours getting my site to look just like I wanted it. The font sizes increase and decrease similar to touch screens, by + or - with a mouse if you are using a desktop. One big drawback that I could see was the lack of a preview before actually publishing the content. Another drawback was the captioning for photos being limited.

Glogster was one of the the glogs I investigated because it offers a protective and child friendly environment. The biggest drawback I found was that it requires annual fees or site licenses from a school district to set up accounts and can get pricey very quickly.  In the course of my glogster investigation a completely free glog surfaced: smore. It is a platform for sharing news with others through social media sites and offers the ability to imbed videos from youtube, vimeo, and viddler. The user interface offered quick and easy templates or flyers and easy editing capabilities on existing templates. Someone could also create their own templates if they were feeling adventurous.

At this point, I plan on using smore next year to provide district wide announcements for a micro business that my Culinary students always operate during the school year. Today I made a dummy news announcement for practice using the site. It was very user friendly and I could see that many other teachers are using it already. I think that incorporating it into my classroom will help me stand directly in the center of the TPACK model. My students will be creating and evaluating an ongoing marketing plan for the business they will be running from our class.  They will conduct an initial market survey, design and populate order forms using smore then make adjustments based on incoming orders.  The customizable forms are templates from another site: wufoo, that supports smore.  It can be as simple or as complex as the user desires and multiple people can share editing and design privileges.

With regard to Bloom's taxonomy my students will be performing higher thinking skills because they will be creating, evaluating, and analyzing the success of their venture on several levels. In the past we have used instagram, snapchat and twitter to promote our business but this platform will be superior because it has an interactive component that will help them analyze incoming data. They can collaborate and conquer!

From my early years as an educator I began to incorporate as much "doing" in my lesson planning as humanly possible because I have always believed that students learn best when they are up and moving and doing. The content area that I teach now lends itself beautifully to the facilitation of learning in this way because almost everything the students do is hands-on. The nature of smore is very hands-on as well and will allow my students to customize what they need based on the direction they take their business. In my other classes that have no business component  I can see using smore to upload instructional content with pictures and video for lab applicatons. Students will be able to see and then follow along, checking their product against my picture and instruction, much like thepioneerwoman (a food network blog from Ree Drummond) uses for her communication and facilitation of learning.

Pedagogically Montessori has been a large influence in the way I approach my students. I can see the value of her ideas and the progress of my students when they are allowed the freedom to create learning opportunities for themselves.  I am also standing squarely on Bandura's shoulders as well. By helping students draw the dotted line between what we do in class and what they will experience in their lives outside the school setting I am able to keep them engaged. Students are modeling what they observe and reproducing their own versions of what they have seen and learned. They are also teaching others what they have learned after they leave my classes. Parents often tell me about things their kids have taught them that they learned in my classes. (I usually see them when open house rolls around and they come to visit me.)

The primary obstacle to implementing  any new program in a school setting is usually financial whether it is a glog or another technology that is implemented for student use. For now, smore and wufoo are free and I hope they stay that way. I will be able to use them for a long time!  Another obstacle might be an initial issue with the school firewall, however; our technology crew is very quick to evaluate what I am attempting to do and work with me to achieve any goal that benefits the students.

General Thoughts on Technology

This activity has been a discovery for me in that there is a distinct difference between embracing technology in a theoretical sense and embracing it in a personal sense. Regardless of what I put here for everyone to see - you as a reader don't really know my entire being. What is here is a picture or a snapshot of who I am now, but I have changed and will continue to change over the course of time - just like technology does.

I am maturing and growing older in my understanding of just about everything,  but you as a reader have no idea what I am truly like in person. Every post I make will freeze me in time for anyone who reads it. They won't get a complete picture of who I am.  Am I usually somber? generally happy?  mean? gregarious? Can you ever truly know me if you don't meet me in person? Is it possible for me to really ever know you in a virtual world? We may form perceptions of each other based on our blog posts, but are they accurate? If we don't keep reading will we be able to get a complete picture? Furthermore, everyone who reads, be it paper, online, magazine, book, etc. brings his or her own ideas and biases to the table. I would venture to say that it will alter our perception - especially in a virtual realm.

Technology is affecting our ability to function socially and will continue to do so. The challenge  is going to be balancing and managing our connectivity in both realms at a level of personal comfort that is agreeable. As a teacher, I have to ask myself how are the communicative abilities of my students being  affected by technology? From an educator's viewpoint, I see all the good things that technology can offer but I also see the bad - bullying on social media, a multiplicity of websites with objectionable  content, potentially dangerous situations that young people can get into through their naivety  or merely their presence online. It is a challenge to embrace it while simultaneously protecting  yourself and  your students from it. That problem is wicked indeed. Most of the students I deal with on a daily basis are very trusting and and quite open regarding their online presence.

Me? not so much.