Summary of Learning - Becoming a Digital Citizen

To help me in my summary of learning, I used Simplemind, a mind map application that assists users to visualize, explain, and organize their thinking.  I learned about this tool because of this class and was fortunate enough to review this tool in my blog.  I chose Simplemind because of its simplicity.  In my review of the tool, I stressed the importance of developing brainstorming and problem-solving skills and Simplemind is one avenue to take.  It contains a desktop version and a mobile version that only increases its ability to be used effectively in a classroom. 

Digital citizenship was one of the main topics that I learned about over the semester and many of the topics covered before this gave me an “ah ha” moment when finally putting everything together.  I created a mind map to somewhat organize my thinking.  Since digital citizenship is how you are known, act, and participate in the digital world, there are many factors that come into play when creating this identity.  

                Creating and sharing are the basics of your digital citizenship.  Obviously, content must exist for any kind of interaction to take place.  Once content has be created, this can be shared throughout online networks for consumers to digest, learn, expand, and even re-create.  This is the sharing process.  When educational material has been shared, it creates the opportunity for open education environments to form.   OERs have the ability to reach a large audience, cut education costs, increase connections, and create a snowball effect on the development of content.  When these open education communities exist, educators can use these resources in their F2F classes and create blended learning environments.  Responsible and active sharing can create endless opportunities for students and teachers across the globe as we can see in the two examples I stated above. 

                Sharing, OERs, and blended learning environments may seem to be the foundation of the digital citizenship, but there is another layer underneath these topics that can greatly affect them.  This ‘layer’ is copyright.  Copyright is like the master puppeteer that can pull the strings on anything that is online.  That being said, copyright isn’t necessarily an obstacle but more of a facilitator.  Through its permissions, copyright balances protecting content and allowing access to maximize the benefits of online educational content.  Through all these topics, your digital citizenship is born. 

                 I plan to incorporate new technologies into my classroom by always being a student myself.  I believe that some people can become content with the status quo and that hinders their ability to expand what’s in their ‘arsenal’ for effective teaching.  If I can keep the mindset that education truly never ends, I believe this will allow me to adapt new methods, tools, and strategies as my career progresses.  It has truly been a pleasure taking this class this semester.  It’s funny, I remember mid-way through the semester I said to myself, “What a great first class to take to enter back into school,” since I have been out of school since my undergrad graduation in 2014.  I said that because I feel like this class touched on so many aspects that I will experience as a student throughout my grad program.  I was skeptical about how quickly I would be able to adapt back into the student mindset, but this class truly dispersed any ill feelings. 

Week 12 Formative Assessment

This week will be my final reflection post and I will be discussing Formative Assessment.

                

There are a great number of opinions about assessment.  Some believe educators teach too tightly with the content on their assessments, others believe that assessing only the content in the standards doesn’t allow educators to be creative teachers.  I am a big believer in balancing formative and summative assessment.  As I have stated in my blog posts before, I can somewhat be an old-fashioned type and believe that if it isn’t broken don’t fix it.  I am talking about summative assessment.  I believe that summative assessment is still the bread and butter of understanding and analyzing where your students are in the learning process.  I know it is a new day and age and the students today are different to those of twenty to thirty years ago, but sometimes I think we have to drop all the bells and whistles and take a test. 

                

Now, that being said, one thing that I do plan to incorporate when I begin teaching, is what I like to call “advanced summative assessment”.  With all the new technology that we have seen and used throughout our class, these partners must be incorporated into today’s education.  My “advanced summative assessment” will be the use of bell work and exit tickets using technology partners.  I believe using shorter summative assessments like exit tickets helps alleviate the stress of taking a large test, but still gives the teacher useful information about their students.  Both of these tactics also play a part in classroom management.  Bell work can help get your students focused and on task as soon as they sit down in your class. 

               

In class last Monday, I used and created a short assessment activity using PearDeck, which I can’t link here because I have to add specific emails to share over google drive or we must be in person to take the assessment using a code just like the application, Kahoot.  We did however take this assessment in class and my fellow students and I enjoyed it very much.  Similar to Kahoot, students can join this activity using a code with a device that has internet connectivity.  The cool thing about PearDeck is it is not just a test with multiple choice questions.  PearDeck creates questions that allow students to answer questions correctly in different ways. 

               

After watching Scott Kinkoph’s video, it may be simple, but the thing that stuck with me the most is that he said, “when it comes to learning, especially using technology, students can move at different rates.”  This may be a no brainer, but before I heard that I never asked, how can I control the rate of my students’ learning with technology.  Now looking back, I realize there have be many applications that help control that.  One application can even control the reading level of how each student can view the lesson.  Every student can be on the same lesson, but the teacher can control the reading level for each student if need be. 

Major Blog Post #7 - The Summary

Today will be my last post for the strength program I have been working on and it will be the final summary for my major project.

The ending of the semester and the major project assignment could not have been at a better time because it concluded perfectly with my team’s final max week before we begin to transition outside to now include speed and conditioning into the program.  I have truly enjoyed writing about my experience running this strength program because it allowed me to explain my thinking rather then just keep all my thoughts in my head.  Somewhat like a mind map, I was able to visualize my learning or my thinking and then make adjustments and improvements all along the way. 

To assist me throughout my project, I used Microsoft Excel, Word, Google Sheets, and Hudl.  Microsoft Excel was my bread and butter because that is where I created the program and included the day’s goal, exercises, repetitions, tempo, and volume.  I also used Excel to record my athletes’ strength gains and used a one rep max Excel that my fellow IT teacher created at St. VM to figure out the percentages of each max.  I used Word to write my thinking down.  Word has been my journal and Blogger has been the facilitator to share my experience.  I used Google Sheets to record attendance that I shared with my fellow coaches.  This was very beneficial so those who are in the building full time were able to stay on top of those athletes who had poor attendance rates. 

The last partner I used in my program was Hudl.  Hudl is mainly used for video breakdown of games but it also has a great communication feature which allowed me to send messages to my seventy plus athletes when unplanned events occurred.  As we have seen throughout my project, I spoke many times about where I had to make game time adjustments because of snow days, early releases, and other school events that effected my program’s schedule.  Hudl was a perfect answer to this problem, not only because I am not full time in the school, but it allowed me to communicate with the largest sports team in the school without the need to rely on administration to communicate messages.     

As I stated above, blogging about my major project greatly helped my thinking and problem-solving abilities.  I first established my goals of the program which were to increase my athletes’ strength (observed and analyzed through max lifts), keep and increase team/family environment (observed and analyzed through consistent attendance), and finally be an effective coach (observed and analyzed through my blogs and this summary). 

Once I created my goals, I moved to look at my athletes’ needs.  I started with a general strength program to assess these needs.  After I observed for the first few weeks I was able to understand the gaps that needed to be filled as a team and within certain athletes.  As a team, we needed to adapt to my style of workout.  This included my terminology for all the exercises, form for all the exercises, the warm up, transitions throughout the lift, and the cool-down and closure of the lift.  This gap was bridged through reps and more experience with me as their coach.  I then was able to look for more individualized gaps for my athletes.  Some were flexibility needs, overall strength needs, advanced athletes, and less experienced athletes.  Observing and blogging all this allowed me to create more effective and individualized workouts. 

Finally, I implemented my program and evolved it over the course of a few months.  I was able to be quite effective in adjusting workouts for specific athletes’ needs.  I made heavier lifts for some position specific athletes like my linemen, and quicker more explosive movements for my skilled positions.  One major theme in my blog posts was, what is the best way to prepare for our max week, which occurred every four weeks.  Writing down my thinking allowed me to experiment on the preparation.  At first, I tried lighter, strength band workouts to prepare and then after me maxed I was able to analyze that method.  For our second max prep, I tried heavier, slower movements to build one rep strength.  After, I analyzed my findings.  For this last max prep, I looked back at all my findings and recorded numbers and implemented a preparation that included aspects of both of the previous preparations.  With no surprise, we had the biggest numbers recorded using this method.  Without this blogging experience, I do not know if I would have been able to organize my thinking to evolve my program as effectively as I was able to.  I hope everyone that followed me throughout my journey enjoyed my writings and picked up something that they will be able to use in whatever their future career may be.  Thanks for reading!

-Coach K

Major Blog Post #6

Spring break is over, my athletes are back, and this week we hit the ground running.

This week was our last preparation week before our fourth max week.  Basketball ended so all of my players that were playing basketball are back with me in the weight room which increased my daily attendance.  One challenge I had this week was scaling down the basketball players workouts.  Obviously, since this was the basketballs players first week back in the weight room, they wouldn't be near the strength level that the rest of my athletes are at.  I had to be careful each day to make small changes to the intensity level and volume of exercises that my basketball players were to do, until their bodies, for a lack of a better phrase, catch up. 

As far as the actual workouts, I kept it business as usual.  Monday was our lower day and Tuesday was our upper/chest day.  Boxed in yellow below shows the volume, or the number of reps and sets for the workouts.  This week I slightly decreased reps for some exercises but increased the tempo.

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Wednesday and Thursday were also normal days, with slightly altered volumes.  

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I am excited to max again next week and evaluate and talk about the gains that have been made! #staytuned

Week 11 eBooks and Global Publishing

It it nearing the end of the semester and for this week I will be discussing eBooks and Global Publishing.

This week, Dr. Lisa Lenhart stopped by my grad class to teach us more about these subjects.  There are many benefits of using eBooks in the classroom.  Students are able to utilize a variety of cool tools that can help them create an eBook.  In my class on Monday, I used a tool called book creator and a classmate and I created a quick eBook about Greece.  The process is simple, and the great thing is that the created information can reach a large audience with no trouble at all. 

In an article written by Jon Smith, Mr. Smith used eBooks in his classroom and saw the contribution levels of his students greatly increase.  It made the writing process more fluid and collaborative.  I believe when students are able to work collaboratively, they have the opportunity to develop a multitude of skills.  I also believe this eases the pain for teachers in the classroom of trying to get students to participate. 

In the future, I plan to use eBooks as a way for my students to create an online textbook.  It will be completely from the student’s perspective and it won’t just be another dry classroom textbook.  I will have them all contribute a section from a specific lesson or unit and the end product will be a student version of our book that we use in class.  I think the main challenge will be balancing the freedom the students will have when they’re creating and facilitating what information should be added. 

Major Blog Post #5

This past week, St. Vincent St. Mary HS was on spring break and my head coach gave my student athletes and myself the week off from the weight room.  So on my major project front there is nothing to report other then I will be writing this weeks program today, when I am finished posting here.

What I did want to talk about this week was kind of the side project that I am doing in conjunction with my major project.  Obviously my major project is to develop and effectively implement a high school strength program for a football team.  My side project is developing and effectively implementing a college preparation strength program for my graduating seniors who will be playing football in college. 

In this program, I am able to be much more attentive and detailed because I am only coaching three to four athletes at a time rather then forty.  Each college prep athlete receives a binder to track their progress through this program.  In the binder, I include a meal program, daily workouts, protein and meal shake options, and a spread sheet where I record their progress of body weight and strength gains that they can see daily. 

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I have been running this side project for about a month now and have structured it very similar to my major project except with more individualization.  Since I had the whole week off, I had my college prep athletes come in at 3 PM when my high school lift would begin rather then 5 PM when they normally would come in. 

Other then that, nothing much else to report.  I'm off to write this week's program! #staytuned

Week 10 TPACK Framework

Spring break is over and I am back with this week’s topic: TPACK.

                TPACK, Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge, was something that I was not familiar with prior to my Monday grad class.  Simply put, TPACK is a theory that is used to explain the set of knowledge that teachers need to teach their students (McGraw Hill Education).  These sets of knowledge are broken down into three categories that each overlap one another to explain the connections that will be made with each set of knowledge.

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One of the main questions that I will consider before introducing new tools into the classroom is what is the content that my students will be learning.  When looking at the TPACK model, the pedagogical and content circles must be addressed first.  This must be looked at first because it will explain the what and the how of a lesson.  The technology is just the partner and trying to choose the technology first can lead you into some problems when developing a lesson. 

                When introducing new tools into the classroom, students will have the opportunity to try something new.  I believe that when something is new for students, it immediately will spark interest and increase engagement.  I believe introducing new tools will also keep content fresh for students and reduce the chance of “burn out” by students.  As with any new tool there could also be some barriers.  Number one, the tool might not be well known or easy for every student to use.  Even for technology native students, there still is always the potential for a learning curve or education of the tool before use.  Selecting the correct tool for each lesson is also very important.  I believe some of the most successful teachers could botch a lesson by choosing a tool that is not relevant to the content. 

                When choosing tools for my classroom, as I stated before, I will always look at the “what” first.  What is the exact lesson that I will be teaching.  If it is a lesson on American Colonization, I would then look at how do I want to teach this content to my students.  I would most likely begin with direct instruction and choose tools such as PowerPoint or Emaze to begin my introduction.  Then if I moved towards cooperative learning, I would choose a tool such as Google Docs and have my students begin to cooperatively develop an “online book”.  This is somewhat the process I would follow for each lesson that I would create. 

                TPACK is relatively easy to understand and it is even more easy to use to develop lessons.  This link to a video shown in my Monday’s grad class breaks down TPACK in a very pleasing manner.  My only question about TPACK is how to effectively reach the sweet spot of all three of the TPACK categories.  The only way to really answer this is to start using TPACK to assist me in my lesson development and find a more effective way to reach that every time.