Nicholas Martin

TPACK Lesson Reflection

December 8, 2013
Discuss your thought process in the development of this lesson. After learning about TPACK
how has this knowledge influenced the way you developed this lesson?
My thought process as I developed this lesson was to give students in the Multimedia
Club a creative way to tell a story using pictures. Since I wanted students to be as creative as
possible, I developed requirements for the project that I felt were as minimal as possible. I let
the students choose the story they wanted to tell and the pictures they wanted to use. If the
students met the requirements for the project, I allowed them to add transitions and music to
their digital photo stories. Since I wanted the lesson to be more than just learning how to use
Movie Maker, I added the writing component to the project. I wanted students to be able to
add a title, introduction, body sentences, and a conclusion to their digital photo stories. I felt
that this writing component would help students practice the basic skills that they will need to
have to write essays in middle school and high school. In addition, basic writing skills (spelling,
capitalization, punctuation, etc.) would be needed as students work on other projects for the
club later in the school year. In order to help students meet the objectives for this lesson, I
created my own digital photo story using vacation pictures based on the requirements for the
project and presented this story to the club on the first day of the lesson. My photo story was
designed to be an example that students could follow while making their own stories.
There were several components of TPACK that were featured in this lesson. First, the
technology knowledge that I needed for this lesson was knowing how to organize pictures in
sequential order, how to add title slides and credit slides, how to arrange pictures and slides,
and how to edit text. Second, the content knowledge that I needed for this lesson was the
writing skills that I wanted students to learn, including having a title, introduction, supporting
paragraphs, and a conclusion and writing in complete sentences. Third, the pedagogical
knowledge that I needed for this lesson was delivering instruction about how to use Movie
Maker that was developmentally-appropriate for the fifth and seventh grade students in the
club. Therefore, I provided students with a detailed step-by-step handout with screenshots
that explained how they could use Movie Maker to complete their projects. While observing
students using Movie Maker to make their Race to the Top videos earlier in the school year, I
felt that students were just exploring and experimenting with the different features in Movie
Maker. Therefore, I felt that students in the club could use some direct instruction on using
Movie Maker. There are also some intersections of technology, content, and pedagogical
knowledge featured in this lesson. First, the technology content knowledge that I needed to
have for this lesson was knowing how to teach students how to add and edit their sentences
using Movie Maker. Second, the pedagogical content knowledge that I needed to have was
knowing how to structure the writing component of this project for middle school students.
This was accomplished by focusing on the five-paragraph structure of having an introduction,
body, and conclusion. While students would only be writing short paragraphs that are three
sentences long, this would still introduce them to the structure of a five-paragraph essay.
As I observed students working on their digital photo stories for the last two weeks, I
saw that students did well adding pictures to Movie Maker and organizing the pictures in the
right order. However, I was disappointed with some of the students writing skills. I saw that
some students made capitalization and punctuation errors, while one student wrote in very
brief sentences that were only three or four words in length. Due to time constraints, I did not
explicitly teach students the writing skills that I wanted them to demonstrate for this project. I
only told the students that they had to have at least three complete sentences for each picture.
However, the students did have my example to use as a guide for how to write. If I taught this
lesson in the future with another group of students, I would probably spend some extra time
giving some instruction about how to write descriptive sentences and how to capitalize words
in a title, since these were two areas that I noticed students in this lesson were lacking.
How is the development of your planning with the use of technology changed in terms of how
you integrate technology? Describe your implementation of the lesson and results.
Planning this lesson helped me realize that integrating technology is a collaborative
process. Since I am not at the school with the students in the club every day, I had to seek the
assistance of the technology support staff at the school to help me understand what students
knew about technology and what technology was available to use. This assistance helped me
plan a lesson that was appropriate for the middle school students in the club, allowed students
to demonstrate creativity, and helped build upon the technology knowledge that students
already had. If I am working as a K-12 teacher in the future and planning a lesson that involves
technology, I would definitely seek out the support of technology coordinators and teaching
colleagues to choose the right kind of technology that would help students meet the learning
goals that I want students to achieve and would help students build upon their prior knowledge
of the content area being taught, but also increase their technology skills to some extent as
well.
During the implementation of the lesson, I posted the requirements for the project as
well as the digital photo story example I had created to a separate page within a wiki site that
was developed by students in an instructional design team for another instructional technology
class at The University of Akron. Even though I told the students where to find these resources
and wrote the address of the wiki site on the board in the room, I feel that students did not use
these resources as well as I would have hoped. While students were working on their projects,
I saw very few of them actually refer back to the resources on the wiki site to make sure they
were meeting the criteria for the project. Even though resources for this digital photo project
were conveniently posted online, this did not automatically translate to students accessing the
resources to aid them in the learning process. One possible reason for this is that students
might have felt that they already knew enough about how to use Movie Maker that they didnt
feel they needed to use the resources posted online. Also, since the students were only making
these projects for the club and knew that these projects would not be graded, perhaps student
motivation for meeting the requirements for the project was lower. If this had been an actual
classroom project, perhaps the students would have been more motivated to use the resources
posted to the wiki.
Based on this observation, if I was teaching a lesson integrating technology in the future
and posted resources online, I would definitely need to think of some strategies to motivate
learners to use the resources made available online. I feel that self-directed learners would be
more motivated to use resources posted online, but I would have some concern that learners
who are more reluctant or dont have strong technology skills would be less motivated to use
materials posted online. One possible strategy that could motivate all learners to use resources
that are available online would be to not provide any print copies and make going online the
only way for students to access these resources. If I used this strategy, I would have to make
sure that all learners have access to the Internet both at school and at home. Another possible
strategy would be to compare the results of a project or an assignment for those students who
used the resources online and those students who did not use the resources online. When the
students turn in a project or assignment, I could ask students to indicate if they used the online
resources. After I have graded the project or assignment, I could present to the class how well
those students who used the online resources did compared to any students who did not use
the online resources. While this approach might not affect how well students do on a current
project, it could motivate more students to use online resources on future assignments.
How do you measure the impact that technology has on your student learning? Did students
learn as a result of the integration of technology in your lesson?
What I have learned from implementing this lesson plan is that just because you create
quality resources to help students learn and present a project where students can demonstrate
creativity does not mean that students will learn the way that you hope they will. Beyond the
actual lesson, I had issues with students not having their pictures ready like I had hoped. While
I was teaching the lesson, I had issues with students not paying attention and having to play
games on their computers while I was demonstrating what I wanted them to know about using
Movie Maker. I had to contact the school principal and after school coordinator to help address
these concerns. Since these projects were just for the club, several students just wanted to
make stories about computer games they liked to play. The most popular one was Minecraft.
Even though it was my intent to have students take their own pictures for this project, I had to
give in a little bit and allow students to take screenshots of game play and organize the images
in Movie Maker to tell a story. I encouraged one pair of students who were working together
to take pictures of themselves acting out scenes from Minecraft and then import those pictures
into Movie Maker. Since these students were not finished last week, I hope that these students
will have a completed project done this week. One student took images of cats off the Internet
to make a story about how big cats need to be protected in the wild. He has put a lot of work
into his project, so I hope it turns out well this week. I also had issues with some students not
coming to the club meeting for one of the work days, so that student was behind, since he
didnt have anything done for the project. I helped him get an idea to make a story about his
family, but he hadnt taken any pictures yet. He is supposed to have his pictures this week.
Even though I had e-mailed all of the fifth grade teachers at the school to get their input
about how to make this project successful, I never heard back from any of them. Therefore, it
has been frustrating to implement this lesson without any support from the students teachers.
What I wanted to do was to connect this lesson to something that students were learning about
in class, but since I did not any input from teachers, I had to develop the project on my own. I
feel that this project would have been more successful if the students had to held accountable
for their work. In order to try and motivate the students, I told them that they could vote on
the best project and the winner would get a $25 gift card to The University of Akron bookstore.
However, this has not motivated students as much as I would have hoped. I had to really push
some students to get any kind of work done for the project.
One positive aspect of this lesson is that it did allow me to see what background skills
students have when it comes to using Movie Maker. We want students in the club to be able to
use this program for future video projects. From this project, students will have the basic skills
needed to be successful, including importing images, adjusting the duration of slides, adding a
title slide and a credits slide, and organizing their images in chronological or spatial order. One
negative aspect of this lesson is that I feel students learned more about using Movie Maker to
create something new and organizing images to tell a story than they did about the writing
process, which was one of the goals of the lesson. Thus, students learned more about how to
use the technology of Movie Maker than how to write a clear, but short, story from beginning
to end. As a result of the technology integration in this lesson, I feel that students now have
the basic skills to produce multimedia products using Movie Maker in the future, but that I will
need to continue to work with the students to develop their written skills and their ability to
craft a story from beginning to end. This lesson was just the beginning of my journey working
with students in the Multimedia Club this year.