Educational Technology Clinical Journal #1 2/4/14

Myers Park Clinical Journals

For my first observation, I spent about two hours in the classroom, including about 20 minutes before and after class talking with my cooperating teacher. I earned a lot of perspective in these two hours, and theres so much to reflect on that most of the information might be saved to later. Almost everything I gained was positive in light of the class itself, if not beneficial to my own knowledge of education. But what stood out to me most were the curriculum and the style of the class. This class is attributed to the students like an elective. Its a Biomedical Science class meant to accompany or support AP Biology, and it also counts as college credit. The teacher told me that students who are interested in biology usually try to take AP Biology, especially with encouragement from their parents, but they rarely have knowledgeable or technical support from home. This class is a way to support the drive for biology students who need more practice in this subject. This is where the strangeness of the curriculum comes in: the entire course curriculum is online. Students come to class and pull out the class laptops to get their assignments for the day. They use Project Lead The Way (PTLW) for materials, such as online resources and carbon-copy-based journals. PTLW helps in the courses objectives by assisting math and science students that are interested in the biology field, but dont have adequate resources. In many ways, this means that there is very little a student can do outside of the class. Students often come in during lunch to finish work, because the hands-on materials and the personal laptops arent available outside of this class. This also means that the teacher, in a somewhat different role, acts more as a coach than an instructor. There was about 20 minutes, if not less, spent on review at the beginning of class, and the remaining time was all used on the online lesson. I see detriments and benefits here. On the one hand, the students are using technology to learn on their own, which will help them not only in future biology classes, but in biomedical practices as well; on the other hand, though, its very hard to be a part of what

Educational Technology

Myers Park Clinical Journals

many call a compassion industry if you arent doing much with the students in terms of social interaction. Its a very multilayered concept. That being said, the teacher did not lack in beneficial effort, toward me or toward the students. She helped the students as a teacher would, guiding them toward answers as they did the activity. The only difference between this and a regular classroom (without the online curriculum) is that the activity was the lesson. The teacher did hardly anything in terms of teaching themthey learned for themselves. As I mentioned above, there are positive and negative factors involved here, and hopefully, I can learn more in future observations and expand on this method.

Educational Technology Clinical Journal #2 2/18/14

Myers Park Clinical Journals

This observation was much less exciting than my firstbut it was still helpful. Because the students are having a test at the end of the week, most of the class was spent on review. Toward the last half of class, the students practiced a pipette activity in preparation for their lab tomorrow. The students finished the day by doing pre-work for their lab tomorrow. The day was very relaxed, from what I could see, and the genuine nature shared between the teacher and the students seems very regular, easygoing, and straightforward. There wasnt much use of technology throughout the class time. During the review portion, students had their laptops out, and the teacher used a projector. One interesting bit was that they had review material in their online coursework. They were to complete these activities and look over the material before the test. The teacher also has the option to see whether or not students have logged on to complete the review material. If a student does poorly on the test, the teacher can see if the student did the review material, which tells her why the student did poorly; this can also help the teacher if parents contact her upset that their child did not do well on her test. The practice lab activity didnt require the use of any technology. The teacher demonstrated how to use a pipette, and they practiced with food coloring, water trays, and gel pads. The significant thing to mention here is that the students were told to put any and all electronics away around water. This is definitely something I hadnt thought of; in the use of any technologies, there can be no open liquids around. There are signs in the classroom that do not allow food or drink around the laptops or around any experiments, and this is worth noting when I use technology in my own classroom.

Educational Technology Clinical Journal #3 2/25/14

Myers Park Clinical Journals

It is not lost on me that this is an extremely visual class. Everything that these students do usually falls back on images, diagrams, and models. For instance, their overarching semester project involves filling in clay onto a plastic statue of a skeleton. The clay represents the muscles, tissues, and organs that make up our inner body. The completed project, which the teacher has saved from previous classes, is visually remarkable. She doesnt stop there, either: for todays class, she went around the class to show her students a cow brain, which she used to visually connect to their study of the human brain. Todays assignment was to create a brain map which requires them to fill in a worksheet with a brain diagram. They used this completed diagram to sketch a detailed picture of the brain on a latex swim cap, which they can use to represent the brain in a three-dimensional way. With the exception of the use of their laptops to draw their brains correctly, there wasnt any technology used, but I think the lack of technology is worth mentioning. They had many worksheets for the day, besides the brain diagram, including some study worksheets that they can use outside of class. The teacher is making sure they have what they need outside of the technology she relies on. The students may not have the proper technology at home, but they still need to study, so she prints out material that they can use. This can also help if technology fails her in the class period, acting as a backup plan. She also doesnt rely entirely on technology herself. At the beginning of class, she told the story of Phineas Gage, who had a spike go through his head in the 1800s and survived, but his personality had changed. She told this story with only one of the swim caps as a visual aid; she used no technology and only told the story. This confirms two things: she knows and understands her topic well enough to rely on her own knowledge, and she doesnt have to use technology when her own words will do. Part of

Educational Technology

Myers Park Clinical Journals

this relies on how calm and/or willing to learn the class is, but its important to note that this is a wellkept class, with or without the technology being used. But thats not to say there is a general lack of technology. For their study of the brain, the teacher also asked them to do some online work and post it to the Project Lead The Way (PLTW) wiki website. They have an individual discussion post (much like posting an assignment to Moodle or MyCourses) where they copy-and-paste their work for the teacher. When theyve posted the work, they can click on a link to check their answers. Part of how well this works relies on PTLW, which has supplied all of this already; the wiki site is included with the class curriculum, the review work on the site, and everything their using for the online portions of the course. Using some of this technology for a class would require more effort if everything has to be made from scratch, which isnt the case here. But things may be different in an English classroom, so Ill need to be able to budget my energy on incorporating technology into my own class.

Educational Technology Clinical Journal #4 3/11/14

Myers Park Clinical Journals

In this penultimate journal, the class time was split between two activities: a reflex/reaction time lab started on the day before, and a project involving the presentation on nervous diseases, called Communication Breakdown. Even when I was sure that I had learned about all of the technology used in this class, my observation today proved me wrong. The lab was a test of the reflex when ones knee is tapped. Most of the students finished this yesterday, but I got to see a few who hadnt quite finished their lab results. Attached to the knee tapper was a motion sensor to measure speed and force of the tap, and on the students legs were electrical sensors to compute the electrical reaction in the students muscles. The motion sensor and the EKG were connected to the computer, so that the data was instantly recorded on the computer screen. The students that I saw werent able to fulfill the requirements of the lab that involved technology, so the teacher told them to take the data from another group so that they could still do the math. All of this represented basic lab materials for a class like this, as well as the results of technology not working properly and the necessary resulting actions from the teacher. This first activity, while very interesting to see, did little for my field of Englishbut the second activity was much more beneficial to me. The Communication Breakdown project involved presenting information about a particular nervous disease, in which neurons fail to communicate in some way and result in a specific bodily reaction. Students were assigned a partner, and they used the PowerPoint on the class website to fill in the information about their disease. The Presentation was already made for them, they just needed to fill in the information; this seems like a very positive step forward in learning how to present. Instead of making the students create the PowerPoint from scratch, they are only given the task of presenting information. They are learning presentation skills one step at a time, starting with information and learning the bare minimum qualifications of making a good PowerPoint. This only

Educational Technology

Myers Park Clinical Journals

works if, later, they get the chance to create the PowerPoint from scratch, but the one-step-at-a-time approach is beneficial. The teacher also took time to show them a poorly-made PowerPoint slide (made purposefully bad by another teacher to show students what not to do). Aside from how hilariously bad it was, it was a way to point out presentation mistakes, such as paragraphs of information, small font, poor coloring, and more-annoying-than-helpful animation. She also took time to make sure that the students know about what they are presenting; she made clear that if they used jargon that they didnt understand, she would embarrass them and ask them to define those words. She told them that they are presenting to their classmates, and they should present with the goal of helping their classmates understand the basics of the disease. While students are listening, they are to take information from their classmates presentations in preparation for the mid-term exam, coming up within the next few weeks. All of these details lay out the use of presentations in the classroom, so that students dont take advantage of the assignment or take the easy way out, each of which are useful to those presenting and those listening; I can also use all of this in my future classroom.

Educational Technology Clinical Journal #5 3/25/14

Myers Park Clinical Journals

In my last observation, the teacher held another regular class with a terrific use of technology to enhance learning. The class had already learned some core ideas about the current topiceyes and opticsand the class began with a video on optical illusions. The video was very interesting, because it used striking visuals to better portray its content, which focused on visuals. The video was well-edited, though it lacked appeal when it began reusing images and ran a little too long. Still, it was very educational and, as far as I could tell, really helped the students with the content. It might have had an even stronger impact had they discussed the video after, but it seemed to help in any case. After this, the teacher reviewed some of the material from previous classes. She used the projector to show the class diagrams of eye disorders. I didnt quite follow the discussion, but the teacher confirmed that it was a difficult topic to discuss. The students then went into the days assignment, which was a study of eye care professionals. They were given scenarios from the online curriculum involving eye disorders, and they were told to determine which eye care professional would help best, and why. If they finished this, they were to move on to their review work for the mid-term on Thursday. Other than a few discussions and questions for the teacher, the class was mostly quiet as they all worked individually. Reflecting back on all of this, there wasnt much to learnnot that there werent benefits, though. I used the video as a way to judge the students reactions and the strength of the video itself. The students were, for the most part, interested. At points when I lost interest in the content, I looked around the classroom to see about the students; some of them were talking to their table partners as well, but only for brief moments at a time. Its worth noting that perfect, 100 percent interest is impossible to achieve, and the video was still a wonderful method of instruction.