Annotated Bibliography and Final Project Ideas - (Reverse)^2

Final Project Ideas

First and foremost, I'd like to say that the quarters I've completed thus far in the program have furnished me with a WEALTH of ideas from which to choose as I begin to mentally prepare major adjustments for my instruction with my students in the upcoming 2014-2015 school year and while I do have these ideas, I find myself most strongly pulled to my AP Stats class (in comparison to my geometry classes) as I feel that this is an audience a) more ready to take on the challenges inherent in embracing online learning for the first time (more motivated group, they're older and have had more time to learn to juggle school and other considerations and also have had more technology in education experience) and b) it is the smaller of the 2 groups (2 sections of 85ish students total versus 3 sections of 115ish students total) so it makes it easier on the instructor (I really like this chick; she's a hard worker, but deserves the time to make mistakes and learn from them with a more forgiving group...).

While I wish I had time for both of the first two options and the third and will, likely, end up completing all 3, I know myself too well. The second option, develop a course outline, is the one that I really NEED to do, but I won't be able to complete it well enough for myself to be satisfied with what I'd have to turn in at the end. The full year course of AP stats and the interactions I'd like to work into the course are percolating in my mind and already (some of them, summer homework here we come!) coming to fruition. What I need most is to complete it over the course of a year so I can adjust as I see and learn from the mistakes that I've made with my students. (I've already started formatting my class with the Schoology LMS for next year from previous investigation we did.)

Therefore, ultimately, I think I'll be combining my project from ETEC 644 with the work for this class final. For my ETEC 644 project I am working to build (SLOWLY and over MUCH TIME) a website that my students can visit and interact with to better understand how to choose from and apply the various triangular tools they learn over the course of the year in high school Geometry. (triangle angle sum theorem, pythagorean theorem, sine, cosine, tangent, sine inverse, cosine inverse, tangent inverse, 30-60-90 special right, 45-45-90 special right, law of sines and law of cosines)

My project will be the work of making each of these presentations high quality and ADA compatible (something which I had previously planned to "wimp out" on...) So, at the end of my final project for both I'll have diagrams for students to choose from and practice, and how to solve videos that are both captioned in and of themselves, but that also have text documents of the transcript from each video.

I would love to hear from you all with any feedback you have to make this project better because I want it to be AMAZING for my students.

Have a great one!

Michelle

Annotated Bibliography

Citation:

Eseryl, D., Law, V. Ifenthaler, D., Xun, G., & Miller, R. (2014). An Investigation of the

Interrelationships between Motivation, Engagement, and Complex Problem Solving in Game-based Learning. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 17(1), 42-53.

Summary:

            The purpose of this study was to investigate how the connections between complex problem solving, motivation, and engagement in the context of game-based learning could be used to guide future studies and instructional design efforts surrounding game-based learning. The previously completed research was summed up by the authors as, “games are problems being solved by players [and games are engaging]; therefore playing games will help [and motivate] people be better problem solvers (p.42).”

            The researchers hypothesized that the following factors would have a positive effect on students’ engagement: a) degree of interest, b) student’s perceived competence, c) perceived autonomy, d) relatedness, and e) self-efficacy for the tasks during game play. Additionally, the researchers made a second hypothesis assuming that the students’ engagement and prior ability to address a complex problem would have a positive effect of his/her ability to address a complex problem.

            Researchers concluded that degree of interest and student’s perceived competence actually negatively predicted engagement as students lost interest fairly quickly (when comparing the game to commercial products), but continued with high engagement as it was the only required course activity. They also concluded that perceived autonomy and relatedness had no impact on student engagement for good or ill. Researchers were, however, able to conclude that self-efficacy did have a positive impact on engagement and that engagement and prior ability to address a complex problem did have a positive effect on their future ability to address a complex problem.

Review:

            While the researchers were, unfortunately, unable to use the results of the experiment to support many of their hypotheses in regards to engagement, the paper is noteworthy in that the researchers were among the first to move to address the lack of literature concerned with empirically validating generally accepted, though untested suppositions in regards to game-based learning. Instructional designers need to, whenever possible, base their work in researched methods to help instructors (whether the designer is the instructor or not) help their students engage with the material in methods that will bring the greatest positive change in learning; this study allows for designers to now conclude that, unsurprisingly, it is important to sustain student motivation over time during gameplay in game-based learning.

Citation:

Downes, J. M., & Bishop, P. (2012, May). Educators engage digital natives and learn from their experiences with technology. Middle School Journal, 6-15.

Summary:

            The purpose of this study was to illustrate the engagement of middle grades students’ in a technology-rich AND student-centered classroom environment. The main focus of the paper was to highlight the attributes of the technology integration that, from the perspective of the students, were most engaging. These elements were: reliability for students, accessibility (in a range from students with skill to students with learning gaps), organization that becomes possible with digital access, and the ease of collaboration when Web 2.0 tools are used.

            Additionally, the authors reviewed the implementation of school-wide technology programs and the components necessary for success when undertaking such a large venture. Unsurprisingly, educators who were in an environment with a school culture of trust and collaboration were more willing to take a leap into the gap of the unknown when working to implement technology in the classroom because it constitutes a risk for teachers when they strive to radically alter their teaching to incorporate these tools on a regular basis in a successful way.            Finally, in the implementation of school wide technology programs, the authors found there to be two factors which contributed most to building that school culture of trust and collaboration for teachers. The first factor was that you had to have teachers who were willing to take the risk and spend the time and effort to radically alter their style. The second factor was having school-site and/or district-level leaders who are committed to finding funds for the endeavor and who are willing to make time for ongoing and embedded professional development.

Review:

            As the implementation of the common core state standards (CCSS) gets closer and closer to full implementation (we go full bore with the 2014-2015 school year), the discussions around implementation of technology in the classroom environment have shifted from a focus of questions like: could you try? have you considered? perhaps, someday, you might incorporate… to questions like: what technology are you incorporating in your classroom? Or how have you prepared students for the new testing environment?  This is especially true for the mathematics and English classrooms as it is our two subjects that have full implementation of the common core next year.

            With that in mind, I found this article to be particularly helpful to me as the co-lead of my department. This coming year, each teacher in my math department will be given a cart of chrome books to use in their classroom environment on a daily basis. This article serves as an important reminder to myself and the leadership in any school environment that we need to make sure we are structuring collaboration time and working to make teachers as comfortable and prepared as possible or we’re going to be missing both components of the two most important factors for transformational success.

Citation:

O'Sullivan, M. K., & Dallas, K. B. (2010). A Collaborative approach to implementing 21st Century skills in a High school senior research class. Education Libraries , 33 (1), 3-9.

Summary:

The idea for the study was founded when a spate of other, recent studies claimed that high school students are graduating without the necessary basic skills needed to be successful in college or at work. While the authors found no consensus among postsecondary institutes as to what skills are required to consider a student as “ready”, the purpose of their study was to offer one example, a high school research paper class, of how a class can be designed and structured to give high school students a structured opportunity to experience what college level research and writing entails.

            The study details the work done by one English teacher as she partnered with the library media specialist. They worked to teach seniors about the available technology to research from day one. Areas of focus included the ways in which a question can be revised to mapping the connections of an idea to other subject areas to finding support for the ideas that they have about a topic in general.

Review:

            Once again, this article is of interest to those at the high school level as they work to transition to the common core state standards. The CCSS were put together to help teachers answer the question of what it truly means to be college and career ready and to also map out how teachers can build these skills from year to year, expanding on that which the students mastered the previous year in a clearly defined, almost yearly linear progression. This article is a resource to those interested in seeing an example; it serves as a starting off point for ideas. Additionally, I have personally found the article useful as I am working to retool aspects of my AP Stats class to include more outside application and research on the part of the students. I would like for them to be able to research and find papers detailing studies and experiments and report back on what they have found in regards to statistical quality.

Citation:

Watson, J. A., & Pecchioni, L. L. (2011). Digital natives and digital media in the college classroom: assignment design and impacts on student learning. Educational Media International , 48 (4), 307-320.

Summary:

            The purpose of this article was to share the learning experience over time of a group of instructors of health communication as they explored an assignment and how it motivated students to interact with both each other and with the content in a meaningful way. The instructors assigned students to groups (or in the third year had them assign themselves to groups) and had them choose a topic of interest on which to create a documentary. The instructors had a variety of assignments over the course of the 16-week semester from watching and analyzing a professional documentary as a group to teaching them how to shoot different camera angles to requiring them to pull together a 2-minute edited clip to form a basis of understanding on the amount of time editing a video for quality really takes. The remainder of the paper details the flow of the project development over the course of the semester and through that detailed flow the growth of the project over the course of the three years.

Review:

            “Often new media and digital technologies are either demonized or viewed as the panacea for curriculum ills (p.307).” (Watson & Pecchioni, 2011) This was one of my favorite quotes from the article because I have feared too much administrators favoring one or the other end of this spectrum. If I have learned anything over the course of the ETEC program, it has been that technology is not the cure all or the evil; it is merely a tool as so many other things and needs to be considered in the light of the instructional needs of the students. As stated by the authors, they took the student-centered approach in designing their documentary assignment and kept their focus on what would most engage students with each other and the material; a technology-centered approach is bound to fail because it doesn’t view the needs of the students as paramount.

Citation:

Gunn, T. M., & Hollingsworth, M. (2013). The Implementation and Assessment of a Shared 21st Century Learning Vision: A District-Based Approach. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 45 (3), 201-228.

Summary:

            The purpose of this study was to detail the process one district took as they strived to increase the implementation of technology throughout the district. Working with a university, they founded their strategy of technology implementation and “up-ramping” in the existing research on successful change within a system. The ultimate district change design called for substantial professional development (100+hours over the course of a single year) and used a system of surveys and response to measure the change in everything from attitudes to integration of software on a 1 to 5 Likert scale.

            The strongest trends found in the district were 1) older groups of teachers (the groups as young as the 41+ group on up) were least confident in their abilities regardless of their extensive training and 2) the more professional development hours dedicated to information technologies, the better acceptance and efficacy felt/observed by teachers.

Review:

            This article makes an interesting and applicable read for any individual, at any level, involved in a district or university-wide push for technology change. Once more, with the common core standards being fully implemented in my subject in the following year, one of my jobs as lead will be to make sure that my teachers have the time, development and support of the admin and district level team to work to learn, apply, and adapt to all aspects of including technology in the classroom. Being aware of these needs is the first step to actually fulfilling them and I take this role seriously.