Thinking EdTech: Content Exploration

Friday, October 17, 2008

Content Exploration

Figuring that this would be a pretty typical lab session, I decided to set up the video camcorder to record about the first half hour of class as a mid-semester observation in order to further reflect on my teaching. I may post my reflections next week after watching the footage.

I began class by distributing index cards and asking the students to think like teachers and write down what they consider makes a content exploration resource "good" to use in their classrooms. While they were working on writing down their thoughts, I handed back their lecture worksheets. We then discussed then some of the key concepts from the lecture including - What are concept exploration tools?, What are some examples?, and What are the different types?. They then shared the tools they had chosen for the scenario presented in class and why they selected those tools from the ones available.

I transitioned the discussion to characteristics of good content exploration resources. I asked several students to share their ideas. One mentioned how easy it would be use to the tool. Another talked about the benefits of repetition within a drill and practice or educational game. And another spoke of how good resources they have previously used incorporated guidance into the interface.

I then presented six areas of consideration -

Content (accurate, educationally appropriate, free of errors, meets learning goals and objectives, valid, free of stereotypes and racial bias)
Ease of use (directions are clear and easy to follow, program is fun, easy to start and exit, can resume where left off, free of bugs)
Documentation and support (teacher guides, technical support, help features, tutorials)
Ability levels (can be set, level automatically advances, covers a variety of ability/skill levels)
Assessment (built-in assessment and reporting features, appropriate assessment, documents student progress)
Technical quality (animations and graphics are appropriate and meaningful, audio is used well, feedback and prompts are appropriate, allows branching)

While these areas are essentially what would be considered when evaluating software, I think that such considerations are applicable also to web-based content exploration tools. I then led the students to find and bookmark in their Delicious accounts, web-based content exploration resources pertaining to their content areas of interest. I provided my own Delicious account as a resource and also showed them how to search within Delicious to find related sites bookmarks by other users. I circulated the room while they worked and talked with several of the students individually about the particular site they were exploring. For instance, one student and I talked about how a math game Math Lines, which is similar to Bubble Blasters, was fun at first, but it got old quickly. We also noticed that success did not necessarily rely on a student's ability to solve addition problems, as accuracy of the blaster was also required. We also noted the advertisements located at the top of the site, something that teachers may not want in an educationally appropriate resource. I asked the students to use the tag content_exploration as one of their tags when bookmarking the sites to make it easy for me to filter through their bookmarks to see what they found. I saw many new sites as I was circulating that I want to be sure and save into my own Delicious account for future use.

I then provided some specific feedback about what I had seen needed to be clarified in the artifact proposals. I gave the students the opportunity to revise their first proposal using this feedback and then write their second proposal. The rest of the class period was spent doing this. I circulated and answered questions back-to-back for about an hour. In reflection, I would say that the students are not quite grabbing a hold of the GRADE framework as well as how it might generate artifacts for their portfolios. I think particularly that the Availability step is fuzzy to them, as they are not convinced of the usefulness of listed resources that they know they wouldn't use. It is like their thought process automatically skips to the Decide step when they find a resource that they think will work for the case. They then do not focus much on other resources, as they have already chosen one in their solution. I can understand their perspective, but I encouraged them to continuing exploring other resources to demonstrate that they are aware of the variety of tools available.

Labels: teaching, W200

posted by SG @ 12:42 PM

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