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Kristen E. Cox - More Than Meets the Eye
Falling in a Man Hole Woke Me Up
Learning to live with uncertainty has been a life-long requirement for Kristen Cox, who lost her site at age eleven. Watch and listen to how we all can learn to deal with complexity and uncertainty and manage discomfort. "You won't know any more than you know now until you take the next step." What do we need to do next in our lives? If it is uncomfortable we often avoid it. But satisfaction in the moment may prevent us from realizing great long-term personal benefits. "If I don't deal with this uncertainty and discomfort now, it will, for the rest of my life, limit my independence."
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MSE Students Change Teacher Education Using Technology
Originally published in McKay Today Magazine
While technology is changing many things in the world, the McKay School of Education is most excited about using technology to enhance teacher education. The following stories illustrate the work of four MSE graduate students working in the Department of Instructional Psychology and Technology (IP&T). These students are combining modern technology tools with wonderful traditions used for decades to nurture children's learning, and they are changing the world of education.
Mike Griffiths
Mike Griffiths explains that he first became interested in using webcams to educate people while he was serving as a branch president in England. During 1998 he would drive the youth of his branch to early morning seminary and then from there to school. He battled with distance-it was almost impossible to get the students to either place on time.
It was also in 1998 that Griffiths first saw a webcam. He says, "I started to think that it might be possible to use webcams so that students who were too far away could participate in early morning seminary by watching and listening from home."
Fast-forward to 2007. As a doctoral student, Griffiths was asked to help design and teach a new class that would use distance learning tools. In the design Griffiths evolved his webcam idea to include student responses to assignments and instructor feedback in video-mail format to facilitate an instructor-student relationship in distance education. Participating students were required to have a webcam, watch video lectures, submit assignments through e-mail, and work from an electronic syllabus. Taking into account research that shows student motivation increases when they perceive an instructor is dedicated to their learning, Griffiths' doctoral study looks at whether or not using the webcam feedback system makes long-distance instruction as effective as face-to-face instruction.
A pilot study conducted during the 2008 winter semester shows promising results. Notably, the instructor said he was able to learn more personal information about each student than he could have in a traditional classroom setting by assigning each student to prepare a webcam introduction. Additionally, the professor felt he was able to give more individual real-life feedback using webcam and video than usually occurs in a classroom. Feedback on work in traditional classrooms most often comes in the form of text. Using the webcam, the student hears the instructor's tone of voice and sees expressions in response to the student's individual work. The professor added that he was more aware of what the student had learned or hadn't learned from each assignment.
Public education may soon be altered by Griffiths' research, and he hopes his methods can also be applied to religious study. Griffiths muses, "I have a burning desire for this technology to be used to extend [the reach of] Church education."
Kimberly McCollum
Kimberly McCollum began her career in education by teaching eighth grade science. After completing two advanced degrees, McCollum found her true north in the Department of Instructional Psychology and Technology (IP&T) studying the science of personal learning networks.
McCollum feels it is important to teach students how to learn, rather than simply telling them important facts. This belief originated after students asked her why they needed to learn about mitochondria (cell metabolism). Pondering this situation led to the development of her current learning philosophy: "Students need to learn how to be informed and stay informed."
McCollum has also realized that students need skills for searching for information and discerning what tools are most effective in a search. According to McCollum, students also need networking skills because they need to learn how to make mental connections between material and people. "Networking tools globalize education-they help to open up a student's eyes to everything that is out there and put it into a context that students can successfully manage," says McCollum. She calls the concept a "personal learning community."
As part of her research, McCollum is identifying replicable and successful models of information searches as well as personal networking tools. "I want to find a way to break down these skills. Then professors can teach the segments and skills to prospective teachers, and they, in turn, can teach them to their students." McCollum believes that everyone needs to develop his or her own personal learning community as a means of being a lifelong learner.
Specifically, McCollum is focusing on the technologies using RSS feeds, social bookmarks, and blogs. RSS feeds can bring a teacher information about best practices and research curriculum. Teachers use social bookmarks to store, organize, search, and manage Web bookmarks. A blog is usually an individual's Web site with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other forms of material such as graphics or video.
McCollum says that teachers are natural bloggers because they love to share ideas, lesson plans, and materials. McCollum says that blogging also meets a social need. She explains why: "When you are teaching, you don't get a lot of time for collaboration. This is a way for teachers to break through isolation and feel they are not alone."
Tonya Tripp
Student teaching observations are an integral part of preparing to become a teacher. But Tonya Tripp is changing how observations can be done, subsequently improving the instructional merit that observations hold for the student teacher.
Tripp taught school for several years, but her love for teaching, learning, and improving that process resulted in her leaving the classroom and pursuing advanced degrees in IP&T. Tripp says, "I want to help teachers improve their teaching practices by their seeing themselves from a new perspective."
Tripp's work helps teachers develop new perspectives using classroom video footage and the software MediaNotes. Participating student teachers randomly record teaching sessions. Using MediaNotes, the student teacher saves the video clips, uploads and comments, and then brings the package to a conference with a supervisor.
Tripp describes the results of her study with the word profound. "We found this process helps student teachers be more active in their assessment. They recognize and vocalize their feelings about their teaching. Student teachers often drive the conference and ask for help in areas they see that need improvement," explains Tripp. She adds that student teachers love to view not only their teaching but also the children's responses to their teaching.
She is not surprised by improvement in the assessment process. Tripp says that no matter how structured a typical observation is, paper-and-pencil documentation does not account for perception and background differences, or even for variation in memory. The video observations spark more meaningful conversations because the student teachers see themselves in real time. This facilitates active involvement by the student teachers for the improvement of their teaching-contrasted with passive listening to an observer's notes being read. The feedback is more credible and better recalled because it is personal.
"The comments [student] teachers make as they watch themselves are what I like the best," says Tripp. "They say things like 'I didn't know I did that' and 'I don't think I would like me as a teacher.'" Due to the power embedded in self-assessment, Tripp thinks the technology could be used to assess new and seasoned teachers alike. "When you teach, you start to develop an image of who you are. But I think all teachers might be surprised if we were to take a different look at ourselves," she concludes.
Cary Johnson
Cary Johnson, a PhD student in IP&T, is currently helping develop a teacher preparation curriculum that helps student teachers use technology in ways that are beneficial to struggling students, especially English Language Learners (ELL). The term used to describe her work is blended learning, a combination of traditional learning methods with technology-based strategies for the purpose of meeting individual learning needs.
The class also addresses the diversity that student teachers will usually find in the children they serve. Johnson says, "We hope [teacher preparation] students take the strategies of blended learning and change the way they think about different cultures and races." She added, "We want ELL students to stay in mainstream classes. To accomplish this, teacher preparation students need to learn how sociocultural pedagogy works so they can implement it in their own classes. Technology is a tool to help us do that." Sociocultural pedagogy is learning through social interactions.
The new course requires teacher preparation students to use podcasts, webcams, text messaging, video, and different computer software systems to complete assignments. Group work is also required in order to teach social learning. For instance, after listening to an audio lecture students must send text messages to five friends and learn about each friend's perspective on the lecture. The student then has to document these findings in a discussion board. The curriculum is very closely aligned with the McKay School's Teaching English Language Learners (TELL) endorsement program for teacher candidates and practicing teachers.
When teacher preparation students master the use of different learning tools, they leave the university able to assess which tools are most useful in helping their future students learn. Johnson uses the mastery of vocabulary words as an example. A teacher can use the computer to teach vocabulary more effectively to a large and diverse group because the computer automatically assesses which words individual students master and which ones they struggle with. "This also frees the teacher to focus on one-on-one time with students," says Johnson. "Something I like about technology tools is that students can go back and listen again and again if they need to. Students can learn at their own pace."