The wicked problem
The two key challenges I have had with my ICT journey (and
more formally, this reflective synopsis) are knowing where to start, and then
finally understanding where to stop. I have shrieked with joy as big,
impressive things worked and gnashed my teeth as silly little fiddly things
took up valuable time and distracted me from the pedagogical value of the
technology. It is indeed a “wicked problem” (Fasso, 2013) with an infinite
number of challenges and solutions.
I wanted to test how easy it is to integrate multiple
technologies into one theme. I figured this is a form of pedagogy that makes it
easier to tie content into the technology (the TPACK framework) so that learning flows,
rather than being a series of discrete demonstrations of each technology. For
reasons explained further on, a test wiki relevant to my family’s farming
operation provided my playground. After realising this could be used to
evidence my ability with a wiki, I brainstormed ways to incorporate the four
technologies into this.
Here’s a map of how everything now fits together.
The dark blue boxes are the assessable tools, the light blue
boxes are sub-pages or elements of the wiki and the Glogster, and the green
boxes simply explain the tools used in the wiki (for readers of this blog
wondering what’s in these private pages).
As alluded to, I would have loved to have included more
technologies in this assessment, I had a lot more video, some animation and
ideas about links to existing animation, however data constraints meant that I
needed to pare back my use of video and uploading. While having a data ‘budget’
may not be a concern in most Queensland schools, the speed of the internet may
dictate the extent to which some tools are used. This has been a valuable
learning experience in itself.
Which tools?
My compulsory posting for the mobile phone wiki activity is
available here.
The technologies I have worked with (and provide evidence
of) are:
Group 1: Wiki (one private and one public)
Group 2: Images and digital video
Group 3: Glogster
Group 4: Simulation/animation (Google maps)
In considering which of the tools I would develop for Group
1, I decided that as I had had experience with blogging and had used and
developed websites previously, a wiki would be the best opportunity to expand
my understanding of tools in this group.
I have actually grown to love the wiki for many reasons
(some already outlined in my compulsory blog). Its usefulness almost snuck up
on me, because before I knew it, I was starting to find many classroom settings
to use a wiki. The most immediate application was my literacy assignment, where
I recommended a wiki be used as a method for collaboratively defining and
understanding unfamiliar words. (I hinted at this in an early blog here). I feel that this
method brings both social constructivism and connectivism to the learning table
as students use both their own prior knowledge and a sense of using the
technology to reach out to find the answer.
Me being me, I needed to play with the technology to
understand it. Sometimes it’s hard to justify this ‘play time’ because in a
typical study environment there tends to be a more direct route to an outcome,
so it felt like I was frittering valuable study time away by mucking around.
So, I thought I’d try to at least kill one bird with this stone.. and it’s
proved to be a handy stone.
The farm wiki
Something we have noticed in the family farming operation is
that it’s good for everybody to know what everybody else is working on. To
practise my wiki-building, I developed a wiki for the farm, called Lyal Online.
I have not publicly linked to this because, in putting this together to
demonstrate its value to management, I used real data, agronomic
recommendations and posted actual meeting minutes. There are eight pages to
this wiki.
Here’s part of my
email to the younger managers trying to engage them in the wiki:
---
“This is basically a whiteboard online
that we can all write on.
I wondered if it might be useful to use
for the daily/weekly planning? It can be as simple or as tricky as you like.
I've just put the daily plan on the main page with some example text.
To write on it, click "edit" (top right hand) then to save it, click "save". This can then be seen by everybody else who has the password. [specific examples included here as to how it could be used to direct the day’s work]
This can be expanded to include whatever you like (eg. long-term the agronomist could go in and put his recommendations into the Agronomy page so everyone can see the latest version).
Remember there's nothing to say you HAVE to write anything, you can just view it as if it's a website if you like.
The good thing is that anybody with an internet connection and the password can see it, so you can add to it from your smart phone if you want.
Anyhow have a play with it, you can't break anything!!!”
To write on it, click "edit" (top right hand) then to save it, click "save". This can then be seen by everybody else who has the password. [specific examples included here as to how it could be used to direct the day’s work]
This can be expanded to include whatever you like (eg. long-term the agronomist could go in and put his recommendations into the Agronomy page so everyone can see the latest version).
Remember there's nothing to say you HAVE to write anything, you can just view it as if it's a website if you like.
The good thing is that anybody with an internet connection and the password can see it, so you can add to it from your smart phone if you want.
Anyhow have a play with it, you can't break anything!!!”
---
I realise in hindsight that my email was like its own kind
of lesson about the technology, I was trying to gently introduce them to the
idea of the wiki and engage them in the ICT journey. To lure the team in, I
embedded this youtube video. Funnily, it was this easy addition that
captured the team’s imagination. I am going to make sure I collect a stash of
funny farming videos for future use!
I unconsciously structured the activity to meet the users’ Zones
of Proximal Development by saying “you can just read it as a website” and “have
a play with it, you can’t break anything” and “long-term the agronomist could…”
The various pages of the wiki form the scaffold for the
learning. The reason the daily plan is on the front page is because if you did
nothing else, you could still scroll down and see what everybody is doing. To
undertake higher level processes (analysis, synthesis and evaluation) you would
go to the other pages (meeting notes, useful documents, agronomy, long-term
projects and rainy day list).
The family fun page is there as a lure but also so that
off-farm family can see the latest photos of the kids/pets/renovations or
recent projects (such as our Glogster) – inspiring connectivism.
The My Holiday
Adventures wiki
The second wiki I created is a very simple one page wiki that I used
to create some connectivism for my Glogster.
This wiki allows children who engage in the Glogster to
record a few of the things that they do on their holidays and why they like
living where they live. An example response is provided by Ebony (one of the
children featured in the Glogster).
Wiki in the classroom
Wikis are easy to use, can be accessible to anybody with
internet, are available 24 hours a day and, when scaffolded well, provide
fertile ground to share and build on ideas. I like that they can provide a
space for the whole class to engage … or they could be used internationally for
students to add their ideas from their own context and prior knowledge (imagine
if a Chinese student practised their English by adding to the My Holiday
Adventures wiki, or vice versa!)
With wikis, there is time and space to think, so the
information garnered in a wiki will not just be that of the quickest or loudest
students in the class. Students can consider an idea, get online at 8pm and share
it with the class, and their contribution will be viewed in the same way that
every other class members’ is. Wikis can be a democratic means of opening up
the floor to discussion.
Wikis support higher order thinking processes because of the
allowance they have for students to examine a topic or a concept, analyse
existing information, defend their own contribution and evaluate the material
in front of them. This level of interaction is not as easily achieved using the
other tools.
Plus
|
Minus
|
Implications
|
-
Easy to use, simple tools (to create and add
to)
-
Facilitates sharing and discussion of ideas
-
Anybody with an internet connection and the
password (if required) can access and edit a wiki
-
Allows 24 hour input
|
-
Not enormous capacity for graphics
-
May require regulation, depending on users and
their level of self-regulation
|
-
Scaffolding is important to achieve learning
objectives
|
Group 2: Images and
digital video
Images and digital video can bring a story or concept alive,
but they’re also not without their challenges. As with other material destined
for the internet, it is imperative that copyright, attributions and image permissions
are used correctly (National Copyright Unit, n.d.)
My beautiful,
borrowed, film stars
In trying to create something that is engaging and authentic
(both for the user, and me!) I decided to create my own images and video. With
the permission of Ebony, Brooke and Toby’s parents I filmed and photographed
them and also gave them a camera to capture their own footage. The most
valuable footage was that captured by Brooke, who took to the roving reporter
role with great enthusiasm. It was a great opportunity for me (and probably
other adults) to realise the different point of view you have when you’re one
metre tall.
I took three cameras to the filming location (an iPhone, a
little digital camera and a big Nikon Digital SLR) and encouraged the kids to
use all three. I also encouraged the girls to use apps on my iPhone and on
laptops to create some animated characters. I was disappointed by the inability
of programs like Windows MovieMaker 2.6 to edit video taken on the iPhone. I
also found that Glogster didn’t upload photos or video taken on the iPhone and
some from the digital SLR. More on these frustrations in Group 3.
The learning I take away from this group is to ensure that
whichever technology you use to take photos, podcasts or video, it can easily
be edited and uploaded to its destination. The most reliable camera was the
little digital camera, both for its video and photos that seemed to transfer to
the PC (and then to the web) seamlessly.
Images and video in
the classroom
In the classroom, the value of this technology is in
empowering students to create their own media from their point-of-view. The
skills and attributes students apply fall neatly into Blooms Taxonomy:
·
Clear communication of knowledge on a topic
·
Arranging
their thoughts, and information, into a logical order for presentation
·
Manipulating
sound and images to tell a story
·
Confidence in speaking and presenting an explanation or a conclusion
·
Competently using ICT to relate information (online or otherwise).
Images and video as a medium are good ways of presenting
both declarative and procedural information. A student can use a video or a
series of photos to show how they do something (ie. Feeding the poddy calf,
making a puppet) rather than just facts about the topic.
I accessed a Creative Commons Australia track of music to use in the video and it was
easy to put into the audio bar in Windows MovieMaker 2.6. I only needed a short
clip of music for the video that Brooke had filmed. I will always head to Creative Commons when looking for stock music or images as much so I am modelling responsible behaviour for students. It would also be useful
to be more conversant with the search capabilities on Creative Commons because
there is such a range of music available on the site.
Too many shiny things
The issue that I found with using the cameras with the kids
is that it’s easy for everybody to get distracted by the technology and lose
sight of the content. This is probably as much a reflection on my inexperienced
scaffolding of the activity (and the fact that it was not a formal school
environment) but I know that the actual content work I wanted to achieve was barely
touched.
I had dreams of including the following:
·
interviews (video and podcast) about living in
the country
·
footage of the kids doing all their chores and
putting this into an online storybook
·
a wiki of the kids planning for a winter vege
garden
·
sock puppet animation talking about all the farm
animals
·
a recording of Skyping the “city cousins” to
discuss the difference between city and country holidays.
The wonderful, but distractive, nature of technology became
obvious when I was trying to interview Toby (to be fair, he is only three)
about why he likes living in the country. I thought I was making real headway
when Toby looked serious, thought for a bit, then moved towards the camera and
said “Can I have a go at the camera now?” Hence, I have plenty of file footage
of the lounge room floor if anybody would like to use it! In all seriousness
though, if I had just been writing down the answers with pen and paper, this
would not have been nearly as distracting as the camera proved.
Plus
|
Minus
|
Implications
|
-
Provides a rich link to the real world
-
Images and video can be captured easily and
with existing equipment (iPod touch, phones, small digital cameras)
|
-
Some people may be interested in images and
video for unethical/illegal purposes
-
Not all formats will work with all editing
suites or websites
-
The camera itself can cause distraction
|
-
Need to be careful to acknowledge others’
material and observe copyright
-
Need to get permission from students’ parents
before posting images of a student
|
Group 3: Glogster
When it comes to Glogsters, I like the destination but I do
not enjoy the journey.
I chose the Glogster to work on because it’s such a new,
educationally focused technology. I understand that students at the local high
school use them regularly for assessments.
Personally, I can see that the Glogster product is bright
and engaging. Its look and feel is very contemporary with elements (sticky
notes, images, text boxes) haphazardly positioned around the page. As somebody
consuming a Glogster, I feel like it is a very sophisticated means of conveying
information in such a way that it doesn’t feel laborious to see it all.
Glogst-arrrrggghhhh
In putting together a Glogster, the sensation is the exact
opposite.
Glogsters are fiddly and frustrating. I’ve said it. If I had
to work with a Glogster in my former corporate life, I would have been on the
phone to the IT desk in minutes, saying “there’s something wrong with this
program, I cannot do the same command twice and expect the same outcome”. Or I
would have said “Why can three of my photos upload, but not the other four?”.
Or perhaps “why, when you recommend I use Vimeo, does Vimeo not actually work
to embed my video?”
The extent of Glogster’s technical issues were borne out in
an email from James, Glogster’s ever-helpful, customer care manager. When I
enquired as to the difficulty in uploading photos to my Glogster, one of the
points James made was:
Please note that when the button
'Create new glog' is clicked there are 6 templates available. The first 5 are
our 'Next Gen' templates - the last one at far right is the 'Classic' template.
We would advise to avoid using the Classic as we have technical issues with it
at the moment. Thanks for your understanding. (J. Wright, personal
communication, 6 April 2013)
I take nothing away from James’ helpfulness and, when I
emailed, he solved some of my issues by recommending updating Flash (I was able
to upload probably half of my photos then – which was enough for the task at
hand). But I reflect on the email and think that there is a chance one in six
users may choose the Classic template, and end up having technical issues
(beyond those I describe in my Next Gen template). I would be interested to
know whether this would have an impact on students’ desire to engage with this
tool again.
The impediments to efficiently putting together a useful
tool on Glogster are:
·
You cannot hover over a button and have a little
text box pop up telling you what that command does. This, to me, stifles your desire to scroll
around and get to understand all the tools. While you do always have the Undo
button (if you did click and try), it seems an unnecessary waste of time as
you’re learning to use the tools.
·
Manoeuvring around in Glogster is a very
frustrating experience. There seems to be no simple guide to how to move,
select one or multiple items, or type on Glogster. It seems to be a matter of
just keep clicking until the thing you want happens. From what I could tell, to
select an item (such as a graphic) you need to click and drag the mouse until
the corner boxes come up. To type, you click until a text options box comes up,
invariably right over the top of where you want to type. Sometimes when you go
to select an item, for no apparent reason, it will select the four items around
it as well, so you move everything. To avoid doing this, I tried to lock the
location of some items. A big, reassuring padlock appeared over the top, but
one click on the item and it moved again.
·
If you choose a new element or image it gets put
right in the middle of the page. This is fine, if there is nothing else in the
middle of your page, but as your Glogster gets populated, there’s every change
your new element will be on top of something else. Picking up this new element
is very frustrating. So you just keep clicking until, somehow, you can pick up
the element and move it to its desired location.
I spent two days working on my Glogster and for that, I find
the finished product to look good, but it is not impressive in its technical capacity.
Yes it has a video embedded (not without drama), the graphics are cute, the
links work and the text looks attractive, but these elements do not reflect the
time invested in putting the tool together.
Glogster in the
classroom
From a classroom perspective, I would worry for the fine
motor skills and frustration levels of students who, like me, cannot readily
move their elements around the Glogster. More experienced minds than mine (W.
Fasso, personal communication, 8 April 2013) assure me that children are more
patient, but I fear that the reward is simply not there if the Glogster
continues to be tricky to drive. I tried to Google solutions to my Glogster
problems but there were not many offered online.
I really like the idea of a free product that students can
access to present information in a fun way. In making a recommendation for the
classroom, I would suggest that the humble Weebly is far more user-friendly and
has capabilities akin to the Glogster anyhow. From my own experience, there is
nothing you can do on a Glogster that you couldn’t achieve with a Weebly.
Weebly doesn’t start with a pre-determined backdrop as the Glogster does,
however I think this does not detract from Weebly. It simply promotes greater
creativity in creating an individual look and feel for the website.
As we all learn differently, Glogster may open doors for
some students in ways that we, as teachers, could never foresee. Understanding Gardner's Multiple Intelligences,
there may be spacial, linguistic or musical areas of intelligence that would
really respond to the style of presentation that the Glogster facilitates. As such, the tool should not be discarded as
an option for presentation, but simply considered among a suite of other
presentation tools.
Plus
|
Minus
|
Implications
|
-
An attractive means of communicating lots of
different pieces of information
|
-
Can be fiddly and potentially frustrating to
use
|
-
It may assist for teachers to first be
confident in the consistent performance of the technology before engaging
students
|
Group 4: Animations
and simulation
The animation and simulation aspect of ICT in learning
design is the area that I feel most engages students. From my own experience,
the children I worked with were most enthralled by the leap from reality to the
screen when using animation and simulation. I am a bit disappointed that I
didn’t make more use of animation and simulation in my assessable components,
however technical and data restrictions inhibited my ability to keep
persevering.
A couple of things I had hoped to use were:
·
A Sock Puppets animation that Ebony had put
together where she talked about the benefits of living on a farm (unexpectedly,
she said that the biggest benefit is that you could chop down trees for
firewood! I think this actually showed high levels of consideration, because
the background in her Sock Puppet show was a row of trees). This animation
would not upload from my iPhone to YouTube so I was unable to use this tool.
The creation of it, however, proved an enjoyable activity for the girls.
·
An animation of the life cycle of a frog because the
kids have tadpoles in a trough that are quite developed (some have legs) and we
took video of the girls holding the tadpoles and talking about them. This video
was taken on the iPhone and would not load to Windows MovieMaker 2.6. I had
researched buying iMovie but in looking at reviews and demonstrations, it was a
bit too limited in its capacity to justify buying.
The simulation/animation that I ended up using for the
assessment was a link to Google Maps and a flag on the town of Yelarbon to show
how far Ebony, Brooke and Toby live from the capital city of Brisbane, with a
brief description of the facilities Yelarbon boasts. Google Map assists with
putting any geographical location in context, in what is a fairly familiar
backdrop to most Google users. I made sure that the immediate scale of Google
Maps shows its distance from Brisbane and the east coast (so that you don’t end
up just looking at a dot on a map surrounded by other unfamiliar dots).
For the purpose of maintaining the children’s safety and
privacy I did not pinpoint their exact location on the map, but just talked
about them living “near Yelarbon” and what facilities the town itself has.
Simulation and
animation in the classroom
In using simulation and animation in the classroom, the
opportunities to tell stories or model processes or concepts are endless.
Recently, in using an online text for my Literacy assignment, I found the ABC Splash website to
have high quality simulations and animations. I used the unit on earthquakes
and this included:
·
animation of the movement of tectonic plates
·
video of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami in
2011
·
a video report by a 12 year old boy who lives in
Tokyo about the effect on his daily life
·
an interactive game to piece together the
earth’s tectonic plates.
As an adjunct to this I used Google Maps to determine the
actual distance between the site of the earthquake and Tokyo (about 300
kilometres) and built an activity where (prior to watching the video of the 12
year old boy) students had to predict the kind of impact on them if an
earthquake and tsunami occurred 300 kilometres away from their home town.
Equally, simple tools such as the Sock Puppets app for
iPhone and iPad have many applications. I provided this app to a friend who
does early primary relief teaching, and she said that this would be very useful
for doing a 30 second introduction of herself to the class. In my instance, I
could not upload the Sock Puppet show file to YouTube (a recurring technical
error) but the app would be useful if it could reliably be converted to a file
that could be projected onto a screen or interactive whiteboard for the whole
class.
Plus
|
Minus
|
Implications
|
-
Exciting, new, often free and can be very
interactive
-
Students can tell stories, recount events,
share facts in a way that is comfortable to them
-
Animation can speed up and illustrate a
process that would be difficult to see in real life
|
-
There is a risk the excitement about the
technology may override any content or pedagogical value
|
-
Careful scaffolding is required to be able to
ensure students benefit from the full TPACK allowances.
|
Conclusion
I remember being dragged along to the opening of a new
library in the mid 1990s, when the world/regional town was just starting to
marvel at the fact that computers could talk to each other. A boffin, (and I
apologise that I do not know his name, or indeed how I would ever find it out)
said that the risk with the internet was that there would be so much
information available that we wouldn’t possibly be able to understand or
consume it all. He said it would be like “trying to take a drink from a fire
hose”. We chuckled politely and thought of the 26 Funk and Wagnalls on the
shelf and tried to imagine ever needing anything more than that. We were
certainly satiated.
Fast forward about 20 years and the idea of entering the
classroom without a free flow of internet data is terrifying. The world wide
web provides a useful source of information when tricky questions pop up
(remembering that for students to be engaging in higher order thinking, we need
those tricky questions to pop up). It provides us the technology to be able to
pull together information and ideas and present it in interesting and
connectivist ways. And thanks to networks of other teachers and resources, it
can also help with achieving effective pedagogy.
I initially spoke of the challenge for me being where to
start and where to stop in my ICT journey. And my finding is that you must
start somewhere that means something to you so that whatever you do is
interesting and relevant to your schema. And as far as stopping? You’ll never
stop. Even as I’m putting together my conclusion I’m fussing about which frog
animation to use, because there’ll always be one better. I actually think you
have to be practical by using timeframes as your indication of what is right
because, in this world of educational abundance, preparing something for the
class to start with, is just that. A starting point. You are better to walk
into a classroom with something that is “perfection minus one” than nothing at
all. Because that starting point will springboard the students into achieving
something so far beyond your own perfection that it’s overwhelming.
Indeed it’s probably perfection to the power of google.
Indeed it’s probably perfection to the power of google.
Reference list
Fasso, W (2013) Week 2 Collaborate
session, Blackboard slides available for EDED 20491 – ICTs for Learning Design
at CQUniversity Australia, Bundaberg, Qld
National Copyright Unit. (n.d.) What can a teacher do on a wiki or
blog?
Retrieved from http://www.smartcopying.edu.au/scw/go/pid/946
