TTL Goals for Spring semester:
After a semester of experience in the TTL, my goals have changed, and new opportunities have presented themselves. My task goals for this semester include:
1) Develop computer purchase and assembly lesson with Olgun. We will have his W220 students determine the computing needs for the TTL, with myself functioning as the client. My hope is to make the lesson such that the students will order parts and build the computers themselves.
2) Developing the ePortfolio and Online teaching workshops. It has been difficult finding time for this, TTL tasks have been keeping my occupied.
Now that I am managing the TTL, my goal is to delegate tasks rather than tackling them all myself. This has been fairly easy this semester as there are now more people working in the TTL, and more TTL lab worker hours. So, my focus will be delegating tasks just enough to carve out the time needed for the task goals listed above.
Friday, January 31, 2014
Friday, September 27, 2013
Find the goal.
These last two weeks have proven exciting in the TTL. More students are coming in for the digital story, and it is very fulfilling because I feel like I get to do more of what I really like doing: helping people solve their problems. One thing I've found to be a good idea: talk to the students to get an overview of what they want to do with their digital story, and take some time to get ahold of their perspective, rather than just helping them with the technical issue that they are having. Why? Because it seems that it is not uncommon for students to assume that they need to do something that is difficult, or sometimes they've chosen a solution that is impractical for what their final goal is. A counter-example:
A student was having an issue with WeVideo. When she uploaded her movie clips, the browser would freeze, and Shockwave stopped working. So, I tried to solve this issue by updating ShockWave and trying different browsers and computers. This approach ultimately took a lot of time and produced no result. So we tried rebuilding the movie from scratch. Turns out that one of the movie clips was responsible for crashing shockwave (and, in turn, the browser). So we tried changing the format of the video so that it might not crash the browser...and that failed to. Finally, I thought to ask, "what is your goal with this clip? what do you want it to do for the viewer?" She responded, "I wanted a globe, and for it to spin." Suddenly the solution was simple - to upload multiple snapshots of the globe movie in progress. This took about five minutes to do.
This made me realize that using technology is so much simpler if we start with the end goal. How do we want this technology to impact the people who will be using it? What do we want it to do for them? This can bring us to solutions that are easier to accomplish, and have the same or nearly the same effect.
After that particular student came in, I decided to put increasing emphasis on conversations that start with, "Tell me about your project. What do you want to do? What do you want to accomplish with it? How do you want your project to accomplish its goals? Why do you want to use that particular way?"
This can help with finding the quickest solution for the end goal, and prevent the student from getting lost in needless technical tasks.
In other news, this week the dean of Teacher Education and a few Social Studies professors came in to learn about using iPods and Swivls for new teachers to use to document their capabilities. For that story, though, you will have to wait until next week.
These last two weeks have proven exciting in the TTL. More students are coming in for the digital story, and it is very fulfilling because I feel like I get to do more of what I really like doing: helping people solve their problems. One thing I've found to be a good idea: talk to the students to get an overview of what they want to do with their digital story, and take some time to get ahold of their perspective, rather than just helping them with the technical issue that they are having. Why? Because it seems that it is not uncommon for students to assume that they need to do something that is difficult, or sometimes they've chosen a solution that is impractical for what their final goal is. A counter-example:
A student was having an issue with WeVideo. When she uploaded her movie clips, the browser would freeze, and Shockwave stopped working. So, I tried to solve this issue by updating ShockWave and trying different browsers and computers. This approach ultimately took a lot of time and produced no result. So we tried rebuilding the movie from scratch. Turns out that one of the movie clips was responsible for crashing shockwave (and, in turn, the browser). So we tried changing the format of the video so that it might not crash the browser...and that failed to. Finally, I thought to ask, "what is your goal with this clip? what do you want it to do for the viewer?" She responded, "I wanted a globe, and for it to spin." Suddenly the solution was simple - to upload multiple snapshots of the globe movie in progress. This took about five minutes to do.
This made me realize that using technology is so much simpler if we start with the end goal. How do we want this technology to impact the people who will be using it? What do we want it to do for them? This can bring us to solutions that are easier to accomplish, and have the same or nearly the same effect.
After that particular student came in, I decided to put increasing emphasis on conversations that start with, "Tell me about your project. What do you want to do? What do you want to accomplish with it? How do you want your project to accomplish its goals? Why do you want to use that particular way?"
This can help with finding the quickest solution for the end goal, and prevent the student from getting lost in needless technical tasks.
In other news, this week the dean of Teacher Education and a few Social Studies professors came in to learn about using iPods and Swivls for new teachers to use to document their capabilities. For that story, though, you will have to wait until next week.
Friday, September 13, 2013
Something old, something new, somethings yet to do - A reflection
Something old: I was not really sure what to expect working in the TTL. Mostly, I anticipated helping students who come in, updated websites, etc...My primary challenge in the beginning was knowing what I would be expected to do, and how to get it done. Having Katie and Janet to help has been a fantastic asset, and made it possible for me to move forward when I was not sure what to do. So, the challenge of knowing what needs to be done seems conquered for now, how do it is being mastered one bit at a time - with a few exceptions.
Something new: The task list is a great resource for me, and I use it to mark progress, etc... it is dawning on me though, that I need to put more effort into uncovering, establishing, and following an unwritten set of priorities. As a TTL novice, I tended to look at the task list, and ask, 'what can I do on this list with my current set of skills?' I used this to establish my priorities. Unfortunately, the needs of the AI's do not have any relationship to my current set of skills. So, I have been reminding myself that I need to look at the list, and ask, 'what needs to be done first?' Knowing this, though, is tricky since I don't know how long the tasks will take. Fortunately, most of the high priority items for the TTL are re-occurring tasks, and so it is only a matter of time before I have no need to...
Something new: creating training material for the next TTL lab workers
Something old: I was not really sure what to expect working in the TTL. Mostly, I anticipated helping students who come in, updated websites, etc...My primary challenge in the beginning was knowing what I would be expected to do, and how to get it done. Having Katie and Janet to help has been a fantastic asset, and made it possible for me to move forward when I was not sure what to do. So, the challenge of knowing what needs to be done seems conquered for now, how do it is being mastered one bit at a time - with a few exceptions.
Something new: The task list is a great resource for me, and I use it to mark progress, etc... it is dawning on me though, that I need to put more effort into uncovering, establishing, and following an unwritten set of priorities. As a TTL novice, I tended to look at the task list, and ask, 'what can I do on this list with my current set of skills?' I used this to establish my priorities. Unfortunately, the needs of the AI's do not have any relationship to my current set of skills. So, I have been reminding myself that I need to look at the list, and ask, 'what needs to be done first?' Knowing this, though, is tricky since I don't know how long the tasks will take. Fortunately, most of the high priority items for the TTL are re-occurring tasks, and so it is only a matter of time before I have no need to...
Something new: creating training material for the next TTL lab workers
Friday, August 30, 2013
Self-Evaluation
For F500, we are evaluating our strengths and weaknesses as teachers. Surveying my strengths and weaknesses, I can see some areas for improvements, and other areas that I will continue to emphasize as strengths.
Strengths: My greatest strength as a member of the w200 team in the TTL lab is my successful experience as a teacher. As someone who has enabled students to truly excel despite significant obstacles, I feel that my principal strength as a teacher is my focus on instructional effectiveness. More specifically, how to motivate and inspire middle school students. Also, being very familiar with the economic, political, and educational environment, I can provide w200's pre-service teachers with ideas and strategies for overcoming obstacles they will encounter in their teaching, and in their efforts to use computers in the classroom.
Weaknesses: My greatest weakness is time management. I tend to focus on ensuring that my students really learn a given concept well rather than orientating them to a large number of things. This means my natural tendency is to spend a lot of time on a small number of concepts. Curricular trends in the Indiana academic standards, and in w200 seem to be heavily weighted in favor of the latter. I think the key to adapting to this different approach is to realize that, specifically for learning about technology, that latter approach is the most appropriate because technology changes rapidly, making in-depth learning of a specific software (particularly constantly changing web 2.0 apps) is not productive.
For F500, we are evaluating our strengths and weaknesses as teachers. Surveying my strengths and weaknesses, I can see some areas for improvements, and other areas that I will continue to emphasize as strengths.
Strengths: My greatest strength as a member of the w200 team in the TTL lab is my successful experience as a teacher. As someone who has enabled students to truly excel despite significant obstacles, I feel that my principal strength as a teacher is my focus on instructional effectiveness. More specifically, how to motivate and inspire middle school students. Also, being very familiar with the economic, political, and educational environment, I can provide w200's pre-service teachers with ideas and strategies for overcoming obstacles they will encounter in their teaching, and in their efforts to use computers in the classroom.
Weaknesses: My greatest weakness is time management. I tend to focus on ensuring that my students really learn a given concept well rather than orientating them to a large number of things. This means my natural tendency is to spend a lot of time on a small number of concepts. Curricular trends in the Indiana academic standards, and in w200 seem to be heavily weighted in favor of the latter. I think the key to adapting to this different approach is to realize that, specifically for learning about technology, that latter approach is the most appropriate because technology changes rapidly, making in-depth learning of a specific software (particularly constantly changing web 2.0 apps) is not productive.
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