ILP Participation - Sandbox AR/VR tools

I went up to the Sandbox to complete the tour that was cut short the other week.  I wanted to get into the AR and VR items because I feel this is really where the applications are enormous for students in a history or social sciences classroom.  "History is boring".  Probably the most common phrase you hear from people about history classes.  I don't think it is, but I've always been able to see the drama in everything.  For most people, it's a collection of dates and dead people.  I think AR and VR, in particular, can help to change that. 

Currently, there is not a ton of content available for the systems for History and Social Studies courses, but there are a few, and I was able to look at a few of them.  Under the AR heading, there was Civilizations AR, which is an excellent tool though limited by content.  (This will be a recurring theme with these programs)  It allows you to see and manipulate items that are superimposed on the background of your space on your phone.  The personal interaction with the objects and the ability to focus on areas you want to see better is nice.  JigSpace is another program that lets you again, insert an object into your space and manipulate it with similar limitations in regards to the availability of content.  These are limited by the sometimes difficult process of maneuvering your phone and having it register a space to place objects.  They can be a bit finicky and difficult to use.

Here's a pic of a mummy sarcophagus on my floor at work, this was taken with Civilizations AR and shows a bit of what you can do with it.

VR is where the technology really has a chance to shine.  I firmly believe that in the next 10-15 years, class field trips to chosen sites and even observation of particular historic events will be as simple as putting a headset on and entering the VR world.  As it currently stands, you are generally limited by a couple of factors.  They have not completely figured out a movement method that is simple and intuitive, but some options are better than others.  You are also usually tethered to the computer, though the wifi revolution is changing that slowly.  The most important limitation currently is (Say it with me) lack of content.  I know there are groups out there who are preserving ancient sites like the Acropolis by taking detailed 360-degree video and using drone photography in order to create a perfect 3D representation of these locations so eventually, you will be able to stroll through these historical sites completely virtually and even, if combined with the 3D modeling techniques, be able to wander through them and see it as someone from the time of their construction would have.  This is where the future of teaching history lies.  Not just a dry talk about an object or a time period, but actually (Well, virtually) seeing it.  Even with the frame rate and resolution issues with the headsets currently, your brain can be completely fooled.  Imagine if when discussing the Civil War in your US history classroom, instead of talking about Pickett's Charge, you could put your students in the front line and let them see what one of those soldiers saw.  Or let them watch the Gettysburg Adress like they're seeing it live.  That is how you can get people interested in history.  Let them be IN the stories you're telling.

As it is, there isn't much to talk about for the history programs for VR, there simply aren't many.  Google Earth VR is useful, as you can somewhat get in and see sites, but the range of motion is limited and the controls are mind-bogglingly frustrating to learn.   We are just on the cusp of what this technology can do, and I'm looking forward to seeing where it will take us.  I appreciate the Sandbox for having these items so we can see what we can do with the technology and letting us try it out.  You can't understand how much your brain can be fooled by this stuff until you actually try it.  I hope I can find some more time to go back and try these items out some more.  I also wish I was in charge of setting up the programs in the pipeline to be made because I have so many ideas for things.

Blog Post 6

I went back to my old school and looked over their websites, unfortunately, there were only two of them (Way to represent Niceville High School!).  Teacher websites were not a thing when I was in school.  Honestly, websites themselves weren't really a thing back then.  I visited the two sites available which were both Honors English sites, Mrs. Ellis' site:

And also Mrs. Mixon's site:

Unfortunately, I could not find a grade level, but given that these are Honors/AP English, it would have to be grade 11 or 12.  Both websites show a list of upcoming homework, have a slideshow with class slides, and also links to external resources for the students to use.  There appear to be discussion boards possibly for them that might allow class discussions.  In general, the layout of Mrs. Ellis site is much better looking and organized and pleasant to look at.

I could see using a website to distribute homework and send out class announcements.  It would be a handy resource to keep communication with parents up, especially these days as the parents have probably also been on the internet for the majority of their lives, so it seems natural to them.  Ideally, it would be nice to be able to exchange comments between the teacher and parents on the site, though given the normal way website comments run, that might not be a great idea.  I would also like to use the site as a discussion board for students to discuss the class activities amongst themselves.  The issue there would be getting them to actually use it.  Perhaps if they were prompted to do so, it might continue.

The tech sandbox trip was too short honestly.  We needed at least another 45 minutes to an hour to get through the whole thing.  As it was, my group only got to see the smartboards and the 3d printing before our time was up.  The smartboards are handy for some things, but I feel that they are perhaps a little overhyped.  I don't deny that they are significantly better than the reel to reel projectors we had, but in general, they really do not have much more than the "wow" factor.  Some things will be easier, and the ability to manipulate items in space is useful.  I see them being much more useful for the younger kids as they beg for interactivity, and once you reach the upper grades, you generally want the students staying in their seats to minimize disruption.  I'm sure as time goes by, they will expand the software and programs available and think of uses beyond what we have now.  As it is, for my purposes, it's not much more than a glorified whiteboard that I can put pictures on.  The same goes for the 3D printing.  I can see tons of applications for this in certain fields of study.  For Social Studies/History, it's not much more than a novelty though.  If we'd had them available back when I was in drafting classes though, I would have been in love. 

Blog Post 5

Diigo looks to be a very interesting and useful tool for teachers.  I can see it being used for teacher/student interactions also, but the inter-teacher communication aspect seems like it would be incredibly handy.  The ability to share links and annotations between your peers without sending each individual contact a link and notes is great.  The main thing I see as being an issue with this is simple overload.  If you have a large group, many links could get lost if there is a large influx of posts at the same time.  Aside from that minor niggle, I think this is one of the better applications I've seen for the dissemination of information between teachers.

Blogging so far has been okay.  It’s not a true blogging experience, mainly because we have topics to talk about in each one, so it’s not free-form rambling of the type of most blogs I pay attention to.  Still, writing off the top of my head is one aspect of school I never struggled with.  Term papers, essays, whatever, just go from base knowledge and then go back for sources is necessary.  I’m good at it, and writing is something I should probably do more of.  As for what I’ve learned from it, aside from how to use this particular blogging site, not too much.  I mean, I’m learning the systems we use, and learning about the problems and issues that we need to discuss in class, but as far as blogging goes, I’ve done it before, there’s not a whole lot of new stuff coming in here.

The Map As History website is a useful site for a social studies teacher.  The website itself is not the prettiest site ever made, but it has a list of historical maps with included videos that explain the progress of the map through time.  This could be a useful resource for teachers to present a basic rundown of different periods of history before using class time to go more in depth.  The maps update as the video presents new features and the timeline advances so the students will be able to see the procession of time, a topic that is difficult for many students to grasp when simply reading text or listening to a lecture.  In an ideal world, the maps would be truly interactive, with the teacher able to control the progression, but this is still an excellent resource.  You are able to get a subscription to the site as an individual or as a school.  They provide a list of all the available maps and have a list of all contributing authors.  The site is fully functional and recommended by a couple of groups, including the French Ministry of Education.

https://www.the-map-as-history.com/

Blog Post 4

Twitter is, in my opinion, one of the worst of the social media platforms, which is saying a lot since I believe that social media is honestly one of the banes of the modern age.  The format and users are overall, terrible.  Yes, there are useful things about it, and if you try, you can find good information and great links, but the format is conducive to insults and pointless one-liners and nearly anything seen by the general public is liable to go political.  Like all social media, Twitter is only as good as the users, and like all social media, the users tend to be awful.  I can see the use for it, but I find it very hard to deal with being on it.  I have followed one person outside of class, which is Dr. Bob Nicholson, who does humorous Victorian history tweets, but aside from that, I really can’t bring myself to be on there long enough to discover much, even though it will negatively impact my grade.  I am serious when I say that Twitter is the worst of social media sites.  It will likely not be very helpful in the future, because as soon as the requirement to have an account is over, I will be deleting the account and never, EVER, looking at it again.

The digital divide is a serious issue in schools today, particularly in areas with a disparity between socio-economic levels or rural and city lifestyles.  As a teacher, you have to take into account those students who do not have ready access to up-to-date technology.  If you teach in a rural area, the students may not even have access to computers at all.  In cities and large towns, children could at least go to the libraries to access one if necessary.  In smaller towns, even that may not be an option.  You must structure your classes in a way that does not disadvantage your students who do not have access to all the modern conveniences.  That means no homework or testing that requires online or computer research or work.  Luckily, we’ve been teaching without computers for a few millennia now, so figuring out how to go about this shouldn’t be difficult.  A lot of schools are now providing computers and/or iPads for the students now, but even then, you must account for any students that are not as adept at using technology as others, and anyone who may not have internet access at home.  

Next up is software for students.  Having just said you must accommodate your students who may not have computers and access to the internet, it seems like an odd transition to then talk about software for them to use.  Particularly since I am aiming to teach in rural communities where they may not have access to these things, so I will hopefully not be requiring my students to have any of this.  I suppose if I have to use them, then things like DropBox, which is a simple to use file sharing service.  I could use to share files like a syllabus and videos or allow students to submit assignments online.  The only other I can think of requiring students to use would be Microsoft Word, which is an easy to use word processing program.  I would mainly use this because as a history teacher, the students will be doing a good bit of writing, and I don’t have the time to be trying to decipher handwritten papers, plus the spellcheck is vital since nobody knows how to spell anymore.

I think the ITSE standard I am most equipped to start off with is "Make strategic use of digital media (e.g., textual, graphical, audio, visual, and interactive elements) in presentations to enhance understanding of findings, reasoning, and evidence and to add interest".  Throughout my years of school, I've gone through a lot of different technologies and feel pretty well equipped to diversify even further.  I'm pretty comfortable with incorporating new things into my techniques and methods as long as someone shows me how to do it.  Also, students get bored pretty quickly if you constantly show them the same content over and over in the same formats.

The standard I'm least equipped for is "Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products in response to ongoing feedback, including new arguments or information."  This blog is my first venture into online writing, and it's not collaborative.  I can't even imagine the issues that would come from any kind of group collaborative writing project done by students.  It's bad enough separating them into groups for normal assignments.  You run into the exclusionary practices of kids toward each other, fighting amongst each other.  I would love to see someone show me how this process works in a normal (non-AP type) class because I simply don't see it as being helpful at all.

CPALMS is one of the best educator resources available online.  It has thousands of standards, lesson plans, teacher and student resources, tutorials and more for any grade level and field.  In my case, since I would like to teach high school level history, I would personally use resource ID# 169158, which is a video discussion titled "Slavery and the Missouri Compromise".  This is a Kahn Academy video, and it does an excellent job of outlining the issues of slavery and the compromises that delayed the split of the U.S. as long as it did.  I enjoy how it's done as a question/answer format.  I know many students don't want to ask questions in class, so having someone else ask the questions that they may have in mind but don't want to ask could help a good bit.

I actually enjoyed the newsletter assignment.  I can't say I learned too much from it, aside from some formatting things, such as the fact that adding a clickable link to a footer is impossible, and that deleting a page from an established template is a royal pain in the rear.  It was fun trying to consider just what might be going on in my imaginary classroom and what the class would have studied at this point, what we might be doing, and making up names for all my great students who have done well.

Blog Journal 2

I did not use MS Word until I was in college the first time around in 1993.  As a student, Word has been used merely as a simple word processing program, used to type papers and do simple grammatical and spelling checks.  In fact, I’m typing this in Word now.  Teachers have used it in a similar way from what I’ve seen, as a word processing program to set up handouts and tests.  I believe my experiences missed the greater part of its use, as in High school, it wasn’t much of a thing, and now, most items from teachers are done using PowerPoint, Excel, and other more graphical programs.

I have literally no experience with the use of copyright and fair use in an educational sense that I am aware of.  I know the general idea, that copyright can be waived in educational use or for parody, but that is pretty much the extent of my knowledge.  I assume that the material would need to be placed into an educational context and adjusted as such, that straight plagiarism would still be off limits.  In general, I think it would be helpful to try and stick to creative commons things for education, which would pose no problems at all unless you intended to profit off their use.

Academic honesty – This is becoming much simpler and more difficult at the same time.  Easier, because there are literally hundreds of plagiarism checking programs like TurnItIn and Viper available, and many for free.  Also, it can be hard though since there are so many more sources available for free on the internet, that students can pull information from sometimes very obscure sources.  Also, the programs all depend on algorithms, and some are better suited to different uses.  As for cheating, again, this is getting harder to control these days with the proliferation of small internet-connected devices.  From my time observing classes, the most common reaction seems to be to roll with it and make many tests open-note.  I have seen teachers erect barriers between students, though that seems to make using a smart device for cheating even easier since the view to the teacher is usually blocked also.  I am unsure of how to combat this to be completely honest.  An easy partial solution, since I plan on teaching history, would be to have more essay tests, where the use of such devices would not be either as easy or as helpful as multiple choice or fill in the blank tests.

Privacy – Privacy is a serious issue in this day with the massive increase in social media sites that are often either hacked or willingly sell their user data to other companies.  The irony of the great wide web, free and anonymous, is that it is rapidly becoming neither of these things.  Too often your info is getting out there, regardless of your intentions.  In the classroom, with the rapidly expanding use of internet-based interactive activities and homework, you run the risk of exposing your student’s data to unscrupulous people.  There are partial defenses such as VPNs, but these are only partial solutions and the only sure-fire way to maintain your student’s privacy is to not use the web-based resources available.  Perhaps the best solution to this is to use the resources, but to do so using a single classroom access point.  You can use a classroom login that contains no student data at all.  You would lose the personal interaction that students could get with programs, but still gain the benefit of the programs overall.  

Blog Post 1

The question of what inspires a teacher to use technology in the classroom is a simple one to me.  You have to connect with the students in some way and get them to reach their full potential in the classroom, and the easiest way to do that is to give them content and learning tools in a form that they are most comfortable with.  For this generation and the next, that will be through technology.  This is a difficult proposition for a lot of teachers because school funding can only stretch so far, and all of the nifty gadgets that are designed for the purpose of reaching the new technologically driven students are pricey.  Relying on students to use home computers to complete assignments can also be tricky depending on where you teach because, while home computers may be nearly ubiquitous in this age, the level of computer available, and access to it can vary wildly from student to student.  It can be hard to find a happy medium where all of the students can be involved without excluding any or holding others back.  The simplest solution is to only use technology for the teaching side, and not relying on the students to have anything themselves.  That can work to an extent, but you will also lose out on some interesting teaching and learning programs if you do.

The ISTE standards are general guidelines for teaching and learning in the technological age.  As general rules of thumb, they are an excellent baseline for students and teachers.  They can be used and tweaked to fit any individual classroom and should be read and understood by any teacher who is trying to incorporate more technology into the classroom. 
The one that seemed particularly apt to me is the Educator as the learner.  It is important to keep up to date with as much as possible, and this is particularly important in a field like educational technology where the pace of change is rapid and as soon as you get new toys, they may be considered obsolete by your students.  You need to be able to learn new technologies and techniques rapidly to keep up with other teachers and your students.  One thing the standard did not mention is that sometimes, the learning you do will come from your students, as they will likely be more familiar with what you're trying to use than you or your peers. 
The one I think I definitely need to work on the most is Teacher as Designer.  I am not a terribly creative person, and it can be a struggle to learn new techniques and methods of doing things.  I will definitely need help from other sources to learn how exactly to use some of this technology in a teaching fashion, but there should be plenty of help out there to do so.

I think, as a generalization, "Digital Native" works, though the phrasing of this question kind of excludes me.  I would not be a digital native, but am in the group of older people who generally take to technology well.  And there are (Again, in general, there are always exceptions) differences between the generations, and technology has an effect on the brain.  I don't think there's even a question about that.  The shorter attention spans are a thing, and it doesn't only affect the students today.  I can see changes in myself from the time before I was using the tech all day and when I wasn't.  If I step away from the technology for a while, as I like to do on vacation, my attention span and ability to concentrate increase considerably.  When I'm immersed in technology, even reading a book, which used to be one of my favorite past times, is a chore.  I don't see this issue going away, as the advances keep coming further and faster.  I imagine we're not too far off from implantable tech that will allow people to be constantly hooked into everything.  It will pose some interesting dilemmas for teachers in the future.