David Mazzotti
Journal
EDUC 422
Assignment Five
Holmes, B (1998). The Data Base: America’s Presidents. Learning and Leading with Technology, 25(7), 6 – 11.
Read this article and then answer the following question in a word document.
1. Write a summary of how you would use a database in your class.
To incorporate database technology into an eighth grade, United States History curriculum, I would develop a class project whereby the students compared and contrasted the Articles of Confederation and the United States Constitution. The dates, main provisions, origins and reasons for, and the proponent and oppositional factions of each document would be accessible via a “Governments of the United States,” classroom database.
To facilitate group work, students would organize under different subject areas based upon titular worksheets that posed questions pertaining to the varying aspects of each government. For instance, a group assigned to research information for a worksheet entitled: “Key Components of the Articles of Confederation” might be asked to list the powers ascribed to the federal legislature. After retrieving this information from the classroom database, and after all other questions on the worksheet had been answered, students would then summarize their findings and conjecture as to why the original governing doctrine of this country floundered, while the current constitution has survived the test of time.
In summarizing their findings, each group would expound their opinions to the rest of the class in a presentation format; questions, comments, and differing viewpoints from other students would be encouraged; any resulting debates would be mediated so that the central focus stayed on American Governments. Grades would be determined by students’ ability to utilize the database as a source of supporting evidence for their theories and ideas.
Assignment Six
McKenzie, W., & Hall, D (2003). Find the Best Software: Using Bloom's Taxonomy and Multiple Intelligences to Select and Use Software. Learning & Leading with Technology, 30(8), 54 - 58.
Read this article and answer the following questions in a word document.
1. What considerations need to be made on selecting software for the classroom?
2. Describe what you feel is most important to consider after reading this article
3. How might software address multiple intelligences?
4. Find at least one site on the Internet that explains multiple intelligences and why they are important to consider.
Software selection for a classroom is dependent upon its primary function, the types of intelligences it serves, peer reviews, and a teacher’s ability to incorporate it seamlessly into his or her curriculum. Primary functions, as classified by the authors, include: 1) “offering content, concepts and skills;” 2) applying skills; 3) using skills to accomplish a goal; 4) the completion of tasks to evaluate student progress and performance; 5) problem solving using more than one strategy; 6) “writing, organizing, composing, sorting, calculating, etc. and; 7) providing the opportunity for students to have “vicarious experiences through electronic means” (i.e. problem solving that allows room for “individual values and attitudes, and the opportunity to participate in group collaboration”). Each of these functions serves to condition a certain type of intelligence; the last function listed above (a.k.a. simulation oriented software), for instance, promotes emotional, inter/intra personal intelligence. Along with product reviews, however, the biggest factor in determining what educational software should be brought into the classroom is the teacher’s capacity to integrate the program into the curriculum.
A teacher’s willingness to renovate their curriculum, so as to incorporate educational software into the classroom, is the biggest factor in assessing educational software’s efficacy. The authors admonish against using educational software as “an end in itself.” In other words, teachers cannot expect that a program alone will accomplish the desired outcome. Rather, teachers should assign “pre-software activities” before introducing the software, followed by instruction conducive to strengthening multiple intelligences.
So long as connections between the software’s function and targeted intelligences are not forced, it is possible for educational software to address multiple intelligences: it is merely a matter of providing a context that will enhance the software that is to be implemented. The construction of a lesson plan that utilizes a PEP model (Pre-Software, Experience, Post-Software - briefly touched upon in the previous paragraph - permits teachers to draw multiple connections between curriculum and intelligences. For example, a software program like “Accelerated Reader,” a tool for developing and assessing verbal and logical skills through literary comprehension, could be followed up with a post software assignment requiring students to work together to write a collaborative short story; thereby addressing interpersonal intelligence.
A site that explains multiple intelligences and their importance:
http://www.thomasarmstrong.com/multiple_intelligences.htm
Assignment Seven
Hoffenberg, H., & and Handle, M (2001). Digital Video Goes to School. Learning & Leading with Technology, 29(2), 10-15.
Read this article and answer the following questions in a word document.
1. What skills are students developing in the process of making a video?
2. What types of video formatting fit well as a culminating activity?
3. What types of curriculum characteristics make sense for a video?
4. Briefly describe the guidelines for video use.
A video based project helps students to develop the technical skills of “making and editing video,” enhances their visual literacy, and introduces to them a higher level of thinking; students learn the significance of content analysis and synthesis when they compile images and sound for their video.
For culminating activities, a variety of video formats satisfy the “final reporting of a project,” including video newscasts, documentaries, infomercials, and video clips from a web page and/or multimedia presentation.
The types of curriculum characteristics that can be addressed when making a video are: emotion; heritage/ cultural; memorable experiences; change over time; a process; a “natural phenomenon” and; a frame by frame process that allows the viewer to not only understand the content of the video, but the videographer’s purpose in making it.
The guidelines for making of a successful video are as follows: choose a subject with which you are familiar; when planning the storyboard, make sure you consider the purpose of your video, as well as the audience; plan the camera angles and shots you think will best convey what it is you are trying to capture; decide whether or not sound will be integral to the overall effect you want to achieve. As a final reminder, you must communicate to your students the importance of thinking about the content of their video in relation to visual representation.
Assignment Eight
Levin, H (2003). Making History Come Alive. Learning & Leading with Technology, 31(3), 22-27.
Read this article and answer the following question in a word document.
1. After reading this article it is hard not to realize the power of using video with students. Describe a way you could use video in a similar way with your own K-12 students.
For a 12th grade, U.S. history class, I would assign a group project in which students used digital video to document the history of the civil rights movement in their surrounding community. In place of lectures and readings from secondary sources, a review of the works by Frederick Douglas, W.E.B. Dubois, Lucretia Mott, and Cady Stanton would serve as a backdrop to the mid-twentieth century push for progressive change; primary source readings of The Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1965, and the writings of Martin Luther King would act as an introduction to the video project.
The project itself would consist of students interviewing members of the community, including historians, city council members, activist groups, and writers from local newspapers, to retrieve information pertinent to the course subject matter. After filming, students would edit their footage and compile audio to arrive at a finished product. A week would be devoted to showing the interviews; students would present their views and thoughts regarding the project after their video aired, and, if need be, a question and response session would follow. Family members, interviewees and the community in general would be able access the interviews via our class website.
This assignment would replace the conventional teaching of race relations and social policy. Students would have to learn the technicalities of, and accompanying software for, the video-making process throughout the duration of the project; group work would be scheduled during and after class, and work outside of class would be each individual group’s prerogative. The significance of the civil rights movement would impact students deeply after being given an oral history of the tribulations of those who fought, as well as those who continue to fight, for equality. Not only would student appreciation for the struggles that earlier generations put up in the name of justice grow, but so would that of the community’s.
