Podcasting, the term which has resulted from the combination of the iPod and broadcasting, presents a potentially effective tool in the arsenal of the creative teacher.
The podcast can enable the teacher to present a concept in a variety of different ways, which potentially can provide the teacher with a wide array of differing presentations of the same concept. As a reusable tool, the podcast, once developed, can provide benefit numerous times, over a many year period.
The podcast may provide supplemental instructional benefit for the student who must miss class due to illness or injury. It can also provide a form of inexpensive review of any material which the student may have forgotten, or with which a student may be experiencing difficulty.
The podcast presents the possibility of collaborative or shared development and use among multiple teachers, thus allowing the creation of a particular lesson and its development in multiple languages. In schools in which the student body consists of students from a wide array of nationalities and first-spoken languages, this presents each such teacher with an effective tool in communicating a lesson in a way that may assist a student to overcome language-related difficulties.
Perhaps one of the greatest single benefits of Podcasting arises from the students' ready acceptance of current technology. The students in general already widely enjoy the use of portable electronic media. The podcast provides the teacher a convenient way to use the tool - computer or portable media player - that is already widely accepted and extensively used the students. The podcast, via the portable media player, itself already ubiquitous, presents a relatively low-cost, high tech instructional tool.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
What Makes an Effective Website?
The key to an effective website is good design. The web site must be designed with an understanding of the typical user always in mind. Analysis and organization are of the greatest importance. The layout and content, ease of use, graphics, and navigation tools must all be considered. Generally speaking, simplicity in the design is preferable to a website that is cluttered, and hence, hard to read, or worse, filled with distracting graphics. A flashing banner may provide a means of obtaining a low-cost or free hosting, but may result in a web page which is annoyingly user-unfriendly. Similarly, the selection of a color scheme should subtly facilitate use of the web site, rather than stand out as might a flashing section, or page frame, that features harsh colors, or even pop-ups.
In general, in the design of a good website, brevity beats verbosity. For example, the layout and content must enable the user to be quickly able to determine that the web site contains potentially useful information, or to continue the search elsewhere. Within the web site, the design must be such that the user can quickly locate the page or section containing desired information. If it is necessary to link to successive pages, the site must be designed in such a way that navigation within the site is easily effected. Buttons, tabs, and other link tools should be clearly identified, and, to the greatest extent possible, seem clear, appropriate, and unambiguous. The flow from page to page within a web site should correspond to a seemingly natural order of presentation.
In general, the design must enable the user to avoid becoming bogged down in reading excessive amounts of text that are potentially irrelevant to the user's immediate needs. The well-designed web site will avoid unnecessary use of graphics, in order to avoid increasing web page loading time, and hence, user frustration. Therefore, the well-designed website will enable the user to quickly locate information of interest.
The effective website is not a static creation, but must instead be maintained periodically in order to ensure the accuracy and relevance of its content.
In addition to consideration of all of the factors which may make a web site easy to navigate, a final and very important consideration may be that of the Internet user's ability to locate the web site. If the site is to be accessed as the result of an Internet search, then this involves designing the web site in such a way that it is ranked at or near the top by major search engines. This means including meta tag descriptors used by search engines to rank and classify the web site.
In general, in the design of a good website, brevity beats verbosity. For example, the layout and content must enable the user to be quickly able to determine that the web site contains potentially useful information, or to continue the search elsewhere. Within the web site, the design must be such that the user can quickly locate the page or section containing desired information. If it is necessary to link to successive pages, the site must be designed in such a way that navigation within the site is easily effected. Buttons, tabs, and other link tools should be clearly identified, and, to the greatest extent possible, seem clear, appropriate, and unambiguous. The flow from page to page within a web site should correspond to a seemingly natural order of presentation.
In general, the design must enable the user to avoid becoming bogged down in reading excessive amounts of text that are potentially irrelevant to the user's immediate needs. The well-designed web site will avoid unnecessary use of graphics, in order to avoid increasing web page loading time, and hence, user frustration. Therefore, the well-designed website will enable the user to quickly locate information of interest.
The effective website is not a static creation, but must instead be maintained periodically in order to ensure the accuracy and relevance of its content.
In addition to consideration of all of the factors which may make a web site easy to navigate, a final and very important consideration may be that of the Internet user's ability to locate the web site. If the site is to be accessed as the result of an Internet search, then this involves designing the web site in such a way that it is ranked at or near the top by major search engines. This means including meta tag descriptors used by search engines to rank and classify the web site.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Webquests
Webquests can potentially help make learning fun. As a result, an appropriately chosen webquest topic may actively engage the student. For the avid baseball fan to whom the study of Mathematics may seem to be boring, a well-designed application, such as Cooperstown Bound, may be just the trick necessary. The chance to gather all of the relevant raw performance data for a favorite hitter, followed by an computation of batting average, or on-base percentage, or slugging percentage, for an individual hitter, or for multiple hitters, and the gathering, computation, and subsequent comparative statistical analysis - and as a possible result, for that student, to be even more baseball knowledgeable than peers, may elicit a spark. That spark may be exactly what is needed to encourage the active participation of the young passionate fan who may not think the study of math is particularly "cool," but who may inevitably end up deeply involved in the statistics of the sport. So, the student who eschews the study of Math, may become the envy of fellow students, who also share a passion for the sport.
So, potentially, the webquest may be a powerful motivational tool. As such, therefore, it provides considerable potential educational value. It engages the student via the Internet using a computer, a tool with which many students are already comfortable and which they enjoy using. It doesn't seem to be traditional learning, because it isn't, yet it potentially provides value, because the student may actually look forward to participating. If so, the assignment may seem less to be drudgery and more fun - perhaps even a reward.
The same possible result as that achieved via Cooperstown Bound may, for another student, be achieved via Johnson's Dover Downs Nascar Challenge. Regardless of the particular project application (baseball, auto racing, or other), in general, the webquest is based on a task that appears to be enjoyable to the student to be accomplished via the student's Internet research. The analytical components require the student to actively participate. The results the student produces do not seem to be similar to a traditional paper, yet actively engage the student. I see great potential for the use of webquests in Mathematics courses.
So, potentially, the webquest may be a powerful motivational tool. As such, therefore, it provides considerable potential educational value. It engages the student via the Internet using a computer, a tool with which many students are already comfortable and which they enjoy using. It doesn't seem to be traditional learning, because it isn't, yet it potentially provides value, because the student may actually look forward to participating. If so, the assignment may seem less to be drudgery and more fun - perhaps even a reward.
The same possible result as that achieved via Cooperstown Bound may, for another student, be achieved via Johnson's Dover Downs Nascar Challenge. Regardless of the particular project application (baseball, auto racing, or other), in general, the webquest is based on a task that appears to be enjoyable to the student to be accomplished via the student's Internet research. The analytical components require the student to actively participate. The results the student produces do not seem to be similar to a traditional paper, yet actively engage the student. I see great potential for the use of webquests in Mathematics courses.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Planning Instruction and Assessment
Instruction and assessment are integrally linked. As a first year teacher, I have learned firsthand the value of truly understanding students' level of knowledge in structuring my lessons and evaluating my own teaching, let alone determining my students' progress.
As much as this notion was relayed throughout my Teaching Fellows training, this realization has come over time, as I now have a much clearer understanding of my curriculum and how my students think. (A little background: during my first month teaching, at the request of my math coach, I distributed a pre-test to all of my sixth grade students - to determine whether they learned the post-March fifth grade standards that could be on the sixth grade statewide exam. At the time, I looked at the pre-test as little more than another document to add to the students' portfolio. Towards the end of September, however, when I introduced fractions, it became clear that many of the standards I expected the students to have ascertained was not prior knowledge. (Yet our pacing schedule carved out a single day to review how to add and subtract fractions (with like and unlike denominators, mixed numbers, etc.).) Unsure of what to do, I spent just two days reviewing fractions and quickly moved onto the next scheduled topic. My students' grades on the following test reflected this.)
I've reflected on this experience many times and realize that I could have been far more effective had I been more aware and proactive about gauging my students' level of understanding prior to a summative assessment (in this case, my unit test). Assessment of my students prior to introducing fractions would have informed me that students were not aware of basic information relating to fractions, including (a) the fact that we only add the numerators when we add fractions or (b) how to change a mixed number into an improper fraction. Assessment of my students during and after my lesson should have revealed that my students required more instruction time. Assessment of my students after we moved on from the topic provided no benefit to me, and I had already moved onto another unit.
Assessment is now an ongoing process as I plan my lessons. Every day, and actually, after every class period I am careful to examine what went well or poorly and why, and I tweak my lessons to account for my experiences. While this creates additional work (as I can never perfectly plan in advance the best presentation of my content), I know that I am far more effective as a teacher by doing so. And next year, after having completed one full year of the curriculum, I will be able to implement these strategies from the start.
As much as this notion was relayed throughout my Teaching Fellows training, this realization has come over time, as I now have a much clearer understanding of my curriculum and how my students think. (A little background: during my first month teaching, at the request of my math coach, I distributed a pre-test to all of my sixth grade students - to determine whether they learned the post-March fifth grade standards that could be on the sixth grade statewide exam. At the time, I looked at the pre-test as little more than another document to add to the students' portfolio. Towards the end of September, however, when I introduced fractions, it became clear that many of the standards I expected the students to have ascertained was not prior knowledge. (Yet our pacing schedule carved out a single day to review how to add and subtract fractions (with like and unlike denominators, mixed numbers, etc.).) Unsure of what to do, I spent just two days reviewing fractions and quickly moved onto the next scheduled topic. My students' grades on the following test reflected this.)
I've reflected on this experience many times and realize that I could have been far more effective had I been more aware and proactive about gauging my students' level of understanding prior to a summative assessment (in this case, my unit test). Assessment of my students prior to introducing fractions would have informed me that students were not aware of basic information relating to fractions, including (a) the fact that we only add the numerators when we add fractions or (b) how to change a mixed number into an improper fraction. Assessment of my students during and after my lesson should have revealed that my students required more instruction time. Assessment of my students after we moved on from the topic provided no benefit to me, and I had already moved onto another unit.
Assessment is now an ongoing process as I plan my lessons. Every day, and actually, after every class period I am careful to examine what went well or poorly and why, and I tweak my lessons to account for my experiences. While this creates additional work (as I can never perfectly plan in advance the best presentation of my content), I know that I am far more effective as a teacher by doing so. And next year, after having completed one full year of the curriculum, I will be able to implement these strategies from the start.
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