Getting students into the GAME (or How to make our kids GAMEy)

The following are the NETS-S performance indicators for students: (1) Creativity and innovation, (2) communication and collaboration, (3) research and information fluency, (4) critical thinking, problem-solving, and decision-making, (5) Digital citizenship, and (6) Technology operations and concepts. The GAME plan is a problem-solving process which consists of defining a Goal, implementing an Action, Monitoring progress, and Evaluating and extending the process in a fluid manner.

Looking at the NETS-S performance indicators, it would appear that indicator (4) would be well-served by having students use the GAME plan, too. Not only could I model its use in my own presentations, but students could practice it in their problem-based learning assignments. The plan is applicable to problems of any type and so would easily extrapolate to “lifelong learning.” Critical thinking, problem-solving and decision-making are probably the most important skills we can foster in the education of our students.

Autodesk Inventor trial and Google Docs

Well, I signed up for a 30-day free trial software package from Autodesk Inventor which should arive in 2 to 3 weeks. I'm not exactly sure if I'll have time to look at it too closely before the summer, but we'll see. Also, I might be able to get the actual software package free through FIRST Robotics--I'll check with my engineer.

After reading the text and looking at this week's videos, I have looked into Google Docs as a vehicle for collaboration--students can look at, comment on, and edit Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents online from different computers at the same time or asynchronously. The key here is that it would result in the creation of a single document by the members of a team, and document participation in the creation of the "product" (at least I think it does--maybe someone can straighten me out here...). This would ensure that each team member is an active participant in making the PowerPoint that a team will be responsible for.

So far, I have discovered that my browser must be updated from IE-6 to IE-7 to take advantages of all of the frills Google Docs has to offer. I uploaded an old PowerPoint just to see how it worked, and it uploaded all right, but doesn seem to have all the animation of the original. The initial memory capacity for a new account is 1024 MB, and it appears that it can be increased. In the next few weeks I will see how Google Docs is managed. For example, how do students share documents in such a way that outsiders can't mess with 'em. Can I look at them as they are created by my students? Can I comment on 'em? These are all questions that some of you may be able to answer for me!

Using Autodesk Inventor

James Tadesco suggested the use of Autodesk Inventor for designing mechanical devices, which I mentioned to the engineering mentor on my robotics team. The engineer said that he knew how to use it, and showed me a part of a robot that he had designed on it. The user interface was pretty visual in nature, and it looked like something I could handle (with some practice, of course). James says the kids he knows who use it also like it, so I think I will focus my efforts this summer on Autodesk Inventor. I have used a CAD program years ago, which was not altogether that visual in interface, and was hard for me to use.

In our second regional competition, in Minneapolis, our FIRST Robotics team made it to the quarter finals but did not make it to the next level. We were still happy with our showing, and our kids had a blast. You can Google Team 1675 or go to http://team1675.com/ if you want to find out more about our team. It is populated by students from two "urban" schools, and is very well represented from the standpoint of diversity.

GAME over (only kidding...)

Looking at my GAME plan, I see that at least I am checking the blogs of my colleagues (my first goal)—but it is not yet a natural process (like the checking of my email). In fact, I wouldn’t even be checking any blogs (much less entering this post to mine) if it wasn’t required of the course. This is not because I think blogging is a waste of time—it is merely because I am not yet used to it. I don’t even think of it unless someone tells me to!

As far as my second goal is concerned, one of the engineers I work with in robotics has agreed to help me with CAD after the competition season ends. We are both strapped for time at the moment, and we will probably communicate via email. He has proposed getting me access to a CAD program, in the meantime, and that, at least, is a start. I have no grandiose plans right now to git ‘er done, but I think that over the summer break I can begin to master the program.
In the meantime, back to robotics, graduate school, teaching, and sleeping (with an occasional martini thrown in for good measure).

A review of my GAME plan.

To meet my first goal of using colleagues’ blogs as resources for professional development, I have found relevant blogs, and subscribed to them with my RSS reader. I have also followed through by looking at them, although admittedly not very often. My idea of making a log to help me become aware of how often and in what capacity I read colleagues’ blogs has not yet been fulfilled.

My second goal will require me to have access to CAD, DesignCAD, AutoCAD, or some similar drawing software, and to bring an engineer into my learning community from whom I can gain assistance. Fortunately, I work with a couple of engineers through FIRST Robotics who use computer aided drawing programs, and when the robotics season is over (it is in full swing now, and I am putting in 12- to 16-hour days) they can perhaps be recruited to help me work out the kinks in my learning curve.

Two GAME Plans For Strengthening My Confidence and Proficiency In NETS-T.

My first goal is to increase my use of professional resources for continued professional development (NETS-T Outcome G5). My action plan is to subscribe to the web logs of my fellow professionals, and to monitor my RSS readers to these blogs. I will monitor my progress by keeping a log of when I monitor updates to these logs, and how many I comment on. I will evaluate my activities by tallying the number of times I look at bloglines per week, and how many blogs I leave comments on per week. After I have habituated myself to reading these blogs I will eventually extend my monitoring process to include brief descriptors of my comments, and those of the professionals whose blogs I subscribe to, as to value, applicability, depth, and usefulness.

As a second goal in getting familiar with the NETS-T Outcomes I will increase my knowledge of technology—specifically the use of DesignCAD (NETS-T Outcome S2) in order to bring extremely relevant technology into my physics unit on statics, which is built into a project in which students design a skyscraper. My action plan will be to acquire DesignCAD and begin tutorials in order to gain confidence and proficiency in the software. I will monitor my progress by keeping a log of my skills as I gain them, and the number of hours I have spent learning them. I will evaluate my learning by determining if I can design a complex 3D rendering of a skyscraper to scale, designed within the limits I will impose on my students. I will extend my learning to determine how to shade, how to adjust the lighting, how to walk and fly around the finished design, and how to add environmental “frills” to the rendering. This will not be required of my students, but some may want to extend their own knowledge, so I should at least be able to give them some guidance.

Reference:
ISTE_NETS·S. (2007). The International Society for Technology in Education - National Educational Technology Standards for Students. Retrieved January 12, 2009, from http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForStudents/2007Standard

Information Literacy and Online Inquiry

The most striking revelation of this course is that everything my students and I need to develop the new information literacy and conduct an inquiry unit is online and free for use as part of the Web 2.0 tool set. Social networking skills can be developed using sites like blogs, VoiceThread, etc. with the added advantage that a complete unit can just about be accomplished outside of the classroom. Peer and teacher input and assessment can occur using these sites during the development of the inquiry unit, particularly for sharing search experiences and fruitful sites with peers. Synthesis of online information can be done digitally and shared with peers using concept mapping tools such as Webspiration. Convincing multimedia PowerPoints can also be created and shared online, serving as the culmination of the online inquiry. About the only portion of the whole unit that might require physical proximity in the classroom would be the presentations of the inquiry results to peers in a live setting – this to give students the experience of a non-digital audience, complete with non-digital questions and responses.

Since computer access in my building is very limited, and with budget cuts does not appear to be improving in the near future, and furthermore, since almost all of my students have Internet access from home, I think I can develop some out-of-class assignments that are both collaborative and independent, and of an inquiry nature. The unit I developed for this course, The Particle Adventure, serves as a model for such units.

My immediate professional development goal that builds upon this course and my need for information literacy and technology skills is to master Webspiration and VoiceThread. These will be the two most useful Web 2.0 tools for synthesis of online inquiry information and for collaboration and assessment of my students in the virtual sphere. Working out the bugs (mine) using basic lessons will probably be my method of attack. From there I will progress to doing a genuine inquiry unit, conducted and presented online.