Take Your Students on a Virtual Field Trip Every Day

It's no secret that I'm a big fan of Google Earth. I regularly tell the pre-service and in-service teachers I work with that every teacher at every grade level in every content area could be using Google Earth every day. A couple of years ago, I wrote this post about why you should be doing more with Google Earth.

Over the past couple of weeks, students in my Technology in the Classroom course have been working on plans for creating virtual field trips. In class tomorrow, they'll actually begin to create virtual field trips using the plans they've designed collaboratively. And later this semester, we'll be sharing our virtual field trips with 3rd graders in Brooklyn, NY. Go here to learn more about the partnership between my students and 3rd graders in Chris Casal's classes.

Two weeks ago, I demoed some of my favorite virtual field trip resources for my students and gave them time to explore the resources on my virtual field trip Symbaloo webmix. As they were exploring, one student commented on Africam - a free site with live webcam feeds from different locations in Africa. That got me thinking....

What if you started the day (or class period) with a webcam or other virtual field trip site projected onto your screen / whiteboard / wall? As students get settled and complete routine tasks like turning in assignments and getting materials ready for class, they could observe what's happening in some location around the planet. You could even ask students to keep a log or journal about their observations. When class begins, take 5 minutes of your class time to learn something about the specific location. Use Google Earth to take your class to the place they were just observing or explore other web resources to learn more about the history, culture, or geography of the site.

A quick virtual field trip would be such an engaging way to start the day.... much better than the typical "bell work" or "morning work" I've seen in schools. Taking a virtual field trip every day could help your students develop global and cultural competence in a way that isn't possible with traditional curricular materials. Let's move beyond the four walls of our classrooms and give our students opportunities that only technology will allow.

Putting the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy to Use

During my Curriculum, Instruction, and Environmental Design class today, I asked students to work collaboratively to plot a set of curricular standards on the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy. This learning experience required students to have a working understanding of the four types of knowledge and six cognitive domains represented by the taxonomy. We used Padlet and Triptico in class two days ago to explore the taxonomy, so my goal today was to get them to apply, analyze, evaluate, and create with the taxonomy. (Oh, and we used sidewalk chalk!)

A couple of take-aways from this learning experience that my students and I discussed afterward:

1. Students can show you what they know in SO many different ways. This course is one of the first courses that teaching candidates take in their college careers. Most students take the course prior to being admitted into the teacher education program. This means that, up to this point, their own K-12 and higher ed learning experiences are all they have to pull from. Sadly, most of those experiences have involved lecture and worksheets. Because of that, my students are wanting to rely pretty heavily on the use of worksheets in their own early attempts at writing learning objectives and designing lesson plans. One of my primary purposes in this activity (beyond applying the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy to a set of standards and becoming more familiar with those standards) was to model that students can show you what they know in a lot of ways that are more engaging and collaborative than worksheets. I could have easily developed a taxonomy worksheet and asked students to work independently and silently to plot the standards. Instead, students worked collaboratively and used more engaging materials. (Who doesn't love sidewalk chalk?) Same learning outcomes. Completely different experience. 
2. Curricular standards are the floor, not the ceiling. It isn't difficult to infer from these taxonomy tables that these standards leave much to be desired in terms of complex thinking. If we structure teaching and learning around the cognitive processes and types of knowledge required by the standards, we will certainly not be developing critical thinking, collaboration, communication, or creativity. My students and I agree that the majority of thinking they do on a typical day (outside of class time, sadly) would be plotted at the higher end of the taxonomy in both types of knowledge (metacognitive and procedural knowledge, mostly) and cognitive processes (application, analysis, evaluation, and creation). We, as educators, are failing our students if we simply ask them to remember and understand factual and conceptual knowledge. It just isn't enough. This means that we have to go beyond the thinking that's required by the standards and ask our students to do more. Dayson Pasion agrees. What about you?

Disclaimer: This post has absolutely nothing to do with technology. :)

The evolution of a tech integration course

In February 2012, I wrote a guest post on Richard Byrne's blog Free Technology for Teachers about my first semester teaching Technology in the Classroom. At the end of the spring 2012 semester, Richard allowed me to write another guest post as the course came to a close. That first semester teaching Technology in the Classroom was a powerful learning experience for me. Since then, I have taught 5 sections of the course (and I'm teaching 2 sections this semester). Each semester, I've gotten valuable feedback from students and made revisions to the course based on that feedback. You can read about various revisions in the blog posts linked below.

This semester, I have made significant revisions to Technology in the Classroom, and I'd like to explore those revisions in this post. My wonderful School of Education voted to change the course from a 1-credit hour to a 2-credit hour course, which gave me a lot of space for flexibility in course design in addition to allowing my students and I to dig deeper into concepts and issues in class. The first change I made in course design was to move Technology in the Classroom to a blended / hybrid course. My students and I will meet for approximately half of our class sessions face-to-face and the other half online. This move to a blended learning model has pushed my students to use technology in a significant way as a learner, enabling them to gain experience in online learning while exploring new tools. So far, it appears that the blended approach is appealing to my students who can participate in online class sessions in their dorm rooms in their PJs.

For the online portion of the course, I'm using multiple tools. We will primarily be using Google Hangouts for synchronous, collaborative class meetings. Some class meetings will take place asynchronously via Google Drive, VoiceThread, and other tools. During our first Hangout, we:

• Took a live assessment on the TPCK framework using Socrative (You can download the quiz using this code: SOC-379965)
• Used Google Drive to reflect on elements of digital citizenship
• Watched the Future Learning Documentary and had a synchronous conversation using Watch2gether
• Gathered real-time feedback on our progress with TPCK using Poll Everywhere

I've also chosen to maximize class time, increasing time for collaboration and creation, using the flipped classroom model. In previous sections of this course, I spent a portion of class time each week demo-ing (or asking students to demo) web tools. This semester, I'm recording (or finding) tutorials and asking students to watch those prior to coming to class. This allows us to spend time using the tools and applying course content while we're together as opposed to doing that work independently of one another after class. 

Each time I've taught this course, I have used Edmodo as my Learning Management System. This semester, I'm playing around with Google+ Communities as a space for bringing students together and collaborating online. I'm currently considering ways that Google+ Communities might replace Edmodo for me at some point in the future. Thankfully, my students are willing to learn alongside me and explore new possibilities for learning and connecting. As of now we have a Community set up, but we aren't doing much with it yet. 

Previously, I've posted discussion questions to Edmodo to get students reflecting on and discussing important concepts. I have never been excited about the typical discussion board format, with one person posting a question or prompt and everyone else responding to the original post. I've always found it difficult to get real, meaningful conversations happening in a discussion board format (both as a student and a teacher). This semester, my students are blogging (with Blogger) instead of responding to discussion questions on Edmodo. I'm hopeful that blogging will allow students to delve deeper into concepts, spend more time reflecting on what they're learning and experiencing, and engage in meaningful conversations with each other. 

The combination of the increased class time, hybrid design, and flipped model has allowed me to design more interactive, engaging, and thoughtful learning experiences for students. Within the next few weeks, I will be gathering feedback from students via Google Forms. I'll share that feedback here to let you know how students are responding to the course. 

I'm hopeful that some of you will take a moment to leave a comment on this post. I would love to hear about your own efforts, and I would appreciate so much to hear your feedback on the evolution of this course. 

I've written other posts about my experience teaching this course. You can read them below.

Edmodo as my Learning Management System

Technology for Formative Assessment

Tech Integration Advice for Pre-Service Teachers

Social Media as a Learning Tool in Higher Education

Feedback 2.0

Exemplary Classroom Webpages by Pre-Service Teachers

Building Pre-Service Teachers' Leadership Capacity for Technology Integration

Helping Pre-Service Teachers Build a PLN

Creating with TPCK and the NETS*S

TPCK Tournament: March Madness in EDU 451

More Exemplary Classroom Webpages by Pre-Service Teachers