10-Rep Learning ~ Teague's Tech Treks

Learning Technology & Tech Observations by Dr. Helen Teague

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“What if” Answers for Graduate Assignments

What if you do not understand an online graduate assignment?

Graduate-level assignments often feature layered tasks culminating in a final learning artifact. Graduate-level assignments are connected to a specific graduate-llevel rubric.

While everyone has their own process and strategy, sometimes you may run into a particularly challenging assignment. When this happens, here are a few steps that may offer help for what to do if you don’t understand a graduate assignment.

In General: Begin earlier than you may think is necessary to preview assignment tasks.

  1. Step 1: Read the Assignment Carefully. The first step to take when you don’t understand an assignment is to re-read it carefully. With layered graduate assignments, learning research suggests repetition. For example, It is best to read an assignment a couple of times, take a short break, then return to refocus and read the assignment again. Read the assignment rubric. Point values in rubrics indicate the assignment items with the most emphasis. Focus on these items.
  2. Step 2: Check for in-class supports from Dr. Teague. Then come back and read the prompt again, keeping any of your instructor’s in-class comments in mind. Looking at your assignment with fresh eyes will often help you either eventually understand the assignment or identify what specifically is confusing to you.
  3. Step 3: Break the assignment into manageable tasks. Some folks create an outline of the tasks or follow the steps provided in assignment instructions.
  4. Step 4: Set a schedule to complete each manageable task.
  5. Step 5: Begin the task with even the smallest activity, such as reading one or more of the Class Resources, taking notes, and summarizing what you’ve read.
  6. Step 6: Research the Topic.
  7. Step 7: Check out ideas with a Classmate/Course Peer.
  8. Step 8: Check for Understanding with specific questions for the teacher or professor.
    This step is listed after all the others because waiting for a reply from busy teachers and/or professors can prolong getting started and may cause procrastination and FOGS (Fear of Getting Started).

 

What are your thoughts? What steps would you add, delete, or revise? 

All the very best cognitive wishes for the successful understanding and completion of your upcoming graduate assignment(s)!

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Video Review of Constructivism and Constructionism

Here is an updated video review of the Constructivism and Constructionism Learning Theories.

The video features a Microsoft digital storytelling app for creating interactive presentation called Sway. Here is the Sway link if you would like to scroll through at your own pace: https://tinyurl.com/TeagueSwayPVP

Vimeo video link: https://vimeo.com/teaguetech/piagetvygotskypapert?share=copy

 

Please note: This is a video excerpt from a Webinar I gave for graduate students and presented onsite in Tampere, Finland and Dublin, Ireland. This is a very low-tech, summary version of a much longer conference presentation. Participant questions and discussion are edited and gaps may be present. The video has been edited for time and content. Some edits are choppy and will never win awards. 🙂

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Animated Word Cloud Comparisons

Animated word clouds add interest to instructional practices in the school and workplace. Using word clouds to compare and contrast ideas. Populate a word cloud generator with text either, transcribed from spoken discussions or copied from written online discussion boards.  Add animation for interesting effects. Students can analyze various word clouds for the similarities and differences of perspective and summation. Older students can create and produce the word clouds.

This word cloud represents the discussion of 29 graduate students, learning online from three different states. MonkeyLearn was used for the initial word cloud instruction. PicMonkey was used for animation, layout, effects, captioning, and gif file creation.

Wk1DiscussionWordCloud

 

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SQ4R – Learning Strategy for Adult Learning Andragogy

The SQ4R active learning strategy and reading system provides scaffolding for textbook reading and taking notes.

The letters in theSQ4R acronym stand for five steps:

Survey
Question
Read
Reflect
Recite …and…
Review

Some versions change words four and five for the key words: Survey, Question, Read, Respond, Record, and Review.

These key words will help all students, but especially busy graduate students learn more from textbook reading with better preparation for assignments, posts, and quizzes. SQ5R also helps identify gaps in understanding, which is very helpful for online learning, since most of the initial concept acquisition is completed during solitary study.

The most effective way to implement SQ4R is to think of Before Reading, During Reading, and After Reading. 

SQ4R

Image Link: http://mhcedls.weebly.com/sq4r.html

Let’s go granular with the five components.

Survey: Scan the titles and subtitles. Study the pictures, charts, or graphs.Read the chapter preface,summary and any chapter questions.

Question: Turn each title, section title, and the first sentence of every paragraph into a question

Read: Read only one section at a time and look to answer the questions that you created.

Reflect: Connect what you’ve read to the Discussion Forum prompts and the assignment instructions. Also, consider connections to your professional practice. 

Recite/Record: Speak out loud the questions you created and the answers you’ve found. Read outloud the bolded or emphasized portions of the text. My daughter used to use the record feature on her iPhone to record important components of the readings and her impressions. 

Review: Keep notes out and visible for quick review. Several students have shared that they take a photo of their notes with their mobile phone and/or take a screenshot of digital notes. Many students have shared that they email their notes to their work email address so they can see them at work. Look at notes first before each new study session. 

 

To learn more, please see the information at this link from Educational Learning Strategies. http://mhcedls.weebly.com/sq4r.html 

 

Additional SQ4R Resources: 

University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh: https://www.usu.edu/academic-support/files/SQ4R_Reading_System.pdf

Utah State University:
https://www.usu.edu/academic-support/files/SQ4R_Reading_System.pdf 

University of Guelph:
https://guides.lib.uoguelph.ca/c.php?g=697430&p=5011752

Queen’s University: http://sass.queensu.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Reading-2020.pdf

Image Link: http://mhcedls.weebly.com/sq4r.html 

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Weekend Ed. Quote ~ October 8

Fisher Frye, and Hattie Quote

 

 


More Weekend Ed. Quotes

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Technology in Practice Model by Orlikowski

References

Orlikowski, W. (1992). The duality of technology: rethinking the conceptof technology in organizations. Organization Science, 3(3), 398–427.

Orlikowski, W. (1993). CASE tools as organizational change: investigating incremental and radical changes in systems development. MIS

     Quarterly, 17(3), 309–340.

Orlikowski, W. (2000). Using technology and constituting structures: a practice lens for studying technology in organizations. Organization

      Science, 11(4), 404–428. https://www.dhi.ac.uk/san/waysofbeing/data/data-crone-orlikowski-2008b.pdf 

Orlikowski, W., & Iacono, S. C. (2001). Research commentary: desperately seeking the ‘IT’ in IT research—a call to theorizing the IT artifact.

      Information Systems Research, 12(2), 121–134.

Orlikowski, W., & Robey, D. (1991). Information technology and the structuring of organizations. Information Systems Research, 2(2),

       143–169

See also

Week 4 Technology In Practice Model_copy
https://4oops.edublogs.org/files/2021/09/Week-4-Technology-In-Practice-Model_copy.pdf

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Best Hero of the Day ~ Wylie and Abilene ISD High School Robotics

                                                                                                        Students from Abilene, Wylie, and ATEMS High Schools are using their time productively during school closure. They are working collaboratively to build a robot for service at local Abilene hospital, Hendrick Hospital. The robot will help hospital staff to keep a safe distance by rolling in and out of hospital rooms. 

Community and Business partnerships leverage the project. Tiger Manufacturing, a local manufacturing company is providing covers for the robot. “The cover we build allows them to cover [the wiring], and so when they’re sanitizing it going from room to room, that allows them to sanitize it completely, smoothly and less contamination going from one person to the next,” Tiger Manufacturing Service Parts and Sales manager Troy Miller.

According to Wylie High School engineering and science teacher Andy Hope, “We just got them all together and started working, and seeing them work it’s the best feeling you can have as a teacher. Seeing them take the stuff they learn in the classroom and apply into real life.”

 

 

 

 

 

UPDATE: March 25: This story featured online at this link

 


 

Celebrate More Heroes of the Day

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Distance Learning and COVID-19 Resources for Teachers

Literate Word Cloud by A.C.

Literate Word Cloud

In response to the growing number of schools that are moving to distance learning because of the current Covid-19 epidemic, PBS LearningMedia has collected a number of useful online tools and resources for educators.  Also, we will be hosting a free Webinar on Wednesday, March 18 at 7:00 PM Eastern Time to address these issues. 

For more information or to register for the webinar, please visit the PBS Learning Media website.

 

 

 

Additional Resources

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Tech Infusion and its Potential to Mediate Online Identities

A recent ice storm caused my retreat from the roadways and outside activities. My indoor inertia was replaced with the indulgence of re-reading my online team process journals. These journals include observations, quotes of team members, ideas for future research, links to current research, and a few doodles. I remain committed to the learning power which emanates from doodles, but time to search for cooraborating research eludes me.

As I turned the paper pages of the journals a quote from an online research team member caught my attention. Our team, led by Dr. Eric Hamilton featured a conversation with Dr. Paulina Sameshima.

Dr. Sameshima’s dialogue during this particular meeting addressed how learners templatize thought for neural efficiency. Dr. Hamilton and Dr. Sameshima catelyzed a discussion on meaning-making.  My research teammate, in response said,

“We bifurcate on default”

My margin notes then echoed my astonishment at the level of understanding engendered from my research teammate. I wondered if the technological affordances of a synchronous meeting held within a communal space simultaneously shared through the online affordance of Fuze amid the separated environments of each of our individual locations coalescenced and liberated insights such as my teammate shared.

“We bifurcate on default”

There is a protection that emerges for online exchanges whether they be confined to formal learning spaces of online courses, webinars, and synchronous team meetings or informal learning spaces of chats, status updates, benchmark updates and the like. 

Both online participants and facilitators for new identities situated within the online community (Brown, et al. 1989; Ito, Kafai, Teague, 2017; Turkle, Wenger and Wenger, 2016). We may become a new version of ourself, embodying attributes of the self that are restricted or confined in the world of our face-to-face interactions. Through the participatory spontaneity of online discourse coupled with the identity safeguards of our physical environments, insights are formed and shared. Growth branches and, as Vygotsky wrote, this development precedes learning. 

 

Permenant Link: https://tinyurl.com/ParticipatoryOnlineIdentity 


Sameshima, P. (2007). Seeing red: A pedagogy of parallax: An epistolary bildungsroman on artful scholarly inquiry. Cambria Press. Amazon

 

Background polling supplemental research: As of January 2014: •  90 percent of American adults have a cell phone. •  58 percent of those have a smartphone (the number soars to nearly 80 percent for those between 18 and 49). •  42 percent have a tablet.1 It’s a truly different, more informed and more connected world. SOURCE: 1 – http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheets/mobile-technology-fact-sheet/

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Teachers Tell All: Ten Tips for Online Course Success

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