Hawkins,+Laurel+A


 * Cool Tools Review and Application Plan ** – Laurel Hawkins


 * Tuesday Cool Tool Carousel: **

In the three concurrent sessions we explored how to find and select appropriate Web 2.0 tools with Julian Wilson, developing ways to question and gather information from students and colleagues with Gail Holmes, and finished with how to collaborate, synthesize and publish ideas with Laura Fogle. In each session, we accessed multiple websites that would help us with each of the stated goals of the session.

Some of my favorite tools were the googleaday question, Tricider, and VoiceThread. Each one create a way for my future students to interact, collaborate, and synthesize information so they are more prepared for the global network they will soon face. I hope to help other teachers incorporate a the googleaday question into their afternoon plans. As I stated in my forum post on Tuesday, July 10, 2012, the application for that is small competitions at the end of the day in our second bus lag time to create more savvy searchers in our students. They could then be paired with students that are not the best searchers to build stronger skills during school hours. There was little time to maneuver through many of the websites and test them out which is what I was hoping to do. As I am a math teacher, asking for the students’ opinion can cause some rowdy classes. This software offers a more silent approach so that the students are expressing their opinion without possibly creating problems in the classroom. Lastly, VoiceThread can be used as a summary tool as well as an assessment tool for math. I am planning to use this in my lesson plan below as a way for kids to annotate information on graphs, tables, and equations of functions.

The afternoon session I attended was the Problem Based Learning with Gail Holmes. We explored the different ideas and facets that go into creating rigorous, authentic problems that engage students. The concept of PBL is not a new one to me, but having multiple examples given and the additional resources were a delight. After this workshop, I hope this next year to create a project within the entire eighth grade where students approach a local camp to create a geocaching course that they will design and create a fieldtrip for the students at our school to go through.
 * Tuesday Afternoon Session: **

This session was probably one of the best, at least from the point of view of the math teachers like me and led by Erin Krupa. The Barbie Bungee Jump activity is one that I have done before, but it added the element of determining the final number of rubber bands before increasing the jump that Barbie takes. Adding that extra element of synthesis and creativity is wonderful. I also enjoyed the review of excel, as it is one program that I have used but have placed on the outdated software versus one of those tools the kids should be able to utilize effectively.
 * Wednesday Session: ** Common Core/New Essential Standards with the Discipline


 * Lesson Plan Idea: **

Math I Curriculum: a. Graph linear and quadratic functions and show intercepts, maxima, and minima. e. Graph exponential functions, showing intercepts and end behavior.
 * F-IF.7 ** Graph functions expressed symbolically and show key features of the graph, by hand in simple cases and using technology for more complicated cases.★
 * F-IF.9 ** Compare properties of two functions each represented in a different way (algebraically, graphically, numerically in tables or by verbal descriptions).

*//Note: These activities are activities designed to be done in conjunction with activities/investigations from the Core One Contemporary Mathematics In Action Textbook.//

Activity 1: Simulations and wiki work (week 1) Part A: Student will be assigned into groups and their groups will be assigned one of the four simulations below along with the job of individually completing the attached handouts. In each handout students are asked to change elements on a simulation that will affect the given equation, table, and graph before recording and making observations about those changes. Simulation links are through SAS Curriculum Pathways which require a password. Linear Simulation link: [] Quadratic Simulation link: [] Inverse Variation and Exponential Simulation link: []

Part B: As a group, students will be given editing access to a wiki page where they will summarize their findings to be posted for the class. A rubric will be given for assessing their work.

Part C: As there are only four simulations, the class will listen as the multiple groups compare their observations and create one complete observation account that constitutes all of their combined and refined knowledge to be posted on the teacher’s webpage.

Activity 2: VoiceThread activity and more wiki work (week 2) Part A: After the different groups have refined their work on the final observation page of the wiki are submitted for the class to peruse. The students are then asked to get into their original groups to create a VoiceThread with the images I provide. The images provided will be a picture of four tables, a picture of four graphs, and a picture of the four equations- one for each of the functions. Their goal is to create and submit a link to a multimedia note page that incorporates the information on all four functions that is annotated with specifics.

Part B: Students will do a peer review of the other groups’ note pages and submit an anonymous vote as to who’s VoiceThread should be posted on the teacher’s webpage as the link to the class’s “official” notes on the basics of the four functions.


 * Closing Reflection Questions 509- Laurel Hawkins **

1. Now that you’ve had this professional development experience, how are you defining “new literacies?” How do you think your definition has changed or evolved this week?


 * New literacies is the ability to question, gather information, collaborate and communicate your initial findings, and synthesize it into a new creation that solves a problem. In reference as to how this definition has changed, quite simply, it has been compounded. It is not just skills on a computer or on the internet. It is more complex than that short sighted definition. I’ve consistently heard how we are a global community, but until Dr. Kleiman spoke it did not really hit that we are sending our students out into the “world market” and that actually means the world market. That means preparing them in every way we can for the jobs and competition for those jobs, namely in the new literacies they will be expected to excel. **

 2. Describe some new literacies that you learned about this week? What did you know about these topics before the week began and how has your experience this week contributed to your understanding of these new literacies?


 * Asking a compelling question- Our county uses the Connected Math Program in middle school and the Core One Plus Contemporary Mathematics in Context integrated text in most of our high schools, which are heavy into questioning students for their ideas at the beginning, middle and end of every investigation. So while I knew about structuring good questions, the multiple chart resources shared by Julie Corio were something that I can definitely take back to my PLC and other faculty members. The question stems however, will help us as we structure our revised lessons to better meet the Common Core Curriculum standards and processes. Her ideas on how to just get them used to asking questions and nothing more was inspired and made me think more about how I can get others at my school more involved in this somewhat simple way to implementing new literacies. **


 * Gathering and Analyzing Information- The internet is such an enormous conglomerate of knowledge and the thought of it is overwhelming, even for someone that is used to surfing for knowledge daily. Releasing children onto it without some sort of way to determine if what they read is legitimate or pure bogus is terrifying. I saw a commercial this week on how one female believed everything on the web because they had read somewhere on the web that everything written there was true. The person beside them looked at them as if they were insane. I feel like that person looking at the obviously misinformed female. To get our students past that perspective will take work, but once again Julie Corio gave us some really good strategies on how to get past that perspective through pointed instruction. **


 * Creatively Synthesizing and Evaluating Information- As difficult as our video assignment was concerning this particular literacy, it brought home how easily you can structure an assignment with a compelling question and multimedia. We each grabbed at a particular role, which is something I believe our students will do based upon their strengths or weaknesses. All of us were engaged and that would be wonderful to see and experience in the classroom with such an in depth assignment. This also leads back to you are still using some tried and true methods (i.e. K-W-L charts) for organization and assigning individual roles in the group. Perhaps the main area that I have grown in my knowledge is in that I now see we are not completely re-inventing the wheel, but merely updating it from a wagon wheel to a nice set of rims. **

 3. In what ways are the new literacies prompted by technology? How do they affect one another?


 * As stated above, the internet is a beast of information. Information is not stored only in books now. Consequently, books are not the best resource in most cases as there is a massive amount of current, more accurate data to be processed and utilized to find the answers to a multitude of queries. Since there is so much information at our fingertips, there is also the danger of erroneous or misleading data being out there because anyone can publish online. This conundrum of a mass of opposing data readily available is what led to the new literacies. Our students have to be able to gather, filter, and synthesize that information for their benefit. **

 4. How do new literacies affect the way we think about academic content? Describe an examples of how some specific academic content is affected by changes in the ways we reading write and thinking (i.e. new literacies).

 **My content area is mathematics, a truly global connecting content. Our world is now comprised of problems that require mathematics in projecting outcomes as well as calculating the costs of decisions. As math is more contextually based now, it is important that students learn how to ask questions to clarify what pieces of information/data they need to find and when they find conflicting pieces of data, to analyze which data set is not only more accurate but will also best represent the population whose problem they are attempting to fix. They need to understand that the answer to these math problems are not going to be a set answer, but a possible range of answers. Thinking in mathematics is not rote memory either. It is whether or not they can use the tools we provide to obtain an answer.**

 5. How do new literacies affect the way we think about our teaching practices? How do they affect the development of new teaching practices or approaches to teaching?


 * The typical scenario in an education classroom cannot be an instructor in front of the class lecturing to impart knowledge. Our students have interactive gaming systems that for some of them are their life’s blood. They need our classrooms to be interactive, with them on a quest to gain knowledge, literally or figuratively jumping from one intense activity to the next where they are constantly rethinking their strategies and actions as a new challenge approaches them. Teachers will need to adapt to that mindset by creating a more engaging, interactive classroom that constantly challenges their students to not only find new knowledge but figure out if it is the knowledge they need, if it is the right path to take, the best idea to produce, or the most advantageous presentation to give. The content is part of the process, that has not changed. The medium in which the content is delivered, however, is more dynamic. The approach to teaching is not just how to impart content knowledge, it is how to ask one question that make your students find that content and apply it authentically. **

 6. During the week, you learning about several conceptual / theoretical frameworks for understanding the new literacies including, project-based inquiry, TPACK, Bloom’s revised cognitive theory, online identity, and global literacies (i.e. cultural competence, cultural awareness, cosmopolitanism). Describe your personal perspective on new literacies as it is informed by these conceptual and theoretical ideas.


 * My personal perspective on new literacies is simply that they are essential to today’s world. Our job market, as stated above, is not just within our region, or our state, or even our nation, it is global. Our students will be jockeying for jobs against people from around the world. Added to that are that the majority of my students see their online social networks as a place to “bare all” and unfortunately for them, sometimes that is literal. I worry about how our students will fare if their employers do a google search on their names. Not only understanding but actually internalizing the magnitude of these small things like motivation in the work place and online identity have cemented the fact plainly we cannot exist without these literacies. The world is too small for us to get away with being foolish. **


 * Project-based inquiry, TPACK, and Bloom’s revised taxonomy give us a better understanding of how our students should be working and how teachers should be planning. We cannot blithely go through with the same lecture, rote memory, and drill and kill activities that have led many educators through the years. We have access to some powerful tools, just like the students do, and rather than wallow in the instruction of the past move forward to how we can engage and inspire our students to be the best problem solvers they can be. New literacies are the framework for these theories. **

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16.6667px;"> 7. How does the design process you learned about in your design studio work and the video digging deeper session support your understanding of the creative process?
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16.6667px;">First and foremost, it is not quick. It takes time, thought, and perseverance. The actual activity in the video digging deeper was one that did not seem like it required a huge amount of preparation for, but I guess it would depend upon the level of students you have in order to determine the extra materials/links you need to provide. This activity had multiple roles and even better everyone was engaged. Creating something like that for ourselves, however, required a little more thought, at least for myself. **

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16.6667px;"> 8. You learned this week about how to manage, and in some cases create, your online identity. What action steps will you take (are you taking) to manage and further extend your online identity?


 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16.6667px;">I will probably be very careful about what I make public and probably will search my own name every so often. **

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16.6667px;"> 9. If you had one more day in the Institute, what would you like to learn more about and why?


 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16.6667px;">If I had one more day at the Institute, I would like to explore web-caches of already made PBL’s and see what I could adapt, borrow, or simply get ideas from for my own classroom. Simply put, it’s always easier to get ideas from looking at other’s ideas, especially if they are in your content area. **