Group Leadership Project Final Product

Part 1
http://screencast.com/t/XCF7mbaU
Part 2
http://screencast.com/t/bHLK8h1vuIa
Part 3/Conclusion
http://screencast.com/t/UwOL8YlM

For our Group Leadership Project we explored the course management system, Moodle.  We used Prezi to make a presentation about Moodle and its capabilities.  Then after developing the Prezi, we used Jing to record the presentation.  We used Jing to record the presentation because of its ease of use and it is what we felt most comfortable with.  The only downside that I have found with Jing is that it only allows you to record five minutes at a time.  This is the reason you see three different parts of our presentation.

I learned a lot about the capabilities of Moodle and Prezi during the development of the final product.  In particular, I learned that you can manipulate almost any image to fit into a Prezi.  With that in mind, I think Prezi gives the user more capabilities than traditional presentation tools.

If I had to develop a similar product again I think I would try out more of the capabilities of the technological tool being implemented.  I have learned a lot by studying the capabilities of Moodle and using some of the options in the class I am teaching.  However, I think I learn best by doing and this would have been an awesome opportunity to try all of the features as I was learning about them.

WPP Final Product

The Problem
The problem that I addressed with my Wicked Problem Project was that I was not getting quality feedback from discussion questions during class.  


The Solution
The solution that I found was using Polleverywhere.com to have students answer discussion questions using the poll everywhere website or by texting their answers.  


TPACK
The technology that I have chosen to use is a classroom polling program called Poll Everywhere.  With Poll Everwhere I can set up poll questions that students can answer by texting from their cell phones or by using computers with internet access.  The goal is to use this technology to enhance my pedagogical strategies in the classroom.  The pedagogical strategies are active classroom discussion and informal assessment.  A large part of my teaching strategy is having active classroom discussions and getting feedback in the form of informal assessments.  Typically, in my Advanced Web Publishing class, I will only get feedback from a few of the students.  As a result, I know what those students know about the content, but what about the other 28 students in class.  I think that by having some of these discussion questions on Poll Everywhere then more students will feel free to respond to questions because they won't have to talk in front of the class and because they may be motivated to use technology in this way. 

This technology also plays an important role with the content that I am teaching.  It could be used for a variety of topics and content.  For my web publishing class, it could be a great tool to have students brainstorm and post their thoughts for web publishing ideas.  This could help students facilitate one another with ideas that they could use on their own web projects.  Discussing, sharing ideas, and reflecting is something that must be done to further understand any content and this technology helps to facilitate that. 

Like I mentioned above, discussions and reflections are an important pedagogical approach to understanding content.  For this, students will reflect on their own knowledge of the content and also be able to learn from others through the live online discussion created on Poll Everywhere.  This students will be able to experience the content by through many different types of questions posed through this resource.


Here is a link to my WPP Final Product.  I recorded my Prezi using Jing.  

http://screencast.com/t/PiWTPZu8R 

Professional Learning Plan

I made a Prezi to make a visualization of my Professional Learning Plan.  I think the most important part of this plan and the Personal Growth Plan that I created in CEP 810 is that it helps us write out goals that are specific, measurable, and attainable.  It helps us measure whether or not we are making improvements and reaching our goals.  Upon reviewing my Personal Growth Plan, I was happy to see that I had met the goals that I made early in my educational technology courses.  My goal with this plan is to get similar results.  Primarily, my goal in my Professional Learning Plan is to not be stagnant in my development as a teacher.  As a result, some of my goals are based off of this.  Most importantly, I have a goal of keeping an updated RSS feed, which is a great method for professional learning.

Here is a link to my Prezi.

http://prezi.com/vqc2ijvsq6g7/kyle-whymer-personal-learning-plan/ 

Part D - Findings and Implications

As we wrap up the end of the WPP project I am pleased to say that I have found a tool to help with the lack of classroom participation and discussion.  The use of Poll Everywhere in the classroom helped to spark interest in classroom discussions and also helped with the percentage of students participating in discussions.  I will definitely continue to use Poll Everywhere as a tool to help improve classroom discussions and get immediate feedback from the students.

Overall, the project was implemented as planned and the findings were similar to what I had hoped for.  As I have stated, I hoped that using Poll Everywhere would help to increase participation and get immediate feedback from the students in classroom discussions.  I found this tool to be successful in meeting its goal because nearly every student in class was participating in providing thoughtful feedback to the discussion questions.  Below I have embedded a screenshot of a classroom discussion using poll everywhere that shows evidence of the projects success.

There are certainly other problems that occur in the classroom that I could address as a teacher in a similar type of project.  After having completed this project I think one thing that I may approach differently as a teacher with other problems in the classroom is to research technological tools and resources that may prove to be beneficial in these other situations.  I learned some valuable lessons in this project with using technology to improve discussions.  Of course, I would let others know about the awesome capabilities of using classroom polls to improve discussion and get immediate feedback.  Another thing I might let other teachers know about is how the students are able to answer questions anonymously using this technology.  As a result, I think I would tell them that it may be something worth addressing before using the technology.  If I were to use this resource in class again I think that I would point out the importance of having real, quality responses to the discussion questions as a way of improving everyone's understanding.  I definitely will continue to use Poll Everywhere as a resource in the classroom and I think I will explore some other online polling programs as well to continue to improve classroom discussion and feedback.

Data Visualization and Mobile Learning Lab

Poll Everywhere
I have used Poll Everywhere a few times in class now.  I have used the questions to survey project ideas and to use as a way to informally assess the students.  The best part about it is that the students enjoy using it to participate in class.  Below you can see a screenshot of one of my classroom polls using Poll Everywhere.  

Classroom 2.0

This is another great resource to explore the ideas and learn from other teachers that are using web 2.0 technology in their classrooms.  I found it useful to learn tips from other teachers about using cell phones in the classroom.  Below you can see a screenshot of me joining the classroom 2.0 group.  

Part B - Storyboard and Script

Here is a link to our Storyboard and Script for the course management system, Moodle.  We used Google Presentations to make the storyboard and we used the "Speaker Notes" feature to add the script to the presentation.  We also added the script in a separate Google Doc.

I chose to focus my part of the storyboard on how using Moodle is different than using website builders like Google Sites and Foxbright.  Primarily, it gives teachers the option to have students upload their assignments.  Essentially, Moodle is a lot like the course management system we use at MSU, Angel.

The work on our final product will be much easier as we already have a detailed script.  We are going to adding to our focus and using a collaborative tool, such as Prezi, for our product.

Part C - Implementation

Here is a link to my podcast discussing the implementation of my WPP.

http://www.msu.edu/~whymerky/Podcasts/WPPImplementationPodcast.mp3    


Here are a couple of screenshots of the responses to the poll questions.