Professional Development

Today I found the most amazing resource for ECE teachers and directors. It's called Early Childhood Investigations and it provides a link to various webinars for FREE! I already registered for one next month. The upside is that the webinars are offered on Wednesdays. The downside is that they run from 2pm - 3:30pm eastern time which is 9am - 10:30am our time. I encourage all early childhood professionals to take advantage of this opportunity!

EC Investigations

Twitter Reflection

                As I approached this Twitter assignment, I was more open minded about the potential benefits of using Twitter in education after being first exposed to it during the summer. I was hopeful about understanding its value, but I am still struggling to fit into this learning experience. Although tweeting in education is not top on my to-do list in the future, especially in providing course content, I do feel that it helped to create a sense of community among the students enrolled in this class.

                One of the most important things I’ve learned about creating an online environment that is both engaging and collaborative, is in an instructor’s ability to successfully set up their synchronous and/or asynchronous delivery. It directly influences a student’s ability to connect to their peers and feel as though they belong to a greater community of learners. Tweeting has done that for me this semester and I felt connected to my classmates in ways that I did not previously experience. There seem to be a sense of camaraderie and a genuine interest in people. The support I received and observed among others on Twitter was always encouraging. For this reason alone, I can find value in using Twitter in higher education.

                Another aspect of tweeting that I liked, but would have filtered a little more was the sharing of links. There were so many wonderful shares that I couldn’t keep up. I believe that in a smaller class it would have been feasible to ask students to share a link related to a weekly assignment and write a response or review about the tweeted link on a discussion board. It was a real struggle sometimes and I would have to delete words or shorten my thoughts. If another student asked me about tweeting I would say try it out for yourself and definitely have separate Twitter accounts for school, work, and fun (Thanks for that advice Kealii).

Futurism and Change in ECE

I am becoming increasingly frustrated by the minute as I search online for information and resources about "Technology and the ECE Pedagogy." I want to know what the current and new trends in ECE are as it relates to pedagogy? After reading David Thornburg's Technology as an Agent of Change in Teacher Practice, I fell the need to validate that my field of early childhood education is on track with the rest of the technology renaissance in global education. So far, the results have been a little disappointing. Everything that I have read refers to new ways that we can "amplify our current practices" when using computers in the classroom or innovative ways to use a digital camera and is centered on information and communication technology (ICT).

So much of the conversations regarding technology in education circulates around its intergration into the early childhood classroom, and not much about rethinking our pedagogical practices instead of our curriculum content. Yes, I get that there are ways to enhance a learning experience with the use of technology, but I long to move beyond that understanding.

m-Learning in Preschool

As I think about how mobile learning can be incorporated into my classroom of 4 year olds, I find myself struggling with it. I guess I consider smartphones and tablets more of an entertainment type of technology tool rather than a teaching tool. Yes they are useful for eReading, photos, apps, and surfing the internet, but what is its value in preschool. I am very open when it come to using technology in the classroom and I can usually find a way to make any resource or tool appropriate for my classroom needs. It is a little frustrating that I have yet to find or understand the value of m-Learning in an early childhood education setting.

Social Media: Caine's Arcade

The CEO of Lakeshore Learning Materials shared this video in his session at this year HAEYC Conference. He talked about social media and how we can best communicate with families of today's children. It was an amazing reminder of why I became a teacher . . . . . Dreams do come true <3

My future in ECE . . . Distributed Learning

                Chris Dede identifies distributed learning as the ability to create shared “learning-through-doing environments” that is accessible and open-ended. As a professional in early childhood education I don’t plan to leave the field I am so passionate about after I receive a degree in educational technology, instead I hope to use this new knowledge to teach the future leaders of my profession on Kauai. Our communities are rural and it takes anywhere from 45 – 90 minutes to get to the only community college from the towns that are far west and north. Using a distance education delivery for scheduled face-to-face courses here would help to ease the strain for students who are working, have families, and have travelling challenges. It also makes sense to introduce the idea of distance learning to community college students who have no choice but to do a distance learning program if they choose to stay on Kauai while continuing their education. If given the chance to change my locus of control from a preschool classroom of 4 year olds to a synchronous learning environment of future preschool teachers and directors, I will use the emerging technologies available to build our learning community online and in the classroom.

                Lev Vygotski is a very important person in early childhood education and child development. When referring to thought development he says that “children must pass through developmental stages of complexes before they form a concept” and the same can be said about adult learners in distance education. I believe it is a process and aiding undergraduate students in developing that when they are just beginning to build their post-high school education is an opportunity we cannot afford to miss. By incorporating the continual use of the internet and hypermedia interactivity to build community, my curriculum would aim to connect student’s demonstrated abilities with the 21^st century skills they’ll need to move forward.

                Each of the three expressive forms of distributed learning-through-doing fits into how I hope run my course. With all of the information available on the web, it is imperative to help students sort through and organize these sources. Introducing tools for social bookmarking at the beginning of a course will assist individuals in creating a system for resources, collaborative learning, and sharing through the construction of knowledge webs. In addition, I feel that using computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) in the classroom first before ultimately substituting it for actual face-to-face classes throughout the semester would provide the gradual development needed for student success. Although I feel that the use of synchronous and asynchronous means of delivering course curriculum and content has changed the face of education, it cannot and should not replace student practicums as it relates to education. Some experiences must happen in its real-world setting like in the P-12 classroom for authentic growth to happen. One day, I will find a way to incorporate Vygotski’s theories about early childhood development and apply it to what I know about how learning evolves in adulthood. Using technology to build a truly collaborative experience for the adult learners I will one day teach will in turn change the way they view education for their young students.

Synchronous Environments for ECE

As I was looking for an article to use for annotation in this week's group assignment, I came across a research article titled Representational guidance and student engagement: examining designs for collaboration in online synchronous environments. The article basically explains that student's in an undergraduate child development class who participated in their study were asked to design a "theoretically-based, developmentally appropriate, preschool classroom setting" (p.619). The researchers divided students into 3 different groups to accomplish this task and evaluated their online on-line text chat discussions, used an instructional rubric, and student survey. Each group was assigned to a different synchronous condition to complete their collaborative design assignment- 1) Text-only, 2) Shared Representations (2D+Text), and 3) Multi-user Virtual Environments (MUVE). The research by F.R.Sullivan et al. indicated that "representational design appears to have an impact on student collaborative problem solving in chat environments" (p.641). In an early childhood preschool environment, there is often lots of collaboration as various staff, family members, and specialist often come together for the common good of the child. Finding this kind of research, environment, and element in my field excites me.


I thought about my training in the early childhood associate's program at Kauai CC and how routine my child development course was- lots of note-taking, tests, and reading. In fact, our professor spoke so fast we had to use a voice recorder just to keep up. Using a 3D virtual classroom and materials in Active Worlds could have helped me understand how classroom aesthetics and developmentally appropriate design could have been better applied with the theories learned in class. The idea of actually moving furniture and selecting material from a child development perspective would make a great collaborative final project. Instead we did a group brochure that lacked substance and any real connection to the space and children we would one day serve. In addition, so much learning happens among teachers/peers when we get out into the field and actually visit other programs and classrooms, that using the virtual world to bridge our current understanding about design and child development in a manner for further discussion and evaluation seems ideal. Up until now I struggled with seeing the value of Second Life in my profession or personal locus of control, but I am now thinking how very appropriate it could be if used in the right way.


Resource:

Sullivan, F., Hamilton, C., Allessio, D., Boit, R., Deschamps, A., Sindelar, T., & ... Zhu, Y. (2011). Representational guidance and student engagement: examining designs for collaboration in online synchronous environments. Educational Technology Research & Development, 59(5), 619-644. doi:10.1007/s11423-010-9178-x

Screencast Reflection

As reflect upon my video screen cast that used a PowerPoint, narration, and screen flashes to show a prospective graduate student how to apply for the UH-Manoa's Educational Technology Master's program, I am in limbo about the cognitive load theory discussed by Joe Winslow. In his article, cognitive load theory suggests that combining "high intrinsic (reading text) and high extrinsic (narration)" puts a person's memory on overload (p.4). Basically, this says that using the video, text, and voice at the same time is too much information to process all at once. I feel that if the text is minimal and the narration relates to it, than a person's mind will automatically block out the delivery method that doesn't work for them. I am a visual person and prefer to read the text, rather than hear it spoken. When I listen to a speaker who has a PowerPoint presentation, I read the slide before allowing myself to hear what is being said.That is not the case for all learners and most of us learn to adapt to the style that is most beneficial for us.

What I did learn through this process is that the UH Manoa website is very hard to navigate. There were broken links, links that did not take you where they should have, and the search bar was of little or no help. The COE-ETEC homepage is better organized this school year and displayed all the information in a common space. When I applied to the OTEC MEd in the spring, the graduate division requirements and extra ETEC necessities were on separate pages.

Video Screencast

Brain Research and Online Learning

The brain presentation by Dr. Mike was very informational and provided a broad overview of how learning is enhanced by the proper use of the multimedia design principles. His helpful tips about multimedia, spatial contiguity, temporal contiguity, and coherence has made me aware of how the use of text and images in educational presentations is connected to the way the information is received by the audience.

In creating an active and engaging online learning environment, it is necessary to use the Web 2.0 tools available to us today. Blogs, wiki spaces, and collaborative spaces like Blackboard has changed to face of distance learning and education. When I began my online learning journey, our class time was spent typing in chat windows as we struggled to make our point and keep up with the moving conversation. Today, I can sit in a class and hear and see my classmates. It has made distance education a personal affair.

Now that I have read Bonk & Zhang's R2D2 Method, I can recognize it in my current and past online classes. Reading and reflections have played an important role in how students collaborate and build relationships with each other online. It gives us time to process the new information and reflect on it before having to respond to our peers. This process can be time-consuming, but makes doing group projects easier because we have been making connections with each other throughout the course of the semester.

This material will help me in various parts of my work and personal life. I co-head my school's parent association and I am also the director of the preschool program. Having the knowledge to make connections to families, faculty, and students through the use of multimedia will benefit our school greatly. We are attempting to move with the time of technology and making the most of those opportunities to impact our audience is important to our success. I also hope to teach adult-learners who are looking for online programs in the field of early childhood education. Whether that be in a college course or professional development workshop, I believe I have the drive and capacity to rise to the occasion.