Critical Thinking Questions – The End

Here I am at the end of this course and I am looking back at the critical challenge questions. We were asked to consider two critical thinking questions. 1 – “How can you select emerging technologies which fit your developing philosophy of education?” and 2 – “How can you inspire, initiate and implement sustainable integration of emerging technologies in your own practice, and in the practice of others?” I wrote a blog post at the beginning of the course to see where my thinking started and so that I could write this post later and see where my thinking has shifted. My first post can be found here: http://breanneqlearnsonline.weebly.com/16/post/2014/01/critical-thinking-questions-the-beginning.html

If there is one thing that I have learned with this course is that you have to choose things that will work for both you and your students. If you do not understand or cannot use something, you cannot expect your students to because when they come across something that they don’t understand, as the teacher you will be the first person they come to for help. This also was drilled into my brain as I quickly jumped on the virtual world wagon and was excited to use it with my students and I had all these grand ideas but then after playing in a world for only a few moments, I got such bad ‘simulator sickness’ that I was on the couch with my head spinning for the rest of the day. I am still looking for something that will work for both me and my students but I am now also aware that I may find something that my head can deal with but I might have students who get sick easier – and faster – than I do and I will need to have a backup plan for them.

I also realized that there are so many tools out there that it can almost be overwhelming! I need to limit the tools I use and choose them carefully so that I don’t scare my students with them all. To use a tool simply because you know about it and think it might work is a little foolish. My opinion is to explore the tools and if you find three virtual reality tools that will work, choose the one you like the best but keep the others on the back burner for students who may need a different tool than the rest (for example if a tool you really like is only available as an Apple app, you may need to find an android one as well).

Something that comes to mind is the “Google Tools you didn’t know existed – or at least I didn’t” post I wrote a few weeks ago (http://breanneqlearnsonline.weebly.com/16/post/2014/01/-the-side-of-google-you-didnt-know-existed-or-at-least-i-didnt.html). The original article outlined 14 different Google Tools that most people don’t know exist. Once looking at it, I noticed that most are for marketing but there are some that I found had educational value once you looked into them a little bit. This was also something we did with our seminar, we had students evaluate educational apps (some were only for one OS and not another so it was good to know) and now we have a mini review of apps from our peers without having to do the work of what 7 others did.

In the end, it will all come down to your comfort level and excitement and your ability to pass that on to your students. If you know a technology or tool well enough and explain it in an engaging way to your students, they will catch on. If it is something that you are not excited about, it is probably best to move on as it most likely isn’t right for you.

This week I have been participating in the virtual worlds seminar as part of the OLTD 509 course. I was really interested in participating in this seminar as I have just finished exploring the world of augmented reality and to me, the two seemed like a logical link with one another. Augmented reality is taking the real world and adding a layer (or multiple layers) of digital content on top of it - whereas virtual reality is taking the real world and completely replacing it with digital media.

 The pros

With virtual reality, I have noticed that there are a lot of benefits when it is used with your students in a classroom. These benefits are also greatly increased when you are in a DL classroom. Virtual worlds allow you to create a space where you can build and insert content that you want to give to your students. It also allows everyone involved to have their own avatar and interact with each other in real time. Having a DL classroom where my students are all over the province and sometimes travelling and are all over the world, it would be a great way to still have a sense of community with everyone feeling connected.

 The cons

The biggest issue that I have come across so far - and it is something that I personally experienced - simulator sickness. I honestly didn't think it existed until I was playing around in a virtual world and was looking through the eyes of my avatar (instead of being able to see my avatar) and then all of the sudden, my stomach turned and my head started to spin! This is something that I can now be aware of and know that some of my students may experience the same thing, although if something is making me feel really ill, I probably won't be using it with my students. I will look for something where I can comfortably immerse myself in for at least an hour without having to go have a lay down.

 Considerations

Not all virtual worlds are the same, but neither are all textbooks or all chocolate chip cookies for that matter. You have to explore and find what works for you. You also have to be aware of all the ins and outs of a program before blindly giving it to your students to use. Something that is big right now is privacy, it always has been and always will be so knowing where the servers for the world are and what privacy laws they are under is something that you should know before introducing it to others.

In conclusion, find what works for you. Explore it. Learn all about it. After all that is done then share it with your students and see where they can take their learning using it!

This week I started learning about Augmented Reality and playing around with apps. I searched for apps about this topic and some were great, the others not so much – at least for me.

The app that I have been using the most is Aurasma. This app was suggested to me by Ben and I have been hooked on it ever since. With Aurasma, you create a video or picture and then ‘link’ it to another picture of an object (or of another picture). I have found that it will work either way but I think the point of the app is to link it to an object that you can just point your app at instead of having to rely on a picture. I have created a few and although some have been pictures of pictures, I also have videos of my daughters playing and linked the videos to pictures of objects other people may have (crayola pencil crayon box, my daughters play jeep, a chair). Although I know that not everyone has the same objects as me in their house, I can at least keep these with me and watch videos as my girls grow up.

For Aurasma in the classroom, I have already started planning out how I would like to implement it. As a DL teacher, I never get to see my students but I always have to send them stuff. It would be great to have auras sent to them so they are not receiving large video files. A few ideas I have had to date:

Foods course: making an omelet (recipe) I could take a picture of an egg. Making a smoothie, I could take a picture of a milk jug (provided the student has the same brand of milk)
Art: I could take a picture of a crayon box and link it to an activity
Science: I could make science lab videos and link it to everyday items
Social Studies: I could link assignments or historical videos to places on a map of the world

In reality, this augmented reality has many different uses and the more I think about it, the more I think that I could do this, or I could do that. I have been sitting here playing with apps, reading about apps and thinking about possibilities with my teaching for well over two hours today. The other day, I was so much in the ‘flow’ state that my ‘quiet time’ (daughter’s nap time) felt like only 10 minutes, not 2 hours! I been finding the deeper we progress into the functions of technology and the implications on our teaching and our students learning, the more my time seems to fly by! I have so many ideas flying through my brain that I have had to start recording them to come back to during my next 2 hours – or is it 10 minutes? most of the time, I can’t tell the difference – quiet time.

How to create an Aura:
Step 1: Pick your content from Aurasma's library or your device
Step 2: Take a clear picture of your trigger - don't press the button until the bar goes green!
Step 3: Get your content into position and scale it. When you are ready tap the arrow.
Step 4: Add your aura to your channel so that others can view!

How to access another person's Aura:
Step 1: Follow the person's channel (mine is BreanneQ)
Step 2: Find a picture that the person has used to make their Aura
Step 3: Scan the picture with your Aurasma app and see what happens!
Hint: Google USD $20 and use the side with the building on it to see what happens (it is the most viewed Aura and you don't need to be following a certain channel as it was created by the developers of Aurasma)



If you are interested in my auras, my channel is breanneq and below are some pictures to try. Enjoy!

P.S.  Two other apps that I tried: ColarMix – my 2 year old loves it! Augment – I wasn’t a huge fan, it seemed more of a interior decorating thing but if f2f teachers could get desks to load, it would be a great way to arrange the desks in the room before physically moving any of them.

If you would like to know more about the Augmented Reality app Aurasma and see the most viewed Aura (the USD $20), click on the infographic or click here: http://lazytechguys.com/news/business/aurasma-celebrates-1st-anniversary-with-augmented-reality-infographic/

On Friday night when my partners and I started leading out week long tablet computing seminar, we gave this challenge to our participants for those who wanted to (and had the technology to complete). Try going one week with completing all of your work for our seminar for the week on your tablet. We have our participants doing activities like exploring apps and rating them in Google+ and doing some readings and finally doing a blog post on one of three topics. Choice A just happens to be writing about your experience trying to use just a tablet for the week.

Here I am, a leader of the seminar and I am thinking, pff a week of readings and apps on my tablet is nothing, I am going to try and do everything on my tablet for the week. That did not last long.

Our seminar started with a Blackboard Collaborate meeting – also the first time I could not rely on my tablet – I did have the capabilities to use my iPad app for the session, the only problem was that we were using my Blackboard link and I could not give my co-presenters moderator privileges, let alone have access to the whiteboard so out came the laptop and I was a dual participant in the session.

Saturday morning came around and I thought that I was doing pretty good. I was reading posts and replying to some. I like to reply to a bunch of posts before going in to track my contributions – you know, stay in the state of flow. Well off I went to my activity tracker and out came my laptop. Turns out you cannot add comments to a google doc spreadsheet with an iPad (I was later informed by Sonny that it is possible but just a huge pain, which I was not about to suffer through – I had two little girls really wanting my attention).

Next was Sunday. I knew that I couldn’t track my contributions on my iPad and I was okay with that so I decided that I would do all that I could and leave it to the end and have a quick little bit of laptop time. Something else I cannot do with my iPad is access my personal email as I have my work one linked to my iPad so I still go on my laptop once a day. So here I am, commenting on posts, looking at articles and I come across something that I think will interest Jean. I post it in Google+ using my iPad then go to +Jean, and nothing. Turns out that you cannot ‘tag’ someone in your post using your iPad. Out came the laptop again as it was a time sensitive thing and I had to make sure she saw it.

Today I saw that a bunch of people had responded to a post I had put up in Google+. I wanted to make sure everyone got their individual responses from me so I had to turn on my laptop so I could tag each person. Next I went to my office to work on report cards as our school had the second quarter cut off on Friday. Again, I go on my iPad to work on reports and it is not compatible. Yet again, out comes my laptop and I am working on it instead. Man is this experiment ever failing!

It has not been all bad. Using my tablet (iPad) I have had to figure my way around things and it has actually been nice to use both at the same time. I was exploring some Google tools earlier today and although I couldn’t really access them properly on my iPad, I played with them on my laptop then wrote about them as I was exploring on my tablet. I have also found myself exploring a lot more of the free apps than I would have if my tablet were not as close to hand as it has been the last few days. I know that there are some failings of a tablet but hey – my laptop is heavier, bigger and cannot runs apps so there are pros and cons to each! I am glad to be exploring this though. I am such a hands on learner and I think that if I were reading about this experience instead of living it, I would think that they overlooked something or didn’t try hard enough (which is the case for me in some instances) but at least I am now more comfortable with my tablet and I know the limitations of it as well as my use of it.

This week one of my colleagues posted a link in a Google+ community about 14 Google Tools that you didn’t know existed (http://mashable.com/2013/07/05/google-tools/#_). To be honest, I didn’t know that any existed. I hadn’t heard of a single one and some made sense that I hadn’t heard of them. I am not a computer programmer and while I input metadata for a website, I am in no way a developer. These two roles are what most of the tools seemed to be aimed at – programmers and developers. In saying that there were a few that I could see of being use with my students so I dove in to explore them in more detail.

Google Public Data Explorer: This tool allows you to search for different data and it will show this data on a line chart, bar graph, map or bubble chart. I started out with something easy – population density. I chose the map view as that made the most sense to me and I played around with some of the variables. I looked at the birth rates of countries, the migration rates, the growth rate. All of this seemed very interesting. I also liked how it showed where the statistics were coming from (in this case it was the International Data Base – IDB).  The next thing that I thought would be interesting to see if the tablet usage per country. This information came from the Connected Consumer and again, I thought it would be easiest to see the information shown on a map. This time I found something that was interesting – there was no information shown on the map outside of Australia (Oceania) and Asia. When I clicked the box next to Canada, it gave me a nice big Canada to mouse over and tell me that we have a national 79.5% PC usage and 29.5% tablet usage but there were no nice little blue dots on the map for me to see.

Next tool on the docket: Schemer.  I will only write a short little piece about this. I went on the website and tried to sign up. I was greeted with this message: “Schemer is being shut down soon. Sign in to get your schemes before they’re gone! So much for that lead, onto the next...

When I first got onto Google fonts, I am shown the message “Grumpy wizards make toxic brew for the evil queen and jack. I was first quite confused until I realized that the sentence contains each letter of the English language so that you can see what they all look like. There was also another sentence option or an option to put all the letters in upper and lower case in order. I will stick with the grumpy wizards. I chose a few that looked neat – Jolly Lodger, Freckle Face, Hanalei and Love Ya Like A Sister. These fonts showed what they would look like and were added to my collection. From there I was asked to verify my settings and copy the code for my website. I will try this when I am done and attempt to have this post show up in “Love Ya Like A Sister” – For now off to Google Keep. (Update: That didn't work, to be honest I don't have the time to try again now so for the time being it is pushed to the back burner.)

Google Keep is something that I don’t know if I completely see the value in. It is a note taking service from google and you can have an app or it will be attached on your PC as part of google drive. My thoughts on this is why not just write notes up in a google doc? If you need to keep quick notes on your tablet, why not use the notes app that comes pre-installed? To be fair, I didn’t look too deep into this but at the same time, I didn’t really see the value in using my time to do so.

Finally – Google Sky. This is the tool that I was most excited about and you know what they say, save the best for last. As an avid star gazer, having one of my favourite DVDs to watch called Indescribable (a Christian perspective of the solar system) and a teacher of grades where the solar system is part of the curriculum, this seemed like the tool for me! This tool allows you to access pictures that have been taken by the Hubble telescope and when you click to view, it shows a closer view of them along with a description of what you are looking at, how big it is, how many stars are in it, etc. There was also an ability to check out different constellations and galaxies. I think this would be a very neat tool to use with my students and allow them to explore our solar system. One thing that I cannot report on as it was not working at the time was the search function. I will have to come back to this at a later date and try again.