Group Leadership Project

What tool did your group use to deliver the PD tutorial?  Why?
We decided to create a tutorial on Google Apps for Education (GAFE).  Our group was intrigued by the usefulness of Google Apps and how they can be incorporated into classrooms and school districts.  Our tutorial is composed of three main sections.  The first section is an introduction of GAFE to educators who many not be aware of its capabilities.  The second sections explores what we called the 5 C's of GAFE - curiosity, collaboration, creativity, communication and critical thinking.  We tried to answer the question of how Google Apps can encourage each of the 5 C's in classrooms and through a district by describing some of the Apps and how they could be used.  The third section takes a closer look at using forms within Google Docs and how Flubaroo can be used to help grade student responses.

We decided to use iMovie to put together our final presentation.  We thought that iMovie would be the easiest tool to use that we all had in common.  I had the pleasure of compiling each of our sections and adding the voiceover.  After a big learning curve I found that it was easiest to import small sections of our presentation at a time and complete the associated voiceover.  The biggest problem for me in the end was getting our video under 10 minutes.  It helped that we had three main sections so that I could trim about a minute off each section so no one person's work would be edited more than someone else's.


What did you learn during the development process of the final product?
The most valuable lesson I learned from putting together such a large video was practicing voiceovers.  The more I read the script out loud, the quicker I got with fewer mistakes - I did twist my tongue a couple of times :)  Also, once the video was done I found out that Flubaroo is pronounced flew-ba-roo not flub-a-roo as I thought.  I guess I just had Flubber on the brain!

What would you do differently if you had to develop a similar product again?
I don't think I would change anything with the content of our project.  I would change the way in which our group communicated.  This became a case where technology was not helpful!  We had so many issues with conferencing and chatting that it became distracting to our project.  While we worked well on our individual parts, it was hard to get together to compile our work together so our work fell on one person.

As frustrating as this project became, I learned a lot and I am thankful for that.

Professional Learning Plan

My most important goal as I set forth to accomplish in CEP 810, 811 and 812 was to find meaningful ways to incorporate technology into my classroom.  I've seen many teachers over the years use "technology" as a buzz word without really understanding what it meant.  I realized I didn't want to be one of those teachers who simply said they used technology, but didn't have evidence of its use.

I feel that I am working hard towards three of my original goals that are intertwined with each other.
1.  Discover and create ways in which to usefully incorporate technology into my classroom.
2.  Incorporate technology into activities and units which I already use in my courses.  (long term goal)
3.  Develop new activities which usefully incorporate technology in my courses. (long term goal)

An example of how I've pushed my envelope for these goals is creating videos of labs and activities as a part of my WPP.  These videos give absent/suspended/homebound students the chance to view what occurred during our labs and have similar experiences to the students who were in class.  Before this course I had never created a video or screencast with a voiceover.  Now I can't imagine how I survived before them :)  I need to continue to work on this set of skills as I can see how useful it will be in a science course.

The biggest lesson that I have learned over the course of these three courses is to make the use of technology meaningful.  If students don't see the importance of the technology portion of a lesson, the entire content can be lost.  This is also the most important idea that I want to bring back to my department and we continue to work on planning for this year and next.

As I look forward to the rest of this year I want to continue working on incorporating technology into my classroom.  I don't want to forget what I've learned over the last 5 months or move away from using my new skills because its easier to fall back to what I've been doing for years.  In times of stress we fall back on what is easiest for us - I want to be stressed (in a good way!) about finding as many ways to connect with my students thought technology as possible yet making them meaningful.  As I've tried new things this school year, I see a definite disconnect with learning the content when the technology used doesn't fit.

I've enjoyed my work over the past few months and I think that is why achieving my goals has come easier than other goals I've set for myself in the past.  I don't think that my technology goals are easier by any means, I think that I see value in them and as a result they are easier for me to work towards.

The next item from my original goal set that I would most like to work on is to bring my skills gained in these courses back to my department/school in order to reinforce my skills and apply what I've learned.  I have had the pleasure of giving a tutorial on Weebly to my fellow Curriculum Leads and it has been neat to see each of our departments use both websites and wiki's as a way to communicate.

Based on what I saw accomplished from my Goals, I created a short Prezi.  I liked how the format allowed me to keep my ideas simple and to the point.  I've already printed out a copy of it and put it on the cork board by my desk to continue to remind me of how far I've come.

WPP Part D: Findings and Implications

Website with Videos can be found here under the Forensic Science section.

Formative:  Did the project get implemented as planned?
The answer to that question is yes and no :)  As the project progressed the plan changed and was re-implemented.  Initially, the plan was for me as the teacher to create the lab screencasts which then changed to having the students complete the screencasts for me.  Unfortunately, the speed at which the students worked on screencasting was not fast enough to use them in a timely manner.  A week after our first activity I still didn't have anything from the students who volunteered to create the screencast.  Even after I told them to simply get me a PowerPoint and a script and I would do the final editing I didn't get anything back.  I went back to my original plan of creating videos myself in order to allow students who were absent , suspended or homebound to get caught up on their lab work.  We have also gotten a reminder from our Turn Around Specialist (we are a SIG school) that we are to focus on curriculum in our classrooms and teaching how to make screencasts fall out of the realm of my science curriculum at this time.

Summative:  Evidence of success in addressing the problem of practice
I am seeing an increase in student grades based on make-up work turned in this past week.  Where in the past I've had 20 - 30% of students making up missing lab work, I now have 40% of students who have completed make-up work with the final due date for work November 3rd. I've also had students complete an exit survey to get their opinion on the ease of completing make-up labs online.  A majority of the responses so far have been positive and appreciative of the ease of making up lab work.  Students like that they can complete the work anytime anywhere instead of being limited to one or two make-up session after or before school.  I should have all survey entries and work by 11/3/11 (the day before 1st MP grades are due).

How would you approach another project of this type differently given what you've learned here?
Now knowing how long students take to work on creating a screencast, I might try to run through the labs prior to starting a new unit.  This would give students more time in creating our lab videos without causing our absent/suspended/homebound students to get further behind.  If I have the chance to teach Forensic Science next year I will already have a collection of videos ready to use.

What are the lessons learned that others might benefit from knowing about?
Creating the first video took me three hours - it took time to organize everything, figure out correct timings and work on voiceovers.  It didn't help that my husband was blowing out the sprinklers and the loud noises could be heard in the final video!  The second video took about an hour and the third took about the same time even though it was much longer.  I also had to go back and edit our original lab handouts and directions since the students won't be able to do exactly what was done in class.

In what ways will you endeavor to do the same project again, and what will you change or not do?
I hope to continue to do make-up labs in this manner - as long as it appears to help my students.  So far the response has been positive.  Any changes made will be based on student requests on their exit survey.  Right now, I am only focusing on Forensic Science because it has the bulk of my students.  As the Curriculum Lead for my department I am going to suggest this is a technique we look at for our chemistry course as it is lab based and many of the teachers have expressed concern with the correlation between low grades and missing labs.  With additional teachers working on a large scale implementation we might develop another way to solve our absentee problem :)

WPP Part C: Implementation

Link to my podcast - Implementation

My Website - Videos and handout have been added here under the Forensic Science section.

Pictures of our latest Forensic Science activity.  Students were looking at class versus individualized evidence and determining which category different types of torn paper would fall under.  

Piece of paper torn into three parts

Can the two ends be individualized?

Microscopic view of torn paper

Leadership Part B: Storyboard and Script

Our Storyboard and Script can be found here.

We as a group initially decided to use Celtx as our storyboarding program.  It sounded like it had lots of potential and was interesting to play around with but we quickly realized that we wouldn't be able to share our information with each other without paying for the service.  As teachers we are good at being cheap and decided to use Google Presenter to organize our information.

We used the speaker notes to work on our script and make detailed notes about transitions, backgrounds to use in our movie and speaker notes.

Cecilia is working on the first seven slides and introducing our project and Google Apps for Education.  I will be working on the middle section of our presentation on how Google Apps for Education can be used for Collaboration, Communication, Creativity, Critical Thinking and Curiosity - I still have to transcribe my content into our storyboard.  Mariah will be working on the second half our of presentation and taking a deeper look at how to use Forms within Google Apps.  We have decided to use iMovie to produce our final presentation.

Mobile Learning Lab

Poll Everywhere
After exploring Poll Everywhere I liked that you had the option of answering via cell phone or through the website.  I was excited at the possibilities of using this tool with my students except for our very strict no cell phones policy in our school district and after asking my administrator if I could use this in my classroom I was reminded of this policy.  Instead, I decided to poll my friends and family about their favorite class in school.  I e-mailed, tweeted and facebooked my poll and was surprised by the conversation it started.  My aunt was really excited about using the poll and sparked a conversation about technology on my Facebook page. She was excited about possibly using Poll Everywhere in her job - she is a Vice President for CETUSA (Council for Educational Travel USA) - dealing with her foreign exchange students and placement coordinators.

I wasn't surprised by the actual responses I got since most of the people who ended up replying were either science teachers or friends who are engineers :)

The link to my poll can be found here.

Classroom 2.0
I can see myself spending a lot of time here.  After browsing through a few conversations about cell phones, I'm going to bring up the idea of revisiting our district's cell phone policy at our next BAT (Building Advisory Team) meeting.  We're getting too combative in trying to keep our students from using their cell phones and electronic devices instead of finding ways to make them useful.  Just this week I began yelling at a student for using her cell phone in class when she looked at me and said, "but I was just looking up the equation for photosynthesis since I couldn't find it my book."  I was so startled I started to laugh.  Here we are thinking that all students are off task if they are using cell phones in class :)

WPP Part B: Application of TPACK

TP Knowledge

My hope for this project is simple. Motivate students who have been absent to complete their lab or activity analysis in order to gain an understanding of our content expectations. The technology will be a short screencast or video of our lab/activity. Absent/suspended students will be able to watch this on their own time and complete our higher order thinking questions (Kagan structures) and data analysis. In the past, students were simply given a set of data and expected to work through the analysis. With many of our students being visual learners, watching the procedure of our lab/activities may help them with understanding and analysis. For the students who are in class, our creations will give them a chance to review the content and storyboard the screencast/video encouraging them to focus on the big idea of the activity in order to help their fellow students experience what they were able to experience first hand.

TC Knowledge

The technology of producing short screencasts or videos of our labs and activities will allow students who have not been in class some experience with our content. With our high rate of absenteeism, long-term suspension and severe tardiness (not arriving until 2nd hour or later) our students miss out on many of our hands on activities. The technology in this case will allow students to see what other students have done in class and may become an incentive for coming to class. The technology aspect will also help students work through the data analysis and potentially make it more meaningful than just answering questions about recorded sets of data. Incorporating technology into make-up work may make it easier for students to catch up and work on their understanding of larger concepts within our classes. The incorporation of technology will also give us a record of our labs/activites for students to use at later dates as refreshers.

PC Knowledge

This project has two groups of students - those students who are in class and experiencing our labs first hand and those students who are not. The main focus of the project is to use technology to give our absent/suspended students a simulated lab experience. The post-lab pedagogy is the same for both students (department/administration requirement) and we need a way to encourage our students to do the work even if they are not a part of the lab/activity. While the technology doesn't necessarily become a part of the pedagogy or content, it becomes an aid for both. Expecting our students to be able to complete higher order thinking questions about a lab/activity with simple a "set of data" hasn't been motivating our students to complete any of their work setting them further behind while they are out of class. Incorporating technology in this case may be one way to combat this student behavior and motivate them to be a part of the assignment rather than ignore it.

Web Conferencing

If I sound like I'm repeating myself please forgive me :)

Screenshot of our Vyew web conference

I tried to explore and sign-up for the web conferencing resources listed in our explore exercise and play around with them a bit before we met as a group.  As you can see in the screenshot above, Yvew gives you the ability to share a document.  My biggest problem with the document sharing function was that you couldn't actually edit the document while conferencing (or if you could we didn't see it).  While you could add comments (like the one to the right) one of the main reasons for web conferencing could be for collaboration and you'd want the ability to edit a document as a group.


I did like the set-up of all the information on the screen and the adds didn't bother me too much.  At the top right you could view people who were utilizing the webcam option and the quality was pretty good with only a few flutters in the video and audio.  All three of us were listed as moderators which gave us the ability to use all the functions, which can lead to audio problems as we quickly found out!  Multiple mics in operation leads to echos.  If I had to find a silver lining for this problem it would be that I ended up hearing every comment three times so I must understand everything said!  The chat feature allowed us to communicate with whomever had the mic, which was useful after our echo problem :)


All in all this was a successful attempt at a web conference.  As I've stated before, it seemed more of a hassle setting up everything and getting everything to work right.  We spent more time on set-up than we did actually discussing anything.  


I've used web conferencing before with the robotics organization I'm involved with.  With having nine events across the state of Michigan conferencing allows us to meet together and share information.  I've also been in several Master's level classes where part or all of the class was taught online utilizing Blackboard which in its basic form is a web conferencing tool.  I like that web conferencing gives a classroom the ability to meet outside of a physical school building.  I could see myself using it as a tool for extended office hours so I don't have to be limited to my building and students don't have to be limited by my schedule to come to get help or tutoring.  The students could also use web conferencing such as we did in CEP 812 to collaborate on a project.

Leadership Part A: Brainstorming Session

Our brainstorming session can be found here.

Our Google Docs session notes.

Our group used Vyew after first trying Yugma.  The advantages to using web conferencing was the ability for all three members of our group to communicate at the same time.  Instead of trading e-mails back and forth where information can be easily overlooked or not sent to everyone, web conferencing gave us the ability to communicate in real time.  We could easily look at our brainstorming document and share our thoughts and ideas about our project.  Vyew also allowed us to webcam, talk and chat at the same time.  Having this ability was nice as it allowed me to be a part of the conversation even though I am battling a chest cold right now and sound like a frog who's loosing her voice :)  We also had the ability to insert comments as we went through our document so we could remember some of the finer points of our discussion and decisions we made.

In reality, this web conferencing portion of our project became more of a hassle that a useful tool.  We started off by trying out Yugma which became a problem for our two Mac users.  I had a problem with Yugma after initially trying out as a test for the explore session but thought I fixed it after updating my Java as they suggested.  In the end that didn't work I tried accessing our room with FireFox which then caused my computer to freeze.  We spent almost 40 minutes troubleshooting and trying to access our conference that we gave up and switched over to Vyew.  While the program had its advantages, the big problem is that it doesn't allow you to record your session.  We had two group members record the session with Camtasia (just in case) only to realize we ended up with no audio.  Even after we used the web conference to discuss our project and make some final decisions, we ended up all going into Google Docs to view our project document at the same time to chat and make final edits.  It seems like we used a web conference for the sake of saying we used a web conference in the end.  We did have some technical difficulties with the talk tool - when multiple people have the microphone you end up with echos.  We quickly learned that we had to share the mic which didn't seem to be a big problem.  Vyew does allow you to download your room, but after doing this I realized that you can't see the comments made about our document and I was forced to go back to Vyew and our go back into our conference room to view them.

While web conferencing can be a useful tool - especially for communicating between group members in different locations, the process itself seemed more aggravating than helpful in the end.

WPP Part A: Description of Need or Opportunity

Education need or opportunity

One of the largest problems at my school is the high rate of truancy, long-term suspensions and random absences.  This is an even larger problem in my science courses as students who miss labs or activities are more likely to have lower or failing grades.  As a department, we have tried to set up make-up lab schedules, but often the students who can’t make it to class on a regular basis can’t get to school early or stay late.  

How will I address this educational issue with technology?

My plan to address this issue by having students take pictures of the steps or stages of a lab/activity while they are working during class hours and then incorporate those photos into a PowerPoint presentation.  I would like to be able to have my students help me create the storyboard for our video both to review the procedure and purpose of the lab/activity and get them to feel as though they are a large part of the process.  Then as the teacher, I will create a voiceover based on my students ideas through Garage Band that will explain what was happening during the lab/activity.  I can then use either iMovie or Camtasia to combine both parts into a short video/screencast (2-3min) which I can post to our class website.  I will also include a either a set of data either from actual student work or from “created” data from which students can complete their lab analysis.

Logistics of solution (What is the scope?)

Since we are taking photos of student’s lab/activity work I do not have to worry about whether or not students have their photo consent form on file (photos will be edited if any identifying information is visible).  

In my Biology class we work on an activity almost every other day with formal labs occurring closer to once every two weeks depending on the unit we are in.  Forensic Science also has activities two to three times a week.  Formal assessments in the form of a crime scene are planned for the end of a unit which may also make them conducive for this type of project.  

I will collect pictures of student progress for all labs/activities regardless of student attendance.  For the scope of this project, I will create videos/screencast for activities where a high rate of student absences will affect their progress in the class within two days. I plan to save additional photos to create videos/screencast at a later date to use in the future.  

Relevant research and resources

With my research I have found many resources on student absenteeism and its affect or impact on academic achievement.  One of the first articles I found looked at the relationship between students with Asthma and academic achievement which stood out to me since we have a very high rate of students with severe asthma and I currently have two students out long term due to it.  

I am concerned that I've found fewer resources related to using technology to reach out to absent students.  Through my limited research it appears that there is a disconnect between absentee students and ways in which they can catch up with missed work in a science class which was made even more poignant after reading the following statement on absenteeism:

"Students who miss school can copy notes or do worksheets; however, the hands-on activities, discussion, listening, questioning, explanation and clarifications are the parts of class that are lost forever when a student is absent."

This statement led me to even question my project's validity in terms of giving hands-on experiences and allowing them to participate in our Kagan style cooperative learning groups.  This led me on another search to see if I could find what other science teachers have tried in terms of solving this problem.

I found a discussion group through NSTA (Nation Science Teachers Association) where teachers were sharing how they helped absent students experience missed labs/activities.  It was interesting to see teachers posting how their colleagues recorded their lectures for students but I didn't see many suggestions for labs.  The discussion did lead me to an article on engaging today's learners with technology which I found to be quite interesting and though provoking (Prensky, 2005).  I continued to search for ways to make my project relevant and engaging for as many of my students as possible and over time I may adjust my procedure to make this more student driven as suggested by an article found in the TechSmith Education Community (“Lincoln Middle Schools Students Use Technology to Help Each Other Succeed”.)  I think the key for my project will be how I engage the students back to the analysis of the lab/activity they have missed.  I think by having the students follow up the video/screen cast with some form of analysis and higher order questions about the information will help to tie together the content - the next possible best practice other than having the student participate in the original lab/activity.  I'm beginning to see my research is leading to more questions than it might be answering at this time.

In the end I rounded out my research by looking for more tips and technique help for creating videos and screencasts at TechSmith to streamline this process.

Krenitsky-Korn, Susan. "High School Students with Asthma: Attitudes about School Health, Absenteeism, and its Impact on Academic Achievement." Pediatric nursing 37.2 (2011): 61,61-68. ProQuest Research Library. Web. 6 Oct. 2011.

Matsuura, Susan. "Attendance shown to Affect School Performance." Sho - Ban News: 6. Ethnic NewsWatch. Mar 01 2007. Web. 6 Oct. 2011 <http://ezproxy.msu.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/367467540?accountid=12598>.

Prensky, Marc.  “Engage Me or Enrage Me: What Today’s Learners Demand” EDUCAUSEreview.  September/October 2005.  5 Oct. 2011 http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERM0553.pdf

“Lincoln Middle Schools Students Use Technology to Help Each Other Succeed”.  TechSmith Education Community.  Mccollom, Dave.  8 Oct. 2011 http://www.techsmith.com/community/education/real-users/mathtrain.asp

Additional tutorials found at http://www.techsmith.com/community/education

NSTA Learning Center Community Forum "Using Technology When Students Are Absent" http://learningcenter.nsta.org/discuss/default.aspx?tid=ZKcl2xkHeLw_E

Plan for implementation (both during and after CEP 812)

My plan is to create (and keep creating) videos as needed by my students.  Due to current time constraints, my goal is to create one video a week for each class that I am currently teaching (Biology and Forensic Science).  This number may increase of decrease throughout the school year depending on the needs and wants of my students.

Indicators of a successful project

With this project I will have three types of students in my class:  1. Those who were in attendance and completed the lab/activity, 2.  Those who missed all or part of a lab/activity and then watched the video and completed the assignment and 3.  Those who fall under neither type 1 nor 2.  These three groups should give me the opportunity to compare student understanding of key concepts through their assessments.  Success of this project would be seen with equal levels of student understanding between types 1 and 2, at the very least I would expect to see higher levels of student understanding in type 2 over type 3.