Innovation Through Technology

Rethinking how students learn

Image created using Wordle.net

After reading Cheryl Lemke article: InnovationThrough Technology, it is very clear to me why do our schools need to embrace the innovation of visualization, democratization of knowledge and participatory cultures of learning. Lemke present a variety of data, sources and examples, always revealing and supporting that technology has become a very important piece of our students and our own lives’. If we live in this highly packed of visual information and technology surrounding, we as teachers need to transport it to our classrooms.

Making reference to the first innovation, visualization, I think it is hard to perceive a student who is exposed constantly to visuals, videos, media, internet, interactive games…, to learn in an austere and static environment. Also it is very important to teach them in how to be “literate” to be involved in that surrounding. “They need to learn to become informed viewers, critics, thinkers and producers of multimedia. Just as there is grammar an syntax for text literacy, so there is for multimodal literacy”. (Lemke 243)

The second innovation we need to be aware of, is the democratization of knowledge, where teachers and students need to be aware that school is only a “slice” of the learning context available for our students. They learn all day long from different sources at home, practicing their hobbies, being connected through the Internet, so it is ours the responsibility in how to teach them to better browse in the internet, how to use it ethically and whom to trust. What a huge responsibility!

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The third innovation talks about participatory learning. Students are expected to be participants in virtual communities, and they are not only observers. We can mention some examples such as twitter, facebook, social bookmarkers, Painterest amongst many others. They can participate “socially” in these communities, but our challenge as teachers is to include it more and more as a resource in our daily teaching.

It is hard to decide which one of this innovations is more likely to be address in my classroom, I really enjoy using technology and virtual communication in my teaching but I think my biggest responsibility should be directing and constantly encouraging my students in ethically using the internet, in being conscious if their digital footprint. I have observed that they now the basic concepts, they have been taught in ways to look for reliable sources, (Destiny Quest as an example), but when they are in a hurry for information, they simple go to Gooogle and browse in the first sources displayed. It is a huge challenge and teachers need to work collaboratively and all of us be aware of the use of internet and the sources they are using. This will help them be more conscious, principled and ethical life long learners.

Visual literacy Standards for Higher Education

How to integrate Visual Literacy to Enhance Learning

                                   Taken from Hattwig, D., Burgess, J., Medaille, A? Visual Literacy Competency Standards  for Higher Education. Association of College and Research Libraries. 2011

We are surrounded by visual information and it is imperative to incorporate it in our daily teaching. Our students have been bombarded constantly with images, videos, movies and we cannot exclude it in our classrooms. 

Its important to reinforce 
learning using images

I think the essential skill that represent my strength in order to engage in a visual oriented society would be in  integrating images in my daily teaching, I constantly try to reinforce what I teach either with powerpoints, where I balance the text with the images, posting images related to the topic all around the class, so if a students comes into my class, the setting “talks” about what we are learning. It can be either students`work, posters, photos… Maybe because I was taught in a very “austere” environment, I try to make it visually friendly to my students. We cannot take for granted that students learn only by hearing, we need to consider the multiple intelligence, so reinforcing learning with images should be even more frequent in my classes.

Classroom surrounded with visual information 
about what is taught

                                                                                               In the other hand, I am not an artistic person, for me it is even difficult to create stick figures, I do not have a good sense of perspective, three dimension... so I almost never draw for myself, even less for my students. Some times I encourage them to draw what they are learning and I got amazed of what they can do, it is also a way for us teachers to have a better sense of how students perceive-process-express what they are learning but, again, I admit this is a handicap that I need to work on it, and not only because it is not my strength I should leave it aside.

Working as a teacher is always a collaborative work, for sure we spend hours isolated in our rooms with our students, but for making lesson plans rubrics, common assessments, sharing best practices, working with peers is essential. Now, if it comes to implementing strategies for building lessons that involves visual literacy, for me it would be a must to work with peers as I do not master this, I need feedback from my peers, I need to hear experiences from others, I would love to know more innovating ideas in this matter. It would be great to work collaboratively in this masters’ class so we learn how to integrate visual literacy in our classrooms and then we can expand our own lesson, we can adapt and modify them, enrich them and then the rubrics as well.

Also I think it would be very important to work with librarians. In the MS  library the have a lot of visual materials and I am confident they can orient us in how to use them and also, in learning how to “quote” them and give credit to their source, as they teach our students in how to do that with internet and book sources.

Is traditional education paradigm outdated?

Learning locally

And thinking globally

Zhao, Y. “The Wrong Bet: Why Common Curriculum & Standards Won’t Help, World Class Learners: Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Learners. Pp. 23 – 45

The Wrong Bet  reading by Yong Zhao explains the contradiction and differences between the globalized/international efforts to create a core global curriculum and its differences between the local decentralized curriculum.

At the beginning it mentions all the benefits of the internationalized curricula and explains how all the efforts made by some countries are clearly focused in being competitive around the world and how they are pushing the instruction in order to create stronger students who are capable of exceeding other students from different countries.

For me, the biggest contradiction is that in the fighting for this competitiveness education is being narrowed, students are focused only in being competitive and the are almost only “test prepared” and in doing so they are leaving in a margin other very important subjects. In the reading, Zhao explains how the arts, humanities, and science are being left apart because most of the effort of international competition is focused on math and English.

If I am to make a personal comment in this topic, I should speak for the ones left in the “margin” section. While the humanities subjects are commonly left apart in this race, the “local humanities” are the biggest example. They do not even enter in to the race, they are not accepted as competitors… So. Why to teach them in a global/internationalized education??  My answer could be kind of naïve. Students cannot understand the global world, the international interconnected world if they do not understand their roots; they place where they belong to, the country where they and their parents were born. So for me is simple, is thinking globally and learning locally. Learning history is not only (never) only memorizing dates and facts, is understanding, assimilating, making connections: truly learning! So this way they can face global competitiveness.

Learn 360. Video notes

Video Notes. In Step with México. Learn 360

After watching the video and taking notes in my I Phone I understand better my students: "Miss may I take notes in my blackberry / phone?". It is easy, it is fun.  Students can really effectively take notes in their devices, they are used to do so constantly when texting with friends, so they are very fast in doing so. By using their devices students can avoid the constant problem of losing their binders or notebooks.... leaving them at home, in their lockers... It is important to take into consideration that is better if they use a Cloud system as it is not recommended to have all their information in their device and only there.


Using mobile devices for taking notes is really a great advantage, is one step forward in tools for educations. Students can share their notes, they can work in different assignments and then easily share what they got.  If they have question or concerns or they need to investigate they can acces to internet easily in their devices. Even if they want to double check some information....


There are many aplications and resources for note taking. Some students are more visual some are more auditory or even they can use both for better learning. They can use note taking as I did with Evernote or even Dragon Dictation if the lesson allows it. Also in Evernote they can record their voices or their teacher`s voice. Notes in Evernote can also be easily shared. Both of them are free Apps available in Mac. Students who usually work at a slower pace can finish their work easily later.


But, I need to say that I am still concern, not about note taking, but about sharing notes. In the Middle School environment, students may find this as an easy tool to share what they didn't do in classroom not because they didn't have the opportunity, but because they are relying on their peer`s work. Teacher should be very cautious with this and find ways to avoid plagiarism and encourage team work and collaboration between students. We are learning with them to do so!!

Pre assignment 10: Reflection on 3 readings

READING ONE: NMC Horizon Report

In the 2011 NMC Horizon Report: 2011 K12 Edition  they present six emerging technologies that they consider will have a important impact in education in the upcoming years. They present them in three stages, according if they will be implemented in the near, medium or long term scenario:

     A)  In a period of one year (near term horizon).-
ONE.- cloud computing
TWO.- mobiles
B) In a period of two to three years: (second adoption horizon)
THREE.- Game based learning
FOUR.- Open content education
C) In four to five years (far term horizon)
FIVE.- learning analytics to study students engagement
SIX.-personal learning environment

I would love to read the 2012 report and see where they place the use of mobiles in education and the game based learning as they describe that mobiles would enter in education in a range of twelve months and we have seen that clearly they did.

I need to talk about a personal experience: every year Eight grade students participate in the “Capital Cities Week” where they travel either to Mexico City or Washington DC and they visit different emblematic places of those cities. As for last year lesson plan, one of the recommendations for students was to leave their cell phones at school (Mexico City) or at the hotel (DC), their were strongly prohibited during the visits as they were a “menace” to their attention. Last month (April 2012) when we reviewed last year’s lesson plan it seemed almost archaic that we prohibited the use of mobiles. This year it was a requirement! Later I’ll describe this lesson plan as a part of my project for this subject, but students were asked to use their mobiles to take pictures of different places and to take notes (written or dictated) and also for the use of internet when they needed to have information at hand. This wouldn’t b done without the use of mobiles and the constant connectivity to internet.

In the other hand, it called my attention the third emerging technology to by applied into education: the game based learning. It was meaningful to me because it was a reflection from teachers after the Capital Cities Week ended: we need to engage students to learning though game based learning, whether it is students creating games or using game based lesson plans either before and after the visits. Many ideas came to our minds and I am looking forward to next year Capital Cities Week. Maybe we will make fun of our selves remembering that this year we did not allow students to play in their mobiles devices and next year it may be a requirement. As stated in the article, “…In the coming months the vast potential for these devices for learning will begin to outweigh concerns about misuse that currently dominate most conversations about their use in school settings.”

They clearly say that they are nor predictors or prophets, but it is more and more common the use of technologies they described in the article: the open content, the cloud storage and in the “long” term the use of learning analytics to asses and evaluate teaching and learning and the creation of PLN by students. Maybe what they say that will come in four years we will see in a closer future.

READING TWO: FUTURE WORK SKILLS

The report from the Institute for the Future (IFTF) Future Work Skills 2020  analyzes key drivers that will reshape the landscape of work and identifies key work skills needed in the next 10 years. We have seen recently the rapid acquire of the key drivers in our daily life and specifically in our daily teaching. Things that used to be seen as science fiction are now part of our lifes like the rise of the use of smart machines, the globally connected word the adoption of new multimedia technologies… just for mention a couple and for sure we’ll be immersed in a vertiginous growth of more key drivers. But what this article really made me reflect is that we are facing a new reality not only in technology but in the skills we should consider.


As teachers we need to be updated in new key drivers but we need to think in the skills our students need to have for their future, they will need to be competitive. As stated in the article “The key is not just to employ people in these locales but also to effectively integrate these local employees and local business processes into the infrastructure of global organizations in order to remain competitive.”


We  as teachers are facing a very different reality, giving information to students seems archaic now, we need to teach or to model them in how to acquire the tools they’ll need for jobs we already don’t now will exist. A huge challenge! That is why we really need to consider what will be indispensable for them. It called my attention some of the ones in the article such as the transdiciplinarity, the social intelligence and the virtual collaboration. 


Also, we have been studying about the importance of the Media Literacy “Ability to critically assess and develop content that uses new media forms, and to leverage these media for persuasive communication” this is a very important skill that students will need to master and maybe us, teachers, will master along with them. We are learning at the same time they are doing so, we can not be behind them!!

READING THREE: IMPLEMENTING A NETWORKED CLASSROOM

In the third reading, Implementing a Networked Classroom there are very important concepts in how teachers need to visualize their role they play in the classroom. There are some that we need to implement and we need to change the concept from being the lecturer and the “know it all”, to the effective connector for our students. It is almost a "obligation" the fact that we need to teach to self direct our students so they can take charge of their own learning.

After reading this article I have notice that, at school or at least in my classroom we are on the right path, we are using more and more  frequently tools and devices that helps students to be connected either between them or between students and teachers. I can give some examples or our daily routine such as google docs, google sites, blogs or skipe as but I must admit we are still missing the connectivity outside the classroom.

We are sharing students' work with administrators and with parents but thinking about "my" class I need to make my walls thinner so we can hear what is going on outside and also it would be great if can hear what is happening outside ours. It would be great to find forums,
to share with students from abroad. Wouldn't it be awesome to ask to a colleague from an other Country to grade my students`s work or vice-versa? to hear his/her comments? "sharing not only for sharing but for the sake if connection and learning"

It is also very important the fact that we need transparency, it is essential if we want thinner walls. Here I can visualize certain difficulty as we have been immerse in a word where the teacher and only the teacher is the one who knows everything, where the teacher is the one who holds "the king's book"  and it is not common for her-him to share it. We need to educate ourselves and our colleagues to be better "sharers" As said in the article, "For some, transparency is uncomfortable, but it is necessary for making those connections happen".

Pre assignment 8: How educators need to adapt their teaching methods to become real 21st Century educators

         After watching the video  Did You Know?Did you know? and Above and beyond It is clear to me that as teachers we need to adapt our teaching as quickly as possible as not to loose the path before we get outdated by the tempestuous growth of technology. Also it is clear that we need to help our student to think “out of the box” and to  work collaboratively

         In present days, technology is growing at an amazing speed and it is accessible to more people daily. The data presented in the video is overwhelming and it makes you feel in a car race where you do not want to be an spectator but a driver. In order to enter to that race it is very important to have technology skills but more than that, to be aware of whom our students are and the resources they have at hand. The gap between our students and ourselves is going to be bigger and bigger if we do not embrace technology as a daily routine in our teaching.

      Also, and  more important, is the fact that we need to help our students to think “out of the box”, to be creative, so they do not get lost in that huge universe of competitiveness that’ll face in the near future. It resonated to be the image were all students were receiving the same box with the same instructions and they all created the same product except the one who was as brave as to think creatively, work with a peer that could help her and made something new, unique. Are we giving all our students the same boxes? Are we expecting them to produce the same results? Why not giving them different boxes and expect different results with the  help of technology?

      As a personal reflection I need to say that after seeing the third video Why Mobile Learning?  that shows how the I-pads can help students with special needs to communicate, I feel speechless about anything else! If I-Pads or any other device can give a voice to the ones with a difficult to express themselves, anything else is not as important… 

Pre assinment 6: Bill Rankin's Mobile Learning presentation

 Next Wave Mobility and the 3 Ages of Information

By Dr William Ranking

The presentation about the “Next-Wave Mobility and the 3 Ages of Information"  clearly presents the big steps in history basically regarding the access to information and the role of teachers in time. When watching the video my mind traveled automatically to my college years, when accessing information was a real challenge. I felt reflected in the Ranking`s explanation of the “Aha” moments when finally you reached a book in the library after a long process and then you realized the book was useless to your purposes…  And talking about “ages” I perceive my life as a college student more connected to the  first two ages of information than the third one. We were lectured, we had trouble accessing information, we spent “decades” to find a book, traveling to a historical archive to look for information, filling forms, copy-pasting by hand… But, my teachers were great, because despite the waste of time looking for information we had great discussions, they made us think, they taught us in how to make connections, in how to rely in the sources.

 This takes my to the second question and really makes me reflect on how the use of mobile devices can help our actual teaching. Mobile devices are a very powerful tool, a tool that  by sure will make a change in the way we perceive the world, a change of culture as Dr. Ranking presents. But technology is finally a tool. Having that immediate access to information represents a challenge for me it makes my reinforce my idea that I am not in front of a classroom to provide information to students, but to be their mentor, to help them make connections, have meaningful discussions, look for information between the lines. Today we can be more powerful teachers than the ones in the past because we can save time accessing information so that gives us more time for actually teaching our fellow student to better prepare them for their  challenging  future, to be more responsible, better thinkers and also good digital citizens. 

Teachers were very useful in the begging of times, they were useful in medieval times and they are and will be a priority in the years to come as long as we see ourselves not as providers of knowledge or as the truth holders, but as guides and mentors, and of course as trained and good digital citizens, always. As Dr. Ranking said, “…we need to teach not information, but informational models, so when information changes, people (students) still know how to apply the model”