Week 6

ESSENTIAL QUESTION: WHAT TOOLS WILL MY GROUP USE AS WE CREATE OUR ONLINE COURSE? WHAT IS OUR RATIONALE FOR USING THESE TOOLS?

            The tools we have decided to use for our training course is Computer Conferencing, Text with study guides and mobile technology.  We have also used surveymonkey for our needs assessment and Google Groups to communicate with everyone involved in the course.

         The computer conferencing will “allow students and instructors to interact in  real time using personal computers to deliver a variety of text, voice, visuals, shared applications, and video” (Moore and Kearsley). We are first going to do an overview and demonstration of the MinecraftEdu teacher tools during our first meeting. Then we are going to have the teachers enter the world of MinecraftEdu and explore and practice with the teacher tools. We are creating a study guide for teachers if they need extra support with a tool in MinecraftEdu.

         We are going to have one document for teachers to reference too. On this document are going to be links to specific tutorial videos on the teacher tools. In the study guide we are going to list and explain during the web conference what the teacher and student responsibilities are. We are going to go over the objectives and the unit plan. We will explain how to upload videos and images to wiki pages and how teachers should log in to their page, create their page and monitor student’s pages.

         A document that we are going to share is being co-created with the diffimooc class. All of the differentiation tools being created in the course for Givercraft will have a short paragraph explanation for each teacher. The document will be uploaded to the Google Drive Study Guide for teachers. I am creating memories for teachers to give to students if they can’t create their own memory. I have created a new teleport station and have hidden the chest full of memories. I will explain and show the teachers how to access the “secret” memories during our teacher training. I will also create a video to add to the study guide and resources page. Teachers will be able to access this document any time they have questions.

            A tool that we didn’t discuss, but could be used when differentiating for students who need help reading the community agreement or possibly differentiating tools they might be using or any other types of documents students need to read for the project is “word talk and word prediction” (teachthought). Word talk is “is a high quality free add-in that provides convenient, versatile and customizable text-to-speech for any document written or opened in Microsoft Word” (UDL). This will allow students to understand what is written on the community agreements, the scenarios in the unit plan and the expectations on the rubric. It can also give them support when reading other students wiki pages, if asked to comment on others blogs.

            The other tool I thought might be helpful for students is word prediction. It helps “predict a word that the user intends to type” (Stanberry and Raskind). If students have trouble writing, they are going to have a very difficult time completing their wiki page about their experience. Word prediction will help them write on their wiki page. I’m not sure if the program can be used right on the wiki page, but students could use word prediction on Microsoft word and then copy and paste their explanation onto their wiki page.

            We only have a week to create our teacher training session. Well less than a week. I think we came up with a lot of tools we know how to use and will be able to have a successful training. I hope for Maze Runner and Lord of the Flies we are given more time to think of other tools or practice the tools we are going to use for our training and not creating them less than a week before the training.

            To use tools during training and a course, educators “need to know how to use them” (Kearsley and Moore). We also need to consider tools students and teachers know how to use. The MinecraftEdu teacher tools are the major tools the teachers don’t know how to use. We had only three responses from our survey and two of the three said they knew how to use the MinecraftEdu teacher tools. To manage students and have a successful Givercraft experience, teachers need to know how to use the tools.

            I’m glad we are creating hands on and web conference style training for the teachers involved with this experience especially following up with a study guide for them to reference. I’m interested to see what training tools are successful and which tools we might want to readjust for the other trainings with Lord of The Flies and Maze Runner.

Resources

Moore, M.G., and Kearsley, G. (2011).  Distance Education:  A Systems View of Online Learning, 3^rd Edition.  Belmont: Cengage Learning.

8 Helpful Assistive Technology Tools For Your Classroom. (2013, May 15). Retrieved February 19, 2015, from http://www.teachthought.com/technology/8-helpful-assistive-technology-tools-for-your-classroom/

Stanberry, K., & Raskind, D. (n.d.). Word prediction software programs. Retrieved February 19, 2015, from http://www.greatschools.org/special-education/assistive-technology/966-word-prediction-software-programs.gs

Free Resources from the Net for EVERY Learner. (2012, May 31). Retrieved February 19, 2015, from http://paulhami.edublogs.org/tag/talking-word-processor/