5313 Week 5

 

    The research article by Rao, Torres, and Smith (2021) was perfect for me. As an intervention specialist, the vast majority of of my day is with students with disabilities. I have taught online before, and my english 4 class is very computer based. UDL(Universal Design for Learning) is a very hot word in the world of education. I think it is occasionally good for us to revisit the meaning of these hit words. Rao, Torres, and Smith do a great job of describing it as "tools to reduce barriers and support students to meet learning and affective goals" (105). Students with disabilities are constantly faced with a plethora of barriers. Having built in things that remove or give access to get around these barriers is always my goal in my classroom. Two of these tools really stood out to me throughout my reading of this article.

    The lesson plan I am developing is the final project for a mini-unit on the hero's journey. With this being the case, I think keeping track of the continuum of student learning. These students are not only  seniors, many of them are legal adults at 18. I really want to push that onus onto them as we develop them as learners and as humans. A great idea I saw for UDL guideline 7 was "Encourage students to track their tasks on a checklist that can be shared with teachers" (Rao, Torres, and Smith, 110). Not only is this an assignment that is part of a much larger mini-unit, but also I have a lot of issues with attendance in this class. Starting out with an initial checklist will make it much easier for students to follow along with as they are in and out over the time we are working on this.

The next tool that really stood out to me was in guideline 3. This tool also has a lot of what we work on in here and my other educational technology classes "Create “at a glance” step-by-step directions with screenshots" (Rao, Torres, and Smith, 107). This tool will help me in a lot of ways. Beyond the fact that my students are very in and out in terms of attendance, they also really struggle with doing things independently. I am only one person, and spend a majority of my time working one on one with students during a majority of the class. Screenshots give them a better chance at doing things on their own. I think this ties back to the original definition of UDL given to us by the author. It really lowers that barrier of entry for my students to take that next step in the assignment. This is specifically important for my students with disabilities. Many have 14 years of learned helplessness in the school system as students who are continually not able to academically access many assignments. This is a great skill of trying things on their own that they will need in the work force.

Resources

Rao, K., Smith, S. J., & Lowrey, K. A. (2017). UDL and Intellectual Disability: What do we know and where do we go?. Intellectual & Developmental Disabilities, 55(1), 37. doi:10.1352/1934-9556-55.1.37

5333 Week 5

 I think my digital story is coming along really well. With it being a story about the learning environment I work in, I fell like I am living in my digital story everyday. This is a real pro and con because I am thinking about my story often, but also wanting to change it often. I fell like I have a good spine of a story through last weeks planning and just want to make some revisions to it after getting my feedback from class and Professor Shannon. The biggest change I want to make is changing the POV. I got some feedback about making it the POV of one person and I really like that. The type of student I would like to try to capture as the main character is just an "average" student. The high achievers fight through it, and the lowest achievers are usually the cause of problems or not participating in general. I think this adds to the complexity of the problem, but also maybe narrows down the end goal. I will make my needed changes to my planning core, script, and board before starting on the creation of the product itself. I think getting lost in the tiny details of the product will be really easy so I want to try really hard to have a clear picture of what I want before I start that creation piece next week. I think as far as assistance I just want someone to look over a draft of my product before I present it. 

    Two of the resource's I am using from the reading Kapular, D. (September 7, 2018). Top 30 tools and apps for digital storytelling. Tech & Learning are Pixton and Storyboard that. I really enjoy Pixton. I am implementing in my own classroom as a more accessible way for my students with writing struggles. I don't feel I have a glaring issue in writing, but I do struggle with being artistic. I feel like Pixton removes the barrier for art from creation pieces like this as it allows to type what I want instead of make it. Storyboard I use in a pretty rudimentary way, but I still enjoy it. Sometimes what you really need is good formatting and storyboard that gave me grade formatting for my planning process.

I think the authentic audience for my creation is teachers. Especially teachers in a truly chaotic school. My story is to make people think about the balance of dealing with everyones baggage as well as needs. We can't constantly baby our kids with trauma, nor completely ignore them, and we cant assume our worst don't have a reason to be that way. Teacher's are only human so my hope is that they can remember we can simply be a calming force in the chaos. Hopefully that impact is passed on to students. I have noticed the calmest teachers that still demand high standards get the most out of students, because I think they truly crave that. I have developed a lot of planning skills from this assignment. I think I usually would have made this on the fly and not doing that has made me step back and think of what my vision is. I think a role I can play with this story is sharing it out to a couple close colleagues and getting some feedback and having better conversations about the things that are happening around us.

5313 Week 4

https://app.magicschool.ai/tools/lesson-plan-generator?share=2fc01be5-4b83-494a-bb2c-536005b5e2c5  

I have used magicschool.ai quite a bit in the past. I think it usually does a pretty good job if you give it some guidance at giving you materials to work with. I have primarily used it for lower level math and english. The lesson I asked it to write today was for my Algebra 2 students. The standard is N.CN.3 Find the conjugate of a complex number; use conjugates to find magnitudes and quotients of complex numbers.

I think it does a good job with this standard depending on what you are looking for. If you are good at teaching the content, a content expert, and skilled at questioning you can definitely use this lesson plan. It does a really good job with giving good examples of practice or example problems. These problems I find follow a very clear path of increasing rigor which is appreciated. The biggest problem I see is that it is just either vastly underestimating how long something takes or somehow under the impression that everyone has totally mastered every standard preceding it. The other big issue is that it doesn't have much in the way of questioning or any real teaching, just a map to follow. Again, I think it does create a rigorous product, but it seems more like a framework with problems as apposed to a lesson plan. I think this perfectly follows what we have been reading about AI in class. AI can be an awesome tool. AI is only a tool, it is a long ways away from being able to weild itself to "build" anything. I think this ties back to that authentic education. Without teachers bringing it to life, it feels pretty soulless.

The tool is used was Raina the chat bot. I think the chat bot is really the best feature in the website. The assessment it came up with was way better broken down into something that I will probably use on my next test. For example, it gave different different assessment questions for different levels and understandings of the standard. I would let it help me find questions to assess my students, but I wouldn't let it do it. I definitely would not let it deliver instruction in any way whatsoever. Again, it is simply a way for an already skilled teacher to save some time in thinking of practice problems, passages, or writing prompts.

I do use magic school. I use it for what it can do, but I use some form of AI as a teacher atleast once a week. I think when it has been the most helpful is with younger students in reading. If you ask it to punch you out 250 words where vowel teams are often used on the 2nd grade level it will be amazing. You can ask it to give you the 5 hardest words from that passage and review them first. I think it's best use is probably for someone like me, an intervention specialist. When I am working on or assessing progress on a very specific skill it does a great job. The insights I would offer on it is that it really isn't too different from the old school teacher guide books I grew up on. It is an effective tool for an effective teacher, not a replacement for one.