Wicked Problem Project: Final Project Posting

The wicked problem project has been a great learning opportunity as it has taken uses of new technology and pedagogical methods and has combined them into a project that I am proud to have completed. My wicked problem project is on group collaboration in Prezi. In doing this project, we had to first identify a problem, and my recent experience as a college student at Michigan State University definitely affected the direction I decided to go. Section B deals with the application of TPACK, a pedagogical analysis on the interactions between technology, content, and pedagogy. Section C deals with the experiences we had implementing the project, and is in the form of a podcast. This course gave me my first experiences in podcasting myself, and I find it to be a very powerful tool that can quite easily be implemented in many areas of education. Section D deals with the implications and findings of the project itself. Where section C deals with experience in implementation, section D analyses those final findings. There is also a screencast of a Prezi presentation at the end of this post in which I give an overview of the entirety of my project and talk about its implementations and the experiences I had.

Wicked Problem Project: Part A - Description of Need or Opportunity


As a college student at Michigan State University, I always found that students disliked large group projects, and I included myself in that grouping. The nature of large group presentations often make them a difficult task to accomplish. Firstly, everyone has be on the same page, which means that meetings and communication are key. Problems arise because students obviously have different schedules making meeting up and getting work done as a team very difficult. More often than not, students end up splitting up assignments and having a designated tasks instead of working as a team together, which often times makes for a project with little conformity. Secondly, the creativity of large group assignments when they are presented is almost always lacking because the status quo is to use PowerPoint. While PowerPoint is a fantastic program in many respects, it is more of a program designed to present in a straight-forward manner. PowerPoint, in my opinion, doesn't foster creativity but instead takes away from it. Countless times in my college education was I assigned PowerPoint presentations as projects. These were always straight-forward presentations that took very little creativity on my part and I often felt like I could be presenting in some other type of software entirely. I have made movies in class before, but those were always difficult to make due to the time consuming nature of recording and editing a video. I wanted something simple yet complex. If there was a program out there that could 1. Be online and have collaborative features and 2. To be a more creative cousin of PowerPoint, I would love to see and use it.  In my CEP 810 class, I was introduced to a program called Prezi. The second that I saw it in action I was in awe. The creativity and openness of the software was great. It looked great, allowed for many types of embeddable media, had many collaborative features that allowed separate people to edit the same document simultaneously, and allowed for the creation of an engaging, informative, and creative presentation. 


In my Wicked Problem Project, I want to create a Prezi presentation on Prezi itself to show the features of the program through the program itself. This program will act as an easy to understand and follow tutorial on Prezi, what the program can do, and how you can be creative with it. There is plenty of education and Prezi literature online, including articles on the Prezi site itself. One story that I found is located here that is an interview with a well-renown Stanford professor about the creativity that Prezi allows for. I will also be using PreziU, which is the educational branch of Prezi, as a reference because it has collected plenty of articles and ways to use Prezi. I hope to be able to teach students and teachers alike the powers of Prezi as a presentation tool. Enhancing presentations through using a new tool is important, as is collaborative features in a program, and Prezi does both. Web 2.0 applications, which are very often free and keep all of your work online so collaboration is easier, is the way of the future.


Wicked Problem Project: Part B-Application of TPACK


I have decided to to do my Wicked Problem Project on Prezi, the online Web 2.0 presentation tool. I have found in my recent university stint, that collaboration and effective utilization of resources and manpower during group projects can be very difficult to achieve with the collection of different schedules and skill-sets of the members. More often than not, one or two students take the reigns of the projects and end up doing a larger percentage of the work. This makes for and unfair work environment as well as a weaker final product due to the work being handled often more quickly by a smaller minority of the group. The use of a cloud computing and collaborative software like prezi will make for a better product. The group planning stage of the initial assignment is important when addressing a new project, but once an idea and timeline is set, the use of Prezi will make for more efficient usage of group members time and resources. I will now be taking a look at the TPACK aspects of my Wicked Problem Project.

What is the TP knowledge for the solution?

From a technological perspective I will be using Jing and Prezi itself to teach the uses and effectiveness of Prezi as a tool in presentations and especially group projects. I will be implementing the uses of videos, screenshots, and other images to more effectively tutorialize the use of Prezi as a collaborative tool. I will also be presenting the final product in Jing. I hope that my video portions of my presentation will benefit the visual and auditory learner. This project emphasizes problem-based learning, and I hope to bring in a solution based on collaborative-based learning. The technology of Prezi will be used to present my presentation which is about Prezi in the first place, giving a very tutorial-like quality to my project. The Jing portion will serve as a tutorial on Prezi as well, benefiting those who learn best from seeing and hearing.

What is the TC knowledge for the solution?  

The use of Prezi to present on the benefits of using Prezi is a good way make a tutorial because it shows the features of the program and how they can best be used as a presentation tool. Prezi is a very powerful tool in presentation and collaboration. I will be using imbedded youtube videos that promote the use of Prezi over other presentation software. I will be making a Jing presentation that guides the user through the presentation.

What is the PC knowledge for the solution? 
 The usage of video and images makes the learning of Prezi more accessible to students. Seeing a program in action before you use it is a great way for a person to wrap their head around the possible uses. While playing with Prezi from the start, learning through exploration, is another way going about the problem, I find that learning about the tools at hand before you use a software keeps the mind more open and willing to explore the program once given a chance. 


Wicked Problem Project: Part C-Findings and Implications

http://archive.org/details/cep812pod

Wicked Problem Project: Part D-Findings and Implications




I am creating a presentation on Prezi, the online Presentation tool, and gearing the presentation towards teaching how to use Prezi to collaborate with other people and groups in making professional level presentations. Cloud computing has given the World the ability to collaborate and share information at a level never before seen. Taking advantage of those opportunities both in the classroom and in the workplace will be vital to keeping up with technological advances and paradigm shifts in whatever areas of concentration. Prezi is a great looking, streamlined presentation tool that acts as an idea web for brainstorming and a powerful presentation tool that can use audio/visual media as a method of information sharing and presenting. I have started showing people my simple Prezi presentation on the uses of Prezi and have gotten overall positive reviews so far. Some things that I have learned during the beginning stages of implementation during this project can be seen below.

Formative

Thus far the implementation of the program has gone smoothly for the most point. I needed to gain more experience with Prezi in general before I could really teach the technology as a collaborative tool, but once I sat down and explored the technology for 2 hours, I found my grasp of it was strong and teaching it would not be difficult. I created a short 5 minute presentation on Prezi and began showing it, first to my parents, and then to some friends at Michigan State University. 
  
Summative: Evidence of success in addressing the problem of practice 

The problem of practice for me was the fact that collaborating on projects in my experience can be quite difficult coming from the perspective of a recently graduated college student. Working around peoples schedules and busy lives often leads to people missing group meetings, differences in workload, etc. After working in Prezi and learning the software well, I have discovered its real usefulness as a collaborative tool that could easily be used outside of the classroom to create professional presentations for inside the classroom. Collaboration can be done on Prezi in real time through chatting and real-time editing, which addresses my problems well. Contributors can be invited from anywhere and contribute as long as they have an internet connection. I taught these lessons in my presentation and people overwhelmingly supported the technology because of its ease of use and creativity. I noticed that of the 7 people I had take watch my Prezi presentation, 3 of them had already heard and even used the technology, which tells me that it is growing in popularity and usage. The zooming feature was of course well liked, as were some f the template features for those of them that took the time to start their own Prezi presentation.


 Approach How would you approach another project of this type differently given what you’ve learned here?

I felt that my approach to the project was well done and thought out. I initially came up with the problem of collaborating online to benefit groups of busy people with busy schedules, and then thought about a possible solution from there. Prezi came to mind because I have seen a few presentations and they were remarkably well done and professional looking, and after talking with people about them I was told that it is relatively simple and easy to create them and collaborate with them. One thing that I would have done differently would have been to learn Prezi before I started the project to see if I could use and liked to use the technology. I choose Prezi quite quickly without doing any research and it worked out for me in this project, but next time a will do some more research on my tool of choice. I would also, when implementing the project by showing it to people, have made a short online Google form or something of that nature to both test what they know and get feedback on my presentation. I went about this in a very verbal manner just to really get an idea on how people feel about the technology, but gaining more documented information would have been very helpful.


Lessons

 
When it comes to teaching technology, tutorials need to be dumbed down as much as possible so that people at all skill levels can understand and implement the knowledge that they are learning. If someone only understands a fraction of vocabulary, technology jargon, or other such aspects, their understanding and eventual learning of the intended skill will suffer. This can be especially possible when TPACK is brought in to the equation. Understanding Pedagogy as it relates with technology and content is often not the easiest thing to do, which is why specificity should be a large concentration when integrating TPACK. I attempted to make my Prezi tutorial as easy to understand and follow as possible, as I was showing off a new technology. Most people in my age group have a great grasp on technology because  we grew up using it both in our educations and for pleasure. However, my mother, who does have a decently solid grasp of technology, does not possess the speed or skill that we do, and she said she understood and grasped the presentation well which made me happy.
 
Changes

I have done many presentations in the past and have found a good recipe in doing them that works for me. I choose a problem first and then a technology to fix that problem. I think that when it comes to technology, the opposite method where you first find a technology and then figure out a way to use that technology to solve a problem could also work as well, which I would definitely think about doing.


Final Presentation:


The link provided here will take you to the video of my final presentations.

CEP 811 Final Reflection

CEP 811 was overall a fantastic experience that really did teach me a lot about integrating technology nto education. I have become a huge fan of Web 2.0 applications as well as resourceful sites like MERLOT because of CEP 811. 

Some things that I learned about effective teaching strategies when integrating technology were the UDL principals as well as NET-S standards. These resources are fantastic in integrating technology in the classroom because they take so many aspects of education into account. The UDL principals really taught me about taking learning and other disabilities into account when creating a technology based lesson plan. I feel that often times I didn't take into account these types of students in my past, but the UDL principals really brought me into the mindset of thinking about these aspects of technology.

When it comes to integrating web-based technologies, WEb 2.0 applications really changed my entire outlook on the future of technology. Free applications like Google Docs, Prezi, and Bubble.us are changing the entire future of technology. Cloud computing is becoming the future of technology as internet speeds and access are everywhere. Being able to create, store, edit, and collaborate on a space like the internet that can be accessed from everywhere in the world is a desirable quality in education which is why we are seeing the shift right now. Resources like MERLOT are also fantastic because they provide a space for like-minded people to collaborate and share resources that are useful in education.

As far as my own personal goals go, I am well on my way to meeting and even exceeding them is some respects. One personal goal of mine is to learn web design and this course got into a little bit of it. I learned how to use Google Sites which is an absolutely fantastic resource. Another goal of mine is to learn how to create and edit videos. I learned how to screencast which was a great resource to learn. Learning how to do a PowerPoint in kiosk mode with interactive buttons was not a goal of mine, but in doing the assignment I really learned about an aspect of PP that I never knew existed.

One goal that I do have now that this course is finished is to start a blog about my experiences both teaching technology and my lifestyle in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where I will be moving this August. The new skills that I have learned will be extremely helpful in implementing my new blog. I plan on documenting my teaching experiences, especially when it comes to using new technologies. The school I will be at is a very technology-friendly environment. There will be a new iPad mobile lab, which I am very excited to start using. I also will be creating my own classroom website, hopefully from scratch, and this course definitely has given me a head start on doing that.

Mobile Learning Lab

I checked out the Podcasting and MP3 player sections of the exploration and I saw some ideas that I definitely liked. For example, using mp3 players as e-book readers would be a fantastic way to get those that aren't so into reading the ability to begin loving reading by listening instead. There was also a mention of guided notes, which I also think would be another great way for a teacher to give alternative pedagogical options when talking about students learning. Also, podcasts could provide an untapped resource when it comes to research papers or assignments. The amount of interviews and professional in-depth knowledge about basically everything and anything in podcasts is a resource worth showing to students and teaching them how to use that resource.

In my future classroom, I would really like to use iPads as an educational tool. I was talking to the technology director, and he is really think about ordering 30 iPads for use in the elementary school, something that excited me greatly. I would love to use the device as an e-reader as well as explore the multimedia tools that it comes with (2 HD Cameras, built-in apps). There are also a huge amount of app's written by random people in every conceivable category that are more than worth exploring. I do foresee the portability and fragility of the iPads maybe being a problem, but hopefully through education in the beginning accidents can be avoided.

Professional Learning Plan

When I initially started taking CEP courses, I wanted to gain experience in some new resources that could help me on my way to becoming  teacher. These courses have definitely taught me a great deal about incorporating technology into the classroom. One great resource that I have become accustomed to using now is RSS feeds of my favorite blogs. I use Google Reader, and I check it every few days to read my favorite edutech blogs which help keep me in the loop and prepare for my new job in August. I have completely gone away from using Microsoft Office products and have instead switched over the Google Docs due to its extreme ease of use and the collaborative features that allows for easier group assignments, editing, and eventual grading for the teacher. These are just two small examples of some things that CEP has taught me over the past 4 months. I do, however, want to keep learning. In the field of technology, staying ahead of the curve means everything. Dedicating yourself to continue learning, whether that be by going to educational technology conferences, reading blogs through and RSS feed, or buying new gadgets, is important in such a dynamic field as technology. I built a computer when I was in 8th grade and considered myself an expert when it came to hardware specifications that year because the depth of my research into what to buy was so extensive. Yet now, around 7 years later, I have no idea what a company like Intel is talking about when they unleash their new processor or video card lines. Staying in the loop is the only way to keep up, and I feel I have a good handle on that partially because of these courses.

One goal that I definitely have for the future is becoming more proficient at audio/video technologies. I would like to become proficient enough at these technologies that I could tape a school play on three separate cameras and then edit footage together to create a polished final product. Having skills like these are helpful to both a career and to the institution I will be working at. I have some experience with filming and editing, but I would like to learn more. I will be having my students use these technologies on projects that I will be doing with them this upcoming semester that will teach both them and I how to better use these technologies for educational purposes. All students in this day and age should have a good base of knowledge on A/V technologies because they are becoming so prominent, so I would like to get better at them so I can in turn teach better about them.

Another goal that I have is to solidify my knowledge in web design. I can design a functioning website from scratch, but my design aesthetics and overall final products are underwhelming because I have had very little formal education in the subject area. I just bought a few books on DreamWeaver and Flash design that I will be exploring in the near future in an attempt to become proficient in these technologies. Being able to create a professional looking web page, whether it be for personal, public, or professional use is another very sought after skill in the workplace. Having web design as a tenant to offer prospective employers makes me look like a better candidate for employment. I am planning on living and working overseas for at least the next 10 years, so gaining the two skills mentioned above will make me a candidate hard to pass up. For someone like me that enjoys exploring the World, gaining A/V and web desing knowledge will help further my career greatly.

Group Leadership Project

Our groups final presentation, a screencast of a Google Presentation, is available on youtube at the following here.

Our group used Google Presentation to make a slideshow that featured mostly images that acted as a guide for the eventual screencast done by Elise. We organized our script in a Google Document and also did our storyboard as a Google Presentation, making our project quite Google-centric in its setup and eventual finished format. We used a screencast because as a group we figured that doing a tutorial through a screencast was the easiest and most informative method available for us to use without going to deeply into video. Screencasts are easy to produce and there are many free creators available on the internet, so the technology worked in our group very well.

I learned a lot about Google Sites during my development of the final part of this project. I had used Sites once or twice in the past for CEP 811, yet I was by no means fully proficient with the software. I challenged myself by making a few websites by myself and editing a few templates, and found that Sites was easy to use yet difficult to tutorialize because it is such a powerful and in-depth program compared to the other Google Docs. Since I had limited time in our presentation, I really had to search for features that would be useful for teachers as opposed to concentrating on doing a full tutorial of Sites itself. I really got to know my way around the program well due to that fact, and I learned some great things such as the Google Docs embedding feature and collaborative features that allows for others to edit a created web site as well. I would also say that overall our group communication was pretty good and it was a learning experience keeping in contact and communicating with all of the group members. Our group was well organized and everything went pretty smoothly.

If I had to do a similar project again, I don;t think that I would change that much. We used Google Presenter to do our presentation portion, which was great because of the collaborative features. Everyone could see what each other was doing, which was great for editing and creating the best possible product. Google products are especially great for that aspect. We also had a few chat discussions within the docs themselves, which is another feature that was incredibly cool because we could all follow along as work was being done.One thing that I would do differently is to change the main method of communication from email to something else. Email is a great method of communication but the organization of it isn't the greatest. Having a sort of discussion forum like the one on Angel (but not Angels) would be preferable. All in all the project went smoothly, I enjoyed working with my group members, and that translated into a good experience overall.

Online Teaching Experiences

I have yet to be in a classroom as an actual teacher at this point in my career. I will be starting a teaching job in Tashkent, Uzbekistan in August teaching elementary school computers at an international curriculum school, yet a main goal of mine is to be a high school history teacher at some point in the near future. History is my subject of choice to both learn and to teach, so I was looking at this list of online resources from a perspective of a history teacher. I found that one great resource to use in a history classroom would be online field-trips. Online field trips allow students to experience different parts of the world without ever having to leave the classroom. As technology keeps on getting better, the quality and interactions between virtual and real life will undoubtedly continue to be blurred, making for some unbelievable educational opportunities. All that a student will need is an internet connection and a computer, and an entire World of information in the state of audio, video, words, and other mediums is right at their fingertips.

A lot of virtual field trips and explorations are already available on the internet as was apparent by the online experience guide. I checked out some of the links and found that many great tours of both geographical and historical features were available free of charge. I then did a few Google searches of virtual tours of some famous sites in history and found that a vast percentage of them have virtual tours available. Gettysburg, Auschwitz, the Taj Mahal, and the Smithsonian all offer virtual tours of their museums and areas. There are now applications available online, like Google Earth and Google Street View, that allow users to basically visit portions of cities through some simple searching and mouse clicking. These types of programs and virtual tours have many many applications inside of the classroom. Students can learn a lot about the physical appearance of something that they may have read about many times but never actually seen. I visited Auschwitz when I was around 14 or 15 years old and it surprised me how serene and almost neighborhood-like Auschwitz was. I associated my knowledge of Auschwitz with what I assumed it was going to look like, giving me a perspective that the death camp was going to feel and look like an evil and vile place, but that was far from the case. Seeing it gave me an entirely new perspective. Visiting Auschwitz from the U.S on a class field trip would cost at least 2,000 dollars, which is beyond the reach of most schools and families. A computer can take you to Europe in seconds, and while the experience isn't exactly the same as being there, it is definitely the second best thing. Using virtual reality with students could be used as parts of projects, explorations, or any number of assignments.

One type of resource that I could see as being problematic for students would be educational online gaming. In my experience with gaming, especially at the primary and secondary levels of education, students can easily get addicted to games to an extent that it begins to hamper their other classroom activities. While online learning games can be a good thing, I think that overall the possibilities of problems it presents wouldn't be worth implementing them in a classroom unless the software was excellently designed and organized.

Wicked Problem Project: Part D - Findings and Implications

I am creating a presentation on Prezi, the online Presentation tool, and gearing the presentation towards teaching how to use Prezi to collaborate with other people and groups in making professional level presentations. Cloud computing has given the World the ability to collaborate and share information at a level never before seen. Taking advantage of those opportunities both in the classroom and in the workplace will be vital to keeping up with technological advances and paradigm shifts in whatever areas of concentration. Prezi is a great looking, streamlined presentation tool that acts as an idea web for brainstorming and a powerful presentation tool that can use audio/visual media as a method of information sharing and presenting. Some things that I have learned during the beginning stages of implementation during this project can be seen below.

Formative

Thus far the implementation of the program has gone smoothly for the most point. I needed to gain more experience with Prezi in general before I could really teach the technology as a collaborative tool, but once I sat down and explored the technology for 2 hours, I found my grasp of it was strong and teaching it would not be difficult. 
  
Summative: Evidence of success in addressing the problem of practice 

The problem of practice for me was the fact that collaborating on projects in my experience can be quite difficult coming from the perspective of a recently graduated college student. Working around peoples schedules and busy lives often leads to people missing group meetings, differences in workload, etc. After working in Prezi and learning the software well, I have discovered its real usefulness as a collaborative tool that could easily be used outside of the classroom to create professional presentations for inside the classroom. Collaboration can be done on Prezi in real time through chatting and real-time editing, which addresses my problems well. Contributors can be invited from anywhere and contribute as long as they have an internet connection.  


 Approach How would you approach another project of this type differently given what you’ve learned here?

I felt that my approach to the project was well done and thought out. I initially came up with the problem of collaborating online to benefit groups of busy people with busy schedules, and then thought about a possible solution from there. Prezi came to mind because I have seen a few presentations and they were remarkably well done and professional looking, and after talking with people about them I was told that it is relatively simple and easy to create them and collaborate with them. One thing that I would have done differently would have been to learn Prezi before I started the project to see if I could use and liked to use the technology. I choose Prezi quite quickly without doing any research and it worked out for me in this project, but next time a will do some more research on my tool of choice.





  Lessons

 
When it comes to teaching technology, tutorials need to be dumbed down as much as possible so that people at all skill levels can understand and implement the knowledge that they are learning. If someone only understands a fraction of vocabulary, technology jargon, or other such aspects, their understanding and eventual learning of the intended skill will suffer. This can be especially possible when TPACK is brought in to the equation. Understanding Pedagogy as it relates with technology and content is often not the easiest thing to do, which is why specificity should be a large concentration when integrating TPACK.
 
Changes

I have done many presentations in the past and have found a good recipe in doing them that works for me. I choose a problem first and then a technology to fix that problem. I think that when it comes to technology, the opposite method where you first find a technology and then figure out a way to use that technology to solve a problem could also work as well, which I would definitely think about doing.