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Tag: UDL

Mind Mapping and Learning Support

I believe in mind/concept maps, having written about them over the years. Mind maps support UDL while often enhancing learning strategies (e.g., brain dump, chunking, grouping, showing connections, etc.) When web-based mind mapping tools like Mindmeister came onto the scene, we made a giant leap in how digital mind maps can help Replace – Augment/Amplify – Transform (RAT Model) learning that previously used analog tools. The collaborative nature of online concept maps between students and teachers can help the process, create, and communicate one’s understanding.

In chats with a learning support teacher and a history teacher, I made a mental list of how digital mind maps could support their excellent instructional strategies. The following are their strategies and my take on how concept maps could augment/amplify or transform learning.

Brain Dump: The teachers described what we sometimes see in students who struggle to get their ideas from their minds down their arms and out into text. Brainstorming for ideas and just getting the story out of one’s head are supported by mind maps. One can keypad the ideas or use voice-to-text tools to support this process. Mind maps with this function go a step further by giving students a big digital bucket to make their ideas visible or intentionally saving them from separating buckets from the start. This connects to…

Chunking: Voice-to-text or typing in mind maps helps students break information down into more bite-size pieces. Students can take the whole brain dump, cut sections and paste them into their branch cells. They can also do their initial dumps into individual buckets. Mindmeister on a mobile device allows for voice-to-text by using the microphone key on the keypad. Digital mind maps provide a place to embed images-sketches-connection arrows-video-audio-web links, in other words, sketchnoting. 🙂 Back to UDL, giving students multiple ways to express their ideas is supported by concept maps.

Jigsaws: When topics and research are divided between individuals or groups, an online mind map can provide the workspace to curate information, resources, images, etc. When the jigsaw comes together, the connector tool shows relationships. Tools like Inspiration that give you the text box on the connector augment the learning pushing students to think and label the connections.

Routines and Protocols: My Web Resources for Learning site demonstrates ways technology can support and enhance visible thinking routines. The NSRF puts out an extensive listing of protocols to review to see where concept maps come in handy. Look through the routines to see where mind maps are listed as the supporting tool.

Templates & Charts: Question prompts around text, etc., are a mainstay for teachers providing students with scaffolding using labeled textboxes, charts with input areas, listed procedures, supporting vocabulary with text, and drawing areas to visualize the words. Focusing on mind maps, one can see how they support sequencing, grouping by categories, cause, and effect, big ideas supported by details, compare and contrast, etc.

There are entire websites dedicated to mind maps and how they can support a great many instructional strategies and thinking processes. My effort here hopefully connects to what others are sharing.

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Teaching Online: Introduction

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I just started an online course all about how to teach online. It is my second course at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. So here is my first post to the discussion board, responding to the textbook and other readings. I plan to share here what I am learning.

Lessons from the Virtual Classroom

Reflection pages 2-20

Blended to virtual learning in teacher education programs…”students of education are seeking to gain these skills. Traditional schools of education are currently not meeting this demand. Given these facts, what has been the impact of this phenomenon on education?” (page 6) There are many recent news stories about our schools of education not preparing our future teachers to be ready to teach. One might conclude that there are limited offerings of more cutting-edge methods courses where the goal is to skill pre-service teachers to teach in a blended virtual learning environment.

I bring this up because we should not take it as a given that our young teachers are very skilled in using technology and online information resources just because they are “digital natives.” My reading and experience as a K-12 educator are that our digital natives going on to college are not profoundly skilled in using a variety of online research, communication, and creation tools. From my high school and college-age sons, it has only been in the last two years that their classmates have moved beyond Facebook to other social learning tools. Unless they attended schools with solid library research and instructional technology programs, they might know a lot about using their smartphone to connect to their friends but lack information and tech skills.

Speaking of Facebook, at least for my sons, it is their number one communication and collaboration learning tool. Their school district uses Blackboard, but it is mainly used in their cases as a place to post homework assignments.

Personalized learning is a hot topic in the blogosphere and on Twitter. It carries over to our student learners as they leverage the Web for learning. Savvy and self-directed students build their “personal learning systems” whether their teachers or schools provide them with rich online learning platforms or not.

“A good way for instructors to begin is by using technology to enhance an on‐campus class. As they gain experience in teaching online, moving from an enhanced approach to one in which a class is wholly delivered online becomes easier.” (page 7) Good advice to start slowly with blended to move on to some entirely virtual options eventually.

Yes, understanding one’s Learning Management System (LMS) is very important, as well as finding and posting various learning resources through multiple modalities. This supports the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principle number one.

I get the varying viewpoints of teachers and administrators of e-learning. The ownership of intellectual property is a big one.

“Many of those we have spoken with around the country continue to believe that the key to faculty training lies in familiarizing them with the technology they will be using to deliver courses.” (page 15) I would add that the shift in pedagogy supported by technology is how I would frame it. It is good to see that a chapter will be dedicated to this topic, as the authors point out that it isn’t just about technology.

Whether the big schools and the prominent name professors will dominate the MOOC scene connects to one of my friends who just attended a conference for liberal arts colleges and their place in the world of MOOCs. Looking at MOOCs, two of my friends are in higher ed, one at a small liberal arts college and the other at a state university. My friends believe we are far from a finalized version of MOOCs or whatever they might eventually become.

Resources:

Three Advantages of Online Learning

Checklist for Online Instructors

What It Means to Be a Critically Reflective Teacher

Clearing Up Some Myths about MOOCS

 

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The ICL and Child Study Team Partnership

I often post here and report through the Edtech Co-Op podcast about my experiences working as a partner with teachers and administrators. A primary collaboration area is having one’s Information and Communication Literacies (ICL) team work with the classroom teachers, the learning support staff, and administrators to review the curriculum.

The ICL team at our school comprises the Tech Director, the Library Media Specialist, and the Instructional Technologist. Besides working to find ways for ICL to enhance student learning, we also look to precisely differentiate the content, process, and products of each unit of study we review. It is beneficial to work with the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) approach to designing the curriculum for special needs and all student learners.

With this collaborative approach to support learning, the logical next step is to have one’s ICL team join the Student Services Team as they meet to discuss individual student needs or give them access to the digital learning plans/IEPs. Just as the ICL team can access unit plans via one’s online curriculum mapping tools to add their ideas, they could also access individual learning plans (via the Student Information System) to list ways that technology and web resources can be utilized to support the learning needs of each student.

This approach also involves helping students develop their Personal Learning Systems (i.e., personal toolkit) of software, apps, websites, widgets, etc using Symbaloo, creating a Google Site with links to helpful websites, finding apps, and adding shortcuts to one’s mobile device, etc. are a few ways to create this personal learning system.

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Moving Beyond Illustrations

Have your students experienced (read) The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore’s book on the iPad? The interactive experience of reading, hearing, and activating animations engages the reader. The book’s Universal Design for Learning (UDL) nature is evident in this new style of publishing.

This Moonbot Studios-produced book demonstrates how a good story combined with animation and reader interactivity moves book publishing beyond text and illustrations.

Looking to use animated books in the classroom, how might we expand the learning beyond the benefits of immersive reading? How can we help our students be designers working to connect their words to potential animations?

While students still need to get the tools to animate aspects of their stories quickly, they can imagine and think beyond the one-dimensional nature of pencil and paper illustrations. One could help students further develop their creative writing stories by having them think as designers needing to explain and visualize how they want an animator to create movements and actions for their scenes. Students could compile a list of animations and then storyboard them for each scene.

There are many ways to proceed with this learning activity. While I am not a language arts teacher, here are some ideas that might be helpful. After introducing the idea of an animated story, one could have the students write their creative story and storyboard animations without reading The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. This would be a challenge for some while leaving it wide open for the more divergent thinkers when they are challenged to design animations for their stories.

One could also have the students write their story and then read the animated book to unleash their imaginations prompted by the animations. Have the students work individually to think of possible animations or have the class brainstorm a listing to prime the pump for the students to draw from. I would like to see how students then might go back and change their stories to make them more vivid to better connect to their animations.

Another approach might be to start with Mr. Morris Lessmore to give the students even more guidance, having them think with movements and other animations in mind before they write their stories.

One might naturally differentiate the lesson by using all three approaches for different learning needs in the class.

Storyboarding comes into play as students use either pen and paper or an app on the iPad or software on the computer to sketch out what each scene will look like and what animations they want the animator to create. Design literacy would be essential as students must explain how their animations support each story segment. In other words, the students working as authors and designers must demonstrate how each animation improves the story. Flying objects and exploding characters might be fun and exciting to an eleven-year-old author. Still, unless an animation improves the story, it doesn’t get published in the final storyboard.

Partnering up the students to offer one another feedback would be helpful, especially with a rubric that also provides questions to ask one’s partner to help connect the animations to improve the story.

There are many opportunities for learning with this type of project-based learning activity that also helps students make their thinking visible. This project brings many fantastic learning opportunities with video production, though the students stay within the storyboarding stage. The Information and Communications Literacies (ICL) also connects with the student’s need to use sound design in constructing their storyboards as if they were communicating with a professional animator.

 

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