Thursday, September 2, 2010
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Debbie's Intro
Denise Dabisch (vol 4 2001) says teacher research is a welcoming way for us teachers to ask questions about our students, our practices, and our material. It provides a way for us to figure things for ourselves, rather than depending on outsiders to tell us what we should or shouldn’t do. I like knowing how to do things rather than what to do things and also getting to know my students and how they learn to help them learn.
For many young writers writing seems to be a nightmare. Even when students are asked to just draw a picture of a small moment they still seem to panic about writing. I want students to be encouraged to draw that small moment out as if trying to peep into their minds. The nuts and bolts of writing by Lucy Caulkins says, “think of something important to you and draw it. “ while conferencing with the student the teacher says, “what more can you tell me? Detail, an issue with young writers and also a process to help them see the big picture in what they are thinking. So we start with an art class to create a picture. Triangles are found on the roof of houses and squares are the body of a house with smaller squares for windows. George Deboer (2002) wrote that the current trends toward standards-based education have decreased the opportunities for child-centered teaching and reduced the autonomy of teachers. The NCLB have changed teacher’s curricula, pedagogy and schedules in ways that do not always support best practices. Deboer found that when content standards are more general and teachers more flexible then teachers can teach to the interest of their students to maintain on task behavior. Rebecca Stout wonders if she needed to incorporate some of the balanced literacy practices in order to help her students. She found the most noticeable difference between the programs was the emphasis that balanced literacy placed on teaching the writing process. Rebecca seems determine to emphasize her literacy centers as a vital part of writing and how reading and writing went hand in hand.
I began to think that this too could work for kindergarten with hands on approach of a way to write. Rebecca also suggested to make her literacy centers very structured and with deeper meaning to help student emphasize their love for writing. Everyone has a story but couldn’t write it down. Literacy centers can offer hands on approach to writing.
I would like to post my challenge to my kindergarteners on how the use of structured literacy centers intrinsically motivate student writing? How can students become better writers by using the activities in the literacy centers? Where will the evidence show their growth in their writing from using the literacy centers? What are some age appropriate activities to put into a literacy center to motivate writing?
Story telling for a literacy center helps students to express a way of writing orally. Like some adults we record our stories students should have the same opportunities too. Kathryne Macgrath Speaker (2002) “Children involved in storytelling programs exhibit improved listening skills, better sequencing abilities, increased language appreciations and more thoughtful organizations in their own writing. At kindergarten it seems to be just this kind of process that will kick start a young writer. Scaffolding and interacting with learners help support learners to complete activities which they might not be able to carry out by themselves.
Aside from the drawing students learn that print also conveys a message. In order for children to benefit from formal reading instruction, they must have a certain level of phonemic awareness. Children can learn phonemic awareness through a process of language play; word play, listening to rhymes, songs and poetry; and engage in shared reading of predicable literature.
Reading and writing at this young age go so much hand in hand. Students use scribbles to represent their thoughts and ideas. How do we support this journey that shows growth over time to show a story that is recognizable to another reader? How will literacy centers enhance and encourage the writing process to intrinsically motivate the thoughts and ideas of young writers? Everyone has a story to tell even the infant child sitting in his chair and making faces at you as if trying to get the words out.
For many young writers writing seems to be a nightmare. Even when students are asked to just draw a picture of a small moment they still seem to panic about writing. I want students to be encouraged to draw that small moment out as if trying to peep into their minds. The nuts and bolts of writing by Lucy Caulkins says, “think of something important to you and draw it. “ while conferencing with the student the teacher says, “what more can you tell me? Detail, an issue with young writers and also a process to help them see the big picture in what they are thinking. So we start with an art class to create a picture. Triangles are found on the roof of houses and squares are the body of a house with smaller squares for windows. George Deboer (2002) wrote that the current trends toward standards-based education have decreased the opportunities for child-centered teaching and reduced the autonomy of teachers. The NCLB have changed teacher’s curricula, pedagogy and schedules in ways that do not always support best practices. Deboer found that when content standards are more general and teachers more flexible then teachers can teach to the interest of their students to maintain on task behavior. Rebecca Stout wonders if she needed to incorporate some of the balanced literacy practices in order to help her students. She found the most noticeable difference between the programs was the emphasis that balanced literacy placed on teaching the writing process. Rebecca seems determine to emphasize her literacy centers as a vital part of writing and how reading and writing went hand in hand.
I began to think that this too could work for kindergarten with hands on approach of a way to write. Rebecca also suggested to make her literacy centers very structured and with deeper meaning to help student emphasize their love for writing. Everyone has a story but couldn’t write it down. Literacy centers can offer hands on approach to writing.
I would like to post my challenge to my kindergarteners on how the use of structured literacy centers intrinsically motivate student writing? How can students become better writers by using the activities in the literacy centers? Where will the evidence show their growth in their writing from using the literacy centers? What are some age appropriate activities to put into a literacy center to motivate writing?
Story telling for a literacy center helps students to express a way of writing orally. Like some adults we record our stories students should have the same opportunities too. Kathryne Macgrath Speaker (2002) “Children involved in storytelling programs exhibit improved listening skills, better sequencing abilities, increased language appreciations and more thoughtful organizations in their own writing. At kindergarten it seems to be just this kind of process that will kick start a young writer. Scaffolding and interacting with learners help support learners to complete activities which they might not be able to carry out by themselves.
Aside from the drawing students learn that print also conveys a message. In order for children to benefit from formal reading instruction, they must have a certain level of phonemic awareness. Children can learn phonemic awareness through a process of language play; word play, listening to rhymes, songs and poetry; and engage in shared reading of predicable literature.
Reading and writing at this young age go so much hand in hand. Students use scribbles to represent their thoughts and ideas. How do we support this journey that shows growth over time to show a story that is recognizable to another reader? How will literacy centers enhance and encourage the writing process to intrinsically motivate the thoughts and ideas of young writers? Everyone has a story to tell even the infant child sitting in his chair and making faces at you as if trying to get the words out.
Critical Thinking Skills for 3rd Graders-Shawna
Introduction
It is report card time. My computer grade book has the Hawaiian General Learner Outcomes for each of my third grade students. These are the over-arching goals of a standards based education. Are the students self-directed in their learning? By this time of the year I know my students’ behaviors very well and even as a scour my grade books for notes and evidence of such, this is a relatively easy grade to give. I have those students who consistently make goals for their own learning and reflect on that learning, turn in assignments and are responsible with their time. They are independent and thrive with instruction followed by work periods where they are must regulate their own behavior. Yet the next grade I must give is ironically more complicated. I must mark for each of my students a grade on a continuum of consistently to rarely, whether they are complex thinkers. We have a rubric given to us by the state to measure this goal and as a grade level team we have attempted to create a child-friendly rubric in order to teach this. Yet still I struggle with defining the thinking level of each of my students. What does it mean to be a complex thinker? How do you gauge whether complex thinking has occurred? Curiosity, skepticism, the need to question are beginning indicators. Beyond that students learn to analyze, evaluate and ultimately self-regulate. What level of complex thinking can I bring my own third graders to? I have been pondering about exactly what I want to impart to my students. I have a year to leave my mark on these future citizens. We need a society that doesn’t take things for face value, that delves deeper to solve problems, that doesn’t always believe what is being portrayed in the media. I have thought about Doris Lessings’ article, “Group Minds” many times since I first read it in college. She argues that it is human nature, not just periods of time like Germany during the Holocaust, to follow the group opinion even when there is evidence contrary. She says that it has been noticed that there is ten percent of a given population who are the natural leaders that will follow their own independent thinking and opinions. And I see this in my own classroom. The few children, eyes sparkling, who will politely disagree with the teacher and the rest of their peers when something contradicts the obvious. I have desired to foster this and to have this modeled for the children who never quite seem to evaluate what is presented to them. How do you teach children to think for themselves without teaching them to be disrespectful? How do you teach kids to question ideas when they have been expected from day one to give rote, memorized answers?
Literature Review
Basically, thinking is an invisible, abstract process that needs to be made visible so that children can learn to extend their thoughts. How can that which is invisible be made visible? Many researchers have been trying to answer this question. Some suggest that modeling, drawing, writing and other forms of art can bring make the invisible visible. Once students become aware of their thinking, teachers can use that knowledge to scaffold lessons to stretch their students ability to think critically. So what is critical thinking? "Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action" (http://www.critical thinking.org)
Brain research supports the explicit teaching of critical thinking skills ( http://online.learningbridges.com/OC/Course.aspx). Teachers can teach students to be metacognitive. Metacognition means to think about your thinking and to learn to think better. Sometimes young students need concrete experiences in order to understand this abstract concept. According to McGregor (2007) “First impressions are critical to a learner. When introduced to a new thinking strategy, the learner instinctively asks, ‘Is this interesting? Do I need or want to know this? Can I succeed in thinking this way?’ A concrete launching lesson helps students reply with a resounding yes to each of these questions.” McGregor goes on to outline in her book, “Comprehension Connections” ways to make these thinking strategies concrete and accessible to children.
Critical thinking should be taught explicitly, and students must learn to monitor their own thinking. Benjamin Bloom (1956) created a hierachy of thinking skills referred to as Bloom‘s Taxonomy. From lowest level of skill to highest he rated types of thinking as: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. Knowledge refers to information that can be recalled simply through rote learning. Further down the list is where higher level thinking occurs. Analysis is where students classify information by parts. Synthesis occurs when a learner combines the parts of message and assembles into something of his/her own. Evaluation is when a thinker presents and defends judgments or opinions based on a set of criteria. As a teacher, the level of questioning I present to a student will directly effect the level of responses. If I ask simple recall questions than I shall get answers that are low level thinking skills. If I structure my questions as more open-ended where there isn‘t necessarily a right or wrong answer students will have to respond by applying their background knowledge and refine their understanding.
If I want to teach my students to think critically, I need to be able to measure their development of critical thinking skills. According to Stiggins, Rubel, and Quellmalz (1988) the way to measure thinking skills is similar to the way teachers measure all other skills: oral questioning, pencil/paper tests, and performance assessments. The key to using traditional means to measure nontraditional skills is to watch the key words in which tests are phrased. Low level thinking skills such as recall can be identified by keys words such as define, identify, name, list and when. Higher level questions such as for the skill of inference will have key words such as predict, anticipate and infer. If a student is asked to evaluate, key words would incluse judge, assess, argue, debate and critique. As an educator, I can change my students’ thinking by being conscious of changing the level of questioning I engage them in.
Shawna’s Notes:
-Mosiac of Thought, , project zero references, developing minds, research papers, Anderson + Krathwohl updated blooms taxonomy
Methodology
Strategies I would like to use:
Debbie Miller, Comprehension Connections, Explicit teaching of Critical Thinking Skills
Data collection:
Complex thinking rubrics to grade student reflections--students opinions of books (dra question), student self reflections
Anecdotal notes in green student notebooks--cooked notes as well
Digital recordings of students book talks --beginning, middle, end
Students thinking charts --use of a lot of graphic organizers and systematic teaching of how to link new thinking to schema
Report card grades??? Complex thinking???
Exit passes?
Student Interviews?
Students tests with higher level thinking questions
HSA test scores of test group students fall data vs. spring
It is report card time. My computer grade book has the Hawaiian General Learner Outcomes for each of my third grade students. These are the over-arching goals of a standards based education. Are the students self-directed in their learning? By this time of the year I know my students’ behaviors very well and even as a scour my grade books for notes and evidence of such, this is a relatively easy grade to give. I have those students who consistently make goals for their own learning and reflect on that learning, turn in assignments and are responsible with their time. They are independent and thrive with instruction followed by work periods where they are must regulate their own behavior. Yet the next grade I must give is ironically more complicated. I must mark for each of my students a grade on a continuum of consistently to rarely, whether they are complex thinkers. We have a rubric given to us by the state to measure this goal and as a grade level team we have attempted to create a child-friendly rubric in order to teach this. Yet still I struggle with defining the thinking level of each of my students. What does it mean to be a complex thinker? How do you gauge whether complex thinking has occurred? Curiosity, skepticism, the need to question are beginning indicators. Beyond that students learn to analyze, evaluate and ultimately self-regulate. What level of complex thinking can I bring my own third graders to? I have been pondering about exactly what I want to impart to my students. I have a year to leave my mark on these future citizens. We need a society that doesn’t take things for face value, that delves deeper to solve problems, that doesn’t always believe what is being portrayed in the media. I have thought about Doris Lessings’ article, “Group Minds” many times since I first read it in college. She argues that it is human nature, not just periods of time like Germany during the Holocaust, to follow the group opinion even when there is evidence contrary. She says that it has been noticed that there is ten percent of a given population who are the natural leaders that will follow their own independent thinking and opinions. And I see this in my own classroom. The few children, eyes sparkling, who will politely disagree with the teacher and the rest of their peers when something contradicts the obvious. I have desired to foster this and to have this modeled for the children who never quite seem to evaluate what is presented to them. How do you teach children to think for themselves without teaching them to be disrespectful? How do you teach kids to question ideas when they have been expected from day one to give rote, memorized answers?
Literature Review
Basically, thinking is an invisible, abstract process that needs to be made visible so that children can learn to extend their thoughts. How can that which is invisible be made visible? Many researchers have been trying to answer this question. Some suggest that modeling, drawing, writing and other forms of art can bring make the invisible visible. Once students become aware of their thinking, teachers can use that knowledge to scaffold lessons to stretch their students ability to think critically. So what is critical thinking? "Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action" (http://www.critical thinking.org)
Brain research supports the explicit teaching of critical thinking skills ( http://online.learningbridges.com/OC/Course.aspx). Teachers can teach students to be metacognitive. Metacognition means to think about your thinking and to learn to think better. Sometimes young students need concrete experiences in order to understand this abstract concept. According to McGregor (2007) “First impressions are critical to a learner. When introduced to a new thinking strategy, the learner instinctively asks, ‘Is this interesting? Do I need or want to know this? Can I succeed in thinking this way?’ A concrete launching lesson helps students reply with a resounding yes to each of these questions.” McGregor goes on to outline in her book, “Comprehension Connections” ways to make these thinking strategies concrete and accessible to children.
Critical thinking should be taught explicitly, and students must learn to monitor their own thinking. Benjamin Bloom (1956) created a hierachy of thinking skills referred to as Bloom‘s Taxonomy. From lowest level of skill to highest he rated types of thinking as: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. Knowledge refers to information that can be recalled simply through rote learning. Further down the list is where higher level thinking occurs. Analysis is where students classify information by parts. Synthesis occurs when a learner combines the parts of message and assembles into something of his/her own. Evaluation is when a thinker presents and defends judgments or opinions based on a set of criteria. As a teacher, the level of questioning I present to a student will directly effect the level of responses. If I ask simple recall questions than I shall get answers that are low level thinking skills. If I structure my questions as more open-ended where there isn‘t necessarily a right or wrong answer students will have to respond by applying their background knowledge and refine their understanding.
If I want to teach my students to think critically, I need to be able to measure their development of critical thinking skills. According to Stiggins, Rubel, and Quellmalz (1988) the way to measure thinking skills is similar to the way teachers measure all other skills: oral questioning, pencil/paper tests, and performance assessments. The key to using traditional means to measure nontraditional skills is to watch the key words in which tests are phrased. Low level thinking skills such as recall can be identified by keys words such as define, identify, name, list and when. Higher level questions such as for the skill of inference will have key words such as predict, anticipate and infer. If a student is asked to evaluate, key words would incluse judge, assess, argue, debate and critique. As an educator, I can change my students’ thinking by being conscious of changing the level of questioning I engage them in.
Shawna’s Notes:
-Mosiac of Thought, , project zero references, developing minds, research papers, Anderson + Krathwohl updated blooms taxonomy
Methodology
Strategies I would like to use:
Debbie Miller, Comprehension Connections, Explicit teaching of Critical Thinking Skills
Data collection:
Complex thinking rubrics to grade student reflections--students opinions of books (dra question), student self reflections
Anecdotal notes in green student notebooks--cooked notes as well
Digital recordings of students book talks --beginning, middle, end
Students thinking charts --use of a lot of graphic organizers and systematic teaching of how to link new thinking to schema
Report card grades??? Complex thinking???
Exit passes?
Student Interviews?
Students tests with higher level thinking questions
HSA test scores of test group students fall data vs. spring
Agenda for August 14th, 2010
Lehua Teacher Research
August 14, 2010
Shawn Fischer’s Home
Conference on Lit Review & Next Steps
Module 2
8:30-11:30
Please view calendar dates on http://www.lehuawritingproject.blogspot.com/
Agenda:
8:30-9:00 Greetings and Research Question
Please update with any news you want to share and state your research question.
As each person updates and shares questions, the listeners will be writing the question down on a feedback form (everyone will have a feedback form for each speaker). Quick feedback will be given to encourage specific, focused and local questions.
Jeannine—Book Clubs, Pay for participation
9:00-9:30- Ann will read her paper that she has posted it on our web site so we can read along with her. http://lehuaresearch2010.blogspot.com/. We will take notes on our feedback forms and then share with Ann.
9:30-10:00- Cathy will read her paper that she has posted it on our web site so we can read along with her. http://lehuaresearch2010.blogspot.com/. We will take notes on our feedback forms and then share with Cathy.
10:00-10:30 Shawna will read her paper that she has posted it on our web site so we can read along with her. http://lehuaresearch2010.blogspot.com/. We will take notes on our feedback forms and then share with Shawna.
10:30-11:00- Debbie will read her paper that she has posted it on our web site so we can read along with her. http://lehuaresearch2010.blogspot.com/. We will take notes on our feedback forms and then share with Cathy.
Researcher:_ Ann
Reviewer:____________________________________________________________________________
Inquiry Question:
A literature review serves to review current literature on issues that inform or impact the inquiry question. These issues may speak directly to the inquiry question or peripherally—just adding to the knowledge. The lit review issues may show a variety of perspectives that will help the researcher as she begins her study.
As you listen to a lit review being read today, please list the issues and its researcher that you feel most directly speak to the inquiry question.
Are there any issues, voices or perspectives that are missing? Please list them.
Write in your own word a brief summary of what this researcher is saying in her lit review.
Researcher:_ Cathy
Reviewer:____________________________________________________________________________
Inquiry Question:
A literature review serves to review current literature on issues that inform or impact the inquiry question. These issues may speak directly to the inquiry question or peripherally—just adding to the knowledge. The lit review issues may show a variety of perspectives that will help the researcher as she begins her study.
As you listen to a lit review being read today, please list the issues and its researcher that you feel most directly speak to the inquiry question.
Are there any issues, voices or perspectives that are missing? Please list them.
Write in your own word a brief summary of what this researcher is saying in her lit review.
Researcher: Shawna
Reviewer:____________________________________________________________________________
Inquiry Question:
A literature review serves to review current literature on issues that inform or impact the inquiry question. These issues may speak directly to the inquiry question or peripherally—just adding to the knowledge. The lit review issues may show a variety of perspectives that will help the researcher as she begins her study.
As you listen to a lit review being read today, please list the issues and its researcher that you feel most directly speak to the inquiry question.
Are there any issues, voices or perspectives that are missing? Please list them.
Write in your own word a brief summary of what this researcher is saying in her lit review.
Researcher:Debbie
Reviewer:____________________________________________________________________________
Inquiry Question:
A literature review serves to review current literature on issues that inform or impact the inquiry question. These issues may speak directly to the inquiry question or peripherally—just adding to the knowledge. The lit review issues may show a variety of perspectives that will help the researcher as she begins her study.
As you listen to a lit review being read today, please list the issues and its researcher that you feel most directly speak to the inquiry question.
Are there any issues, voices or perspectives that are missing? Please list them.
Write in your own word a brief summary of what this researcher is saying in her lit review.
VERY IMPORTANT: READ THIS
Next Steps: Creating a Research Design MODULE 3 DUE SEPTEMBER 1
Walk through Chapter 2 of The Art of Classroom Inquiry
READ or REREAD Chapters 3 & 4 of The Art of Classroom Inquiry
Project Design DUE by September 1—Jeannine will put our course up on a developmental site that we can keep on Laulima so we can upload our documents in WORD, have asynchronous chats, put up modules, videos, etc.
Design Plan will include:
I. Research Purpose (directions on p. 13 of TACI)
II. Research Question (directions on p. 13 of TACI)
III. List of Relevant Data (directions on p. 13 of TACI)
IV. Data Collection Plan (directions on p. 13 of TACI)
Create this in a WORD document and post on Laulima. I will send the address.
IRB Class: Taught online or in person DECIDE DATE
IRB UHH DUE: September 15th
IRB DOE DUE to Submit upon receipt of IRB UHH Approval
Data Collection Begins
Weekly Journal Posts
Review Meeting Dates for Fall Semester
August 14, 2010
Shawn Fischer’s Home
Conference on Lit Review & Next Steps
Module 2
8:30-11:30
Please view calendar dates on http://www.lehuawritingproject.blogspot.com/
Agenda:
8:30-9:00 Greetings and Research Question
Please update with any news you want to share and state your research question.
As each person updates and shares questions, the listeners will be writing the question down on a feedback form (everyone will have a feedback form for each speaker). Quick feedback will be given to encourage specific, focused and local questions.
Jeannine—Book Clubs, Pay for participation
9:00-9:30- Ann will read her paper that she has posted it on our web site so we can read along with her. http://lehuaresearch2010.blogspot.com/. We will take notes on our feedback forms and then share with Ann.
9:30-10:00- Cathy will read her paper that she has posted it on our web site so we can read along with her. http://lehuaresearch2010.blogspot.com/. We will take notes on our feedback forms and then share with Cathy.
10:00-10:30 Shawna will read her paper that she has posted it on our web site so we can read along with her. http://lehuaresearch2010.blogspot.com/. We will take notes on our feedback forms and then share with Shawna.
10:30-11:00- Debbie will read her paper that she has posted it on our web site so we can read along with her. http://lehuaresearch2010.blogspot.com/. We will take notes on our feedback forms and then share with Cathy.
Researcher:_ Ann
Reviewer:____________________________________________________________________________
Inquiry Question:
A literature review serves to review current literature on issues that inform or impact the inquiry question. These issues may speak directly to the inquiry question or peripherally—just adding to the knowledge. The lit review issues may show a variety of perspectives that will help the researcher as she begins her study.
As you listen to a lit review being read today, please list the issues and its researcher that you feel most directly speak to the inquiry question.
Are there any issues, voices or perspectives that are missing? Please list them.
Write in your own word a brief summary of what this researcher is saying in her lit review.
Researcher:_ Cathy
Reviewer:____________________________________________________________________________
Inquiry Question:
A literature review serves to review current literature on issues that inform or impact the inquiry question. These issues may speak directly to the inquiry question or peripherally—just adding to the knowledge. The lit review issues may show a variety of perspectives that will help the researcher as she begins her study.
As you listen to a lit review being read today, please list the issues and its researcher that you feel most directly speak to the inquiry question.
Are there any issues, voices or perspectives that are missing? Please list them.
Write in your own word a brief summary of what this researcher is saying in her lit review.
Researcher: Shawna
Reviewer:____________________________________________________________________________
Inquiry Question:
A literature review serves to review current literature on issues that inform or impact the inquiry question. These issues may speak directly to the inquiry question or peripherally—just adding to the knowledge. The lit review issues may show a variety of perspectives that will help the researcher as she begins her study.
As you listen to a lit review being read today, please list the issues and its researcher that you feel most directly speak to the inquiry question.
Are there any issues, voices or perspectives that are missing? Please list them.
Write in your own word a brief summary of what this researcher is saying in her lit review.
Researcher:Debbie
Reviewer:____________________________________________________________________________
Inquiry Question:
A literature review serves to review current literature on issues that inform or impact the inquiry question. These issues may speak directly to the inquiry question or peripherally—just adding to the knowledge. The lit review issues may show a variety of perspectives that will help the researcher as she begins her study.
As you listen to a lit review being read today, please list the issues and its researcher that you feel most directly speak to the inquiry question.
Are there any issues, voices or perspectives that are missing? Please list them.
Write in your own word a brief summary of what this researcher is saying in her lit review.
VERY IMPORTANT: READ THIS
Next Steps: Creating a Research Design MODULE 3 DUE SEPTEMBER 1
Walk through Chapter 2 of The Art of Classroom Inquiry
READ or REREAD Chapters 3 & 4 of The Art of Classroom Inquiry
Project Design DUE by September 1—Jeannine will put our course up on a developmental site that we can keep on Laulima so we can upload our documents in WORD, have asynchronous chats, put up modules, videos, etc.
Design Plan will include:
I. Research Purpose (directions on p. 13 of TACI)
II. Research Question (directions on p. 13 of TACI)
III. List of Relevant Data (directions on p. 13 of TACI)
IV. Data Collection Plan (directions on p. 13 of TACI)
Create this in a WORD document and post on Laulima. I will send the address.
IRB Class: Taught online or in person DECIDE DATE
IRB UHH DUE: September 15th
IRB DOE DUE to Submit upon receipt of IRB UHH Approval
Data Collection Begins
Weekly Journal Posts
Review Meeting Dates for Fall Semester
Friday, August 13, 2010
My Question has changed.-Cathy..it seems fluid at this point
Here is my very rough draft of a lit. review
Ann, I was very impressed with your work, as you will see I need mucho help.
Literature review:
In 2010 classrooms are throbbing with the expectations of outside forces. Teachers are being pushed from above with directives from local administration to meet “Adequate Yearly Progress”, administrators are pressured by the State Department of Education who in turn have the looming stipulations of NCLB at a national level which all seem to be connected to monetary support of schools and education. The intense pressure for teachers and students to “make the grade” and pass the test is sometimes overwhelming. As a special education teacher I am constantly trying to find different ways to engage and interest the students in my classroom. They struggle with phonemic awareness, fluency and Comprehension as do many students but these students in particular are slow to pick up skills. These difficulties have contributed to the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results, indicating that 69% of fourth graders read below the “proficient” reading level (NAEP, 2005). It has also been noted that by third grade, children who cannot comprehend tend to fall further behind their peers in overall reading abilities regardless of their decoding skill levels (Chall, Jacobs, & Baldwin, (1990).Sometimes the difference between making AYP and not is measured by a few students who usually fall under the umbrella of special education. From IDEA 2004 “All children with disabilities are included in all general State and district-wide assessment programs ... with appropriate accommodations and alternate assessments, where necessary and as indicated in their respective individualized education programs.” (Section 1412(c)(16)(A)) Many times, the buck falls backward. Fifth grade teachers blame fourth grade teachers who blame 3rd etc. and often I hear; “We missed the benchmark by just a couple points.” followed by the inevitable glance at the special education department. For most of my teaching career I have described my students as a collection of little locks that all just need the right key. It is my job as a special education teacher to provide as many “keys” or different methods of learning to these children so that they may experience success in a classroom
For many years I have tried to inter-weave my master’s degree in theater with my teaching and have had small successes, seen amazing progress with students who seemed unreachable through drama and the arts. Harvard Graduate School of Education sponsors “Project Zero” a educational research group whose mission is to enhance learning through creativity in the arts. There are many current projects that work within the United States and internationally to build communities of independent learners across disciplines that is based on Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences.
From a website by Dr. Thomas Armstrong who is a proponent of the theory of multiple intelligences’
“Dr. Gardner says that our schools and culture focus most of their attention on linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligence. We esteem the highly articulate or logical people of our culture. However, Dr. Gardner says that we should also place equal attention on individuals who show gifts in the other intelligences: the artists, architects, musicians, naturalists, designers, dancers, therapists, entrepreneurs, and others who enrich the world in which we live. Unfortunately, many children who have these gifts don’t receive much reinforcement for them in school. Many of these kids, in fact, end up being labeled "learning disabled," "ADD (attention deficit disorder," or simply underachievers, when their unique ways of thinking and learning aren’t addressed by a heavily linguistic or logical-mathematical classroom.
If Harvard University thinks that education through the arts is a viable option, my question then becomes: Why can’t I teach reading and writing to Kindergarteners through drama and role playing?
It has been proven that using different modes of learning is beneficial for emergent literacy learners and that K-3rd graders are able to retain more through movement and hands on activities ----- students comprehend significantly more when their lessons include both a linguistic and nonlinguistic input system. When information is received through a variety of pathways (e.g., auditory, visual, kinesthetic), readers’ retention of information increases significantly (Paivio, 1991; Sadoski, Paivio, & Goetz, 1991).
Ann, I was very impressed with your work, as you will see I need mucho help.
Literature review:
In 2010 classrooms are throbbing with the expectations of outside forces. Teachers are being pushed from above with directives from local administration to meet “Adequate Yearly Progress”, administrators are pressured by the State Department of Education who in turn have the looming stipulations of NCLB at a national level which all seem to be connected to monetary support of schools and education. The intense pressure for teachers and students to “make the grade” and pass the test is sometimes overwhelming. As a special education teacher I am constantly trying to find different ways to engage and interest the students in my classroom. They struggle with phonemic awareness, fluency and Comprehension as do many students but these students in particular are slow to pick up skills. These difficulties have contributed to the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results, indicating that 69% of fourth graders read below the “proficient” reading level (NAEP, 2005). It has also been noted that by third grade, children who cannot comprehend tend to fall further behind their peers in overall reading abilities regardless of their decoding skill levels (Chall, Jacobs, & Baldwin, (1990).Sometimes the difference between making AYP and not is measured by a few students who usually fall under the umbrella of special education. From IDEA 2004 “All children with disabilities are included in all general State and district-wide assessment programs ... with appropriate accommodations and alternate assessments, where necessary and as indicated in their respective individualized education programs.” (Section 1412(c)(16)(A)) Many times, the buck falls backward. Fifth grade teachers blame fourth grade teachers who blame 3rd etc. and often I hear; “We missed the benchmark by just a couple points.” followed by the inevitable glance at the special education department. For most of my teaching career I have described my students as a collection of little locks that all just need the right key. It is my job as a special education teacher to provide as many “keys” or different methods of learning to these children so that they may experience success in a classroom
For many years I have tried to inter-weave my master’s degree in theater with my teaching and have had small successes, seen amazing progress with students who seemed unreachable through drama and the arts. Harvard Graduate School of Education sponsors “Project Zero” a educational research group whose mission is to enhance learning through creativity in the arts. There are many current projects that work within the United States and internationally to build communities of independent learners across disciplines that is based on Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences.
From a website by Dr. Thomas Armstrong who is a proponent of the theory of multiple intelligences’
“Dr. Gardner says that our schools and culture focus most of their attention on linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligence. We esteem the highly articulate or logical people of our culture. However, Dr. Gardner says that we should also place equal attention on individuals who show gifts in the other intelligences: the artists, architects, musicians, naturalists, designers, dancers, therapists, entrepreneurs, and others who enrich the world in which we live. Unfortunately, many children who have these gifts don’t receive much reinforcement for them in school. Many of these kids, in fact, end up being labeled "learning disabled," "ADD (attention deficit disorder," or simply underachievers, when their unique ways of thinking and learning aren’t addressed by a heavily linguistic or logical-mathematical classroom.
If Harvard University thinks that education through the arts is a viable option, my question then becomes: Why can’t I teach reading and writing to Kindergarteners through drama and role playing?
It has been proven that using different modes of learning is beneficial for emergent literacy learners and that K-3rd graders are able to retain more through movement and hands on activities ----- students comprehend significantly more when their lessons include both a linguistic and nonlinguistic input system. When information is received through a variety of pathways (e.g., auditory, visual, kinesthetic), readers’ retention of information increases significantly (Paivio, 1991; Sadoski, Paivio, & Goetz, 1991).
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Action Research Question-Cathy ..draft
Here is what it looks like at this point. I have another idea that I will be looking at due to methodology and actual student counts, but I will talk to you guys about that on Sat.
Cathy Riehle's Question: How does movement and kinesthetic teaching methods affect special education students learning reading skills in Kindergarten.
Cathy Riehle's Question: How does movement and kinesthetic teaching methods affect special education students learning reading skills in Kindergarten.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Effective Communicator As a Writer-Ann
Being able to communicate effectively is a demanding task for primary aged students. Both written, speaking ,and listening skills are critical skills that prove school has been successful. Growing up in the first decade of the twenty first century, children have had to prove their communication skills on high stakes testing, as well as class projects and school community. These communication skills that are learned by students that are effective at school also prepares them for their future goals and successes.
Students need instruction that is explicit and then need encouragement to solve. (Gibson, 2008; Englert, Dunmore, 2002) Elements and strategies should be visible and accessible. (Vaugh, Gersten, Chard, 2000) Even a limited writer will learn strategic behaviors and expand knowledge. (Boocock, McNaughton, Parr, 1998) Therefore students should be taught in flexible guided writing groups based on needs. Some children will need more guidance than others in small groups. However using guided instruction does help the students, it does not replace the writing workshop framework. (Graves, 1983) Rather, after the whole class lesson is completed limited writers gain additional support in the guided writing group having a shared experience of introductions, engaging conversations, explicit strategy directions. Teachers give clear directions, examples of steps and strategies to support effective writing with tools such as cue cards, diagrams, graphic organizers, and clear examples. (Englert, Mariage, Dunsmore, 2006) When students are ready to write teachers should give “feed forward”. The teacher “leans in” on what the student is writing and gives assistance. Students receive immediate teacher attention, giving help when the student struggles. Once writing is complete students have a daily opportunity to share daily writing with a class audience. Assessment practices are suggested to measure student progress: authentic anecdotal and analytical assessments. (Fearn, Farman, 2001) More research is still needed on grouping practices (Flood, Lapp, 2000) and improving the effectiveness of writing through drafts over time.
In their book Reading and Writing With Understanding: Comprehension in Fourth and Fifth Grades, Sally Hampton and Lauren Resnick (2009) suggests an array of purposes and processes that help students gain effective writing skill. It is recommended that the editing should be done after revisions so writing is not restricted. (Cawlkins, 1994; Graves, 2003) By the end of Third Grade students should be familiar and able to identify several genres. If the student has been in a strong writing program from Kindergarten through Third Grade they should have age appropriate skills of effect writing. Effective function strategies that should be in place by the end of Third Grade are: introductions, closings, organization, storyline, compare, contrast, details, and sentence structure. Getting students to have clarity in effective writing has a “direct ration to the number of things we can keep out if it that shouldn’t be there” (Zinner, 1985). English Language Learners (ELL) that were placed in peer response groups did not improve as writers without teacher direct instruction. (Gomez, Parker, Lara-Alecio & Gomez, 1996) ELL students placed in peer groups with English speaking students wrote more, the quality of the writing of writing did not improve (Prater, Bermudez, 1993) Next steps to improve the peer group model are to have specific teacher instruction on rubric components, plus more modeling of group responses and procedures.
Another important factor in the teaching of writing is motivation. One strategy is “Write Talks” (Wilson, 2008) to build student attention to writing by seeking adults admired, and asking people to come in and share the kind of writing that they do for work to students and explain why the writing is important or the purpose of the work. Students in class develop questions for the adults. The writing is also used as an example for the reason to write. The students have the opportunity to gather the advice of their guest writers and observe styles and compare genre. Using this strategy is motivating for students and students learn real life communication skills.
Gambrell (2004), takes a look at 3 decades of reading conferencing in Shifts in the Conversion: Teacher Led, Peer-Led, and Computer Mediated Discussion. Reasoning that while teacher -led discussions are effective when the teacher gives feedback. (Mercer, 1993) Peer –led discussions engage students in problem solving and high level thinking which engages the reading discussion. (Almasi, 1996) Students are enabled to make similar attempts of critical thinking and also more engaged as readers given the opportunity to share thinking in peer-led discussions. The teacher is facilitator and the students work together, improving reading comprehension. Also computer mediated discussion is a promising way to engage students in print based dialogue, outside of the traditional classroom setting (Wade, Fausko 2004)
Rickards and Hawes (2006), point out in their article Teaching Tips: Connecting Reading and Writing Through Author’s Craft, the importance in focusing on one strategy in reading and writing workshop. There are an array of benefits to this. Exemplar text are present as students read like writers. The end result is that students can take the learning of strategy/ concept as the basis for conferring peer to peer. Teachers were able to make literacy connections in daily mini lessons, and students were able to practice and evaluate their effectiveness in their own writing, using these exemplar text from reading workshop.
This can be the focus of my research…this alone….
Targeting key teaching strategies that support Third Graders to become effective communicators as writers.
“If I want to chart student progress, change….follow student work everyday” page 59 from The Art of Classroom Inquiry
Students need instruction that is explicit and then need encouragement to solve. (Gibson, 2008; Englert, Dunmore, 2002) Elements and strategies should be visible and accessible. (Vaugh, Gersten, Chard, 2000) Even a limited writer will learn strategic behaviors and expand knowledge. (Boocock, McNaughton, Parr, 1998) Therefore students should be taught in flexible guided writing groups based on needs. Some children will need more guidance than others in small groups. However using guided instruction does help the students, it does not replace the writing workshop framework. (Graves, 1983) Rather, after the whole class lesson is completed limited writers gain additional support in the guided writing group having a shared experience of introductions, engaging conversations, explicit strategy directions. Teachers give clear directions, examples of steps and strategies to support effective writing with tools such as cue cards, diagrams, graphic organizers, and clear examples. (Englert, Mariage, Dunsmore, 2006) When students are ready to write teachers should give “feed forward”. The teacher “leans in” on what the student is writing and gives assistance. Students receive immediate teacher attention, giving help when the student struggles. Once writing is complete students have a daily opportunity to share daily writing with a class audience. Assessment practices are suggested to measure student progress: authentic anecdotal and analytical assessments. (Fearn, Farman, 2001) More research is still needed on grouping practices (Flood, Lapp, 2000) and improving the effectiveness of writing through drafts over time.
In their book Reading and Writing With Understanding: Comprehension in Fourth and Fifth Grades, Sally Hampton and Lauren Resnick (2009) suggests an array of purposes and processes that help students gain effective writing skill. It is recommended that the editing should be done after revisions so writing is not restricted. (Cawlkins, 1994; Graves, 2003) By the end of Third Grade students should be familiar and able to identify several genres. If the student has been in a strong writing program from Kindergarten through Third Grade they should have age appropriate skills of effect writing. Effective function strategies that should be in place by the end of Third Grade are: introductions, closings, organization, storyline, compare, contrast, details, and sentence structure. Getting students to have clarity in effective writing has a “direct ration to the number of things we can keep out if it that shouldn’t be there” (Zinner, 1985). English Language Learners (ELL) that were placed in peer response groups did not improve as writers without teacher direct instruction. (Gomez, Parker, Lara-Alecio & Gomez, 1996) ELL students placed in peer groups with English speaking students wrote more, the quality of the writing of writing did not improve (Prater, Bermudez, 1993) Next steps to improve the peer group model are to have specific teacher instruction on rubric components, plus more modeling of group responses and procedures.
Another important factor in the teaching of writing is motivation. One strategy is “Write Talks” (Wilson, 2008) to build student attention to writing by seeking adults admired, and asking people to come in and share the kind of writing that they do for work to students and explain why the writing is important or the purpose of the work. Students in class develop questions for the adults. The writing is also used as an example for the reason to write. The students have the opportunity to gather the advice of their guest writers and observe styles and compare genre. Using this strategy is motivating for students and students learn real life communication skills.
Gambrell (2004), takes a look at 3 decades of reading conferencing in Shifts in the Conversion: Teacher Led, Peer-Led, and Computer Mediated Discussion. Reasoning that while teacher -led discussions are effective when the teacher gives feedback. (Mercer, 1993) Peer –led discussions engage students in problem solving and high level thinking which engages the reading discussion. (Almasi, 1996) Students are enabled to make similar attempts of critical thinking and also more engaged as readers given the opportunity to share thinking in peer-led discussions. The teacher is facilitator and the students work together, improving reading comprehension. Also computer mediated discussion is a promising way to engage students in print based dialogue, outside of the traditional classroom setting (Wade, Fausko 2004)
Rickards and Hawes (2006), point out in their article Teaching Tips: Connecting Reading and Writing Through Author’s Craft, the importance in focusing on one strategy in reading and writing workshop. There are an array of benefits to this. Exemplar text are present as students read like writers. The end result is that students can take the learning of strategy/ concept as the basis for conferring peer to peer. Teachers were able to make literacy connections in daily mini lessons, and students were able to practice and evaluate their effectiveness in their own writing, using these exemplar text from reading workshop.
This can be the focus of my research…this alone….
Targeting key teaching strategies that support Third Graders to become effective communicators as writers.
“If I want to chart student progress, change….follow student work everyday” page 59 from The Art of Classroom Inquiry
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Inquiry Question and Lit Review for Upcoming August 14, 2010 Meeting
Hi, :30 All,
Thank you Shawna for the directions. The 8:30 start will be fine with me.
Everyone, you need to bring a working draft of your Literature Review. If you could get me a copy of it this week to preview, I can get notes started to you. You could post your lit review to the blog (preferably) or e-mail it to me. Also PLEASE post your WORKING QUESTION that is guiding your study. Please put it at the beginning of your lit review.
I have a paper that I wrote this summer on the blog. It was accepted by a journal, and I think you can get another example of a literature review by looking at that.
1. We will do a group conference on our inquiry questions and lit reviews, listening, and responding to each other with a protocol. This will take most of our time period.
2. Our next step is our IRB. I will use what time we have available to start teaching this process, but I, likely, will have to finish the lesson on our blog:http://lehuaresearch2010.blogspot.com/. We must have our IRB approved by UH Hilo and the DOE before we can begin data collection. We will be doing exempt proposals because we are doing action research so hopefully, if we can get our IRB's written and submitted in a timely manner, you can begin collecting data within 4-6 weeks.
3. In order to be successful with our research, we are really going to have to stay connected as possible and support each other with feedback as we meet the time lines we set.
I am excited to see you and be working with each and every one of you. I LOVE teacher research and love working with teachers who are making a difference in the classroom through their own inquiry.
Thank you Shawna for the directions. The 8:30 start will be fine with me.
Everyone, you need to bring a working draft of your Literature Review. If you could get me a copy of it this week to preview, I can get notes started to you. You could post your lit review to the blog (preferably) or e-mail it to me. Also PLEASE post your WORKING QUESTION that is guiding your study. Please put it at the beginning of your lit review.
I have a paper that I wrote this summer on the blog. It was accepted by a journal, and I think you can get another example of a literature review by looking at that.
1. We will do a group conference on our inquiry questions and lit reviews, listening, and responding to each other with a protocol. This will take most of our time period.
2. Our next step is our IRB. I will use what time we have available to start teaching this process, but I, likely, will have to finish the lesson on our blog:http://lehuaresearch2010.blogspot.com/. We must have our IRB approved by UH Hilo and the DOE before we can begin data collection. We will be doing exempt proposals because we are doing action research so hopefully, if we can get our IRB's written and submitted in a timely manner, you can begin collecting data within 4-6 weeks.
3. In order to be successful with our research, we are really going to have to stay connected as possible and support each other with feedback as we meet the time lines we set.
I am excited to see you and be working with each and every one of you. I LOVE teacher research and love working with teachers who are making a difference in the classroom through their own inquiry.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Jeannin's Paper: Pedagogy of Aloha
Hey Y'all! I got the paper finished and submitted to a Tech Integration journal on June 15th. I should hear something in 6-8 weeks!! I would appreciate your feedback and questions. I already have edits in mine should it be accepted or rejected--either way.
A Pedagogy of Aloha: Situating Educational Technology Coursework in an Indigenous Cultural and Epistemological Context
Jeannine S. Hirtle Ed.D.
Abstract: This case study analyses two sections of an educational technology course that is situated in cultural and epistemological context. The inquiry question is: Can educational technology skills be acquired in a culturally situated online learning environment which utilizes indigenous epistemology? Student technology projects and products are examined for cultural connections and technology acquisition. Evidence of a “pedagogy of aloha” consistent with Hawaiian epistemology is examined in chat room analysis.
Author: Jeannine Hirtle Ed.D Associate Professor, University of Hawaii at Hilo
Key Words: education technology, culture, epistemology, indigenous, social constructivism, place based learning
Introduction
Hawaiian universities face unique challenges and opportunities in using educational technology in the 21st century. Hawaii, the 50th American state, is literally separated from the rest of the states by the Pacific Ocean and, metaphorically, by an ocean of cultural disenfranchisement. This began in the aftermath of the work by 19th century American missionaries and the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy by American and European planters and businessmen in the early 20th century. In this cultural genocide, Hawaiians were banned from most of their cultural heritage, including dancing the hula - the ancient method of storytelling through rhythm and movement, speaking the Hawaiian language, and were discouraged from the agricultural and fishing economy that had sustained them for centuries as they lived and prospered in relative isolation from the rest of the world.
Marginalized because of their lack of Eurocentric beliefs and practices, Hawaiians took on the role of the oppressed, both economically and culturally, in this land where they had once enjoyed sovereignty. Hawaiians, along with immigrant groups that included Japanese, Filipino, Portuguese and Chinese, became the working class that helped support the patriarchal plantation system that became the cornerstone of Hawaii’s economy. In the 1970’s a renaissance of Hawaiian culture began to emerge and, “in the face of grassroots movements, legal restrictions on the use of Hawaiian in the schools were removed, and Hawaiian was once again made an official state language (together with English) in 1978” (Warschaeur, Donaghy and Kuamo’o, 1997). Within this rebirth of cultural expression, The University of Hawaii’s Hale Kuamoʻo Center for Hawaiian Language and Culture Through the Medium of Hawaiian was established. This center is the support and research division of Ka Haka ʻUla O Keʻelikōlani College of Hawaiian Language. The Center brought encouragement and support to the expansion of the Hawaiian language as a medium of communication in education, business, government, and other contexts of social life in the public and private sectors of Hawaii and beyond.
Within the academic division of Ka Haka ʻUla O Keʻelikōlani, the College of Hawaiian Language emphasizes language acquisition, linguistics, traditional culture and education in a Hawaiian medium environment. The Hawaiian Studies Division oversees undergraduate and graduate programs in Hawaiian language and studies, as well as an indigenous teacher education program.
With the inception of the College of Hawaiian Languages at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, UH Hilo educators began to use the internet to support their programs. The Internet started to become a medium - not of western oppression, as some indigenous people argued - but of revival and preservation of culture. Students in Hawaiian language classes began to collect chants, hulas, and oral histories and preserve and produce them in multimedia formats published on the Internet. Large repositories of these cultural artifacts are now part of Hawaii’s heritage, thanks to the efforts of these Hawaiian language instructors and students. These are used primarily by those who study in Ka Haka ‘Ula Oke’elikolani (College of Hawaiian Language), and in Kahuawaiola, the Hawaiian Language Indigenous Teacher Education Program. The students and instructors in this program live the value of Ke Kumu Honua Mauli Ola Hawaiʻi, the Hawaiian educational philosophy which asserts Hawaiian cultural identity as the basis of education and participation in contemporary life. (Ka Haka ʻUla O, 2010)
In 2010, the 25th Hawaiian Legislature requested the board of education to adopt a policy for the integration of a “pedagogy of aloha” in public schools for improved learning in the 21st century. The “pedagogy of aloha” is grounded in the wisdom and values of a native Hawaiian worldview” that “strives to create an atmosphere of mutual trust, respect, and inclusiveness among teachers, students, and students' families; and will provide students with an effective learning environment in which they feel nurtured, safe, and encouraged to achieve the highest level of success in everything they do (House Current Resolution # 167, 2010).
Before this resolution went into effect many of the faculty at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, connected to colleges other than the College of Hawaiian language, had already begun to implement a pedagogy of aloha. While more western-centric in their academic approach as a whole, they embraced an opportunity to participate in a grant offered by the College of Hawaiian Language. This grant required faculty to propose a way in which they could include Hawaiian and Pan Pacific culture in their courses. In exchange each faculty member would receive a Mac Air computer and software to use while they worked on the project. On of the challenges I faced as a white instructor who had grown up, been educated and worked on the mainland for many years, was how to integrate the pedagogy of aloha in pre-requisite online teacher education classes—specifically education technology. This case study of my course work addresses this question:
Can educational technology skills be acquired in a culturally situated online learning environment which utilizes indigenous epistemology?
Review of the Literature
Social anthropologists Jean Lave’ and Etienne Wegner (1991) first identified situated learning as learning that is socially constructed within the context that it is applied. This view has its roots in Dewey’s Pedagogic Creed (1963) where Dewey articulated education coming as a result of the empowerment of the learner in a social situation. He saw the learner as becoming a member of a community, able to see him/herself, not from an egocentric view but rather from the perspective of the welfare of the community. While Dewey saw school as one form of community, which could help learners construct knowledge socially, he maintained that learners must maintain their social heritage and construct learning experiences that are fundamental to making civilization what it is. When applied to education of indigenous populations, the question becomes “Who defines civilization and what experiences make civilization what it is?”
In the Hawaiian culture the aina, (land), the ocean, the volcanoes, the rain, oral histories of the kupuna (respected elders), hula (dance and hand movements), songs (mele) and myths and legends all become the “language” that embodies the culture of Hawaii. In the complexities of this language the Hawaiian definition of civilization emerges. This civilization has its own particular ways of knowing and Hawaiian-born educator, Manulani Meyer (2008, pp. 230-231) describes this epistemology as knowledge that:
• Endures-- that animates and educates.
• Is bound in the awareness that we are earth and must be aware of how to exist with earth.
• Recognizes that our senses are culturally shaped, offering us distinct pathways to reality.
• Is bound to how we develop a relationship with it.
• Recognizes that function is vital with regard to knowing something.
• Believes that Intention shapes our language and creates our reality.
• Recognizes that knowledge Is embodied and in union with cognition.
For learning in an online educational technology course to be situated in Hawaiian culture and epistemology, the course must make relevant its purpose for acquiring technological skills in a way that is meaningful to the community that supports and sustains the re-emerging Hawaiian society. The online learning community grounded in constructivism provides a medium for indigenous students to mediate knowledge in a social context. The role of language in a constructivist environment serves to mediate between the learner and the world shaping and extending thought (Vygotsky, 1986). But language must help mediate meaningful activity and, for Hawaiians and the immigrant populations that have come to personify Hawaii, indigenous ways of knowing, when incorporated into the language of culture, provide just such an opportunity.
Lehua Veincent, indigenous educator, doctoral candidate, and principal of Keahukah Elementary in Hilo, HI posits that ways of knowing are inextricably linked to “one’s genealogy, one’s history, and one’s place; for this is where knowledge begins (2010). “ Thus, in order for meaningful connections to occur in the process of learning, educators must understand the foundational knowledge that sets . . . learners unique to a specific place, apart from other individuals of different places. He terms this foundation knowledge: “‘ike mauli. “
‘Ike mauli is the foundational knowledge that is passed from one generation to another within a community as a way of securing one’s own identity to family, community, and land. ‘Ike mauli sets forth traditional knowledge that provides the needed connection to new knowledge introduced.
This philosophy is congruent with Piaget’s (1977) assertion that all knowledge is assimilated or accommodated into the learner’s existing schema. It follows that existing schema is created within a place that is strengthen by relationships within the family and community.
For Lave’ and Wegner (1991) the community of practice is the core of situated learning, because it is this community that provides the mechanism for its members to learn from each other. This type of learning replicates the learning situations that occur within society that Vygotsky (1986) describes in his theory of the zone of proximal development (ZPD). Here a learner can do with assistance that which he cannot do by himself (p. 87).
Collins, Brown and Newman, (1987, p.4) also describe this type of assisted learning as being available through cognitive apprenticeships, where tacit processes can be observed, enacted with help from an expert. Cognitive apprenticing can occur within communities of practice. The educational technology course must provide meaningful, contextualized opportunities for students to operate with communities of practice, use multimedia, publish online to speak in the expanded Hawaiian cultural language, and support each other as representatives of various communities of practice within the Hawaiian and Pan Pacific cultures. Lehua Veincent addresses this concept when he acknowledges the importance of genealogy, history, family, language, and place. He defines these as “‘ike mauli the values and beliefs of a family and community” and believes that learners become representatives of not only themselves but of their family and community. I extend this concept to include the belief that learners are cognitive apprentices of the families and communities from which they come, and that ike mauli can be preserved and sustained in culturally-situated online learning projects. However, these projects must engage learners in an epistemology that is reflective of the culture. For the indigenous Hawaiian population and those students who live within this host culture this means a pedagogy of aloha—where students respond to a mutually supportive interactive learning environment. Here they must be able to share their stories as they work toward a common goal of meaningful activity that supports the community. With student populations, which are scattered geographically, the online teaching and learning environment can simulate and support this culturally-situated learning.
Methodology
Researcher
As a white, non indigenous professor, who spent most of my teaching career on the mainland, I had to first deconstruct my own position within this indigenous society before I could begin to study it. Part of that deconstruction involved learning what my ethnicity, as a white American from the mainland, represented in terms of the oppressive colonial history Hawaii had endured. Then I had to examine my educational value system and see what parts of it were congruent with Hawaiian values. I believed my social constructivist values that define knowledge as being constructed in the nexus of thought and language within a community and focused on purpose, meaningful activity became a starting point and the basis of this study.
Setting
The setting for this study is my online ED 314 educational technology classes. I analyzed data from two sections that were taught in the Spring of 2010. Courses were taught on Sakai courseware.
Participants
Participants included 68 students taking online courses in educational technology. This course is a required pre-requisite to the post-baccalaureate teacher education program leading to licensure. Students varied in age from 20- to late 50s. Participants represented a variety of occupations including students, realtors, teachers, educational assistants, county extension agents, health care professionals, clerks, and retail associates. There were 19 males and 47 females total in the two sections of this course.
Ethnicities of students represented the prevalent ethnic groups found in culturally diverse Hawaii. These populations included Hawaiian, mixed Hawaiian, Portuguese, Japanese, Filipino, Chinese, Marshall Islanders, and white.
Method of Analysis
I collected data from the following sources: student work samples, teacher-made rubrics, chat room transcripts, and forum comments.
I viewed and analyzed student internet-based multimedia projects collected over the course of two academic semesters for student self selection of topic and how that topic related to Hawaiian cultural values. Topic and topics were categorized by emerging themes identified by the researcher and verified by participants. Some typical themes were value of the aina (land), preservation of the language, value of farming methods and production, and place-based science (oceanography, vulcanology, astronomy, geology). I analyzed student reflections, in the screencast showcases of their work, for student statements of technology acquisition and student statements of commitment to likely future application.
I reviewed, coded and analyzed the course modules, forums, chat room transcripts, and results of assessments by rubrics for:
• Epistemology used in course design
• Elements of culture chosen for student-designed technology projects.
• Elements of engagement
• Student acquisition of technology skills
Results and Discussion
Epistemology Used in Course Design
This course was organized into 15 modules, which took the students from an overview of 21st century learning and ecology, through an introduction to the applications and tools of 21st century learning, to the design and construction of student-created, culturally-situated technology-based projects. In addition, students posted all of their assignments to forums. In each forum other students could read and post comments about their classmates’ work. In addition to these opportunities for interaction, students and I posted questions and comments in a chat room that was part of our Sakai courseware. Students also had assignments and opportunities to post to Twitter and Flickr to extend the social networking component of this course.
I designed this course to take students through an overview of web-based learning tools. Using Will Richardson’s Wiki’s, Blogs and Technology (2008) as our class text, I enhanced the readings to include web-based articles and videos which supported the message that “21st century learning is learning that is collaborative, interactive, creative, problem-solving, and requires critical thinking” (Cruey, G., Smith, Gladowski, 2009; Kesey, 2009; Nesbitt, 2008;Payne; 2009, Pink, 2009;). Students wrote papers defining 21st century learning. I started with a traditional academic paper because these students, while from an indigenous host culture, came from the part of our university that taught in a traditional academic way. I wanted to get them used to reconceptualizing their understanding of 21st century learning tools, processes and products gradually—reading about them first, watching videos, and responding in ways they were used to.
From there, students moved into looking at what the ecology of 21st century learning might look like. They examined representative blogs and web sites from across the globe.
As students reviewed these web sites and searched for the elements of 21st century learning, they looked specifically to see:
• who created the sites,
• what audience would benefit from the sites,
• what technology tools were used to create the sites,
• what multimedia was featured on the sites, and
• what learning opportunities existed
It was my goal that students would view these web sites and the see the same type of apprenticeship that goes on within their own communities of learning – only extended out to a larger more global community. Within the indigenous community the Kuhuna, or wise elder, is valued for their insight and wisdom. Kahunas teach specific tasks and share special knowledge. Through a global community sharing their wisdom, students can see that ways of acquiring knowledge are similar. This is one element of pedagogy of aloha.
Secondly, I wanted students to organize their learning of technology skills around meaningful activities. To that end, their assignments were to design educational projects of a topic of their choice linked to their content area and connected to Hawaii or Pan Pacific culture. The project must include a wiki, blog, edited video, podcast, and screencast of a multimedia PowerPoint. Once complete, the project was presented in a series of four, five-minute screencasts which were created on Jing and hosted on Screencast. com. Each of these products was created over twelve sessions of the online course and posted at scheduled dates in a forum assigned to that product. In these forums, students posted their own work and responded to each other’s work. They were able to post questions about a completed product and comment on the content of the product as well.
Students posed questions, commented, asked for clarification, advice, and help in the chat room. The chat room gave students a place to ask for the wisdom of someone who was a specialist.
Within the course, students could draw on the wisdom of specialists from a larger global community and specialists within their own class. They created their own definitions of 21st century learning and applied those definitions to the creation of a culturally-situated project which used the indigenous ways of knowing—a pedagogy of aloha. They collaborated with peers and the instructor as they began to make sense of how technology could fit into their world view.
Elements of epistemology and elements of culture chosen for student-designed technology projects
I analyzed the student projects for the topics they chose and how those related to Hawaiian and Pan-Pacific culture. I divided the student-chosen topics into themes and then connected those themes to how students obtained knowledge to see if they drew on the five elements of ‘ike mauli—foundational knowledge. Then I looked at how students utilized the technology products that were taught as part of the course, and finally, how they utilized culture and twenty-first century technology tools in the assignments they developed for their hypothetical class.
Student topics fell into general categories : family, plants, literature, food, the ocean, sustainability and the environment, literature (oral, written, danced), history, geology, astronomy, and language.
Students developed inquiry questions that guided their project development.
Family
Under the category of “family”, two students created projects. Student, A1, developed a project that helped children discover the importance of taro (kalo) to the Hawaiian people. This project asked students to explore this issue through family stories. Her project featured a video she created capturing the story of the creation of kalo, through hula, stories, and chants that expressed the story of how kalo was given to keep the people and land alive as it perpetuated the culture. In her project, she asked families to create a taro patch and to tell the stories of the perpetuation of kalo. She asked them to post their stories to the blog; she also asked that they take video clips of their gardening and storytelling and create a video to share on the class wiki. There was a strong spiritual component to this project and she combined history, traditional practices, language, and setting—all foundational knowledge—into her project.
The second family project dealt with the concept of the hanai family. In a hanai family, friends are welcomed as members of a family (ohana) and carry almost the same place within the ohana as the family members. Student A4 created a virtual hanai family that paired students from different schools in this project for the hypothetical classroom. Students became hanai for a paired family, and visited a virtual family blog, where family members posted information about their homes and family life. In addition, families’ stories and traditions were shared. Some of these stories and traditions involved traditional practice, and affirmed, extended or expanded the hanai’s family members sense of cultural identity. The student could ask questions, respond, and virtually participate in a visit. Then the hanai student family member would write a letter to his own family explaining what his or her virtual hanai visit would be like. This letter was then posted to his or her family of origin blog.
Plants
Native plants were also a category students chose. Student A2 focused on La’au Lapa’au, healing plants. This student wanted to explore what healing properties native plants had and how the knowledge of native healing plants could be integrated into contemporary western medicine. She had students going into the field to photograph and write about native plants. These photographs were then assembled in student wikis with corresponding descriptions of the plants and their properties. The students’ wikis were linked to the class wiki. This knowledge involved traditional practice and was specific to place. This student’s video used music, photos and videos to overview the la’au lapa’au to her hypothetical class before they went out into the field. She created a nonlinear multimedia PowerPoint in which she created a screencast for her students and put on the class wiki. Here she gave the directions for the project for her own hypothetical students.
Oral Tradition, Chants and Dance
Hawaii history, culture and tradition have been passed down through oral story telling. Student A5 created a project where her students interviewed family members or local kupuna (elders) to capture this rich culture and history through their story telling. She had them video and record the interviews. They created videos and uploaded them to a class wiki and then sent in copies of copies of podcasts they created from their audio recordings to a Kids Talk Radio site. Student A5 modeled the process with her own video and podcast of oral story telling from a local kuhuna. Knowledge here was accessed through genealogy and language and the content of the knowledge itself was historical and involved traditional practice.
Celebrations representing the diverse ethnic population of Hawaii was a topic that student A6 focused on. Her guiding question was: How has Hawaii helped to preserve the diverse culture of the islands and how have those celebrations changed over time? Her project began with a screencast overview of a nonlinear, multimedia PowerPoint of the project. She used pictures and videos to trace the immigration of culturally diverse workers who came to Hawaii from eight different cultures. She focused on how and when each culture immigrated to Hawaii and set up the basis of the project where students explored the festivals that originated within the cultures. Students were to research the literature, interview, and capture pictures representing these festivals. Her goal was to show how Hawaii became a “mixed plate” of culture. The society is “one plate,” but each culture is identified separately on the plate. With the research, students created a wiki that represented their culture and the festivals they celebrated. Foundational knowledge was obtained through genealogy, as the students were encouraged to interview kupuna about historical, traditional practice. It also encompassed language, as the students discovered that Hawaiian pidgin was the common language of immigrants. This language mixed English, Hawaiian, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, and Portuguese and became the medium of communication in this diverse society.
Sustainability
The people of Hawaii are very concerned with sustainability. Ninety percent of their food is imported, and normally the island also has only a two-week food supply available at any given time. In addition, the land, water, and ocean are precious resources. A movement towards sustainability has swept throughout the islands, and student projects reflected this. These projects dealt with the coral reefs, gardening, hunting, fishing, water resource management, and invasive species.
Student A8’s project explored the cultural significance of Hawaiian reefs and how Hawaiians can support their sustainability. She had each student pick a tropical fish located in and around Hawaiian reefs. She required them to research the fish on the web and answer questions about their species. Then they were required to provide a visual and a report of this information on a wiki they created. In addition, she had student research groups that were working to save the reefs. Finally she had the class take a field trip to do a beach clean-up so they could see a reef and the beach that was created by the reef.
How will my students chart their progress? The students will have to complete their tasks and create a coral reef art project. In the art project, students created a sculpture from found objects on the beach. They will have to post their information on the fish they choose on our secure website for other students to view. Once the online portion of the project is finished they will have information about many different fishes that live in the coral reefs in our oceans.
This student created a video of a coral reef. In Hawaii’s crystal clear water reefs can be seen through the water and in some cases above the water. She created a podcast where she interviewed an expert on coral reef sustainability, and a multimedia PowerPoint presentation where she gave directions for her project. ‘Ike mauli was accessed through language, place, and history.
Student A13,focused on how Hawaiians historically sustained themselves through using the land’s natural resources. In this project students explored gardening, hunting and fishing through stories from their families and kupuna as well as the internet. These stories were captured with video and placed in a wiki. In addition, student used traditional internet-based resources. The project design called for students to participate in a class garden. The progress of this garden would be photographed and documented on a class blog. The student’s video showed pictures of Hawaiian natural resources and his podcast gave directions for the project. The student’s video showed pictures of polluted and unpolluted lands and water, and urged students to preserve the integrity of Hawaii’s lands and oceans. Foundational knowledge came from place, traditional practices, language, and history.
Student B10 developed a project on conservation of water resources. In her wiki home page she told students:
Wai is the Hawaiian word for fresh water, and wai wai means wealth, suggesting that water is the source of wealth and abundant life. For ancient Hawaiians to survive and flourish in these islands they had to develop and enforce strict systems to manage and preserve their source of life. Today, fresh water is still a valuable resource, though we are challenged by the modern world, mixed society, and forces of nature to maintain a lasting source of water into the future. If we are to continue to live in these islands, this is perhaps one of the most important and imminent topics to discuss with children. Some sources say that in roughly a decade, our daily need for water will have exceeded what our water supply can provide. Ten years! That’s not too far from now.
She developed an interactive website, or wiki, to give students the opportunity to learn through technology and solve the personal dilemma of how they can help with water conservation in our islands. She developed an integrated unit—lessons combining the core subjects of science, social studies, language arts, and health—that called for students to work together in the study of water resource management in Hawaii in ancient and contemporary times. Student teams developed a podcast in which they shared their discoveries about the cultural and scientific significance of Hawaii’s water supply, past and present, and explained what their personal responsibility is when it comes to using water in daily life.
She also used a class blog for students to participate in class discussions. She planned to take a field trip to a nearby freshwater stream, a lava tube (where ancient Hawaiians collected fresh water using gourds), and the nearest water treatment plant. So that students could have “real world” information, she also gave them information and photo opportunities to include in their final projects which included pictures, video and podcasts. Foundational knowledge was drawn from place, language, history, and traditional practice.
Student acquisition of technology skills (Rubrics)
I created rubrics to assess student acquisition of technology skills, understanding of 21st century technology learning strategies, and application of technology to culturally situated projects.
Elements of Engagement
The chat rooms associated with the courses turned out to be a very active means of communication. At the beginning, students were a little hesitant and most posts were about asking for help on technology or asking for help on course content and requirements. As a result student posts and instructor posts were close to a 50-50 ratio. These typify these kinds of posts:
E, What is our text anyway? Where is it mentioned? I forgot. Sorry such a dumb question...
I was wondering what chapters I should read first in the book? Should I just start with chapter 1 and read on through to the end of chapter 9? Or should I just read as is needed? I could not find it listed anywhere. Have I missed something?
I still feel a little lost in the course. I guess it is because I am a digital immigrant. Do I use skype only if I have a question and would like to talk face to face?
On another note, can anyone please send me the descriptive paragraph rubric unzipped? My mac is only a few years old but it doesn't open docx or cpgz. Thanks
As the students became more comfortable with the chat format, their posts began to take on a different flavor. They asked for and provided feedback, both to the instructor and each other, made “Wow!” observations, and commented on all sorts of topics. Here are some examples of these mid-course posts:
S- I love your real-life example of how a wiki would have immediate, practical results! I never thought of that- tracking the organizational details of a project is great.
D: The movie was Awesome! I definitely would have gone to see the movie after hearing the podcast, though I'm glad I watched the movie first because I knew what they were talking about in the podcast.
Dr. Hirtle, I'm using the Google reader. It's very simple, though at this point I am only following a couple blogs. I figure that I'll add stuff gradually as I find things that interest me most.
Here is a real life situation in which a wiki would be a perfect. At H Elementary, where I work, the 6th graders are planning an overnight trip to Volcano National Park. A lot of class time is spent recording who has turned in permission slips, who has lost theirs and needs another one, what parents are signed up to chaperon and who still needs to turn in their money. So often, forms aren't even making it home. Students are also responsible for keeping track of their points daily. In order to go on the excursion, students have to earn all of their points for turning in homework and having good behavior. A wiki for this field trip would be a great way to keep track of these types of things. A wiki could contain all of the logistics for this trip.
What a great explanation video! I would liken wiki to a table everyone can sit around or get up and leave for awhile, but the table and what is on it stays. Shelley's situation at H Elementary does seem an ideal opportunity to use a wiki. My youngest son who is still in King K H.S. sometimes gets saddled with collective projects and ends up doing most of the writing because it’s easier than finding time to meet everyone. A wiki would make the collaboration simpler and easier to distribute equally.
This was a great video and it made me realize how inefficient and "ancient" email seems. I’m amazed with how quickly technology evolves!
I love Diigo! It will help with the problem I often have on searches. I end up finding so much that I can get lost and end up searching my history to find one exact site. I will definitely use this a lot.
By this time the students were totally comfortable in the chat room and the nature of the posts changed dramatically. The posts, which used to be between a student and the instructor, or between two students, ended up being collective, group discussions about all sorts of topics. Here is a good example. Each of these posts is by a different student.
I'm in Austin for the "south by southwest" festival. I'm an exhibitor of my instruments there (the xaphoon), but I brought a sax too. The AME folks were extremely welcoming. I played sax with them and my girlfriend played flute. They said come back anytime, and I hope I will be able to. Thanks for your interest.
Well, B, I just discovered that you and your xaphoon have an entry an Wikipedia. I read your post and thought, "what's a xaphoon......" Now I know. The site had a link to a you-tube clip of you making the xaphoon. Wild. All this info at the tips of my fingers.
Wow, B, you’re extremely lucky. Your spiritual experience sounds like you were touched by the LORD. Amen. Its good to see people share their excitement for him. My mother in law influenced me a lot. SO I hear the word everyday and it’s now a part of me. God bless, be safe, and soak your experience all in.
One student observed:
I was explaining what a podcast is to my husband and after I read others explanations because he just purchased an ipod touch and he just listens to music. After watching the possibilities for ipods on the Apple link I was amazed they can be so educational. I will think differently when I see kids on their ipods because maybe they are actually learning! I was trying to convince my husband to let me use his ipod touch because it could be useful in this class and he told me to get my own!! :-)
Chats at this point in the course rarely involved the instructor, except for specific questions. The chat room had taken on a life of its own, both in usage level and content. Here is a student’s observation:
Yes this chat room is getting interesting. K, very interesting information about AA and separation of church and state. So much of our actions are dictated in some way or another by the government in ways we scarcely realize. Certainly podcasts are well suited for rather anonymous communication of ideas and advice that could be considered scandalous.
The chat room became a place that exemplified the pedagogy of aloha. Here students “talked story” with the instructor and each other. The instructor started the chat room by requiring posts by the students. Gradually students began to respond to each other and soon they were asking for help, commenting on each other’s work and each other’s stories. The chat room became the community center and the interaction that took place in this community center helped students build knowledge and support each other.
Technology Skills Acquisition
I evaluated student projects by teacher-made rubrics that were organized according to the following four major products:
• Wiki and Blog
• Podcasts
• Screencasts
• Movie
• Showcase of Major Products
The average of the class grades in each category are
Technology Product Teacher Evaluation Score
Wiki and Blog 88%
Podcast 86%
Screencast 89%
Movie 90%
Showcase of Major Products 98%
Students achieved the acquisition of these skills certainly by following direct instruction and tutorials and, more importantly, by their interest in their projects that they chose from their own Hawaiian and Pan-Pacific culture. Grades reflect an increase in skill acquisition as the course progressed beginning with an 88% in the first products they created and ending with 98% in their screencast showcase of their products with their personal reflections on their products and culturally-based products.
Unsolicited student comments in the screencast showcase revealed surprise and satisfaction with the skills they achieved. The following comments represent those elements of satisfaction and surprise:
Now that I have learned a little, I hope to be able to use them in and out of the classroom. Different – but fun! It opened doors for me to express my thoughts with others. I will continue to use these applications.
At first I was apprehensive. But now – exciting. I understand the importance of technology in the classroom.
Mahalo to Dr. Hirtle for her help and support. She helped us learn these difficult 21st Century materials.
Very very insightful. Very educational. I will be taking these skills with me and definitely using them in my classes. Thank Dr. Hirtle for introducing me to these programs and opening my eyes to the technology of the 21st Century.
I can’t wait to incorporate all I’ve learned.
What I’ve been taught is essential in the 21st Century. It’s been fun. I didn’t even know I could do it. It is a must for the future of education.
Thank you for an awesome semester! We learned so many things over the course of the 4 months we had together. I'm very excited to share what I learned with my friends and be able to utilize my new skills for other classes and projects I may have.
This course was challenging, but all things learned will be useful and helpful in my future.
Wow. It's really the end? After completing this course I feel as though I have moved myself even closer towards declaring myself as a digital native. I have really enjoyed this course and learned so much about how I can utilize more tools and take the steps to become a better (more hip) teacher.
Conclusion and Implications
A pedagogy of aloha--where mutual trust, respect, and inclusiveness among teachers, students, and students' families exists so that students feel nurtured, safe, and encouraged to achieve the highest level of success in everything they do (House Current Resolution # 167, 2010)--is possible in an online educational technology class that is culturally and epistemologically situated in the students’ host culture. While Hawaii is a culturally diverse state that includes Hawaiian, Japanese, Filipino, Chinese, Korean, Marshallese and white cultures, the host culture’s traditions and values resonate with all the islanders. When respect for the land, for spirit, respect for self and others, interaction with others, and shared common goals are provided, students’ ability to achieve mastery of skills and increase knowledge in a particular content area are increased. The major implications are that:
• Place is important to content areas of course.
• Ways of knowing (epistemology) must be honored.
• Students need choice and power to make real world connections with the knowledge they are building.
References
Collins, A., Brown, J. S., & Newman, S. E. (1987). Cognitive apprenticeship: Teaching the craft of reading, writing and mathematics (Technical Report No. 403). BBN Laboratories, Cambridge, MA. Centre for the Study of Reading, University of Illinois. January, 1987.
Cruey, G., Smith, R., & E. Gladowski (2009) Twenty-First Century Learning: The Digital Learner. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEDulInv9rE
Dewey, J. (1987). My Pedagogic Creed. School Journal v54. Pp.77-80.
House Concurrent Resolution # 167. (2010). Retrieved from http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/session2010/Bills/HCR167_HD1_.HTM-
Ka Haka ʻUla O, College of Hawaiian Languages. (2010) Retrieved from http://www.uhh.hawaii.edu/academics/hawn/
Kay, K. (2009) Middle Schools Preparing Young People for 21st Century Life and Work. Middle School Journal 40:5, pp. 42-45.
Lave,J. & E. Wegner. (1991) Situated Learning. Legitimate peripheral participation, Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press
Meyer, M. (2008) Indigenous and Authentic: Hawaiian Epistemology and the Triangulation of Meaning. In N. Denzin,, Y Lincoln, and L. Smith’s (Eds.) Handbook of critical and indigenous methodology. Los Angeles: Sage.
Nesbitt, B. (2008) A Vision of K-12 Students Today. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A-ZVCjfWf8/.
Payne, S. (2008) Wes Virginia’s superintendent of schools argues that classroom technology use is at the core of 21st century learning. T.H.E. Journal. Retrieved from http://www.thejournal.com/articles/24357/.
Piaget, J. (1977). The Development of Thought Equilibrium. New York: Viking.
Pink, D. (2009) The Changing World of Work. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykq6XSO0c0M.
Veincent, L. (2009). Mauli Keaukaha. Unpublished Dissertation Prospectus.
Vygotsky,L. (1986) Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Warschauer, M., & Donaghy, K. (1997). Leokï: A powerful voice of Hawaiian language revitalization. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 10(4), 349-362.
Warschaeur, M. (1998) Technology and Indigenous Language Revitalization: Analyzing the Experience of Hawai'i . Canadian Modern Language Review v55:1.pp.139-159.
A Pedagogy of Aloha: Situating Educational Technology Coursework in an Indigenous Cultural and Epistemological Context
Jeannine S. Hirtle Ed.D.
Abstract: This case study analyses two sections of an educational technology course that is situated in cultural and epistemological context. The inquiry question is: Can educational technology skills be acquired in a culturally situated online learning environment which utilizes indigenous epistemology? Student technology projects and products are examined for cultural connections and technology acquisition. Evidence of a “pedagogy of aloha” consistent with Hawaiian epistemology is examined in chat room analysis.
Author: Jeannine Hirtle Ed.D Associate Professor, University of Hawaii at Hilo
Key Words: education technology, culture, epistemology, indigenous, social constructivism, place based learning
Introduction
Hawaiian universities face unique challenges and opportunities in using educational technology in the 21st century. Hawaii, the 50th American state, is literally separated from the rest of the states by the Pacific Ocean and, metaphorically, by an ocean of cultural disenfranchisement. This began in the aftermath of the work by 19th century American missionaries and the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy by American and European planters and businessmen in the early 20th century. In this cultural genocide, Hawaiians were banned from most of their cultural heritage, including dancing the hula - the ancient method of storytelling through rhythm and movement, speaking the Hawaiian language, and were discouraged from the agricultural and fishing economy that had sustained them for centuries as they lived and prospered in relative isolation from the rest of the world.
Marginalized because of their lack of Eurocentric beliefs and practices, Hawaiians took on the role of the oppressed, both economically and culturally, in this land where they had once enjoyed sovereignty. Hawaiians, along with immigrant groups that included Japanese, Filipino, Portuguese and Chinese, became the working class that helped support the patriarchal plantation system that became the cornerstone of Hawaii’s economy. In the 1970’s a renaissance of Hawaiian culture began to emerge and, “in the face of grassroots movements, legal restrictions on the use of Hawaiian in the schools were removed, and Hawaiian was once again made an official state language (together with English) in 1978” (Warschaeur, Donaghy and Kuamo’o, 1997). Within this rebirth of cultural expression, The University of Hawaii’s Hale Kuamoʻo Center for Hawaiian Language and Culture Through the Medium of Hawaiian was established. This center is the support and research division of Ka Haka ʻUla O Keʻelikōlani College of Hawaiian Language. The Center brought encouragement and support to the expansion of the Hawaiian language as a medium of communication in education, business, government, and other contexts of social life in the public and private sectors of Hawaii and beyond.
Within the academic division of Ka Haka ʻUla O Keʻelikōlani, the College of Hawaiian Language emphasizes language acquisition, linguistics, traditional culture and education in a Hawaiian medium environment. The Hawaiian Studies Division oversees undergraduate and graduate programs in Hawaiian language and studies, as well as an indigenous teacher education program.
With the inception of the College of Hawaiian Languages at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, UH Hilo educators began to use the internet to support their programs. The Internet started to become a medium - not of western oppression, as some indigenous people argued - but of revival and preservation of culture. Students in Hawaiian language classes began to collect chants, hulas, and oral histories and preserve and produce them in multimedia formats published on the Internet. Large repositories of these cultural artifacts are now part of Hawaii’s heritage, thanks to the efforts of these Hawaiian language instructors and students. These are used primarily by those who study in Ka Haka ‘Ula Oke’elikolani (College of Hawaiian Language), and in Kahuawaiola, the Hawaiian Language Indigenous Teacher Education Program. The students and instructors in this program live the value of Ke Kumu Honua Mauli Ola Hawaiʻi, the Hawaiian educational philosophy which asserts Hawaiian cultural identity as the basis of education and participation in contemporary life. (Ka Haka ʻUla O, 2010)
In 2010, the 25th Hawaiian Legislature requested the board of education to adopt a policy for the integration of a “pedagogy of aloha” in public schools for improved learning in the 21st century. The “pedagogy of aloha” is grounded in the wisdom and values of a native Hawaiian worldview” that “strives to create an atmosphere of mutual trust, respect, and inclusiveness among teachers, students, and students' families; and will provide students with an effective learning environment in which they feel nurtured, safe, and encouraged to achieve the highest level of success in everything they do (House Current Resolution # 167, 2010).
Before this resolution went into effect many of the faculty at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, connected to colleges other than the College of Hawaiian language, had already begun to implement a pedagogy of aloha. While more western-centric in their academic approach as a whole, they embraced an opportunity to participate in a grant offered by the College of Hawaiian Language. This grant required faculty to propose a way in which they could include Hawaiian and Pan Pacific culture in their courses. In exchange each faculty member would receive a Mac Air computer and software to use while they worked on the project. On of the challenges I faced as a white instructor who had grown up, been educated and worked on the mainland for many years, was how to integrate the pedagogy of aloha in pre-requisite online teacher education classes—specifically education technology. This case study of my course work addresses this question:
Can educational technology skills be acquired in a culturally situated online learning environment which utilizes indigenous epistemology?
Review of the Literature
Social anthropologists Jean Lave’ and Etienne Wegner (1991) first identified situated learning as learning that is socially constructed within the context that it is applied. This view has its roots in Dewey’s Pedagogic Creed (1963) where Dewey articulated education coming as a result of the empowerment of the learner in a social situation. He saw the learner as becoming a member of a community, able to see him/herself, not from an egocentric view but rather from the perspective of the welfare of the community. While Dewey saw school as one form of community, which could help learners construct knowledge socially, he maintained that learners must maintain their social heritage and construct learning experiences that are fundamental to making civilization what it is. When applied to education of indigenous populations, the question becomes “Who defines civilization and what experiences make civilization what it is?”
In the Hawaiian culture the aina, (land), the ocean, the volcanoes, the rain, oral histories of the kupuna (respected elders), hula (dance and hand movements), songs (mele) and myths and legends all become the “language” that embodies the culture of Hawaii. In the complexities of this language the Hawaiian definition of civilization emerges. This civilization has its own particular ways of knowing and Hawaiian-born educator, Manulani Meyer (2008, pp. 230-231) describes this epistemology as knowledge that:
• Endures-- that animates and educates.
• Is bound in the awareness that we are earth and must be aware of how to exist with earth.
• Recognizes that our senses are culturally shaped, offering us distinct pathways to reality.
• Is bound to how we develop a relationship with it.
• Recognizes that function is vital with regard to knowing something.
• Believes that Intention shapes our language and creates our reality.
• Recognizes that knowledge Is embodied and in union with cognition.
For learning in an online educational technology course to be situated in Hawaiian culture and epistemology, the course must make relevant its purpose for acquiring technological skills in a way that is meaningful to the community that supports and sustains the re-emerging Hawaiian society. The online learning community grounded in constructivism provides a medium for indigenous students to mediate knowledge in a social context. The role of language in a constructivist environment serves to mediate between the learner and the world shaping and extending thought (Vygotsky, 1986). But language must help mediate meaningful activity and, for Hawaiians and the immigrant populations that have come to personify Hawaii, indigenous ways of knowing, when incorporated into the language of culture, provide just such an opportunity.
Lehua Veincent, indigenous educator, doctoral candidate, and principal of Keahukah Elementary in Hilo, HI posits that ways of knowing are inextricably linked to “one’s genealogy, one’s history, and one’s place; for this is where knowledge begins (2010). “ Thus, in order for meaningful connections to occur in the process of learning, educators must understand the foundational knowledge that sets . . . learners unique to a specific place, apart from other individuals of different places. He terms this foundation knowledge: “‘ike mauli. “
‘Ike mauli is the foundational knowledge that is passed from one generation to another within a community as a way of securing one’s own identity to family, community, and land. ‘Ike mauli sets forth traditional knowledge that provides the needed connection to new knowledge introduced.
This philosophy is congruent with Piaget’s (1977) assertion that all knowledge is assimilated or accommodated into the learner’s existing schema. It follows that existing schema is created within a place that is strengthen by relationships within the family and community.
For Lave’ and Wegner (1991) the community of practice is the core of situated learning, because it is this community that provides the mechanism for its members to learn from each other. This type of learning replicates the learning situations that occur within society that Vygotsky (1986) describes in his theory of the zone of proximal development (ZPD). Here a learner can do with assistance that which he cannot do by himself (p. 87).
Collins, Brown and Newman, (1987, p.4) also describe this type of assisted learning as being available through cognitive apprenticeships, where tacit processes can be observed, enacted with help from an expert. Cognitive apprenticing can occur within communities of practice. The educational technology course must provide meaningful, contextualized opportunities for students to operate with communities of practice, use multimedia, publish online to speak in the expanded Hawaiian cultural language, and support each other as representatives of various communities of practice within the Hawaiian and Pan Pacific cultures. Lehua Veincent addresses this concept when he acknowledges the importance of genealogy, history, family, language, and place. He defines these as “‘ike mauli the values and beliefs of a family and community” and believes that learners become representatives of not only themselves but of their family and community. I extend this concept to include the belief that learners are cognitive apprentices of the families and communities from which they come, and that ike mauli can be preserved and sustained in culturally-situated online learning projects. However, these projects must engage learners in an epistemology that is reflective of the culture. For the indigenous Hawaiian population and those students who live within this host culture this means a pedagogy of aloha—where students respond to a mutually supportive interactive learning environment. Here they must be able to share their stories as they work toward a common goal of meaningful activity that supports the community. With student populations, which are scattered geographically, the online teaching and learning environment can simulate and support this culturally-situated learning.
Methodology
Researcher
As a white, non indigenous professor, who spent most of my teaching career on the mainland, I had to first deconstruct my own position within this indigenous society before I could begin to study it. Part of that deconstruction involved learning what my ethnicity, as a white American from the mainland, represented in terms of the oppressive colonial history Hawaii had endured. Then I had to examine my educational value system and see what parts of it were congruent with Hawaiian values. I believed my social constructivist values that define knowledge as being constructed in the nexus of thought and language within a community and focused on purpose, meaningful activity became a starting point and the basis of this study.
Setting
The setting for this study is my online ED 314 educational technology classes. I analyzed data from two sections that were taught in the Spring of 2010. Courses were taught on Sakai courseware.
Participants
Participants included 68 students taking online courses in educational technology. This course is a required pre-requisite to the post-baccalaureate teacher education program leading to licensure. Students varied in age from 20- to late 50s. Participants represented a variety of occupations including students, realtors, teachers, educational assistants, county extension agents, health care professionals, clerks, and retail associates. There were 19 males and 47 females total in the two sections of this course.
Ethnicities of students represented the prevalent ethnic groups found in culturally diverse Hawaii. These populations included Hawaiian, mixed Hawaiian, Portuguese, Japanese, Filipino, Chinese, Marshall Islanders, and white.
Method of Analysis
I collected data from the following sources: student work samples, teacher-made rubrics, chat room transcripts, and forum comments.
I viewed and analyzed student internet-based multimedia projects collected over the course of two academic semesters for student self selection of topic and how that topic related to Hawaiian cultural values. Topic and topics were categorized by emerging themes identified by the researcher and verified by participants. Some typical themes were value of the aina (land), preservation of the language, value of farming methods and production, and place-based science (oceanography, vulcanology, astronomy, geology). I analyzed student reflections, in the screencast showcases of their work, for student statements of technology acquisition and student statements of commitment to likely future application.
I reviewed, coded and analyzed the course modules, forums, chat room transcripts, and results of assessments by rubrics for:
• Epistemology used in course design
• Elements of culture chosen for student-designed technology projects.
• Elements of engagement
• Student acquisition of technology skills
Results and Discussion
Epistemology Used in Course Design
This course was organized into 15 modules, which took the students from an overview of 21st century learning and ecology, through an introduction to the applications and tools of 21st century learning, to the design and construction of student-created, culturally-situated technology-based projects. In addition, students posted all of their assignments to forums. In each forum other students could read and post comments about their classmates’ work. In addition to these opportunities for interaction, students and I posted questions and comments in a chat room that was part of our Sakai courseware. Students also had assignments and opportunities to post to Twitter and Flickr to extend the social networking component of this course.
I designed this course to take students through an overview of web-based learning tools. Using Will Richardson’s Wiki’s, Blogs and Technology (2008) as our class text, I enhanced the readings to include web-based articles and videos which supported the message that “21st century learning is learning that is collaborative, interactive, creative, problem-solving, and requires critical thinking” (Cruey, G., Smith, Gladowski, 2009; Kesey, 2009; Nesbitt, 2008;Payne; 2009, Pink, 2009;). Students wrote papers defining 21st century learning. I started with a traditional academic paper because these students, while from an indigenous host culture, came from the part of our university that taught in a traditional academic way. I wanted to get them used to reconceptualizing their understanding of 21st century learning tools, processes and products gradually—reading about them first, watching videos, and responding in ways they were used to.
From there, students moved into looking at what the ecology of 21st century learning might look like. They examined representative blogs and web sites from across the globe.
As students reviewed these web sites and searched for the elements of 21st century learning, they looked specifically to see:
• who created the sites,
• what audience would benefit from the sites,
• what technology tools were used to create the sites,
• what multimedia was featured on the sites, and
• what learning opportunities existed
It was my goal that students would view these web sites and the see the same type of apprenticeship that goes on within their own communities of learning – only extended out to a larger more global community. Within the indigenous community the Kuhuna, or wise elder, is valued for their insight and wisdom. Kahunas teach specific tasks and share special knowledge. Through a global community sharing their wisdom, students can see that ways of acquiring knowledge are similar. This is one element of pedagogy of aloha.
Secondly, I wanted students to organize their learning of technology skills around meaningful activities. To that end, their assignments were to design educational projects of a topic of their choice linked to their content area and connected to Hawaii or Pan Pacific culture. The project must include a wiki, blog, edited video, podcast, and screencast of a multimedia PowerPoint. Once complete, the project was presented in a series of four, five-minute screencasts which were created on Jing and hosted on Screencast. com. Each of these products was created over twelve sessions of the online course and posted at scheduled dates in a forum assigned to that product. In these forums, students posted their own work and responded to each other’s work. They were able to post questions about a completed product and comment on the content of the product as well.
Students posed questions, commented, asked for clarification, advice, and help in the chat room. The chat room gave students a place to ask for the wisdom of someone who was a specialist.
Within the course, students could draw on the wisdom of specialists from a larger global community and specialists within their own class. They created their own definitions of 21st century learning and applied those definitions to the creation of a culturally-situated project which used the indigenous ways of knowing—a pedagogy of aloha. They collaborated with peers and the instructor as they began to make sense of how technology could fit into their world view.
Elements of epistemology and elements of culture chosen for student-designed technology projects
I analyzed the student projects for the topics they chose and how those related to Hawaiian and Pan-Pacific culture. I divided the student-chosen topics into themes and then connected those themes to how students obtained knowledge to see if they drew on the five elements of ‘ike mauli—foundational knowledge. Then I looked at how students utilized the technology products that were taught as part of the course, and finally, how they utilized culture and twenty-first century technology tools in the assignments they developed for their hypothetical class.
Student topics fell into general categories : family, plants, literature, food, the ocean, sustainability and the environment, literature (oral, written, danced), history, geology, astronomy, and language.
Students developed inquiry questions that guided their project development.
Family
Under the category of “family”, two students created projects. Student, A1, developed a project that helped children discover the importance of taro (kalo) to the Hawaiian people. This project asked students to explore this issue through family stories. Her project featured a video she created capturing the story of the creation of kalo, through hula, stories, and chants that expressed the story of how kalo was given to keep the people and land alive as it perpetuated the culture. In her project, she asked families to create a taro patch and to tell the stories of the perpetuation of kalo. She asked them to post their stories to the blog; she also asked that they take video clips of their gardening and storytelling and create a video to share on the class wiki. There was a strong spiritual component to this project and she combined history, traditional practices, language, and setting—all foundational knowledge—into her project.
The second family project dealt with the concept of the hanai family. In a hanai family, friends are welcomed as members of a family (ohana) and carry almost the same place within the ohana as the family members. Student A4 created a virtual hanai family that paired students from different schools in this project for the hypothetical classroom. Students became hanai for a paired family, and visited a virtual family blog, where family members posted information about their homes and family life. In addition, families’ stories and traditions were shared. Some of these stories and traditions involved traditional practice, and affirmed, extended or expanded the hanai’s family members sense of cultural identity. The student could ask questions, respond, and virtually participate in a visit. Then the hanai student family member would write a letter to his own family explaining what his or her virtual hanai visit would be like. This letter was then posted to his or her family of origin blog.
Plants
Native plants were also a category students chose. Student A2 focused on La’au Lapa’au, healing plants. This student wanted to explore what healing properties native plants had and how the knowledge of native healing plants could be integrated into contemporary western medicine. She had students going into the field to photograph and write about native plants. These photographs were then assembled in student wikis with corresponding descriptions of the plants and their properties. The students’ wikis were linked to the class wiki. This knowledge involved traditional practice and was specific to place. This student’s video used music, photos and videos to overview the la’au lapa’au to her hypothetical class before they went out into the field. She created a nonlinear multimedia PowerPoint in which she created a screencast for her students and put on the class wiki. Here she gave the directions for the project for her own hypothetical students.
Oral Tradition, Chants and Dance
Hawaii history, culture and tradition have been passed down through oral story telling. Student A5 created a project where her students interviewed family members or local kupuna (elders) to capture this rich culture and history through their story telling. She had them video and record the interviews. They created videos and uploaded them to a class wiki and then sent in copies of copies of podcasts they created from their audio recordings to a Kids Talk Radio site. Student A5 modeled the process with her own video and podcast of oral story telling from a local kuhuna. Knowledge here was accessed through genealogy and language and the content of the knowledge itself was historical and involved traditional practice.
Celebrations representing the diverse ethnic population of Hawaii was a topic that student A6 focused on. Her guiding question was: How has Hawaii helped to preserve the diverse culture of the islands and how have those celebrations changed over time? Her project began with a screencast overview of a nonlinear, multimedia PowerPoint of the project. She used pictures and videos to trace the immigration of culturally diverse workers who came to Hawaii from eight different cultures. She focused on how and when each culture immigrated to Hawaii and set up the basis of the project where students explored the festivals that originated within the cultures. Students were to research the literature, interview, and capture pictures representing these festivals. Her goal was to show how Hawaii became a “mixed plate” of culture. The society is “one plate,” but each culture is identified separately on the plate. With the research, students created a wiki that represented their culture and the festivals they celebrated. Foundational knowledge was obtained through genealogy, as the students were encouraged to interview kupuna about historical, traditional practice. It also encompassed language, as the students discovered that Hawaiian pidgin was the common language of immigrants. This language mixed English, Hawaiian, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, and Portuguese and became the medium of communication in this diverse society.
Sustainability
The people of Hawaii are very concerned with sustainability. Ninety percent of their food is imported, and normally the island also has only a two-week food supply available at any given time. In addition, the land, water, and ocean are precious resources. A movement towards sustainability has swept throughout the islands, and student projects reflected this. These projects dealt with the coral reefs, gardening, hunting, fishing, water resource management, and invasive species.
Student A8’s project explored the cultural significance of Hawaiian reefs and how Hawaiians can support their sustainability. She had each student pick a tropical fish located in and around Hawaiian reefs. She required them to research the fish on the web and answer questions about their species. Then they were required to provide a visual and a report of this information on a wiki they created. In addition, she had student research groups that were working to save the reefs. Finally she had the class take a field trip to do a beach clean-up so they could see a reef and the beach that was created by the reef.
How will my students chart their progress? The students will have to complete their tasks and create a coral reef art project. In the art project, students created a sculpture from found objects on the beach. They will have to post their information on the fish they choose on our secure website for other students to view. Once the online portion of the project is finished they will have information about many different fishes that live in the coral reefs in our oceans.
This student created a video of a coral reef. In Hawaii’s crystal clear water reefs can be seen through the water and in some cases above the water. She created a podcast where she interviewed an expert on coral reef sustainability, and a multimedia PowerPoint presentation where she gave directions for her project. ‘Ike mauli was accessed through language, place, and history.
Student A13,focused on how Hawaiians historically sustained themselves through using the land’s natural resources. In this project students explored gardening, hunting and fishing through stories from their families and kupuna as well as the internet. These stories were captured with video and placed in a wiki. In addition, student used traditional internet-based resources. The project design called for students to participate in a class garden. The progress of this garden would be photographed and documented on a class blog. The student’s video showed pictures of Hawaiian natural resources and his podcast gave directions for the project. The student’s video showed pictures of polluted and unpolluted lands and water, and urged students to preserve the integrity of Hawaii’s lands and oceans. Foundational knowledge came from place, traditional practices, language, and history.
Student B10 developed a project on conservation of water resources. In her wiki home page she told students:
Wai is the Hawaiian word for fresh water, and wai wai means wealth, suggesting that water is the source of wealth and abundant life. For ancient Hawaiians to survive and flourish in these islands they had to develop and enforce strict systems to manage and preserve their source of life. Today, fresh water is still a valuable resource, though we are challenged by the modern world, mixed society, and forces of nature to maintain a lasting source of water into the future. If we are to continue to live in these islands, this is perhaps one of the most important and imminent topics to discuss with children. Some sources say that in roughly a decade, our daily need for water will have exceeded what our water supply can provide. Ten years! That’s not too far from now.
She developed an interactive website, or wiki, to give students the opportunity to learn through technology and solve the personal dilemma of how they can help with water conservation in our islands. She developed an integrated unit—lessons combining the core subjects of science, social studies, language arts, and health—that called for students to work together in the study of water resource management in Hawaii in ancient and contemporary times. Student teams developed a podcast in which they shared their discoveries about the cultural and scientific significance of Hawaii’s water supply, past and present, and explained what their personal responsibility is when it comes to using water in daily life.
She also used a class blog for students to participate in class discussions. She planned to take a field trip to a nearby freshwater stream, a lava tube (where ancient Hawaiians collected fresh water using gourds), and the nearest water treatment plant. So that students could have “real world” information, she also gave them information and photo opportunities to include in their final projects which included pictures, video and podcasts. Foundational knowledge was drawn from place, language, history, and traditional practice.
Student acquisition of technology skills (Rubrics)
I created rubrics to assess student acquisition of technology skills, understanding of 21st century technology learning strategies, and application of technology to culturally situated projects.
Elements of Engagement
The chat rooms associated with the courses turned out to be a very active means of communication. At the beginning, students were a little hesitant and most posts were about asking for help on technology or asking for help on course content and requirements. As a result student posts and instructor posts were close to a 50-50 ratio. These typify these kinds of posts:
E, What is our text anyway? Where is it mentioned? I forgot. Sorry such a dumb question...
I was wondering what chapters I should read first in the book? Should I just start with chapter 1 and read on through to the end of chapter 9? Or should I just read as is needed? I could not find it listed anywhere. Have I missed something?
I still feel a little lost in the course. I guess it is because I am a digital immigrant. Do I use skype only if I have a question and would like to talk face to face?
On another note, can anyone please send me the descriptive paragraph rubric unzipped? My mac is only a few years old but it doesn't open docx or cpgz. Thanks
As the students became more comfortable with the chat format, their posts began to take on a different flavor. They asked for and provided feedback, both to the instructor and each other, made “Wow!” observations, and commented on all sorts of topics. Here are some examples of these mid-course posts:
S- I love your real-life example of how a wiki would have immediate, practical results! I never thought of that- tracking the organizational details of a project is great.
D: The movie was Awesome! I definitely would have gone to see the movie after hearing the podcast, though I'm glad I watched the movie first because I knew what they were talking about in the podcast.
Dr. Hirtle, I'm using the Google reader. It's very simple, though at this point I am only following a couple blogs. I figure that I'll add stuff gradually as I find things that interest me most.
Here is a real life situation in which a wiki would be a perfect. At H Elementary, where I work, the 6th graders are planning an overnight trip to Volcano National Park. A lot of class time is spent recording who has turned in permission slips, who has lost theirs and needs another one, what parents are signed up to chaperon and who still needs to turn in their money. So often, forms aren't even making it home. Students are also responsible for keeping track of their points daily. In order to go on the excursion, students have to earn all of their points for turning in homework and having good behavior. A wiki for this field trip would be a great way to keep track of these types of things. A wiki could contain all of the logistics for this trip.
What a great explanation video! I would liken wiki to a table everyone can sit around or get up and leave for awhile, but the table and what is on it stays. Shelley's situation at H Elementary does seem an ideal opportunity to use a wiki. My youngest son who is still in King K H.S. sometimes gets saddled with collective projects and ends up doing most of the writing because it’s easier than finding time to meet everyone. A wiki would make the collaboration simpler and easier to distribute equally.
This was a great video and it made me realize how inefficient and "ancient" email seems. I’m amazed with how quickly technology evolves!
I love Diigo! It will help with the problem I often have on searches. I end up finding so much that I can get lost and end up searching my history to find one exact site. I will definitely use this a lot.
By this time the students were totally comfortable in the chat room and the nature of the posts changed dramatically. The posts, which used to be between a student and the instructor, or between two students, ended up being collective, group discussions about all sorts of topics. Here is a good example. Each of these posts is by a different student.
I'm in Austin for the "south by southwest" festival. I'm an exhibitor of my instruments there (the xaphoon), but I brought a sax too. The AME folks were extremely welcoming. I played sax with them and my girlfriend played flute. They said come back anytime, and I hope I will be able to. Thanks for your interest.
Well, B, I just discovered that you and your xaphoon have an entry an Wikipedia. I read your post and thought, "what's a xaphoon......" Now I know. The site had a link to a you-tube clip of you making the xaphoon. Wild. All this info at the tips of my fingers.
Wow, B, you’re extremely lucky. Your spiritual experience sounds like you were touched by the LORD. Amen. Its good to see people share their excitement for him. My mother in law influenced me a lot. SO I hear the word everyday and it’s now a part of me. God bless, be safe, and soak your experience all in.
One student observed:
I was explaining what a podcast is to my husband and after I read others explanations because he just purchased an ipod touch and he just listens to music. After watching the possibilities for ipods on the Apple link I was amazed they can be so educational. I will think differently when I see kids on their ipods because maybe they are actually learning! I was trying to convince my husband to let me use his ipod touch because it could be useful in this class and he told me to get my own!! :-)
Chats at this point in the course rarely involved the instructor, except for specific questions. The chat room had taken on a life of its own, both in usage level and content. Here is a student’s observation:
Yes this chat room is getting interesting. K, very interesting information about AA and separation of church and state. So much of our actions are dictated in some way or another by the government in ways we scarcely realize. Certainly podcasts are well suited for rather anonymous communication of ideas and advice that could be considered scandalous.
The chat room became a place that exemplified the pedagogy of aloha. Here students “talked story” with the instructor and each other. The instructor started the chat room by requiring posts by the students. Gradually students began to respond to each other and soon they were asking for help, commenting on each other’s work and each other’s stories. The chat room became the community center and the interaction that took place in this community center helped students build knowledge and support each other.
Technology Skills Acquisition
I evaluated student projects by teacher-made rubrics that were organized according to the following four major products:
• Wiki and Blog
• Podcasts
• Screencasts
• Movie
• Showcase of Major Products
The average of the class grades in each category are
Technology Product Teacher Evaluation Score
Wiki and Blog 88%
Podcast 86%
Screencast 89%
Movie 90%
Showcase of Major Products 98%
Students achieved the acquisition of these skills certainly by following direct instruction and tutorials and, more importantly, by their interest in their projects that they chose from their own Hawaiian and Pan-Pacific culture. Grades reflect an increase in skill acquisition as the course progressed beginning with an 88% in the first products they created and ending with 98% in their screencast showcase of their products with their personal reflections on their products and culturally-based products.
Unsolicited student comments in the screencast showcase revealed surprise and satisfaction with the skills they achieved. The following comments represent those elements of satisfaction and surprise:
Now that I have learned a little, I hope to be able to use them in and out of the classroom. Different – but fun! It opened doors for me to express my thoughts with others. I will continue to use these applications.
At first I was apprehensive. But now – exciting. I understand the importance of technology in the classroom.
Mahalo to Dr. Hirtle for her help and support. She helped us learn these difficult 21st Century materials.
Very very insightful. Very educational. I will be taking these skills with me and definitely using them in my classes. Thank Dr. Hirtle for introducing me to these programs and opening my eyes to the technology of the 21st Century.
I can’t wait to incorporate all I’ve learned.
What I’ve been taught is essential in the 21st Century. It’s been fun. I didn’t even know I could do it. It is a must for the future of education.
Thank you for an awesome semester! We learned so many things over the course of the 4 months we had together. I'm very excited to share what I learned with my friends and be able to utilize my new skills for other classes and projects I may have.
This course was challenging, but all things learned will be useful and helpful in my future.
Wow. It's really the end? After completing this course I feel as though I have moved myself even closer towards declaring myself as a digital native. I have really enjoyed this course and learned so much about how I can utilize more tools and take the steps to become a better (more hip) teacher.
Conclusion and Implications
A pedagogy of aloha--where mutual trust, respect, and inclusiveness among teachers, students, and students' families exists so that students feel nurtured, safe, and encouraged to achieve the highest level of success in everything they do (House Current Resolution # 167, 2010)--is possible in an online educational technology class that is culturally and epistemologically situated in the students’ host culture. While Hawaii is a culturally diverse state that includes Hawaiian, Japanese, Filipino, Chinese, Korean, Marshallese and white cultures, the host culture’s traditions and values resonate with all the islanders. When respect for the land, for spirit, respect for self and others, interaction with others, and shared common goals are provided, students’ ability to achieve mastery of skills and increase knowledge in a particular content area are increased. The major implications are that:
• Place is important to content areas of course.
• Ways of knowing (epistemology) must be honored.
• Students need choice and power to make real world connections with the knowledge they are building.
References
Collins, A., Brown, J. S., & Newman, S. E. (1987). Cognitive apprenticeship: Teaching the craft of reading, writing and mathematics (Technical Report No. 403). BBN Laboratories, Cambridge, MA. Centre for the Study of Reading, University of Illinois. January, 1987.
Cruey, G., Smith, R., & E. Gladowski (2009) Twenty-First Century Learning: The Digital Learner. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEDulInv9rE
Dewey, J. (1987). My Pedagogic Creed. School Journal v54. Pp.77-80.
House Concurrent Resolution # 167. (2010). Retrieved from http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/session2010/Bills/HCR167_HD1_.HTM-
Ka Haka ʻUla O, College of Hawaiian Languages. (2010) Retrieved from http://www.uhh.hawaii.edu/academics/hawn/
Kay, K. (2009) Middle Schools Preparing Young People for 21st Century Life and Work. Middle School Journal 40:5, pp. 42-45.
Lave,J. & E. Wegner. (1991) Situated Learning. Legitimate peripheral participation, Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press
Meyer, M. (2008) Indigenous and Authentic: Hawaiian Epistemology and the Triangulation of Meaning. In N. Denzin,, Y Lincoln, and L. Smith’s (Eds.) Handbook of critical and indigenous methodology. Los Angeles: Sage.
Nesbitt, B. (2008) A Vision of K-12 Students Today. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A-ZVCjfWf8/.
Payne, S. (2008) Wes Virginia’s superintendent of schools argues that classroom technology use is at the core of 21st century learning. T.H.E. Journal. Retrieved from http://www.thejournal.com/articles/24357/.
Piaget, J. (1977). The Development of Thought Equilibrium. New York: Viking.
Pink, D. (2009) The Changing World of Work. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykq6XSO0c0M.
Veincent, L. (2009). Mauli Keaukaha. Unpublished Dissertation Prospectus.
Vygotsky,L. (1986) Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Warschauer, M., & Donaghy, K. (1997). Leokï: A powerful voice of Hawaiian language revitalization. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 10(4), 349-362.
Warschaeur, M. (1998) Technology and Indigenous Language Revitalization: Analyzing the Experience of Hawai'i . Canadian Modern Language Review v55:1.pp.139-159.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Welcome to Our Lehua Teacher Researcher Blog!
Crafting our question
literacy..... strategies...problems...wonderings...
What strategies will promote complex thinking in a Third Grade literacy classroom?
How can students become complex thinkers? - Shawna
How do you bridge the gap of expected/sanctioned curriculum and developmentally appropriate practices?- Debbie… to meet the requirement benchmarks and standards with a junior K class, and kindergarten standards…
How can conferencing strategies lead students to be effective communicators in writing?-Ann
How does kinesthetic learning impact student letter, sound, and phonemic awareness? - Cathy
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