Teacher recommedations for on and off-task behaviors

After observing and recording on-task behaviors, here are some of my initial adjustments or recommendations:

• Group projects
  
• Provide written instructions so all know expectations
• Give each student to a role to fulfill
• 1-1 or 1-2 computing is ideal for sharing work - more than that does not give adequate time for students to participate
• Have alternative tasks for those who finish early
• Direct Instruction
• Remove all distractions: headphones, open websites
• Consider purchasing lab management software so all can easily view screen
• Find out prior knowledge and do not demo skills already known
• Keep direct instruction short and provide written instructions
• Individual tasks
• Provide written instructions
• Remove all distractions: headphones, open websites
• Stop class work time and encourage interaction and sharing
• Intervene early with students who are stuck or off task
  

On task behavior documentation

For my ARP I have been documenting students behaviors during direct instruction time, during group project work and then during individual tasks. Here are some of my observations so far:

• Group
• initially there is a lot of discussion
• some students made the decisions, other members wait for instructions
• students confered with each other about progress during writing of article
  
• when students were formatting their newspaper page, students who were not actually controlling the computer were not as involved.
• groups that only had 1 or 2 members formatting per page were more on task than higher numbers
• Direct Instruction
• teacher can view 3/4 of screens from her vantage point and see if all are following along with instruction
• students are engaged when instruction is unfamiliar - opening word outline in PPT
• If students perceive they already know the material - they seem to "check out"
  
• Where students sit in room seems to have direct impact of how well they pay attention. Students in front right row and back row do not watch demonstrations on overhead screen.
• Off task behaviors include trying to use headphones to listen to music or websites, viewing own screen instead of demo, not looking at teacher, talking to neighbor
• Individual tasks
• some students work well on their own
• some students need interaction or clarification to understand the task
• if students have clear understanding of task, or written directions to refer to, they usually are more productive than those who have to stop and ask for clarifications
• the more confident the student is in their ability to complete the task at hand, the more on task behavior I observed
• personality & overall school achievement has a lot to do with on-task behaviors
  

chart of behaviors will be posted soon.

Cycle Three Plans

During the next cycle I will continue to provide lessons where the students create authentic projects for authentic audiences – but students will have more choice during this cycle.

After reviewing the National Technology standards for students and my scope and sequence of skills, I determine that students still exposure to more desktop publishing skills (columns, section breaks, drop cap, customized borders) but also review some general paragraph formatting skills (indents, before/after spacing, styles, and outlines). My plan is to list these technology skills for the students and give them some options on how we can use them in a project and let them decide as a class how to demonstrate their understanding. Some of the options will be: a class newspaper, a basic website, Word tutorials, etc. By allowing students to choose the format of their project I am hoping to increase ownership and engagement in learning.

We have not covered any PowerPoint skills this semester so the final capstone project of the term will be an integrated PowerPoint and Excel project. Students will be given the opportunity to choose any educational topic that is of interest to them and one that they could teach their classmates about. First they will determine prior knowledge by designing an Excel survey about their topic. Once they have collected that information, students will design an interactive PowerPoint presentation on their chosen topic. Direct instruction of the following PowerPoint skills will be covered: opening a Word outline in PowerPoint, creating a slide master, custom animation, action buttons, and adding sound or video to PowerPoint. Each PowerPoint project from the class will be linked together on a main project so all students can view each other’s projects.

The final days of class instruction will incorporate a “Choose your own Techventure” time – where students can pick any type of technology that we have at school and work individually or in groups to explore the software tools.

Direct Instruction - Excel formulas

For the career project, I want the students to collect authentic career data to place into Excel so they can organize, analyze, and graph the results of their research.

I quickly checked to see how many students had used Excel before and when I realized that more than 2/3 were not familiar with Excel, I took a class period to stop research and teach a basic lesson in how to write formulas in Excel.

I had the students take 5 minutes to set up a simple spreadsheet that included some data so I could introduce the following functions: SUM, AVERAGE, MIN, MAX, AND COUNT. I felt like these would be the most beneficial when they began analyzing their career data. I purposely decided NOT to use their career data for this lesson because I wanted that experience to be more authentic - but later on during the lesson - I questioned this decision.

I spent most of the period demonstrating how to write a formula in Excel as the students followed along and practiced on their own computers. Most students did a good job of following the directions and I only had to stop one or twice for clarification or demonstration. Students liked learning about some of the time-saving features, like AutoSum and the copy fill handle.

At one point during the lesson I felt like I had regressed back to my old teaching habits of being the "sage on the stage". I am conflicted - on one hand the students were unfamiliar with Excel and needed some instruction to be successful - and on the other hand - I felt like I through out my constructivist methodology by NOT using authentic data and allowing them to figure it out for themselves.

Next week when I have them set up their career spreadsheets I am definitely going to explain to them what resources they have to figure out how to analyze their data and stand back and let them flounder a bit in groups to see what they can do for themselves. I think back to Vygotsky and his Zone of Proximal Development. These kids are pretty bright - and I think I have given them some basic information that will help them in their analysis but I tried not to teach them everything they needed to know - and give them a chance to teach each other.

This "letting go" is a bit harder than I thought it would be.

Direct Instruction - Word skills

Today's lesson had two goals:

1. Students wrote a survey to ask a parent, teacher, or adult friend about their career.
2. Skills focus: Word formatting, numbering, indents, and styles.

Using the career questionaire as the topic, I asked students to brainstorm and write questions they could ask a parent, teacher, or adult friend about their career. I used this lesson to teach some specific skills in Word:

• How to write their name of the paper: View / header and footer / type name and assignment name
• Quickly review keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl+S=save, Ctrl+Z=Undo, Ctrl+B=Bold
• Using the "gutter" to select one line or a paragraph
• Identifying the indent markers when you choose number formatting
• Purpose of styles, how to apply and modify them.
• Using line spacing for questionaire.

I ran out of time. On Monday I will follow up with customizing numbering styles and how to use the indent markers.

Since this format of teaching Word skills is new to me I feel that I need to make sure the students have reference information to refer to when I introduce a new concept. I have decided to add a page to our Career wiki for specific skills (ie: definitions, how to's) and add additional resources for more assistance. I will direct student to the wiki when I introduce a skill and I will base future vocabulary quizzes on this material @ http://p6compapps.wikispaces.com/Word

Observation - Lecturing vs. Doing

The Problem:
It is getting to the end of the term and I am running out of time. I still have several skills that I want the students to be able to do for their final projects but I haven't had time to cover yet. This quarter is one week shorter than the first and Food Drive and holiday events have cut into my class time. I normally give students an opportunity to practice several PowerPoint skills before they are required to use them on their final projects but I am short on time. What to do ....?

The Solution:
I am not completely happy with my solution but I have decided to have my students make a PowerPoint presentation about "How to make an effective PowerPoint presenation". This will give me opportunity to "teach" some skills ABOUT PowerPoint and the students will include this information in their projects. They will also get a chance to PRACTICE some of the skills in the project at the same time.

The Result:
At first the students seemed to like the idea that they were making their own tutorial about how to use PowerPoint. They like learning how to make screenshot to show examples of what they were writing about. But after 5 days of repeating the same thing over and over again, I could tell that some of the student were getting bored with the material. I am guilty of trying to cram too many concepts into one lesson. I should have just chosen 2-3 unique skills (ie: varying slide layouts, using the slide master, and features of custom animation) and let the students "discover" many of the other skills on their own.

I fall into the habit too often that if I don't teach it to them - they won't discover the information. I really need to embrace the constructivist point of view and create an environment where my students can discover and explore various elements of technology skills and provide them with guidance and resources to uncover the information. My mantra needs to be "guide on the side" not "sage on the stage".

Observation - Direct Instruction

Today I filmed myself instructing my students in my Computer Applications course. The intent was to get a "before" snapshot of direct instruction.

Lesson objective: Students will understand what is an Excel chart and understand the importance of choosing the best chart to represent the data. Students will learn the 4 steps of the chart wizard. Student will learn how to customize an Excel chart

Text: Learning Microsoft Office 2003, (c) 2004 Pearson Education, Inc. Exercise 17, Pages 397-402.

Procedures: I asked the students to open an Excel assignment that we worked on the day before. This assignment contained data from an in-class survey. I taught the students how to choose adjacent and non-adjacent cells for an Excel chart. I explain they needed to include both labels and values. After selecting the data, the students opened the chart wizard. Step One: Choose the Chart. We discussed the importance of choosing the appropriate chart for the data (ie, data over time might want a line graph, pie graphs are good for comparisions to the whole, etc). Step Two: Select the data series. We discussed ways to change the selected data. Step Three: Chart Options. The chart options correlate to the type of chart. We discussed picking a specific and appropriate chart title, labels for x & y axis, legends, data labels, etc. Step Four: Choose the Chart Location - either as an embedded chart or on its own sheet. I then instructed the students how to change the features (fonts, colors, alignment, etc) of the chart. At the end, each student went around to each other's computers to view the various charts.

Reflection: For most of the students, using the chart wizard was a new procedure. For the most part, students followed the direct instructions and created a successful chart by the end of the class. Here are some specific observations:

1. The students chose appropriate charts (mostly pie, bar & column)
2. 3 students did not understand the initial instructions and I had to assist them in choosing the correct data.
3. Think/Pair/Share: When I asked the students to discuss information with their neighbor, 3 sets of students did not follow the instructions.
4. Most of the students were on task and several asked for clarification on chart options.
5. Dustin seemed familiar with the procedures and worked ahead when we got to the chart wizard.
6. Scott was distracted and several times opened his Internet browser to look at pictures from the school dance.

Overall, I felt the lesson was fine. The class period consisted of me giving lots of instructions and only a little bit of student interaction. The students were on task but not all were actively engaged in the activity. Some students did not follow along with the demonstration and as a result, made mistakes that needed correction. I referred to the book but most of the instruction was oral.