PART A - Description of Need or Opportunity

Sloan*Longway is a historical museum and Science Center located off of I-475 in Flint, Michigan. Its mission is to "create engaging experiences for everyone that inspire a lifelong curiosity in history, science and technology." To fulfill this mission Sloan*Longway provides a variety of educational programming for students and adults throughout the year. In order to meet demand from local school districts, the organization offers 26 hands-on and materials rich core programs aligned to Michigan's Science and Social Studies GLCEs. These programs are taught by 3 full-time educators and 4 part-time educators. For various reasons, staff training and remediation is an ongoing problem which results in an undesirable level of program specialization within the staff.  

 In order to help allieviate this issue, I plan to create an easily assessable mulit-platform mobile solution for iOS, Android, and Windows phones. My initial concept is a series of websites that contain key program background, content, set-up, and other information that will be accessed through the phone's camera with QR Codes. Here is a brief description of QR codes from Common Craft:

I plan to create 12 websites for the top 6 science programs and the top 6 social studies programs  using free sources like Weebly, YoutTube, and other non-flash based resources.  QR code creators and readers are free so the only cost for this project will be paper and laminate.  Furthermore, using a QR reader is relatively straightforward so only minimal staff training is required. I plan to track the use of  the websites with a counter, and will provide a brief survey using Google Forms.

Here are some sites that provide information for using QR codes in training:
How to Use QR Codes in Corporate Training

5 Real Ways To Use QR Codes In Education

You and QR Codes

Saline BYOD Policy

812 Introduction Video

DaleVideoIntro_0001.wmv Watch on Posterous

Introduction Video for CEP812

CEP 812 Final Reflection

In the past I’ve viewed myself as more of a technology assistant for teachers. I’m amazed at some the creative ideas that teacher have and since I’m proficient at a technical level I can help them meet their goals.  Studying ideas like Instructional Design Principle, UDL, and Face to Face strategies gives me confidence and helps me find my own voice. 

I’ve always wondered how well I would function in a classroom with access to limited technology.  Using web based technologies allow you to extend the classroom walls and take advantage of technology that students own in their own homes.  From content delivery to projects, instructors can use the web to leverage time and resources and use classroom time for mastery and student presentations.

I think I’ve found good platforms with Weebly and myUdutu to present the content I created for 8^th US History Classrooms, and I will continue to work at that.  I had planned on using Moodle, but Weebly sites are more assessable and I can easily port myUdutu objects later on. Here is the link to Water Treatment which I created as part of CEP811. I want to use the inbuilt mics on iOS devices for projects like this, so I have to figure how to improve the audio production.

I originally intended to take a break and continue with CEP 812 in July.  However, after reviewing the July schedule at work I’ll start right back up on May 7^th.  I will continue to study the TPACK framework, UDL, and Face 2 Face strategies to the point where I can hold an in-depth conversation with them and look for ways to express myself through Instructional technology.

Online Learning

The Michigan Merit Curriculum Online Experience Guideline Companion Document provides several examples that help teachers meet Michigan's Online Experience Requirements. I've worked with most of the technologies listed at some point over the last few years and lists like this remind me of things I've forgotten about.  For me, the most valuable tool is a Learning Management System (LMS).


Unfortunately, I've haven't worked on the administrator side of Blackboard for a couple of years.  When I had the opportunity to do so I was amazed with what I could do in the environment.  The LMS is an organizational force that allows a teacher to aggregate the much of the learning experience into a single location. Every online learning experience listed in the companion document could be linked to the LMS. If used to its fullest potential the LMS can organize the day, store resources like pdf files or presentations, link external sites, embed objects, provide online discussion, and even do some grading.  Here are a few more things the LMS can do:

• Facilitate parental communication
• Supports differentiation and student choice
• Supports flipping the classroom
• Provides assignments to absent students 
• creates the potential for anywhere/anytime learning

Using the LMS to its fullest potential requires quite a bit up front work,  but after that it's more about modifying and tweaking.     

XML and RSS give us the technical ability to do the things we do like sharing and collaborating with web 2.0 technologies.  They are the engines for the online experiences and environments we want to create so it is valuable to learn about them for background knowledge and technical proficiency but there not really an online experience.  It's a few years old now, but this is my favorite video about XML and RSS are and what they do.

This entry may be referring to the use of RSS feeds to create Personal Learning Networks which aggregate several continuously updated websites (blogs, news, video, etc) at a single location. If that's the case then, for example, an ELA teacher could encourage students to create blogs and  then RSS readers for sharing and commenting.      

Wikis

For our wiki lab in CEP 811 we've been asked to do a couple of tasks. The first task involved finding our place of work on Wikipedia and changing some of the information.
I work for Sloan*Longway in the Flint Cultural Center.

Here is the original wiki posting.

Over the last year our Board and Director has stressed the importance of our Mission Statements so I added those to the Wikipedia page.

I've been using PBWiki and WikiSpaces for several years. WikiSpaces, in particular, was very helpful to me and would up being a big help for my employment at the Cultural Center. Unfortunately, I edited out quite a bit a while back. These are 3 of my active wikis.

http://daleehrhart.wikispaces.com/Resume
http://daleehrhart.wikispaces.com/VideoResume


I've been wanting to make a wiki for my favorite iOS apps and web apps for a while so I decided to begin doing that.on PBWiki. Here is the start of that feel free to edit it yourself.

A Few of My Favorite Apps

UDL Lesson Plan Evaluation

After studying the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) I evaluated the lesson plan for Solar Wars that I submitted to Merlot.  Click on the link below to see the evaluation.

UDL Guidelines: Solar Wars

I wrote this lesson plan to enable other Sloan*Longway educators to teach the Solar Wars economic simulations with older model Palm handhelds at camp-ins.  It's a duplicate of what I do with upper elementary students.  I enjoy teaching this and UDL has helped me see several ways I can improve it.