904 3.1: Mobile Learning in the Classroom

This workshop was led my J.R. Ginex-Orinion. He is a very enthusiastic and organized presenter with tons of great resources and activities for us to practice. His hyperdoc (below) was an excellent tools to push out his "assignments" to us and share information.

Throughout the workshop presentation he provided a variety of activities what we participated in. The first of these was focused on teaching us a strategy called: Question Formulation Technique (QFT) developed by The Right Question Institute (RQI). We were given a "focus" statement then asked to generate questions based on this statement which was related to mobile learning and its impact on instructional pedagogies. Initially, I was feeling instantly overwhelmed by this activity as it generally takes me a bit of processing to grasp the idea then to develop some thoughtful or meaningful question from it. However, I was able to complete the task and created 3 questions, one of which was chosen as a focus question that a few of us later researched and provided answers to. Although I struggled a bit with this, I feel this is an excellent way to push my students to become more involved in their learning. Developing leveled questioning is a focus in my district and this activity will be a great tool to meet that goal. A sample of some of our questions and the focus group's "answers" are seen below.

My submission for "answers" included 2 sites: one is an article that talks about 5 Teaching Strategies to Engage Students with Technology; and, the other is a video, "Introduction to the SAMR Model"

• The next segment of the workshop focused on learning how to "qualify" the applications that we use in the classroom for instruction and learning. This requires that we ask some key questions. Although each us may have a different purpose for using the tools and resources that we choose, so those questions might vary, it is very critical to always ask ourselves "Why" we are using them in the first place. J.R.'s (4) questions (for this purpose) are as follows:
• CAPTURE - How well does it capture student thinking?
• SORT - How well does it sort student data?
• ASSESS - How easy is it to assess student work?
• DISCUSS - How easy is it to comment, provide feedback, or allow for conversation about learning?

Our "assignment" was to select 2 apps that we currently use in our classroom and rate them according to these 4 questions. Using a "Traffic Light" method, it was easy to rate and qualify the app we those. And, he mentioned that the Apps we use will all have their advantages and disadvantages, so it isn't always necessary that they are all "Green" and meet the qualifications of all our questions.

Finally, the last task (because we ran out of time) was to create an Elevator Pitch, asking the question, "How do we focus on Content Creation vs Content Consumption with Mobile Devices?" This prompted us to imagine we were needing to "sell" the idea of technology in the classroom with 1:1 devices, to our Administrators. We were to come up with a 1 minute pitch that would help them see our vision for our students and the advantages for bringing technology into our classrooms.

Reflection

This workshop provided a great opportunity to not only share information with each other on pros and cons of different Apps and web tools, but to practice new ways that we might push out these things to our kiddos. Initially, I wasn't sure how I'd enjoy the session since I feel that some of these can be a bit repetitive as far as Apps we use in our classroom. However, I was pleasantly surprised and even pushed out of my comfort zone a bit with a couple of the activities, which is a good thing!

There were several Apps that I am familiar with and use regularly as well as others that I am very interested in looking into; one of these is Educreation which is a teacher tool that may be used to show videos and slides with voice-over to use in a blended or flipped learning activities. This type of tools can be very powerful for students as they have more control over when and where they do their learning; and, can always go back for review as needed.

This workshop was very hands-on and, I feel, very worth the 2 1/2 hours of time invested!