Connect with Dr. Jennifer Miller-Ray

About Dr. Miller-Ray

Author: Dr. Jennifer Miller-Ray

  • Improving Instructional Design

    How do you understand the differences between advanced and basic instructional design?

    Advanced instructional design pushes student intrinsically to create meaningful and real world connections, using building blocks, to acquire new knowledge.  Instructional design is more than just presenting information to students.  It is the ability to provide students with the need to learn more.  Advanced instructional design allows for learners to have clear goals, utilizing a variety of perspectives, to allow for students to generate questions and to understand different points of view.  Good instructional design extends the learning environment to include an efficient process .  Learning technologies can extend the learning environment and give students the ability to consume, evaluate and produce knowledge in a social environment.  21st communication opportunities take instructional design to an entirely new level.  Advanced instructional design utilizes alternative assessments and provides ongoing student led evaluation or reflections. Creative elements are used to differentiate learner experiences to produce a positive outcome.

    Challenge based learning is an area that I am very interested in exploring.  Advanced instructional design must be meaningful to the student, and I feel this is one way to give content meaning.  Students need a wider audience to develop critical thinking skills, to evaluate information after reviewing a variety of perspectives, and to propose or contribute their interpretations to a wider audience.

  • This is a great way to get kids to create and think about STEM.

  • Exploring MUVEs in K12 Environments

    Working with an atmosphere of high stakes testing, time needed to direct students towards instructional engaging students using MUVE (Multi-User Virtual Environments) is limited.  How can leaders promote the use of MUVE in an after school program?  Would such a program be engaging?  Would students gain valuable knowledge participating in after school instructional MUVEs?

    MUVE’s can foster collaboration and learning communities.  Jones & Warren’s (2011) study demonstrates tough challenges facing K12 teachers interested in pursing MUVE integration approaches, with only one of nine research participants able to move forward to utilize a MUVE with students.  Little research can be found to support integration of MUVEs in the K12 classroom, and there is a strong need to show that such environments improve academic yearly progress (p. 6).

    Sardone & Devlin‐Scherer (2008) point out that developers often fail to consider learning processes and first consider the user not the learning process.  Further research on learning outcomes is needed in this area.  Students do spend a lot of time after school accessing participating in a MUVEs.  Could developers and ed tech corporations leverage games and MUVEs to produce a more knowledgable society by considering first the learning process during design?   How can we leverage after school K12 time using MUVE’s to enrich learning experiences?  The market exists.   Perhaps a generation of STEAM learning designers, scientists, programmers and digital artists are needed.  It would be very interesting to have students recreate history like the example here, Teachers Discovering History As Historians.

    Are you interested in virtual gaming in an after school tutorial program?  Here are some K12 resources.

    Multi User Environment Educational Resources

    MindCraft Educational Resources

    Jones, G. & Warren, S. J. (2011), ‘Issues and Concerns of K-12 Educators on 3-D Multi-User Virtual Environments in Formal Classroom Settings.’, IJGCMS 3 (1) , 1-12 .

    Sardone, N. B., & Devlin‐Scherer, R. (2008). Teacher candidates’ views of a multi‐user virtual environment (MUVE). Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 17(1), 41–51. doi:10.1080/14759390701847484

  • Creating Young Authors

    How do you get kids interested in writing?  You might consider having your students create an ebook or ibook and sharing best examples with the school, parents, or community to encourage reading.  Today anyone with a computer or device that connects with the Internet can create an ebook, which is great news for students.  Students can build their own reference works and become young authors to publish and share stories with the world. 

     

    1. It is very simple to create an ePub book in Pages on your Mac.   ePub documents can be shared with your iPod, iPad, or iPhone.  http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4168  Teachers doing this many times will share files on their blog or school web page with parents to encourage reading.
    2. iBooks Author is a free app that allow students or you to create Multi-Touch books for your iPad.   I know many of you that worked STEAM camp last year have a teacher iPad and students have access to iPads at the intermediate.  I encourage you to play with this app because it is really fun and students can really get creative.  http://www.apple.com/ibooks-author/  
    3. Storybird is a great way to have a collaborative, groups of 2, work together to create a story.  Students choose from a collection of art to be inspired to write stories.    After students select art, students are able to build their story by dragging and dropping pictures and creating a story to match the artwork chosen.  Some teachers even partner with another teacher’s classroom from another country. 
    4. 4.       Presentation software can be used to create ebooks.  You can create an ebook in Keynote on a Mac or PowerPoint on a PC.
    5. Simple Booklet lets student authors combine text, images, videos, and audio files.  There is a commercial and education version.  The education option offers the benefits of commercial features without cost to teachers.  Students can share their eBook by embedding it into a webpage or providing the unique link generated for your booklet.  http://simplebooklet.com/index-sb.php#
    6.  Scribble Press:  http://www.scribblepress.com/
    7. Scribblitt:  http://www.scribblitt.com/

  • Global Education Conference Reflection

    It was wonderful to have students in my community giving international input on how the invention of the  STEAM engine continues to engages all of us to think critically, create, and contribute ideas.  The global education conference was a fantastic free experience that connected a small rural community of learners in Dublin to the international community of passionate educators interested in connecting classrooms to improve the learning experience of others.

    Did you miss out?  No worries, all programs were recorded and can be accessed at the Global Education Conference Website.   I encourage you to listen, connect and learn from people interested in  challenging schools to improve.

    Dublin 4th Grade GT students researched the invention of the STEAM and considered how this invention has shaped life in our rural community and globally.  Each student created a slide a short presentation to share with the international community.  Dublin Elementary students visited their local museums to find a local artifact or inventor that was a direct spin off from the invention of the STEAM engine.  Students used animoto to create a video celebrating STEAM that will be placed in our community museum.

    The Special

    Ben Hogan: STEAM Inventor

    Dublin High School students reflected on STEAM in photoshop and created digital art to celebrate the anniversary of STEAM.  Examples can be seen below.

     

  • Improving the Value Added Model of Public Education

    How do we measure the value of learning experiences? Student enrollment, classroom grade performance, standardized test scores, job placement, and completion rate are all variables researchers examine to try to better address school improvement.  How do educational technology products improve the overall learning experience for students?  With so many approaches to addressing the need for improvement, we continue to rely on task oriented activities and solutions, which students fail to understand.  Often these approaches and solutions lack meaning.  Is value purely economic or social?  Why is education important?  What should students learn?  Why shouldn’t we raise expectations?  Many agree that change is needed.  The current system is leaving so many students without economic opportunity and students fail to see the purpose or lack interest in becoming “enlightened.”

    Dialogue, discourse, and collaboration are key to understanding how information can be used to solve a problem and classroom environments, both online and face to face, should be encouraged.

    Crabbe (2007) suggests the following instructional guidelines to assist in adding learning value to tasks, which gives students the ability to manage learning and view learning as an opportunity.  “Provide direct instruction in the big picture of how to add private learning value to tasks by presenting the full range of language learning opportunities.  Do not assume that one public performance on a task is ever sufficient. A task is a starting point—a learner should understand how to add value to the task themselves. Frequently model in class time on how to add value to tasks by identifying and demonstrating specific private learning activities deriving from the public part of the task. Provide independent study time to try these activities in class and explain their anticipated effects.  Give time for learners to discuss difficulties experienced in their performance on a task and how they might address those difficulties through rehearsal.  Discuss affective factors that might affect opportunity take-up, particularly lack of self-confidence, uncertainty of goal, feeling foolish. Suggest strategies to overcome these inhibiting factors.  Write private learning opportunities into materials so that they become an explicit part of the script and thus prompts for teachers to explore the opportunities with learners.  Give status to private learning by assessing the learners on how well or how often they have taken up opportunities, possibly through learning logs” (Crabbe, 2007, p. 120-122).

    Crabbe, D. (2007). Learning opportunities: adding learning value to tasks. ELT Journal, 61(2), 117–125. doi:10.1093/elt/ccm004

    Ken Robinson: Changing education paradigms

  • STEAM…..Teaching to Foster Creativity……

    Digital technology is driving users to rethink how to create by introducing students to new styles, modes, and audiences. Students can now engage as creators, producers, contributors, users and evaluators in the social and professional environment. Tillander (2011) encourages art educators to not ignore the opportunities available, which is fostering a cultural revolution. Giving students the opportunity to contribute thoughts or reflections from research in a social context gives meaning to content. Teachers can now expose students to a variety of perspectives, which fosters critical thinking using Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy (p. 44-45). Allison (2012) encourages teachers to consider the following questions when evaluating the creative potential of existing curriculum and materials. “Is it possible for students to develop than one idea in this context? Is it possible for students to develop more than one type of idea in this context? Do students have the content knowledge necessary to successfully generate creative ideas? Do students have sufficient time and information to think through their creative ideas and communicate them” (p. 55). How do we teach creativity? As we attempt to understand issues and redesign instructional approaches, encouraging the arts across PK-16 would be an excellent start towards answering that question.

    Celebrating STEAM Resources

    Tillander, M. (2011). Creativity, technology, art, and pedagogical practices. Art Education, 64(1), 40-46. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/847386915?accountid=7113 Allison, A. M. (2012).

    Teaching for creativity. The Science Teacher, 79(5), 54-56. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1023451500?accountid=7113

  • Artificial Morality Questions

    Who decides on what is ideal?  What is rational?  Aristotle’s ideas of rationality for mankind may be “threatened when humans begin to behave irrationally when their interests are threatened and they begin to have to deal with beings/entities they perceive as different from themselves” (Anderson, 2007). 

    Artificial morality is impossible because humans will never be completely ethical.  Anderson (2007) clarifies why Isaac Asimov’s “three laws of robotics” published in his 1976 novel “Bicentennial Man” is an unsatisfactory approach to new ethical challenges facing humans and machines.  Asimov’s offered the following rules for artificial intelligence: “A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.  A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the first law.  A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second law” (p. 478).   Anderson (2007) explains how artificial morality will be problematic for humans to program and adhere to Asimov’s rules.  In addition, it would be a hard sale for humans to allow machines to ethically advise them (Anderson, 2007, p. 477-478).

    Who decides on how the supreme prophet bot interprets past experiences?  To address these issues we must first decide on a universal ethical theory and apply these theories consistently.  As the rapid progression of new technologies continues, huge concerns and challenges are facing societies in regards to artificial morality. Will future man happily abide robotic intelligence or will the threat of intelligence higher then our own force mankind to destroy this intelligence?  Will robots be created in our own image:  imperfect, dangerous, and unpredictable? 

    Anderson, S. L. (2007). Asimov’s “three laws of robotics” and machine metaethics. Ai & Society, 22(4), 477–493. doi:10.1007/s00146-007-0094-5

    Coeckelbergh, M. (2011). Can we trust robots? Ethics and Information Technology, 14(1), 53–60. doi:10.1007/s10676-011-9279-1

    Dodig Crnkovic, G., & Çürüklü, B. (2011). Robots: ethical by design. Ethics and Information Technology, 14(1), 61–71. doi:10.1007/s10676-011-9278-2

    Social Robots NOVA  

  • Considering the Science of Phenomenology and Linguistic Analysis in Learning Technologies

    How do students learn?  How can we continue to foster creative thinking?  Children who are very young are full of questions and often eager to explore and learn.  How does the physical classroom environment and school experience influence learning?

    How does the examination of life experiences contribute to learning?  How can learning technology improve data capture and themes in a K12 environment?

     

     

    Østergaard, Dahlin, & Hugo (2008)  discuss how phenomenological can be used during lab observation exercises.  “Teachers need to establish forums in which the diversity of interpretations can be discussed and contrasted with the canonical views, which the teacher may have to contribute him- or herself.  Phenomenology has a considerable potential as a method for investigating learning as a whole.  (Østergaard, Dahlin, & Hugo, 2008).

     

  • Three Minute Motivators

    Excellent ideas

     

    Three Minute Motivators.