Digital Age I
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Digital Age 2 Course Dave Moursund's ICT in Education Home Page Oregon Technology in Education Council Search Engine

Homework Assignments & Assessment

The individual term project titled Hit the Road Running. This is an ongoing term long project. Electronic Journaling due weekly starting in week 2.
The team term project titled Roles of ICT in Specific Disciplines. Oral presentation and written report due during the last week of the term (the week before final exam week).
(Minor assignment.) This will be a writing assignment. Topic and due date has not yet been determined.
(Minor assignment.) Prepare for and participate in the Exit Interview. This occurs after the last class meeting of the term.

Summary of Graded Activities

The number and nature of the graded activities for the course will be somewhat "emergent." Thus, while the ideas given below will guide course assessment, there may well be changes to, additions to, or deletions from the activities discussed below. Here is a "first draft" of the number of points that are available on the various graded activities that are initially being planned for the course.

Course grades will be based on the percent of points earned. The (tentative) grading scale is:

The class will be divided into teams of approximately two students each. Each team will have a different one of the following general areas:

• Art
• Math
• Music
• Reading
• Social Science
• Science
• Writing
• Other discipline areas can be negotiated with the course instructor.

There are two specific goals for each team:

1. To develop a significant level of expertise in roles of ICT at the K-5 grade levels in one specific discipline that is an important curriculum strand. Each team member will gain a level of ICT expertise within their team's discipline area that is well above that of other people in the class, that is really well above that of students in their cohort who are not in the ICT specialization, and that is really well above that of most current teachers. This means that you will have ICT knowledge and skills in this discipline that are immediately applicable and useful in teaching and that can make a significant difference in the quality of education that your students will receive in the area of your team's discipline.
2. To develop and disseminate (in writing and through inclass presentation) a set of materials that are specifically designed to help your fellow teachers (and people like your fellow teachers) as they work to gain increased ICT-related expertise within the discipline your team is addressing. Success in this endeavor will be shown by your fellow students in the class having significant increased knowledge and skills, and a good set of resources, for use of ICT in the discipline that your team is covering.

In summary, your goal is to gain a significant level of practical, useful expertise in ICT within a specific discipline and to share what you have learned.

Here are some ideas that each team must carefully consider. There is no specified length for the final paper, but it must be long enough to carefully cover the ideas in this list.

1. Start with a careful discussion of what your discipline is. What distinguishes it from other disciplines? What constitutes increasing expertise within the discipline? What are Standards or widely accepted goals for K-5 education in this discipline at the state and national levels? Your team's paper should include details that help to define the specific discipline it covers. In our course we have placed considerable emphasis on a broad-based definition of a discipline, and on problem-solving being an essential and core component of each discipline. Thus, you will want to make it very clear what the goals of education are within your discipline from a problem solving and higher-order cognitive point of view.
2. Give careful thought to the ideas of Discipline-Specific Content and Discipline-Specific Maturity. In our course we have discussed a number of examples that help to differentiate "content" from "maturity." For example, content in history certainly includes lots of names, places, dates, and events. Maturity overlays this with: understanding; causality; generating and testing hypotheses; finding, reading; and making effective use of multiple sources of information, including primary resources; and so on. In math, you are certainly familiar with a number of different components of math content. Maturity includes topics and ideas such as: recognizing problem situations that might make effective use of math; problem posing; transfer of math learning form the classroom setting to other setting; and so on. See page 6, and then pages 21-23 of Moursund, D.G. (2004). Improving Math Education in Elementary Schools: A Short Book for Teachers. Access at http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~moursund/Math/El Math Book.pdf. Your team's paper should specifically address this issue. Thus, I expect to find a section in your paper in which you discuss content and you discuss maturity. I am also expecting you to discuss roles of ICT in content and maturity in your discipline. One way to think about this is in terms of a Discipline-Specific Piagetian Cognitive Development Scale. What roles will ICT play in helping your students move up a Discipline-Specific Piagetian Cognitive Development Scale? (This is illustrated in the math materials made available to you. See Moursund's November 2004 book available at http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~moursund/Math/. Math content knowledge and skills, and math maturity are two different aspects of math expertise. If there is a math group, it will have an advantage over other groups in this specific aspect of the project.)
3. Roles of ICT in your discipline's curriculum content, instructional processes (that is, pedagogy), and assessment. Curriculum, instruction, and assessment provide an umbrella for much of what a teacher does. For your specific discipline, do a careful analysis of how ICT is impacting (could be impacting, should be impacting) the content, the teaching, and the assessment. In the individual meeting that I had with each team, we explored examples of various aspects of this task. For example, in reading students now need to learn to read interactive hypermedia documents. This is a different reading task than reading non interactive, non hypermedia documents. For example, in reading hypermedia, how do you know when you are through reading? In reading interactive documents, how do you decide whether to branch off by using a clickable button or piece of text? In writing, ICT has brought us new genres (including instant messaging with all kinds of abbreviations). In science, ICT has brought us computational biology, chemistry, physics, and so on. Indeed, in each discipline one must now consider "computer modeling and simulation" as a potential important aspect of the content. In all disciplines, the Web (thought of as a global library) has brought the content area of information retrieval within the content area. In all disciplines, ICT can solve or greatly help in solving some of the problems in the discipline. This provides potential problem-solving content in each discipline. In terms of content, what ICT-related content is (or in your opinion should be) part of the curriculum content? What discipline-specific aspects of information retrieval via the Web can and should students be learning in this discipline? In terms of pedagogy, be specific. Provide your reader with solid, useful, readily available materials, examples, ideas, and so on. For example, it is not sufficient to say that Highly Interactive Intelligent Computer-Assisted Learning materials exist that have proven very effective in helping students to learn XXX (your discipline). What is actually available, what research supports its effectiveness, what does it cost, how widely is it used, and so on. What ICT knowledge and skills does the teacher need, and what do the students need, to make effective use of the materials? The section about pedagogy seem relatively complete to me. But, here is a specific example. In music, ICT provides us with new instruments. It also provides us with tools that allow for displaying music, editing music, and listening to the results. This is a powerful aid to teaching and learning. It is somewhat similar to the idea in the teaching of writing of displaying a written document and then working with students to edit the document. In terms of assessment, how does one assess the ICT-related aspects of curriculum and instruction in this discipline? When discussing software, to the extent possible make use of software that is available free on the Web or is highly likely to be available in a typical elementary school. We spent time discussing authentic assessment. How might ICT be used to increase the authenticity of assessment in your discipline? As students learn to make use of ICT to help solve the problems and accomplish the tasks in your discipline, how might this new knowledge and skill be assessed?
4. Your paper must have a significant annotated bibliography. Items mentioned in the annotated bibliography must be items that are discussed in the body of the report. By now, I assume that you all know what I mean by an annotated bibliography. Annotations need to be complete enough so that the reader can decide if the reference is worth accessing. A somewhat different approach is to make the annotation sufficiently detailed so that if the specific reference is not available (for example, if the Website is no longer available) the reader can use the description in the annotation to effectively search for alternative references that cover the same topic.
5. Part of the project is to prepare and present a high quality presentation to the class. This will be about a half hour in length. You must make effective use of multimedia in this presentation, and you must have a short handout for audience members. This handout is not your full report—it is a short handout designed to help the audience follow, and learn from your presentation. One to two pages should suffice for the short handout. Typically, a copy of a set of "slides" (for example, PowerPoint slides) is not a particularly good handout. It is better than nothing. However, slides have the goal of focussing attention on very specific topics to be covered and are often highly abbreviated (for example, a slide might show a few key words rather than a sentence that conveys an idea).

Make enough copies of your complete paper so that each person in the class can have a copy. The complete papers can be distributed on the last day of class. The short handouts must be distributed before your group begins its presentation.

Samples of Attendance & Reading Quizzes

Typically each class meeting will begin with an Attendance & Reading Quiz. Half of the points are awarded for being in attendance at the time of the quiz. Half of the points are awarded for the content of your written response to the quiz questions. Here is the rubric that is used.

Here are some samples of Attendance and reading Quizzes given in recent years. Note that these were 10 point activities, and that the number of points assigned to these activities is different for Fall Term 2004. Also note that the course content is quite a bit different this year than it has been in the past. Thus, the main value of these examples is to give you some idea of the nature and difficulty of quizzes.

Digital Age Education 1 Fall 2002: Attendance Readings Quiz for Week Number 1 and 2, 10/10/02 (10 Points)

Printed name (Last, First) __________________________________

The reading assignment for last week and this week included the following two editorials written by Moursund:

Moursund, D.G. (August-September 1999). Ten powerful ideas shaping the present and future of IT in education. Editor's Message, Learning and Leading With Technology. Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology in Education.

Moursund, D.G. (October 2000). Roles of ICT in improving our educational system. Part 2: Compelling applications. Editor's Message, Learning and Leading With Technology. Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology in Education.

Select one of these two articles and:

1. Write a short paragraph summarizing the main idea(s) in that article. The intent is to show that you carefully read the article and remember the main ideas.
2. Write a short paragraph discussing the relevance and importance (or, the lack of relevance and the unimportance) of the article with respect to K-5 education. The goal is you show that you have thought about the article with respect to your goal of becoming an elementary school teacher.

DAE1 Fall 2001: Attendance & Reading Quiz for 10/4/01

Printed name (Last, First) ___________________________________

As part of the readings for weeks 1 and 2 of this course, you were asked to spend time browsing the following five Web sites:

Eisenhower National Clearinghouse for Mathematics & Science Education [Online]. Accessed 9/20/01: http://www.enc.org/.

Federal Resources for Educational Excellence (FREE) [Online]. Accessed 9/20/01: http://www.ed.gov/free/.

Oregon Technology in Education Council (OTEC) [Online]. Accessed 9/20/02: http://otec.uoregon.edu/.

SouthEast Initiatives Regional Technology in Education Consortium [Online]. Accessed 9/20/01: http://www.serve.org/seir-tec/.

U.S. Library of Congress [Online]. Accessed 9/20/01: http://www.loc.gov/.

Select one of the five sites. Discuss its contents in enough depth to show you have reasonable insight into the contents of the site. Also, discuss the contents from a personal, constructivist point of view. That is, explain the meaning of constructivism by illustrating constructivism in action as you browsed the website you have selected and then thought about it again as you are doing this writing.

DAE1 Fall 2001: Attendance & Reading Quiz for 10/11/01

Printed name (Last, First) _____________________________

There were three reading assignments for this past week:

Lemke, C. and Couglin, E. (1998). Technology in American schools: Seven dimensions for gauging progress [Online].

National Educational Technology Standards for Students [Online.) (1998). Eugene, OR: ISTE.

Moursund, D.G. (April 1999). Enhance your opportunities to learn: A different slant on professional development. Learning and Leading With Technology. pp. 4-5. Eugene, OR: ISTE.

Make up a higher order cognitive skills question that is designed to test knowledge of one or more of these readings--and answer it.

DAE1 Fall 2001: Attendance & Reading Quiz for 10/18/01

Printed name (Last, First) ___________________________________

One of the assigned readings for this week was:

SEIR•TEC (May 1999). Factors influencing the effective use of technology for teaching and learning: Lessons learned from the SEIR•TEC intensive site schools. SouthEast and Island Regional Technology in Education Consortium. [Online]. Accessed 10/16/01: http://www.serve.org/seir-tec/publications/lessons.html.

Select one Big Idea from this document that seems particular important to you. Select a different Big Idea from the previous weeks of this course that seems particularly important to you. Compare, contrast, and in other ways analyze your two Big Ideas from the point of view of how each might be useful to you (personally) as a teacher working to improve education through appropriate use of ICT.

Digital Age Education Fall 2000: Attendance Quiz for Week Number 5, 10/26/00

Printed name (Last, First) __________________________________

Give a careful 4-part definition of the term "well-defined problem" (as defined in the readings for this week). Then give an example of a well-defined problem that you have encountered within the past few months. Explain how your "problem" meets each of the four criteria for a well-defined problem.

Digital Age Education Fall 2000: Attendance Quiz for Week Number 7, 11/9/00

Printed name (Last, First) __________________________________

Everett Rogers writes about adoption of innovations. Gordon Moore is known for a "law" predicting the rate of change of chip technology. The readings for this week covered these two topics.

Briefly discuss the work of Rogers and Moore, and then provide some insights into how they relate to our educational system.

Digital Age Education Attendance Fall 2000: Quiz for Week Number 8, 11/16/00

Printed name (Last, First) __________________________________

Briefly define what it means when a teacher functions as a "guide on the side" rather than as a "sage on the stage." Then explain how constructivism and how project-based learning related to the two terms "guide on the side" and "sage on the stage."

Rubric for Written Components of Assignments

In this course, a variety of assignments require writing. For each written activity, it is expected that you will make use of appropriate word processing and desktop publication procedures, and that you will turn in electronic copy. Perhaps the two most important aspects of this are: 1) You develop an appropriate "style sheet" for the document you are writing and use it appropriately; and 2) You make use of common desktop publication practices such as a first line indent at the start of a paragraph (not to be accomplished by use of a tab), one blank space between sentences, and no "carriage returrn" types of spacing except for at the end of a paragraph.

The following is a general purpose rubric, lacking details needed to align it with a specific assignment. The idea being put forth here is that an assignment is scored and assigned points on the basis of a rubric. The rubric given below is for a 10-point assignment. A corresponding scaling of points would be used for an assignment with a larger or smaller number of possible points. Note that points will be subtracted for assignments turned in late except when the conditions for "turning in late assignments without loss of points" are met. Note also that "knowledge and skills" being demonstrated in a written assignment include desktop publication, no matter what the specific topic area of the assignment.

Rubric for Multimedia and Handouts for In-class Presentations

Some assignments require you to make an in-class presentation to the whole class. These presentations will be graded on a combination of content, effectiveness of the presentation, appropriate use of multimedia, and hardcopy materials for the audience.

In all such presentations, you are expected to make appropriate and effective use of multimedia presentations aids. Each presenter is expected to demonstrate the ability to set up and use the multimedia.

In a formal presentation to a group it is common to use multimedia and also to have an appropriate hardcopy handout. In this course, we will assume that the in-class presentations that use multimedia will be accompanied by appropriate hardcopy handouts. When preparing your hardcopy handout, be aware that a copy of your "slides" is seldom an adequate handout. That is because slides are designed to accompany and support an oral presentation, while hardcopy is designed to be read without the help of an accompanying oral presentation.

In both the multimedia presentation and the hardcopy handout, your name and contact information (such as email address) should be included.

Details on how we handle the multimedia presentations will emerge as the course progresses. In the past, a class has often had one or more students who were especially competent in setting up multimedia presentation hardware facilities, and these students often did setups for the other students. This is no longer acceptable.

The oral (in class) presentation will be assessed on criteria such as:

• Quality of handouts outlining/summarizing the presentation. These handouts should capture the key ideas and findings and should be given out before the start of the in-class presentation, or at the time of the start of this presentation. A major goal of the presentation is to have the audience learn the key findings resulting from the team's work.
• Quality of content of the presentation. Make sure that the important ideas from your team's project are presented in a clear and concise manner.
• The presentation should make appropriate use of presentation media. Teams are responsible for setting up the presentation facilities and dealing with difficulties that may arise.
• Each person on the team should play a significant role in the presentation. Roughly speaking, each person should play an equal role. It is helpful (and desirable) to have a rehearsal before doing the actual in class presentation. The overall quality, organization--"having your team's act in gear" for the presentation--is one of the assessment criteria.
• Leave time for questions at the end. Thus, plan and budget your time.

The following is a general purpose rubric, lacking details needed to align it with a specific assignment. The idea being put forth here is that an assignment is scored and assigned points on the basis of a rubric. The rubric given below is for a 10-point assignment. A corresponding scaling of points would be used for an assignment with a larger or smaller number of possible points.

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Exit Interview

There will be an individually scheduled half-hour "Exit Interview" scheduled for each student at the end of the term. A variety of time slots will be available on the Friday after the last day of class, and during Final Exam week. Students will be asked to carry on a conversation on topics such as:

1. What are some quite specific things that this course (including your time and constructivist efforts) contributed to you being better able to improve the quality of education that will be received by students you will work with during your student teaching and your first year on the job? Be specific.
2. For you, personally, what were some of the most useful parts of the course?
3. For you, personally, what were some of the least useful parts of the course?

This will be a 15-point graded activity, using the following rubric: