Professional Growth

My career and life has changed so rapidly it has been difficult to keep pace with my education, research interests and professional experiences.

I begin this doctorial process as a math teacher, moved rapidly toward technology, diverted to augmented reality's, researched and contributed to the advancement of virtual environments in a classroom and flopped back into teaching math.

From one perspective it may look circular and not productive, but if one views this, with your left eye squinted,from the side and the bottom, you might see a spiral. This spiral has a large opening, but continues to move in a smaller circular pattern toward one specific point.

From my professional experiences a timeline forms along the edge of the spiral, making the journey long and arduous. My experiences begin in the cohort and learning the intricacies of online learning and the design method of instruction and planning, slowly winding through research coursework.

Math Teacher and Technology User

From this path I had a career change to the position of ITRT in the district I work in. With a new school opening I was very busy with helping others to understand using technology in their classrooms. In this position I also had the unique opportunity to meet and work with many similar colleagues from around the the state of Virginia through the North Tier Consortium. This group of Northern Virginia schools, with the help of a grant, offered technology professional development to teachers around the Northern VA area. I became my district's representative, and the avenues of exploration began to open again. The spiral grows tighter as I was able to become a trained online facilitator for North Tier and I was tasked with creating a course to be added to the professional development catalog.

Technology Facilitator and Designer

In the summer of 2009. I helped create a course titled Games, Simulations and Virtual Environments. This course allows teachers to gain the hands-on experience for using these tools in the classroom to aide in classroom instruction. In creating the course, I used a constructivist methodology. Teachers had to experience and use the sites and activities to better understand how they can help in the classroom. These layered hands-on type of activities gave experience and meaning to the situations we placed them in with the course. It was through discussions and interactions with their classmates they were able to find the relevance for instruction.

Virtual Environment Advocate

All the while, I had been investigating and researching the virtual environments which exists. I had been teaching a class called personal finance, which had become very successful, very quickly. In this course I found a virtual environment to use in conjunction with teaching the course. I became so involved with the program, I formed a relationship with the creators and developers of the virtual environment we were using. I convinced these same developers to attend a conference I was presenting at with a student about their program. We had many positive comments and many other districts and school who began using their curriculum. The program directors attend the conference the next year as full time exhibitors and expanded their users again. This has been the most satisfying experience of my professional career. Helping this virtual environment to grow and introducing thousands of users and teachers to a new concept in learning personal finance.

Virtual Environments Researcher

This is the spark which fuels my desired research. As I follow others who have blazed research trails into using games, simulations and virtual environments, I have discovered newly created branches of organizations, special interest groups, and peer-reviewed periodicals which fuel this spark. I want to add to this talented pool with my research using this virtual environment as a treatment to learn good habits for teaching students personal finance. My hope is this will make smarter investors and financially success adults.

For all of my projects in my research courses I have focused on incorporating some aspect of virtual environments into my coursework. My most recent in Qualitative Learning is shown below.

Project EDRS 812 Fall 2010

Introduction/Overview

During the course in Qualitative Methods Research in Education, I completed a final project in which I interviewed 6 students on their use and experience with using a virtual environment to learn personal finance.

Project Goals

During this project it was my goal to understand intricacies of qualitative research. This projected helped me combine coursework with practical qualitative research methodologies as it applied to high school students and interview techniques.

Evidence

This project took my coursework to my classroom as I was able to interview these students in a school setting about an expertise from the classroom. Here is the final project.

What Worked/Modifications

What worked well was my technology. I used a tablet devise and an app to record conversations with the students. This made transcribing the conversations very easy. As for modifications, I learned questioning teenagers required more strategy and direct questioning. Student responses where ambiguous and evasive to say the least. Students used phrases such as "cool" and "stuff" for responses. It was difficult to get them to expand on their replies. Interview questioning for teens needs to be much more refined.

Summary

I really enjoyed this project even with the amount of work that went into recording and transcribing interviews. But I come away with a greater appreciation for for my research topic and for qualitative research in general. I hope to take this and move toward a dissertation proposal involving a pilot study.

Practicum Project EDIC 791Spring 2009

Introduction/Overview

This lesson is to be taught at Kettle Run High School, in a level 3 Earth Science class.  The make-up of our 728 students consists of predominately 86% white, 7% Black, 5% Hispanic, and 2% other.  We are a new school and do not have a senior class.  The majority of students in the class taking part in the project are 9th graders.  In this class, taught in one semester on a 4x4 block, students learn the Earth Science curriculum and are prepared to take the VA Earth Science SOL at the conclusion of the course.

Classroom Project Goals

The River City Project is a simulation embedded in Activeworlds.  This program, created by Harvard University’s Chris Dede, allows students to transport back in time to help the town of River City.  The citizens of River City are falling ill, and the Mayor is asking the student to use modern scientific skills to identify the cause of their troubles.  This matches the practices in the Earth Science curriculum of Scientific Investigation (VA ES.1e and ES 2 standards a-e) and my goal for their learning objectives.  Students are then transported back to River City and through their avatar. They explore the simulation and begin to use and understand the concepts of inference and deduction. 
The students move through the time period of October 1878, January 1879, April 1879, July 1879 a control World and an experimental world also in 1879.  When in each month students gain an in-depth understanding of a scientific concept.  Students use an in-world guide to assist them with questions, observations, and ways to disseminate information gathered in River City.  In the Control and Experiment Worlds students test their theories and prove or disprove their hypothesis, students are expected to report to the mayor their findings for each month and make recommendations to the mayor on how to improve the standard of living for the citizens of River City.
For this project students used laptops for at least 45 minutes an day for about 3 weeks.  As to not take away from too much instructional time, students had their Earth Science class work to resolve first then could enter into River City.  River City software was downloaded to the laptops and the students used the wireless connection to access the Internet and Activeworlds.  My goals were simple, as with all technology, to keep the computers running so students could access their material.  As with all lessons which involve technology, we had our glitches, but for the most part the technology worked well. 
Not knowing the students as well as my co-operating teacher, I was unsure of their ability levels and needed time to ascertain their skills.  The irony of this is it took me longer to learn their names than it did for them to learn the basic controls of River City.  The class was a level 3 (average) and many students had lower reading levels.  But the River City program lends itself to exploration and self discovery and a majority of the students needed little help.  I was the one who need time to acclimate.  My aspirations were to give the students an exciting way to learn, experience, and succeed in the ways of the scientific method.  For some students, my simple goal turned into a 3 week love affair with science and exploration.
In this project I hope to gain a comprehensive understanding of using multi-user virtual environments.  It is my wish to expand the use of virtual worlds and simulations in the classroom first to my school and then district wide. 
In River City, there are imbedded assessments scatter throughout the six worlds, and these assessments along with notebook entries and chat logs are emailed daily to me.  This data is then used to compile a daily class work score for the students.  A spread sheet with all the activities listed is used to keep record of the student’s interactions and completion of activities for each of the months in the program.  Students will also take a pre and post test on 8th grade SOL material.  Score will be reported to see if any improvement in their grade. 
Teachers will also add reflections and observations of student behavior and actions when using River City.  These notes will be added.  In looking at the grades and reflections of teachers, I am hoping to glean insight into students learning.  I am interested to note if the simulations help the students to transfer scientific methodologies to other material in the Earth Science curriculum. 

Quantitative Evidence:

The following chart is a portion of a chart used to identify completion of sections in River City.  The first short area is the tasks for the first month of October.  Here students need to learn to move around and become acclimated to the Activeworlds interface.

Students also took a pre-test and post-test on a 30 question 8th grade SOL, material relating to science inquiry.  The test results show a grade before working in River City and then after completing River City.

The results show, the majority of the students tested better after working in River City, and made better choices with regards to questions involving the scientific method.

Qualitative Evidence:

Much of the qualitative evidence comes from chat logs emailed by the River City organizers.  Every conversation and entry into their notebooks and chat boxes was recorded and sent to my email on a daily basis.  These conversations in the beginning were very entertaining to say the least.
        A Tale of Two Classrooms:  In trying to explain the learning in room 256, one would assume, there are two separate classes or teachers.  When the bell rings, students are noisily bustling around preparing for the days’ lesson.  The teacher takes roll and reviews the lesson objective for the day.  After an initial instruction the students mill around the room and clog areas for the lab they must complete.  After a deafening and dust raging 45 minutes, the classroom magically transforms to a calm temple like atmosphere as the students log onto their computers.  Once this change occurs, the noises heard are the occasional ticking of keys and the random giggle of an amused student.  However, the initial energy of the bustling classroom is morphed into palatable energy of online learning.  The only evidence of the work these students are completing will be delivered by email at 2 in the morning.
Which room/lesson learned more?  During one lesson a sub walked in announced “why do these students get to play games?”  As this was the end of the class they looked up at the sub, looked at me, smiled, and went back to work.  Without missing a beat, the sub learned firsthand about the roles of using simulations in a class for at least 40 minutes.
Teacher Observations:  In working in the Earth Science class chosen, there were two other teachers in a collaborative setting.  Having these teachers’ insights was a valuable experience. One collaborative teacher noted this from the first day of the session:
The look on their faces changed from involved, but not enthused when they were working on the computer the first half of class, to intently participating when working on River City.  Students are sitting up straighter, if they could fit themselves into the screen, they would.
Positive chatter concerning observations among students increased."I'm over by the river." "What's that in the street?" "Why do people throw that stuff in the river?"

Side note here, students were reminded to type in chat and not shout out.  They needed to learn to communicate in-world with their group mates and be able to find one another.

Another teacher added these comments:
1) Huge increase in interest, motivation, participation from pre to active involvement in RC animation exercise.
2) Unanticipated level of competence demonstrated from initial sign-on to active play by all participants
3) Obviously higher level of "learning" going on as levels of lack of self-confidence, ego eliminated
4) Excitement manifested as next session opportunity mentioned
5) Better than expected level of understanding of instructions and execution of directions
6) Less confusion and questions encountered than in regular learning environment

In researching the students taking the class, I learned one student in particular was doing two virtual worlds simultaneously.  Along with River City, Slim101 (as he prefers to go by) was working in another Activeworlds program.  Ironically, he much preferred the other program.  He thought River City much too restrictive and didn’t allow for instant gratification of answers.  Students submitted answers to questions but never received feedback on their work.  He enjoyed the adventure and freedom the other program offered and preferred to converse with all members in-world.  In River City, only group members could converse via chat.  Other program allowed for more interaction from “bots” (in-world characters with programmed speech).

Samples of Student Work

Collecting work in a virtual world was a challenge.  In gathering data and student perspectives, I relied on the chat logs and notebooks of the students and their observations.  The culminating activity was a letter written to the Mayor of River City with the findings of the student scientific experiments.  It also asked for solutions to resolve the problem.  One example is listed:
Dear Mayor Bowman,
I gladly inform you that the dilemma of River City is solved! It links down to the Bog and the Dump, and water pollution played a major factor in the entire affair. Please, all you need to do is just do litter pickup and clean the water and learn to be a greener and happier community.  Thank you so much for letting me help in solving this crisis.

Sincerely,
Maddie H.

In one instance two students excelled in River City and asked to create a slide show presentation of their experiences and findings in River City.  This slide show was presented at the finish of the River City Project to the teachers and the rest of the class.  Project Their excitement of the learning process and the scientific method was contagious.  That weekend the students were invited to present at our county’s professional development conference.  The two students were extremely focused and very pleased to talk to anyone about their experiences in River City. 

What Worked:

What worked in this project was the technology for one and secondly, choosing the right person to work with.  All of the computers functioned very well and were able to keep pace with the student learning.  Having the appropriate technology and the time to use the software was due to our school and the talents of the teacher I had the pleasure of working with.  I choose wisely when considering whom to work with in delivering my project at school.  This teacher was a huge influence on me in her method of instruction and a trusting person to allow me and my computers to enter her domain.  It is to her I and her students I am truly grateful.

What Would You Modify?:

As this was a completely new experience for me, the co-operating teacher, our school and students, there were many things I would have done differently, first and foremost, the time.  River City needs to be completed in a time frame with no breaks.  We did fairly well but then ran into spring break which set us back. 
This group of students tended to “play” too much and forget to check their guide book to see what activity was next.  To compensate students were presented with printouts of the guide book.  This helped many to get back on track.  The print out allowed them to check off activities they had completed and to ensure they had completed all the sections and assignments before continuing on to the next month.  With the basis of the printouts, a spread sheet document was formulated for assessment purposes to which student completed which activities and sections.  This made keeping student on task much easier and assessing their work became less of a guessing game.

Summary:

River City is a multi-user virtual environment for students in grades 5-9.  This simulation program was a huge success in this class. Many students gained a new understanding of the scientific method, its applications and can foresee its usefulness in other areas of their education and life.  Mostly the students enjoyed being immersed in the virtual world.  As we watched the room become quiet as the students prepared to work, the transformation of their attitudes, behaviors and learning was magical.  Working with 3 wonderful educators collaboratively allowed me to expand my goals for the project and complete them with data to spare.  In review the reflections I have gained a new understanding of simulations in the classroom and how I can better educational experiences by promoting project elsewhere in my district.