Lopez-Romero Samuel Lopez-Romero CEP 817 Mishra, Terry, and Park Spring 2013 Final Paper: Experience by Design

I am a Biology teacher in Anaheim, California and have been teaching at the same school for the last seven years. I also coach Soccer and Tennis and advise the Yearbook Class. All my experiences as a teacher, coach, and adviser, have made me realized that design is all around us. Design has become an important part of our teaching and how we present our content knowledge to our students. For a while, I have been seeking ways to improve my own pedagogy and have been trying new way to stimulate the minds of my students. In a way to pursue this personal search, about a year ago, a friend of mine brought up the subject about going to graduate school. It took us a while to decide which program to pursue. Someone brought up the subject of educational technology. I feel that enrolling in the Masters of Arts in Educational Technology program at Michigan State University was one of the best decisions I have made so far in my life. I know this is such a strong statement, but courses such as CEP 800, 812, and 815 have changed my way of thinking about technology and how to use it to provide a better learning experience for my students. CEP 817 has had a deeper impact than any other course and has transformed my idea of design and its relationship to teaching and learning. I truly believe this class has offered us the necessary skills to recognize good design and how to use this approach to improve our instructional design. I feel that I have become better at curriculum, unit, and lesson planning. In my opinion, the purpose of the course was never to teach us about new technology tools per say; but rather, it served as a medium to help us reflect on how to present information more efficiently but looking at the way we design our teaching pedagogy.

Lopez-Romero In this paper, I will give my reflections on a couple of assignments given during the course. I will also provide an input as to the way I have been using a design-based approach in teaching my subject matter. I will then discuss the ways I have been integrating the design related issues we have been discussing in this course into my own teaching. Finally, I will provide examples of two technologies that feel are great designs that educators can use in their classrooms. At the beginning of the course, I was a little confused when the first assignment was called 55 fiction. I was not sure how an off the topic, simple and yet trivial assignment would provide the setting for something more amazing to come. That assignment was actually exactly what design is all about. We were given an ideal start to prepare us for something more meaningful to come in the next few weeks. 55 Fiction was indeed a micro-design. The best part was the constrained requirements; the medium, time, and length, forced us to design something more appealing and also pay attention to detail. It emphasized the job and limitations of the designer. It also focused on the beauty of aesthetics in writing. In my opinion aesthetics in design was also an important topic covered throughout the course. The good and bad examples provided by all the groups was a way to help to recognize that every day things, creations, and innovations, fall under either beautifully design or simply poorly design. In the last reading assignment, specifically Perkins Chapter 2 from Knowledge as Design, stresses the idea that we need to view good design as something that serves a purpose. This idea says a lot about how we should approach our teaching based on design and how we transfer knowledge unto our students. If we provide something to our students without a purpose, then that information simply becomes meaningless. Often times we concentrate on terminology and concept teaching alone, rather than providing a connection of this knowledge with real-life.

Lopez-Romero Perkins helps us understand the difficulty of connecting some types of knowledge, particularly factual knowledge to purpose. If we fail to understand this connection; then we will definitely be unsuccessful in providing our students with a positive learning experience. The goal for our students is to experience the world in our classrooms, so me must spend time in a well-designed instructional path. According to Perkins, teaching fails at times in providing students with vivid models that can help in understanding the subject, concept or terminology. So if we consider knowledge as design, then we need to make sure we deliver our teaching pedagogy in a way that the student will see and find a purpose, and be able to evaluate and explain the subject. Ultimately, we can use technology as a support to improve design. I feel that only then the student can experience knowledge by design. The Big Kahuna was one of the most intricate, time consuming, detailed assignments; that I have worked on in a very long time. If you think about it, nowadays pretty much anyone can make a website. Most people with any computer knowledge will tell you that it is somewhat simple. However, in my opinion, it takes time to actually design one. In other words, it is harder to create something with a true purpose that can be valuable for a student to understand the material. It is not simply a matter of putting long hours in making the website, or making it colorful, or full of sound and graphics, but designing an attractive and usable layout that can provide the student with a real life experience. I remember many years ago, I was trying to learn how to make a website by using the HTML code. It was frustrating trying to learn this new language. It was definitely foreign. In my opinion, this old computer language provided website makers, with better tools for designing something more meaningful. By using codes and putting detail into their work they created the basis for what we have in the web presently. Their designs had a deeper impact, a purpose, and a vivid model for us to follow. Nowadays this process has

Lopez-Romero been transformed; there is no need to enter codes. I feel that creativity is limited which inhibits the purpose. I truly feel that The Big Kahuna aims to revive our creativity and individualism and expands our way of designing some valuable. As stated, in the course syllabus the Big Kahunas goal was to create an educational website that can be used to teach about a powerful idea in our specific content area. It does sound simple enough, but the task became harder when asked to create something with value, concise, comprehensible, high quality, and one that encompasses the fundamentals of good design as a whole. The constrained requirements and the design approach of the assignment is what made it challenging but fun. I have made a couple of websites in the past, but I never thought about the impact of the design would have on the user. I feel that my students will definitely benefit from this website as compared to the others I have created in the past. Biology as a subject is full of terminology and hard to understand concepts. Through my experience as a science teacher, I have seen that students lack a sense of motivation and give up because they feel overwhelmed. Biology covers a huge area of information. It goes from general principles to delving into chemistry and physics at certain points. At my present school, there has been a high decrease in students willing to participate and less willing to be engaged. I feel that most of the times, students simply repeat the material verbatim. It is not easy to measure exactly how much they have learned. Most of the times, many science teachers use a multiple-choice exam as the preferred method of assessment. I do use it once in a while but I prefer written exams. I feel that this provides us with a better outlook as to how much the student actually understands. There is definitely a need for re-designing how we teach certain subjects, and

Lopez-Romero Biology is one of them. After learning about design in CEP 817, I have been pondering about ways of how I can use a design-based approach to provide a more affective and effective learning experience for all my students. Here is one example of how I redesigned my lesson planning by introducing new technology into my pedagogy. A few weeks ago I taught the topic of the Immune System. The main focus was for students to learn the importance of this system in fighting diseases and how immunity plays a big part in maintaining the stability of your health and body. Another goal was to clear misconceptions by having students understand the difference between specific and nonspecific immunities in fighting pathogens. Some traditional pedagogical strategies used during the lesson includes, lectures using PowerPoint, recalling prior knowledge by using KWL charts, using rubrics and timelines to guide completion of assignments, and working in groups to enhance collaboration. I decided to use two technologies to hopefully provide a deeper understanding of the subject. One was an Audience Response System, known as clickers and the other was Weebly, an online webpage creating application. The clickers were used as formative assessment to measure comprehension during lecture and discussion; leading to reinforcement and re-teaching. Weebly was used as a summative assessment to measure the over all learning of the content. The implementation of the re-designed lesson started smoothly. The clickers were a hit. All students seem to be responsive and highly interactive. Much to my surprise, I was able to quickly see how much my students were learning at any given point. It gave me a chance to further assist those who were having a harder time learning the concepts. I have decided to use Weebly as their Final Semester Project. Students will be given extra time to complete this assignment. Hopefully with this extra time they will be able to submit some extraordinary 5

Lopez-Romero projects. Most importantly, it will give me a chance to further teach them how to use Weebly. With the knowledge I have received about design in CEP 817, I feel confident that I will be able to help students create wonderful Weebly pages. I know that they will definitely be more creative. In Unit 2, we focused and learned about Creative Teaching. Keith Sawyer, in his article Creative Teaching: Collaborative Discussion as Disciplined Improvisation, stresses the fact that teachers should not simply follow a script when they are teaching, we must construct constantly on the students prior knowledge and experiences and at the same time be ready to improvise when dealing with students diverse learning styles and ideas. In my opinion improvisation is an extremely part of design. It can lead to the increase of the students interest and engagement in the classroom. Teaching is an art and unless we do something to see its true beauty we run the risk of becoming dull and monotonous. George Nelson, an American industrial designer and one of the founders of American Modernism, once said that a designer is someone who gives form to the essence of something. I truly believe it is our duty to provide that essence and beautiful aesthetics of form to our teaching skills. We must design each and everything step of a lesson and curriculum. I am certain that only then teachers will be able to infuse knowledge more deeply and valuable for our students. To strengthen this idea, I will provide a personal example about creative teaching. I feel this is important because it shows how I have taken a new technology, which I have recently learned about, and use it to redesign one of my lessons. I learned about Prezi for the first time a few months ago in a previous class and ever since I have been dying to try it out with my students. I knew I had to do it sooner or later, so I took my chances and ended up finding lots of surprises, unexpected bumps on the road, and also many 6

Lopez-Romero delights. The topic I decided to use it on was Photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is the process by which plants take the suns energy and use it to make their food from carbon dioxide and water. The process starts by leaves collecting this energy during the day. Carbon dioxide comes from the air and it is mainly released to the environment by animals. Water is collected underground and is absorbed by plants through their roots. Two main products are produced by Photosynthesis. One is glucose, which is used by plants as a food source to help them grow and develop. The other one is oxygen, which is used by all living things to carry out cellular respiration. Although this definition can seem easy to grasp, the actual details of the photosynthetic process can be trivial, hair pulling, and unfortunately sometimes even boring to learn. This is were creative teaching come in to place, hence the use of Prezi to increase motivation in learning about Photosynthesis. Initially I had decided to go ahead and try this out with all of my Biology classes, but at the last minute I changed my mind. I went ahead and only assigned it to one of them. It was hard to determine which class to assign it to, so I ended up choosing the one that seemed to be a bit more technology savvy. It didnt mean that everyone would have been capable of completing the assignment since about 80% of the students had never even heard about Prezi. I was surprised how people were more aware of web-based social media than tools that can improve their learning. An unexpected bump on the road happened during the first day of implementation. I became frustrated because of the lack of willingness from students to learn a new tool. They were so afraid to try something new and there was so much complaining even before they had seen the demonstration I had prepared. One student even said why do we have to learn Prezi, when we already know how to use PowerPoint. I spent more time than I had planned for to sell 7

Lopez-Romero them the idea that they will like working with Prezi better than PowerPoint. I was hoping that they would understand that my goal was to design something more meaning for them, but I unfortunately that was taking a while for them to realize. Finally, somehow the mood changed after my brief presentation and there were even a few oohs and aahs, and some students actually expressed excitement to start their project. This was definitely a welcoming surprise and I found my mood changing for the better. The few students who knew about Prezi were delighted to finally use their abilities with this technology. The first day of the project included students doing some research on line, encyclopedias, or their Biology books. They needed to find enough sources and information about Photosynthesis to be able to understand the subject in a deeper manner and show comprehension through their work on their presentations. The total number of slides required in the Prezi were 10, including title page, various topics in Photosynthesis, a conclusion, and a work cited slide. They needed to have the information approved by me before they actually begin the project. I was surprise to see how quickly this was done, with the correct information of course. I felt that indeed they were surprise to see how easy and fun Prezi really is. For the first day, I had asked them to have 2 slides done in class and 1 more for homework. By the end of the second day in class, many students had exceeded my expectations, and had moved farther into the project. The final project was not due for another few days, but I was pretty certain and sure that every assignment turned in was going to be creative and unique. Although, it seemed that they were enjoying the new technology, I had to wait to measure comprehension and how much students actually understood the concept. I hoped that the new technology proved to be successful and that all misconceptions about Photosynthesis disappeared. At the end I realized that giving the assignment to only one class actually work for the better, I used the results of the summative

Lopez-Romero assessments to compare results between classes, and noticed a slight difference in comprehension level. The period I used Prezi with scored better in the unit exam. I am by no means saying that this was a proven solution, but it was definitely a great design in improving lesson planning and ultimately comprehension of Photosynthesis. Figure 1, shows the rubric I used for the Prezi assignment. Figure 1: Prezi rubric and timeline

PHOTOSYNTHESIS PREZI PROJECT Instruction/Rubric: There will need to be a total of 9 slides/paths on your Prezi. Each slide (except the Introduction slide and the Works Cited slide) will need to have a visual and a 4-5 sentence summary paragraph (or more if needed). Slide#1: Title Page: Include teacher and student name, period, due date Slide#2: Picture of the Chloroplast: Include a labeled picture of the chloroplast Slide#3: Introduction: (with a visual & 4-5 sentence summary) Describe what is Photosynthesis. Include the chemical equation. What are the reactants and products? Slide #4: CO2: (with a visual and a 4-5 sentence summary) Explain where does CO2 come from. How is CO2 absorbed? What happens CO2? Slide #5: H2O: (a visual and a 4-5 sentence summary) Explain where does H2O come from. How is H2O absorbed? What happens to H2O? Slide #6: Energy: (a visual and a 4-5 sentence summary) Explain where does the energy for photosynthesis come from. How do plants absorb this energy? Slide #7: Glucose: (a visual and a 4-5 sentence summary) How is glucose formed? How will the plant use glucose? Slide #8: Oxygen: (a visual and a 4-5 sentence summary) How is O2 formed? What is oxygen important for other organisms? Slide #9: Conclusion: (a visual and a 4-5 sentence summary) - What did you learn? Provide your insight. Slide #10: Work Cited: Cite your sources for both web links and pictures. Use easybib.com

Lopez-Romero I have also been able to use what I have learned about design into my Yearbook class. It has given me a chance to create better yearbook spreads and teach students to appreciate and find design more meaningful. The planning, the budgeting, choosing the staff and editors; the cover, the page ladder; all these things require careful designing. Scott McClouds book Understanding Comics provides the idea of using six steps in order to create the design of any work or art. Creating yearbook spreads is one of the best ways to put this format into practice. Formulating the idea on how to create and cover memories that have mean something to people is not easy to do. This is the part where design starts and carries the rest of the steps. Form in yearbook is how this information will be presented. The idiom is just as important because the designer has to use the right language to draw peoples attention. The structure is the layout of the pages. The craft is what the designer uses to make it unique. Finally the surface is the overall outcome of the entire yearbook. I feel that if people enjoy the yearbook and find it meaningful as a well-done piece of the schools history then it was definitely a good design. Next I will share my two favorite technology tools, which I feel work well because of their good design. First is one that I have started using at school just recently. It is an Audio Response System or better known as clickers. These ones work through a program called Turning Point. Turning Point has been around for a few years, and it has been used throughout high schools and colleges. The software is easy to use. It allows the integration of interactive activities unto PowerPoint presentations. These activities can include surveys, questionnaires, or quizzes; anything that can help you monitor comprehension. There are two reasons why I enjoy this technology. First, it gives me a chance to assess understanding before moving onto a new topic or concept. Second, it gives you, the teacher, a chance to receive immediate feedback and participation from all students.

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Lopez-Romero My second favorite technology device is my iPad. I take it with me everywhere I go. I enjoy the fact that you can turn it on with the simple push of a button. The iPad has a world of things for you to do, play games, listen to music, browse the Internet, email, do Internet shopping, and even take pictures. In the next few weeks a selected few, some colleagues and myself will be taking part of a pilot program at my high school using iPads. We will be testing different applications that hopefully will improve student comprehension across curriculum. I am excited because I again it involves one of the favorite technology devices. Although the ideas learned about design are extremely meaningful and beneficial to our teaching and learning; there are certain aspects of the course that I truly think needs some improvement. First of all, I feel there was a lack of appropriate feedback and communication about our progress in the course. The percentages were provided in the syllabus for each assignment, but we were never told what part of the percentage we received for them when turned in. The midterm review was almost meaningless. I asked for my specific grade, but the answer was ambiguous. Still up to this point, I really do not know where I stand. I think that a grade feedback is very important because if I end up with a bad grade; I would feel that I was never given the chance to improve. The second area of improvement lies on the design of the course website. I felt it lacked creativity and usability. In conclusion, aside from the small hurdles of the course, I feel that we were given a chance to learn on how to use design in a deeper and more comprehensible manner. I now have a better understanding about the good and bad designs all around us. A good design must have usability and value aesthetics. It must have the ability to capture us and somehow transform our thinking. Design makes something more meaningful if done appropriately. In our classrooms, design will simply makes us better educators by improving our pedagogy and in turn use it in 11

Lopez-Romero providing a more successful and affective positive learning experience for all our students. Our goal is to make effective 21st Century citizens, so we must start by constructing a good design in the knowledge we provide to them.

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