David+Tippenhauer



Hello. My name is David Tippenhauer. I am pursuing my Master's in Curriculum and Instruction and my licensure in Middle Childhood Education with math and language arts concentrations. I am beginning my second career after spending 22 years in journalism. I worked as a sports reporter and copy editor at three different newspapers, and spent the last 17 years at The Cincinnati Post before it closed. I live with my wife, Peggy, and 9-year-old daughter, Katie, in Deerfield Township. Since August, I've been serving my teaching internship at Little Miami Junior High where I teach math and a little bit of social studies.

[|little miami schools]


 * __ Week 1 Reflection __**

The articles by David Jonassen and Johannes Cronje deal with the two longtime divergent approaches to instructional design (teaching): objectivism and constructivism. Objectivism suggests that teachers objectively make sense of events for their students and don’t encourage their “students to make their own interpretations of what they perceive” (Jonassen 10). Constructivism allows students to construct their own knowledge by relying on past knowledge and experiences. The articles tell us that objectivism and constructivism have traditionally been placed at opposite ends of the spectrum and that there is a longstanding belief that finding a way to integrate both into learning isn’t possible, but that this doesn’t have to be the case.

What both articles call for is a new paradigm – incorporating both objectivism and constructivism – that will guide the learning process, instead of instructional designers or teachers having to choose between objectivism and constructivism to build learning. Cronje talks about using a right-angled model allowing a learning event to be characterized as both highly constructivist and highly objectivist without any inherent contradiction (Cronje 394). This way, objectivism and constructivism can be integrated because a teacher needs to use both approaches to be effective and allow students to learn. Cronje’s illustrated case studies shows this right-angled model does work.

In reading the articles, I see how both objectivism and constructivism can work together and how they both are actually necessary for learning. In my brief time as a student-teacher, I’ve seen that students need me to give them objective, direct instruction, such as showing them how to do a math problem or using “Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally” to do order of operations. Yet I also see that I must have them relate these formulas to real-world situations. I start to feel like I’m losing the students if I don’t do this. First, it will help them actively learn if they can see how learning something will help them in the real world, and second, it will simply make the subject matter more interesting for them. By relating formulas to the real world, they can build on their knowledge of real life events.

I think these articles line up with the NET standards very well in that they outline ways to inspire students and make learning interesting by using real-world issues. Building on a student’s prior knowledge and experiences, the basis of constructivism, allows a connection to be made with the student that spawns innovative thinking and creativeness that the NET standards call for. Meeting students in the digital age, where they live, is essential for this to happen. Being able to create digital-age learning so important to the NET standards that also incorporates both objectivism and constructivism covers much highly effective educational ground.

I like Conje’s idea that constructivism and objectivism can and should be integrated into a learning event, and I think showing this as a graph with corresponding quadrants is effective. This gives the reader a concrete way of looking at this issue, seeing integration as having high levels of both traditionally conflicting schools of thought. I also like his idea of a “chaos quadrant” or immersion quadrant, because this acknowledges that some learning comes to us by accident. By acknowledging this, in my eyes he earns a lot of credibility. I did have a problem with Conje’s article, though. I realize that to write an article on such a complicated issue with so much research to include requires the article to be lengthy, but I think the fact it runs 30 pages takes away from its impact. I guess it’s just the journalist in me that feels the need to be concise, but I think Conje’s article could have been more effective had it been shortened.

My discussion questions: 1. If objectivism and constructivism can come together to promote learning as the articles suggest, how can we come up with ways to incorporate both into our instructional design? 2. How can instructional technology be used to give our students an education rooted in both objectivism and constructivism?

The one-computer classroom articles by Whit Anderson and Glori Chaika are strikingly similar. They each outline strategies to be used to optimize benefits to be gained from a classroom that has just one computer for students to use. They each recommend using “stations” activities (Anderson 1; Chaika, under //Management Strategies that Work//) so that the computer can be just one of several stations being used at one time, thereby avoiding having students wait around doing nothing while others are on the computer. Each writer also suggests projecting the computer screen onto a big screen or large monitor so that all students can get the feel of being on the computer, and encouraging students to print out articles rather than take up computer time reading the articles while sitting at the computer (Anderson 1 and 2; Chaika, under //Additional Strategies//). The writers also offered tips for gathering more computers, such as finding computers that aren’t in use. Finally, Anderson and Chaika each recommend that teachers take time to plan activities well so that each student knows what he/she is to do on the computer before sitting down at the computer. Chaika add some nice activities for teachers to use, such as working with students in another part of the world and having a student e-mail the daily weather to the school principal.
 * __ Week 2 Reflection __**

Being a math teacher, I think the stations activities will work very well in my teaching, more so than in other subjects that require the use of the computer for research projects. Station teaching lends itself well to math class because one station can be set up for actual, physical manipulatives such as pattern blocks or tangrams, another station can be set up for virtual manipulatives on a computer, a third for pictures that represent the manipulatives in symbolic or number form, and a fourth for problems to be worked out and for questions students may have. Projecting the computer’s images onto the classroom screen will also work well in my classroom, again because of the many Web sites that feature virtual manipulatives. Of course, students can also print out interesting things they find on the Internet as they can in any content area.

I think the ideas conveyed by these articles reflect the NETS standards well in that they help teachers find ways to advance children’s learning and creativity by giving them time on the computer that is hard to find with only one computer in the classroom. With just one computer available, it’s easy for teachers to just throw up their hands and say, “I just can’t waste time having students go to the computers one by one, so I won’t use the computer at all.” Anderson and Chaika outline ways for teachers to get around this and pave the way for them to achieve the NETS standards. These articles also allow teachers to design lessons for the digital age even though they have just one computer. Teachers would also be promoting and demonstrating the effective use of technology if they are able to create ways to incorporate a one-computer situation into a fertile learning environment for their children, and their example would be leading the way for other teachers in their school to do the same.

The criticism I have for these articles, especially Anderson’s, is that while they outline many effective ways to make use of just one computer, they don’t have a lot of creative ideas I hadn’t heard before. While using stations is a great idea, I’ve already seen it used in one of my math teaching classes at UC. Simply showing the computer images on the classroom screen and printing out articles off the Internet are obvious ways to make use of a computer in a one-computer classroom. Chaika’s article did offer more ideas, such as how to set schedules for students to use the computer and providing links to more interesting ideas.

My discussion questions:

1. In a "stations" class, a teacher can't be paying attention to all the stations at once, so what are some ways teachers can keep students on task while the teachers are at a different station?

2. In this rapidly changing age of technology, is it still worth it to go out and find out-dated computers as Chaika's article suggests, or would those computers just sit there unused because they are so far behind in technology?

__** Week 4 Reflection **__

The two articles that we read go hand-in-hand to explain the problem that educators face involving copyright laws and fair use rights. “The Cost of Copyright Confusion” details the problems that educators face in needing to use copyrighted materials to teach their students but needing to comply with the copyright laws. “The Code of Best Practices” gives educators guidelines on how to utilize their fair use rights. The subjects of the authors’ (Renee Hobbs, Peter Jaszi, and Pat Aufderheide) study are essentially saying that everything we communicate about our culture is copyrighted, so those who want to teach media literacy are handcuffed by copyright laws. In order to teach about anything in our culture, these educators must find ways to teach without breaking these copyrights, making it very difficult to facilitate a valuable education. “Limiting access to copyrighted materials is limiting access to existing culture,” (Hobbs 3). The big problem is this: Because these educators do not know what these laws allow, they have to curtail their resources so as not to break these laws and thereby give their students a less-effective education. The fair use laws are confusing to everyone involved. Several organizations came out with guidelines intended  to make fair use laws easier to understand, but what they did was hamper understanding of the law, as “Law professor Kenneth Crews’s 2001 ‘The Law of Fair Use and the Illusion of Fair-Use Guidelines,’ illustrates,” (Hobbs 8).

As a result, many teachers have learned to just not ask about fair use and others just keep their use of copyrighted materials hidden from school administrators. Many “hyper-comply” with the laws, forcing them not to use materials that would a valuable help in teaching (Hobbs 14-15). After reading “The Cost of Copyright Confusion” before reading “The Code of Best Practices,” I came away confused. I came away knowing the problem but was left with many questions as to how to fix it. The article does a good job outlining the problems educators are presented by the copyright laws they face and how they don’t understand what these laws and the fair use rights allow. The problem I had with article is that it deals with pages and pages of examples of how administrator and teachers are in the dark on copyright laws and fair use and how this hinders their teaching, and then the article spends only the last few paragraphs explaining what can be done to help the situation. It says that media literacy instructors should educate themselves further about copyright laws and fair use rights and then create a “code of practice.” I found the most important point of the article in the final few paragraphs when the authors talked about the filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use. The authors praise this Statement as giving both educators and those who interpret the laws better guidelines for copyrights and fair use. They cite it as an example of what can be done to fix the copyright and fair-use mess. I think they could have devoted more of the article on this and any other advances they have found, but I guess the purpose of this article was only to detail the problems educators face regarding copyright and fair use and to only initiate suggestions for what can be done to rectify this situation.

But after I read the “The Code of Best Practices,” I saw how the authors used a detailed study to determine a usable code to help instructors understand their fair use rights. Still, there are so many gray areas, such as when a teacher needs to use a whole video clip vs. just portions of a clip, that I still find the whole copyright/fair use issue confusing. Even though there is “Code of Best Practices,” in order to find out the legality of each copyright case, it must be pulled apart and looked at on a case-by-case basis. Because teachers are not lawyers, this issue will always be confusing. But at least now, with a “Code of Best Practices” to look at, teachers have something to go on. Applying this issue to my teaching, I would like to use video clips and other copyrighted materials in lessons that I am sure would be beneficial to students’ learning. From the “Code” it seems that as long as you can prove that students are learning a predetermined lesson from copyrighted materials, fair use gives you a lot of flexibility. I would just be very careful about letting students put things out there for the public to see. That seems to be where most of the copyright trouble can arise.

I find it easy to relate what I’ve learned about copyrights and fair use to the NETS standards. If I am going to use copyrighted materials to teach, I am definitely using technology to facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity. I would have to model digital-age work, and in complying with copyright law I would be promoting and modeling digital citizenship and responsibility. Passing along to students what they must know concerning copyright laws and fair use rights is essential to keeping in line with the NETS standards.

My Discussion Questions:

1. If there are no district or school guidelines for the use of copyrighted materials in my school, what steps does a teacher take in finding out how to implement these copyrighted materials into his/her teaching? 2. In regard to copyright laws, how much of risk-taker does a teacher need to be (or should a teacher be) in order to be an effective instructor?


 * __ Week 5 Reflection __**

The Dina Rosen and Charles Nelson article gives a comprehensive overview of Web 1.0 (using the Internet to present information) vs. Web 2.0 (Internet usage featuring both presentation and participation) technology and the benefits and challenges that go along with incorporating Web 2.0 into the classroom. The other two articles give extensive examples of two uses of Web 2.0 in the classroom. Ikpeze and Boyd write about their research of a Webquest unit of teaching/learning, and Wang and Hsu examine the use of blogs to facilitate learning, focusing on a blog created for use in a pre-service teachers class on diversity. Rosen and Nelson say that the social aspect of learning is at the center of Web 2.0. Through Web 2.0 tools such as blogs and wikis, students can now learn via “multi-way communication and collaborative information searching,” (Rosen 212). Users can be producers of information as well as consumers (Rosen 213). Because Web 2.0 students, or Student 2.0, are so digitally savvy, Rosen and Nelson call for education to evolve into Education 2.0, which will allow both students and teachers to interact in gathering and producing information (Rosen 222) and build a constructivist learning environment. But Rosen and Nelson also warn that while Education 2.0 could build and broaden learning greatly, not all students are Internet savvy and teachers can get sidetracked by technology and lose their focus on teaching and learning. So they offer many questions that still need to resolved (Rosen 223).

Ikpeze and Boyd expand upon one area discussed by Rosen and Nelson, the Webquest. They illustrate a fascinating study of how students can use the Internet to go far beyond the confines of a normal classroom design. In addition to just using technology to get more information, they show how class discussions, collaboration and connections can build a better understanding of the real world and help build valuable critical-thinking skills (Ikpeze 647). They point out some drawbacks as well, such as students and teachers becoming disoriented because there can be an overwhelming amount of information and disorganized information. But they strongly recommend this type of inquiry based learning. Wang and Hsu point out the advantages that blogs have over discussion boards. Blogs go beyond discussion boards in that they allow anyone on the Internet to access a class’s information, and future classes can also access this information and add to it.

I liked how each of the articles focuses on a single topic, giving a detailed account of the research found on it but staying on that single topic. This allows the reader to gain all the pertinent information on the subject of Web 2.0 and not get caught up in the information overload that is discussed in the articles. The readings go well together, with Rosen and Nelson giving the overview and the other two articles going into detail on Webquest and blogging. Before reading this I never saw blogs as a valuable learning activity. I only saw blogs as a way for “superfans” to go on the Internet and get an interactive wealth of information about the subject with which they’re obsessed. But now I can see that blogging can have a place in the academic world, allowing students to collaborate in an easy and fun manor.

While I have not seen any Web 2.0 in my classroom as a student-teacher, I think I could begin to implement Web 2.0 fairly easily after reading about the Webquest unit illustrated by Ikpeze and Boyd. Almost any topic can be researched in an interactive way quite easily using the Internet, and I’m sure students would find it fun and engaging. With so much information and so many distractions available on the Internet, I could seen the problems of information overload and the burden of keeping students on task. But I’m sure the valuable discussions and collaborations made possible by so much interactive tools and research would make it possible for my students to build a valuable learning experience. Also making it easy for a teacher to build a Webquest is the fact, pointed out by Ikpeze and Boyd, that there are already many Webquest ideas out there that I could use to build my own Webquest.

Once again, I see that using Web 2.0 in the classroom is very much aligned with the NET standards. Using Web 2.0 technology surely facilitates and inspires student learning and creativity. Students are creating much of their own learning and certainly are having fun doing it when working on a Webquest or blog as opposed to sitting through a lecture or even doing some textbook-based project. As far as promoting and modeling digital citizenship and responsibility, this is something I as a teacher would have to pay close attention to as I guide my students through a lesson or unit. As we learned previously, teachers must learn their fair use rights and look at the copyright laws when leading their students onto the Internet for an extensive project.

My Discussion Questions:

1. How can we, as teachers, determine the right Web 2.0 tools for our students to use, based on their age and computer savvy?

2. How can we align Web 2.0 tools to state standards? How can we use these time-consuming Web 2.0 tools in a way that allows us to teach a comprehensive unit and still have time to meet all the state standards?


 * __ Week 6 Reflection __**

//Assessing the Educational Value of Digital Games// by J-C Hong, et al, primarily deals with the study of creating an assessment tool for determining the educational values of digital games. Most of the article concerns creating criteria for this assessment tool. Seventy-four game evaluation indices were developed and put into seven categories (Hong 2009, 423). The last part of the article deals with lining up one digital game – a word searching contest – against these indices, and the consensus was that the game promoted many educational values.

//Teacher Candidate Responses to Digital Games: 21st-Century Skills Development// by Nancy B. Sardone and Roberta Devlin-Scherer looks at a study of 25 college education students who are asked to use a digital game in their pre-service classrooms, report their results and rate the games based largely on 21st-century skills development. The 21C skills (creativity and innovation, critical thinking and problem-solving, and communications and collaboration) are viewed as essential to finding employment and keeping the United States competitive in the global economy (Sardone 411). This study reports that the pre-service teachers find using the games to be effective in developing these important 21C skills and in motivating students to learn. Then the study focuses on many specific games that are popular with students. The study finds that skills taught by the games are “those desired by employers (Sardone 421).” The pre-service teachers feel “positive and confident” about using the games in their classrooms after participating in this study (Sardone 422).

I find the Sardone study much more interesting, relevant, and important to the use of digital games in the classroom. Whereas the Hong study primarily looked at an assessment tool for evaluating the games, the Sardone study looks at many specific games, some that I have heard about. It talks about specific games catered to the world of business, history, art and music. An example is Darfur Is Dying, a game that had students discussing why genocide is occurring in this African region (Sardone 420). Both studies found that increasing the motivation of students is a big plus for using these games in the classroom, but the Sardone article went further, saying that motivation is just one of the benefits of these games and cited the promotion of 21C skills as exceptionally valuable.

I came away from reading the Sardone article encouraged that digital game are worthwhile to use in my classroom and that I shouldn’t be afraid to use this technology in my classroom. The pre-service students report that they feel comfortable using these games now after having had many doubts before the study. This makes me feel more confident about using these games in my classroom. Before I read this article I believed there was some potential for using these games as educational tools, but after reading this I more clearly see that these games are not just going to keep students busy but are going to teach them a lot about the world.

Linking the NET standards to using digital games in the classroom is clear. Educational games of any era are good motivating factors for students. Digital games facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity through the use of technology. Students will always find a well-chosen game engaging and motivating; using digital games takes this up a notch because digital games hit students where they live. I know many parents worry about their children playing too many digital games, but these studies show that the well-chosen games can be valuable tools. Students are creating much of their learning by being forced to make creative choices while playing the games, a big component of the NET standards.

My Discussion Questions:

1. How can a school or school district facilitate the use of digital games into its curriculum?

2. Are using digital games in the classroom free from the restraints of copyright laws?