Follow Gods Leading

Alex Boshaw EDUC 526 Capstone Experience in Digital Teaching and Learning Dr. Joanne Gilbreath APU Murrieta Campus 10/14/13

Introduction Setting the context.

My first experience in teaching was leading a small group bible study for children while on a missions outreach in Sweden at the age of thirteen. Allowing God to use my words and experiences to benefit others has always brought me a great amount of satisfaction. Following my high school graduation in 1990, I moved to Europe to learn languages and travel out on short-term Christian outreach trips. Over the course of several years, I had the chance to travel throughout Europe, witness the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, learn four languages, and teach sermons and lead Bible studies on many occasions. I even brought a piece of the Berlin Wall back with me on one of my return trips to California. I returned to the United States full time in 1994, and completed my Bachelor of Arts degree in Liberal Studies at CSU San Marcos in 1997. In 2001, I accepted a job offer to teach 9th grade English, and junior high History at Calvary Christian School in Vista, California. From day one, I have been completely at ease in the classroom, and have been able to develop a good rapport with young people. In my classroom, I encourage an atmosphere of mutual respect, discipline, and create an environment in which students feel the confidence to learn and grow. I also began coaching junior and senior high sports very soon after joining Calvary Christian School. In 2011, I received a job offer at Classical Academy in Escondido. That job offer was exciting, as I would be going from a school with 100 students to a school with over 400 students. I would be given increased responsibility and a raise in pay. I would also be required to get a teaching credential by attending evening classes at APU. Currently, my job as high school athletic director and high school history teacher gives me the opportunity to impact young people and make a difference in the lives of my students. Being involved in education is a calling and a ministry, and in my 13 years education, I have seen the hand of God guide my life over and over. Two years ago, when I switched jobs and

entered the Teachers Education Program, I did so as an act of faith in God, that he would guide my steps. Although I have not found the time to coach at Classical Academy, I am currently managing a sports program with over 20 sports teams. Having an outlet like athletics gives me an opportunity to encourage student-athletes outside of the classroom setting. Athletic competition allows athletes the platform to learn the values of discipline, commitment, and hard work as a member of a team, and I believe that it is crucial for students to be involved in extra-curricular activities and be a well-rounded citizen. I have always been interested in how I could use technology to further enhance the content of my lessons and make them more attractive to students. 10 years ago, I was one of the first teachers at my school to use PowerPoint presentations in my classroom. I would also use my laptop and the schools Wi-Fi to show history videos from YouTube. The technological aspects of my lessons seemed to interest my students and keep them engaged with the lesson. When it came time to choose the focus of my masters degree, digital teaching and learning seemed like the perfect fit for me.

Personal Growth
I have learned that my two greatest strengths as it relates to academics are that I am logical and that I thrive in group-settings (interpersonal intelligence). I plan ahead and try to work on tasks little by little so that they do not overwhelm me. I create lists and I budget my time wisely. I am a husband and a father. I have 3 small children that require quite a bit of my time. My job is also quite demanding. I must plan out my days and weeks carefully in advance so that I make sure to get everything done. I take this same approach in my professional life as I do with my education. If I am working on a group project, I have learned to choose my partners wisely. It can be quite frustrating to be matched up with a group member who is a procrastinator. I do not work well under pressure. I get stressed out easily as it is, and working under stress just lowers the quality of my work.

I have enjoyed meeting many interesting people in this program. Students in this program come from all walks of life and I have learned a great deal from their input and by listening to their experiences and perspectives. I enjoy the face-to-face classes where I can sit next to other people and discuss issues with them and collaborate on project and assignments. However, because my life is so busy outside of school, I have not made any friendships that have extended outside of the classroom. I have put quite a bit of thought into whether or not I have added another event to my spiritual timeline during my time at APU. I feel that I have grown as a Christian man and become a more loving husband and father. I have shown the dedication that it takes to work full time and attend school at night in the pursuit of this important goal, which will ultimately benefit my family. Instead of discussing a specific event on my spiritual timeline, I would like to describe my Christian worldview and how that worldview has an effect on my personal and professional life. Matthew 5:13 points out that Christians are to be the salt of the earth, which basically means that we are to make an impact, and that our presence should be felt. Salt does not go unnoticed; salt makes a difference in the meal in which is it added. My Christian worldview affects every area of my life. My marriage is based on biblical principles. I raise my children based on the word of God. We attend church and worship The Lord in church and community related activities. I practice morality and ethics in my job, and I work hard as unto The Lord. I pray before making decisions, no matter how large or small that they may be. In fact, my decision to pursue a masters degree and teaching credential at APU was based on much prayer and seeking God for his direction in my life. In addition, I desire to be a witness to the people around me. This is the most important way for me to apply Matthew 5:13 to my life. I desire to be salt and light to those that God has placed in my life. I have worked in the secular job market as well as in a Christian and a public school. Obviously, the environment is quite different in all of those situations. However, my attitude and work ethic should remain the same. My Christian faith 4

should be evident in how I conduct myself, what speech comes out of my mouth, and how hard I work as an employee. In all job situations, I should be known as a high quality individual and a dependable, loyal employee. That way, Christ is glorified and I am a good witness of him. This degree is a huge milestone for me personally. I stepped out in faith over two years ago when I left a good job that I had held for ten years prior. In obedience to God, I accepted a job at a new school and earned a teaching credential and a masters degree in my spare time. It has truly been Gods grace that has brought me through the past two years. My job as athletic director is incredibly demanding. Our schools sports program has grown to include over 20 teams, which allow opportunities for over 200 athletes. I hire all of the coaches, reserve the facilities, and schedule the games for all of those teams. In addition, I teach two AP classes, which are quite rigorous. I am constantly bringing my work home with me and grading papers and preparing for lessons. I answer emails at night and I am constantly dealing with sports-related issues on my personal time. My three kids are also on various sports teams and in dramas and musicals. I also try to carve out some time with my wife. Somehow I have also found the time to study for my APU classes on the evenings, weekends, and holidays. It has really been a hectic, crazy pace for me this last two year. God is so faithful and he has provided me the strength and the stamina that I have needed in order to succeed. On a separate note, I will also be finished with the BITSA program (teacher induction) at the end of this school year. I will finally clear my California teaching credential. It will be amazing to be finished with my masters degree in November and the BITSA program in June. It will definitely be a time of great celebration.

Professional Growth
I have grown in many ways as an educator in the past two years. The classes that I have taken at APU have not only taught me how to integrate technology into my lessons, they have taught me how to be a better teacher. Each of my instructors has personally taken the time to work with me on my time management skills, and

they have helped me to be more effective in presenting my lessons. One example of this is in the area of universal access. Before coming to APU, I would prepare a lesson plan that was suitable for a variety of my students. However, if one of my students had a learning disability, I did not make many adaptations to help them. I also did not know what to do with English language learners in my classroom. This masters degree program has taught me how to use technology to meet the needs of every student in my classroom. I have also become more aware of the various intelligences in my students and I use technology to appeal to each of those. I allow every one of my students to be successful and engage with the lesson by designing instruction that is attractive to all intelligence types. Instructional Strategies: The course that had the most impact on my growth as an educator was the EDUC 522 class taught by Dr. Courduff. I learned many valuable strategies that help me reach out to all different types of intelligences. While working on my unit plan for EDUC 522, I found this website, which was especially helpful for me to how many apps there are out there that target the specific intelligences. http://apps4stages.wikispaces.com/AppWheels At first, it was quite challenging to design lessons that took into account the multiple intelligences and also guided students to higher order thinking skills. However, as that class progressed, I discovered many ways to use technology to accomplish both of those goals. The unit plan in EDUC 522 also helped me incorporate those new technologies to enrich the learning experience of my students. Another strategy that I learned was to use a blog to interact with my students. One of my favorite instructors was Lance Martin. In EDUC 515, I learned about how to maintain a blog, and make that blog accessible to my students. I found it very useful to be able to communicate with my students outside of the classroom. I posted videos, Voicethread presentations, and photos to my blog. My students love to use technology and many of them have their own blogs. Using blogs for educational purposes in a nice way to connect to students using technology. Action Research Project: I am a high school history teacher and I face the same struggle each year in my AP World History class. Our school year begins in early September and my students take the AP Exam in mid-May. I have a hard time 6

covering the entire curriculum in such a short period of time. I would like to research strategies that will help me maximize my class time and help me to get through the course curriculum in a more efficient manner. I am intrigued by the concept of the flipped classroom. I would love to find a way to have the students learn the lesson at home and come to class ready to discuss the material and engage in critical thinking activities and interactive group projects. I would also like to find an effective way for my students to collaborate on projects and interact with each other outside of the classroom. Email and Facebook can be cumbersome ways to share information in an academic setting. I was introduced to Voicethread during the teacher credential program. I use Voicethread to teach the lesson to the students while they are at home (or anywhere with an internet connection). Voicethread allows me to upload my PowerPoint presentations and narrate them and make the available for students to view. There is also a student comment feature, which makes it possible for students to post questions and comments to the Voicethread slides, and interact with each other outside of the classroom. Students will view the Voicethread presentation and input the lesson as a homework assignment. That will leave us more class time to work on essays, engage in group-activities, and conduct Socratic seminars where the students are able to drive the conversation.

Procedure:
Step 1: The baseline assessment will be given after the students have read the assigned material. The students will answer 4 questions, which represent 4 different levels of critical thinking, according to Blooms Taxonomy. I will use specific questions from the Blooms Taxonomy pyramid. The questions will all be free response questions. Step 2: 1 week after the results of the baseline assessment are collected, a second series of 4 questions will be asked, using the same critical thinking levels of Blooms Taxonomy that were used in the baseline assessment.

Students will respond to these questions after having viewed the Voicethread presentation for homework prior to the lesson. I will use the same scoring guide to as I used in the baseline assessment. That way I can accurately measure the students improvement, after having access to the frontloading strategy of Voicethread. A scoring guide will be used to interpret the results of the baseline assessment. I will chart the students results according to the levels of questions that they were able to respond correctly to. I will use specific question types from Blooms Taxonomy to represent 4 different levels of critical thinking and analysis. I am hoping that I can collect clear data that reveals the effectiveness of the flipped classroom model of instruction. THE QUESTION: The goal of the flipped classroom is spend valuable class time pushing students to higher levels of critical thinking and analysis instead of spending time actually teaching the lesson. Does frontloading my students using Voicethread increase their ability to think critically and come to class more prepared for higher-level discussions?

Technical Growth
I benefited greatly from the EDUC 514 class, taught by Timothy Holder. I learned how to film and edit video in this class, as well as put it all together in iMovie to create a nice finished product. One of my projects in this class was to film a promotional video for our schools athletic program. I was able to show this video to our school administration and to the student body to highlight the importance of athletic participation to high school students. Here is the YouTube link to check out that video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O0-IRH9mks I also create and upload podcasts and videos for my students to use in AP World History. I have uploaded 20 15 videos to YouTube since that class, so that is a skill that that I have found very helpful.

I also continued working on my video skills and was able to create a 3-part video series called How to be Successful in AP World History. I posted this instructional video series on my blog and invited my prospective students and parents to view it before the start of the school year. Hopefully this video series gave those families the information that they needed to make an educated decision about whether AP World History was the right class for their child to enroll in. These videos were also designed to give students strategies and hints for having success in a rigorous college-level course. Here are the links to view those videos: Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VB7do_H60cQ Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0XQBfIVSNk Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AujXgvRFOVw Another example of my technological growth is my use of Webquest. I designed a Cold War Webquest, in which students use the Internet to explore fascinating videos, on-line articles, and pictures relating to that time period. Students get to work in groups and collaborate in this adventure even though they are not in the same location. Here is the link to view the Webquest: http://zunal.com/share.php?w=129603

Life Long Learning Plan

Currently, I teach at a high school with a student enrollment of over 700 students. We expect to grow to over 1000 students within two years. As the high school sports program continues to grow, my job as athletic director gets busier and busier each year. In addition, teaching AP classes is quite demanding and timeconsuming. I think that it is quite possible that in a year or so, I will move to a fulltime athletic director position. I may want to teach PE classes or coach sports, but not AP classes. The possibility also remains that I will be able to get a full-time 9

assistant to help me with athletic director duties. In that case, I might be able to continue teaching my regular classes. I thoroughly enjoy being in the classroom. Whether I commit to my athletic director position full-time, or choose to remain in the classroom, I will definitely use the technology that I have learned to benefit my school. I will also see a pay increase as a result of obtaining my masters degree. I feel very well prepared to meet the needs of 21st century learners. Technology allows students to access information, and therefore participate in learning, from anywhere at any time. Because students are demanding this kind of access to information, educators need to respond to this and make our curriculum available to students. I have certainly improved the quality of my classroom content by integrating technology to a greater degree. Therefore, I am meeting the needs of my students in a significant way. I am competent and I utilize technology to put together activities that are fun and engaging. Using blogs, podcasts, Voicethread, and Webquest allows my students to interact with each other, help each other, and get ideas from each other remotely, not needing to be in a classroom to do so. As a teacher in the 21st century, I need to be up-to-date in the area of technology. I dont want my students to become bored with my instruction. If I bring in the latest in technology to my classroom, I will have a higher likelihood of reaching my students and engaging them in the lesson. More student engagement and interest in the lessons will hopefully lead to more learning taking place and a higher pass rate on the AP exam. I plan on attending summer seminars put on by the College Board. These seminars will teach me strategies to use to help my students understand the

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concepts in Advanced Placement classes. There are always break-out sessions for teachers interested in using the latest technology to enhance their AP curriculum. As I mentioned in the paragraph above, I will always desire to stay current in the area of educational technology. I would also like to return to APU and take one class per year to learn new educational technologies and strategies.

Section 2-- History of Coursework and Course Evaluation Evaluation of the impact of the Digital Teaching and Learning Program
My action research project also shows evidence of a new technology that I learned during my time in this maters degree program. Using Voicethread to frontload my students has been a key factor in my students success on the AP exam. In June, I conducted an end-of-the-year evaluation, and many of my students commented about how helpful it was to view a Voicethread prior to being taught the lesson. Learning to use Voicethread to create presentations that encourage student feedback and interaction is a key take-away from my time in this masters degree program. I would like to develop an entire Voicethread unit using PowerPoint presentation. I would narrate each presentation and invite student comments and interactions. The students would view these presentations prior to class time. Another important take-away from this masters degree program for me is the use of blogs and a wiki. I have a wiki page for my AP World History classes. I regularly upload videos, podcasts, and relevant course material for my students. I also post their upcoming assignments on the wiki page by using the Google Calendar

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widget. My students now have access to all of my course materials, rubrics, assignments, and upcoming due dates on-line. I have learned many of these skills for the first time during this program. Other technological skills that I possessed prior to the program have been enhanced as a result of the high quality of instruction that I received.

Program Evaluation (included in coursework table)

Course

Course Title & Instructor Name

Term

Complet ed

Key Skills Acquired Wordle Skype LiveBinder

Comments/Suggestions A nice introduction to the EdTech masters degree program. The So What, Who Cares paper was beneficial for goal setting and disposition issues. Wordle can also be a helpful tool to help students see the important topics within a piece of written text We did an app scavenger hunt, we took a trip to the Apple store, and Jim Sullivan taught us everything that we would need to know about the iPad and Apple devices. He also taught me how to use AppleTV to connect my iPad to my classroom projector. There are many cool, 12

EDUC 511

Foundations in Digital Teaching and Learning INSTRUCTOR: Dr. Joanne Gilbreath

Fall 12012

EDUC 512

Instructional Applications Productivity Software INSTRUCTOR: Jim Sullivan

Fall 12012

Using Webquest as an exciting Internet project for my students. They can view videos, read online articles, and work together on an interactive project outside of the classroom. The iPad tutorial was very helpful. I learned to use the iPad


Learning in the 21st Century

EDUC 522

INSTRUCTOR: Jennifer Courduff

Spring 2-2013

accessibility settings to meet the needs of blind and deaf students, or any students that have special needs. Using apps to meet the needs of all multiple intelligences. Developing a comprehensive unit plan using technology. Camera technology Filming Uploading and editing video IMovie

history-related apps that are not available on a laptop. Now I am able to use those in my classroom instruction. The Cold War unit that I put together was a lot of fun, but I especially enjoyed using the video skills that I had learned during this program to create my final project. Tim Holder is a very patient, helpful educator. He showed me how to use iMovie to create professionallooking movies and then upload them to YouTube. I made several videos for use in my classroom as well as to promote the athletic program. This is a skill that I use quite often. Lance Martin showed us how to use a blog to upload educational content and make learning more interesting and exciting for students. I really developed my use of Voicethread in this class. This technology has impacted my teaching more than any other. 13

Digital Video in the Classroom INSTRUCTOR: Tim Holder

Fall 22012

EDUC 514

EDUC 515

Evolving Educational Technologies INSTRUCTOR: Lance Martin

Blogs Prezi Photo editing Voicethread

Reflecting Enhancing unit plan Action research project Growth Assessment

EDUC 526

Capstone Experience/ Digital Teaching and Learning INSTRUCTOR: Joanne Gilbreath

It was very helpful to look back upon all of the classes that I have taken over the past year and evaluate their great benefit to me. I enjoyed looking back and remembering the skills that I have learned and describing how those skills have impacted my professional development I have learned so much during this program, but the real benefit is measured by the kids lives that I affect. If I am able to make education more enjoyable for my students and reach out to them using technology, that will be a tremendous positive take-away from this program.

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