Reflection Space

Educational Technology Examples

Innovative Technology for Promoting Change

Podcasts

Web 2.0 Tools

Professional Organizations

Globally-connected Learning Activity

Resume

Josh Burker's Portfolio

The collection of information on this web page was created for Melissa Anderson's EDC 668 Managing Technology for Change OMET course.

As the semester progresses this page will grow with examples of work I find inspirational and interesting, as well as my own work.

Reflection Space

The reflections I post for this course are located in my Action Research Blog, as well as the Myomet blog.

Melissa provides the class with reflection topics, and we respond in the blogs. These topics also spur conversation in Blackboard and in our Tapped In sessions.

Educational Technology Examples

This section includes links to online resources that illustrate my developing educational philosophies and my experiences with educational technology.

Rubric: Mercer Island School District Technology Competencies. A rubric for the understandings and practical application students in a K-12 school district should be expected to develop. I worked on a previous draft of this documentation while a member of the district's Technology Planning Team. This rubric helps determine adoption of new software, curriculum, and practice for technology use in the classroom.

Electronic Portfolio: Amy Bruckman has a particularly interesting web site that collects many of her writings, projects, and teachings. She is interested in a "constructionist" approach to the design of online communities. Margaret Riel pointed her work out to me early in the OMET program.

Peer Review: Last term my Learning Circle used wikispace's wikis as a means of collaborating on our Executive Summary and curriculum design, as well as the final Design Activity, which was submitted electronically for assessment.

 

Innovative Technology for Promoting Change

The following are innovating simulations and video games that I believe could have impact on the learning success in a K-12 school environment.

Scratch: a multimedia programming environment for students of all ages. One of the students I work with in Tech Club created his own project, a digital drum set, that you can play with on the site. In installed this software on the library computers at the school where I work.

Cocoa, Internet Programming for Kids: a project started by Apple Computer and spun off into Stagecast, another multimedia programming enviroment. As you will see from the Cocoa link, at one point I was fairly obsessed with this program and used it extensively in a middle school Multimedia Club while developing much documentation and training material for the software.

The Restaurant Game: "The first collaboratively authored computer game." Though I have yet to find the time to play this game, I find the idea brilliant. The designer will comb through the gameplay of the participants to create a unique new videogame experience. Play the role of a dinner or a waiter! Extra-meta!

Wario Land II: One of my favorite video games ever, this one is for the Game Boy Color. You play Wario, kind of a greedy Mario character. You have to navigate through 12 "chapters" that are comprised of 52 "worlds." The narrative is completely non-linear. There are more than one way to get through the game. Although your character can be squashed, set afire, and stung, you never die, and the "hinderances" can actually be beneficial. For example, squashed flat, Wario is able to get through small spaces. Brilliantly fun gameplay with ridiculous graphics and sound effects. The puzzles and different ways of considering a problem make games like this appropriate in an educational context, taken in moderation.

Chipwits: This was my all time favorite game on my original Macintosh. My friend and I would spend hours creating "programs" for our robots to navigate complex mazes. One programmed using a graphic programming language. Years later, Doug Sharp has resurrected his code and released a new version of this classic!

 

Podcasts

Radio WillowWeb: A podcast produced by students at Willowdale Elementary in Omaha, Kansas. This podcast is what got me into podcasting and proved to me that podcasting is a great medium for kids.

Scribe: An initiative by the San Antonio Independent School District, SCRIBE produced the template that I used with my Tech Club when they recorded their podcasts. Invaluable!

Lakeridge Podcasting Network: The podcast that the Tech Club I lead produced this year! Good stuff!

November Learning Podcast Series: A collection of podcasts hosted by Alan November and covering a wide variety of educational technology topics.

Texas History Podcasts: Debby Jones, a fellow OMET student, facilitated the creation of these informative and well-produced podcasts.

 

Web 2.0 Tools

De.licio.us: One of my collections of bookmarks (I'm always bookmarking sites on my Mac, and this is a machine-independent bookmark collection I can access from any machine!)

Google Video: I have a student film, "Mission to Mars," hosted on Google Video. The district now blocks access to Google Video, so I will have to host this year's film on the school district web server.

 

Professional Organizations

Washington Education Association: A professional organization of certificated and classified school employees, I belong to the Mercer Island Education Association local association. I serve as the classified representative at large in the MIEA Executive Committee, am a member of the MIEA Representative Council, and serve as a bargainer on the MIEA bargaining team. The WEA represents the interests of more than 80,000 educational employees, working with legislators in Washington State for better wages and working conditions.

Apple Certified Technical Coordinator Certification: At one point I held this certification for OS X 10.2 and 10.2 Server. It is intended for personnel tasked with maintaining a small to medium size network of Macintosh computers.

Autism Society of America: The oldest and largest grassroots organization within the Autism community. A professional organization for individuals with Autism, their families, and the professionals who work with them.

 

Globally-connected Learning Activity

The collaborative possibilities offered by web technologies allow learning activities to connect students to global issues and audiences. Any learning activity, properly designed and incorporating appropriate technologies, can expand a student's world-view and connect them with other learners around the world. The following are two examples of using web technologies to make the learning experience globally-connected.

Wikipedia: Students could collaborate with other students, using versions of Wikipedia that are localized, to create a wikipedia article. The Wikimedia MetaWiki is a comprehensive list of all available localizations of the Wikipedia and gives a glimpse of how students might connect with others around the world to collaboratively author an article. Students in one country might hypothesize solutions to a problem that could be tested and verifiedby students in another country, with the Wikipedia page serving as the repository of the data, evidence, and conclusions. Work need not be confined to Wikipedia; students could use other wiki solutions. However, considering the number of possible languages Wikipedia articles might be written in, the collaborative possibilities make this a globally-connected activity.

Google Earth: Students could use this application to explore their world in a virtual context. Locating historic landmarks, geological formations, or contested areas of the world might spark bigger questions and discussions among students. Google Earth and other satellite imagery technology is also leveraged to try to influence governments and individuals to action on important issues: Eyes on Darfur, for example, allows the world to monitor villages in Sudan that are under threat of attack, as well as to witness firsthand the destruction and displacement ravaging this region. Technology can make the world a smaller place, and students can get connected to important global issues through lessons that use technology to connect students to global issues.

 

Resume

My resume, current June 2007, in PDF format.