802+topics+-+2013

This is where you can add your topic and description. You don't need to add your entire proposal, just your title, name, and a 100 word abstract.

Lynda Hall: **"Teachnology" - The Pedagogical Rationale for the Use of Technology in our Classrooms** “Teachnology” is a term I have coined to describe the pedagogical rationale for the use of technology in our daily teaching practice. For many educators, the use of technology is a new approach and as such, its incorporation is more of an add-on rather than a respected teaching methodology. As a result, there is a need for a more detailed explanation for the use of technology as an effective pedagogical tool; one where the ultimate goal is to challenge students to expand their learning to its fullest potential. My project will examine the pedagogical rationale for the everyday use of technology in our classrooms as well as explore the potential improvements for student learning. Your feedback is greatly appreciated.

Brian Simmons: **Gamification of Learning**
For my contribution to the ePub that we will be creating, I want to have a look at the concept of gamification and the related concept of gamification of learning. The chapter will explore the different definitions of gamification, and how it is used in the business world. Connections will be drawn to different theories of learning, particularly to those relating to motivation. Once an understanding of the concept has been created, I'll try my hardest to narrow on to the idea of Gamification of Learning. This will involve sections on the implications for instructional design, how it can be easily confused with Game-Based Learning and, finally, an exploration of how educational technology can be, and is, directly supportive of the implementation of this concept. I'm also hoping to connect with local experts and/or organizations that employ gamification within their specific contexts - I think this part would make great video or audio contributions to the ePub.

Here's the link to my proposal: ETAD 802 - Simmons - Proposal - I've made it so anyone can comment, so feel free to leave some feedback!

Jason Grayston: **Collaborative Inquiry via Web-Based Applications**
Redefining the way we do group work within the classroom and beyond has held my interest over the past few years. With the availability of web-based applications and the number of mobile devices being brought into the classroom, the concept of the classroom is changing whether we know it or not. So how to embrace change and enhance learning through the use of available tools? I would like to explore the potential of collaborative learning through inquiry based projects using web based applications. This may be an interesting look at the modern use of devices and methodologies in the classroom and in professional development. I'm looking forward to bouncing ideas off my fellow ETADers to see where the potential of the idea may take this project.

Here's a link to my proposal (a work in progress) Collaborative Inquiry via Web-Based Applications

Bill Kapphahn: **Distance Education, Blended Education and Face to Face. What’s the difference in a K-12 school system?**
choosento make part of the ePub. I have done some research into the characteristics of successful K-12 learners and would like to generalize this to school programs. There is little research into long-term success of students in these programs. I have observed school systems placing students inappropriately into programs with little likelihood of success. I would like to define and give guidance to the predictability of the effective use of educational technology within the school setting. Research, summarizing current literature, would be integrated into the paper to help predict the success of these types of programs within the K-12 context. I would also like to discuss the use of educational technology for professional development and collaboration. See the rough draft here! (Work in progress)

Clay Bergen: **Twitter, Social Media and Personal Learning Networks (PLN)** At the beginning of this year if you had asked me if I'd have thought Twitter could be used as a serious tool for teachers I would have been hard pressed to repress a sneer. Now, however, I find Twitter and indispensable asset as I follow educational leaders and the neat things they are doing, reading and tweeting about. Twitter has become an amazing resource for me in learning and reflecting on my practice. I would like to look at research on PLN's and how Twitter and other social media work in creating teachers who not only use technology, but use it in innovative ways to enhance their learning.

Mark Selinger: **Best Practices for Implementing a BYOD Policy** The evolution of personal digital devices has begun to occur at a more rapid rate. If we look at tablet computers, for example, the first generation iPad was introduced in April of 2010, and in less than a year, a new version of this device, with additional features (the iPad 2) was released to the public. This constant improvement and evolution of personal digital devices may be good for the consumer by giving them the best devices available; however school divisions are finding it difficult to keep up. The old model that most school divisions had adopted of purchasing devices for the schools is not necessarily a feasible one anymore. The devices are changing too quickly, and the divisions do not have the money to constantly refresh their digital devices. This has led to school divisions exploring the option of a Bring Your Own Device model. My project will examine the Bring Your Own Device Model to see if it can benefit school divisions as well as students. And we will also explore if there are some best practices that school divisions can use when developing a Bring Your Own Device Policy.

Giséle Stalwick: ** Cyber bullying…How to educate against it and prevent it? ** The purpose of this e-book chapter is to discuss the effects of cyber bullying on students. I will be writing a chapter for an ePub book. I will also look at how in-school administrators can work towards educating students to better protect themselves and to prevent cyber bullying. Research Questions: 1. How has the use of electronic devices affected bullying? 2. What can in-school administrators do to help prevent cyber-bullying? 3. What are some long term effects of cyber bullying on society? Significance: This topic is important to me because I believe that as an in-school administrator it is important to understand the effects that cyber bullying is having on students. Due to the increase of on line bullying, educational institutions have an important role in teaching students’ safety when using the net as well as prevention of on line bullying. Most of the time, cyber bullying occurs when students are not in school but the effects of cyber bullying comes back to school, therefore we must be proactive and deal with the situation.

Cara Hauber: **Learning the Basics of Math with Technology** I believe that this will be an e-book chapter, but I might change my mind as I go! My project comes from my years of teaching math to varying grade levels - the program our school division is using challenges students to problem-solve and understand different methods to answer mathematical-based questions. This new focus in mathematical learning seems to come at the expense of the "basics". I have seen students in the middle years struggle with basic facts and not be able to continue on in the assignment. My project will study what the literature says is needed for "basic" mathematical facts, and what features in a software program assist students to continue to use the program (especially since most of the technology I'm thinking of is used during students' free time or at home). I also want to analyze some programs that my school has been using with students to see if they are assisting our students to attain/retain basic math facts.

Kevin Kitchen: **Individual Learning Devices for each student** I love the idea of an e-book chapter, even though I'm not quite sure what it is. I actually prefer anything to papers. I'm not exactly sure what direction I'm going to take this topic, but I know its of great interest to me as a Technology fanatic and I do believe this trend is coming near to schools near us sooner than later. I have heard rumours that our school division plans to have tablets or laptops for each student by the start of the 2014-15 school year, which is when our next technology roll out is set to take place. This would not be an easy topic to write about, because there is probably very little research out there seeing as how this is a very new topic. What I really want to know are the following things; Is this substantial cost worth it if there will be little to no change in learning? Are there schools out there that have tried this and witnessed noticeable results? Is this simply another trend that will become obsolete in a few years? I've confused myself with the last question or two so chances are I will change my topic before long. Good luck all!

Kevin Kitchen: Take 2 **Social Media and Increased Communication between schools and families** I literally thought of a second possible topic only 3 minutes after finishing the one above. This one is near and dear to me. I am the administrator of both our facebook and twitter accounts at our school, as well as the main technology teacher. In our school, and I'm willing to bet many schools around the province, communication between the school and families is severely lacking. I don't believe our students feel a connection to our school like they should. When it comes to parents, the divide is so big it is difficult to comprehend. Parental engagement is something so obviously integral to students education and success. The problem is that it is only obvious to us as educators, and not the parents or even students themselves. Social media has a very large influence on communication. Granted not all influences are positive ones, but in a controlled environment such as a school facebook or twitter account, the benefits far outweigh the negatives. I'm interested to explore this topic further and find some data and success stories, as well as some strategies to improve parental engagement.

Sherry Vetter: **What does engagement look like in an online environment** There has been a lot of focus on engaging students in the classroom. As an online teacher, I have found it difficult to engage the students - for them to take ownership of their learning. I want to explore questions like: • What does engagement look like in the online world? • What are some strategies that work in a f2f classroom and how can they be adapted to online? • What might work online that would be difficult f2f? • What does the research say? • What are the potential benefits or issues?

Crissy Sutherland: **Cyber-Bullying/Digital CitizenshipHow can we prepare our kids for 21st century communication?** As a teacher, administrator, parent and member of society, I am choosing this topic as a means of defense and an act of desperation. I am not a user of social media and my knowledge in this area is limited, but I am facing the challenges of cyber-bullying, engagement and communication every day. My plan is to write a paper (the second option) and hopefully make some sense of how to handle the issues and create citizens who use technology to enhance their lives. (Big dreams but knowledge is power.)My research focus will include the following: I know there is a pile of literature on this topic and my main goal is to make some sense of it all.
 * 1) 1. How can we incorporate digital citizenship into our current curriculum?
 * 2) 2. How can we prepare, protect and prevent cyber-bullying? (I am also interested to know if cyber-bullying is a technology issue or a virtue/value issue?)
 * 3) 3. How can we create an environment where children are using social media and technology to enhance their ability to communicate?

Name: Karim Tharani Type: Academic paper <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Topic: **Supporting Research and Knowledge Discovery in the Digital Age – A Case Study** <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Abstract: Historically academic libraries have played a vital role in making extant manuscripts and other primary sources accessible to researchers to facilitate the knowledge discovery process. With proliferation of digital collections across university campuses, how can academic libraries continue to engage researchers in the digital age? By way of a case study, this paper will highlight the existing disconnect between the needs of researchers and services provided by academic libraries. The paper will also illustrate how academic libraries can better meet the needs of researchers by integrating disparate technologies to transform dormant digital collections into active research repositories.

-- <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Jeremy Lang: **How People Read and the Evolution of the eBook** <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">My first few years of teaching was spent exploring how to improve my students’ engagement in reading and in turn their reading comprehension. I have also been working on ways to better infuse digital technology into to my classroom in an attempt to further engage and improve my students’ learning. Seven years later, through trials and tribulations, I continue to work on both of these tasks as the students and the technology around me forever evolves. As a result I am planning on exploring how individuals read and I will try to discern if there is a difference between how print and digital text is examined. Through this I intend to look at the evolution of eBooks and the accompanying reading tool, eReaders. However, my focus will be on trying to provide guidelines for designers to follow when presenting text in digital form in the hopes of engaging readers and ultimately improving reading comprehension. Who knows, this might even make for an interesting read in an eBook. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Proposal** - Please feel free to add comments directly on the document. If you have questions about how to do this please just ask.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Jason Sand: **Increasing Student Motivation with Technology**

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">There are three things that guide all we do. They are what we do, how we do, and why we do it. To often in education we are focused on what. What content is covered, what a students knows or doesn't know, etc. We are very good at letting the students know how to achieve at the highest level. Do X, Y and Z well and you will get a good mark. Think about a student who is struggling in a class. We tell them what to do and how to do it again, sometimes we even adapt or make things easier for them just so they can be successful. In all of this there is no rational for the student a to why they should do it. If we really want to create successful, productive members of our society students need to become lifelong learners. To be interested enough to continue learning for your whole life you must be intrinsically motivated. If you as an individual want to do something, nothing will stop you. I have been studying this concept for a while, as it has become an interest area of mine. I would like to further my focus to now look at how this concept can move forward. There is research that has been presented in my division for a student learning model. In this model it states that 80% of students have the cognitive level to succeed and it further breaks down the other 20% of students and attributes the extra supports that are in place for those students. Np where does it address student motivation and the students that can succeed but are not doing so, or that are barely scraping by. Imagine if there was one resource that any student could access. This resource would be motivating for the student, house all the content inside itself, allow them to modify and personalize it for their own needs, give enrichment content for high, middle and low end of learners, while at the same time addressing accessibility for learners with special needs. No student has a different resource or program, just a different way to get to the end.

Glenn Nowosad -“**Inspiring and Supporting Learning”** through the effective and timely management of “One-to-One” and “Mobile” Technology

The timely deployment, inventory, imaging, support and maintenance of technology utilized by students and staff is critical to the success of maintaining a 21st century learning environment. Technology support needs to be a seamless component of the instructional process and not primary focus of technology integration. More importantly instructional design support for teachers in the classroom is as important as the physical technology. Each comes at a financial and instructional cost. Far to often one is sacrifice for the other because of budget reasons. What is the right balance between instructional design and infrastructure support?

Teresa Lalonde- **"Using Technology to Create a Paperless Classroom"**

I think that paperless classrooms can be a useful by-product of using technology in the classroom. While there are many pros and cons to having a paperless classroom, technology is already creating a shift in education away from traditional 'paper work'. Some of the issues I would like to discuss are: - Why would paperless classrooms be beneficial -What are some of the technologies that are particularly useful to achieve this -How assignments/exams and assessment would be altered to fit into a paperless environment -What are some issues that need to be worked out (ie access issues, organizational, time constraints) -Will a paperless classroom allow teachers to better use their teaching time more efficiently and become learning facilitators

Aaron Biberdorf - **Using Technology to Create a Collaborative Problem Based Learning Experience in a Synchronous Learning Environment** WOW! I am really late... Sorry team. I thought this was due today, not last week. I see that my idea for a paper is somewhat similar to several that have already been posted. What I would like to do is look at how technology can be used to create an effective learning environment during my synchronous Physical Science 20 broadcast for next year. I see my paper being more of an action plan, backed by research. My school division has provided funding for projects based on 21st century learning skills, and this is actually the project I have proposed. I am now hoping to use the knowledge gained in this class to make the experience the most meaningful for my students. Some issues I would like to discuss include which device would be most appropriate for this project, what type of software or apps would be beneficial and why, a general 'acceptable use' policy, and how this type of learning envronment could increase student learning.