INTASC Assessment Form

INTASC Assessment Form

EDUD 520 Reflections

This morning, I finally figured out how to record and upload on Screentoaster.com.  What a fun and fantastic Web based tool.   All of the Web based tools have been fantastic to explore.   The teacher I worked with in fourth grade asked me at the beginning of the year if I would create a Web page for her class using the District's web tools.  I thought that would be a great experience, but the project never got off the ground having to use the District's tools and guidelines.  After learning about Blogspot.com and GoogleDocs Web sites,  in the last month of the school year, I have finally created a Classroom Blog for that fourth grade teacher.  I created a blog site, embedded a picture, tokbox videos, and had students interact on the blog.  Wow, have I come a long way. 

What struck me most about the times when I was involved with a lesson that incorporated technology, was how involved and interactive the students were in the projects.  Many of the Internet sites have so much knowledge accumulated on one site that it would be impossible to read the whole site.  The Educational Internet sites ask students not only to read, but they ask students to think, make decisions, and manage their research so that they find the information that they need to complete their assignments.  I also discovered that the Internet can support learners at their varying degrees of ability.  With teacher involvement, learners can find sites that are appropriate for their grade level, ability, and learning styles.  I can see possibilities for incorporating technology throughout the curriculum.  Technology is a very exciting tool which enhances student participation and learning.  In this class I have learned from Barry, as well as from my fellow students.  Thanks-I'm hooked on Technology.  

HERE"S MY Web Page

EDUC 520 Final Project Presentation

Free online screencasting tool

New Tech Standards & Requirements

I think it is fantastic that technology is now part of the Oregon Diploma:  2012 essential skills. Just as colleges and employers of high school students expect a minimum standard of ability concerning reading, writing, and math, so to should they be able to expect a minimum standard of technological ability from graduates.  I also think that graduates deserve to receive technology training that prepares them for learning, living, and working within our society. 

One of the ideas I have for implementing a technology strategy for developing Creativity, Innovation, Communication, and Collaboration is developing a class blog.  Elementary school students can participate in the development and maintenance of a class blog. 

Students can be involved in the designing of the layout of the blog,  take pictures for the blog, participate in deciding what class work they would like displayed on the blog and, students can share all of this with their parents at home.  Younger students can actually watch on a screen in the classroom as I add pictures, classwork, and make comments to the blog. 

 Older elementary students can actually create projects and add them to the blog. For instance, in my son's class we are going to tape student's biography presentations on tokbox.com and embed them to the class blog.   Students will then be asked to visit the site in pairs, choose three biographies to read and make comments to each them.  I should point out that this project could not be carried out completely with the school's computers.  The school's computers do not have web cams.   The teacher and I plan to use our laptops so we can make the project happen, but I'm starting to see that there may be problems with lack of technological equipment available to students.

For research, information fluency, critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making,  I can think of many activities using active links.  Allowing students to explore the Internet for solutions to questions like, how do I safely get rid of termites in my home? This question can challenge students to learn about termites, learn about termite habitat, decide what "safe" means, come up with solutions, and determine if the solutions are legitimate.   This project could be done in small groups providing students the opportunity to think, problem solve, and make decisions as a group. 

I also think it is important for students to learn to develop power point presentations. Researched information can be put in a power point presentation which can include pictures and active links.  Elementary students cam also learn to use dictionary.com which offers not only word definitions but language translations and a thesaurus.  As we have mentioned in our class before, technology can be easily implemented into lesson plans throughout the curriculum if we decide to make the effort.  Because kids seem to be drawn to technology, I think technology can be easily merged with all of the Oregon Diploma essential skills.

Analyzing Student Datat in a Spreadsheet

The data indicates that all students have improved their test scores or increased their knowledge of the content.  The student growth line of Kathrine is very interesting.  She started out with the lowest test score of 120 and then shot up to 180.  She then dropped back down to a test score of 160 and then back up to 180.  Most students consistently increased their test scores.  Kathrine's score seems to fluctuate.  What is causing the fluctuations in her growth chart?

I had some trouble hiding data, so I followed Barry's advice and copy/paste the data on a seperate sheet so I could create a chart with the scores lower than 192.  I think the Excel program is ok.  I don't have alot of experience with Excel but I do think the Excel program on Google Docs creates a bit of busy work.  We should be able to hide data so a chart can be created with the data we have showing.  Also, I'm not sure about the publishing section.  I posted my chart earlier today and when I later went to edit the post, my chart was gone.   It could be my computer because it has had problems functioning in Google Docs today.   

Analizing Student Data in a Spreadsheet

Comments on Multimedia Presentation-4Shared

Well, I'd like to say that our Presentation was fun and easy to create but we had many technical problems which caused us to spend hours coming up with a final project.  Our original idea was to use ScreenToaster.com so that we could make a video of us using 4Shared while we were talking.  We could not get the sound to work so we recorded the project with no sound and then recorded our presentation to Tokbox.com with sound.  It is hard to see what we are pointing at but the conversation is good and I think helpful to someone who wants to try 4Share out.  

4Shared has some nice features.  Sharing documents and photos were relatively easy to do.  I posted my Husband's welding projects on my virtual hard drive.  When we first moved to Salem, Steve was applying for lots of jobs and they wanted to see his work.  It would have been helpful to be able to have included a link to 4Shared with his photos downloaded with his resume.  I like the fact that information can  be stored "in space" rather than on a persons hard drive.  The feature that I liked the most was their emailing process.  It was extremely simple to use and I liked the format in which it was sent.  I didn't particularly like the "search engine".  Since files sometimes have numbers or funny names, it's hard to find files on a particular subject like, lesson plans. I also found that I couldn't download half the files I tried - that could be because of VISTA.  The music download also seemed fairly easy.  There was a forum section where I was able to find discussions on particular topics.  That might be fun to look into further.    

 

Below our 4Shared Presentation Post are two Posts in which I used 4Shared.  Please take a look so you can see what 4Shared looks like when you use it.

4Shared Multimedia Presentation

4Shared using a password to view

This site needs a password in order to share.  It's maddie.

Class Puzzle.docx

Using 4Shared to post pictures

I'm sharing my Husband's handiwork from Neets Bay, Alaska. 

Click on the link.

http://www.4shared.com/dir/14184215/a6282a8f/sharing.html

TokBox Presentation

TokBox Presentation Copying Comments

I tried two ways to embed or copy our Presentation to my blog.  The first attempt created a nice picture of the first page of our Presentation but, it also included GoogleDocs which if clicked, lead a path to my email.  I tried to get rid of it and failed.  So, I made this ugly post. What I do like about this ugly post is that when you click on the link, it puts up a large version of our Presentation.  I'm looking forward to hearing about some other ways that I can post on my blog or web page.  I feel posting on the blog and web site from other sites should be a discussion for those of us who have little experience in this area. 

Okay, Okay, I've got it.  I deleted my second ugly post because after some testing, I discovered that the copy/paste procedure did not leave a path open to my gmail.  Michelle checked out the post on my blog from her account and hit Google Docs and it opened up to her gmail.  I tried it from willamette.mat"s account and it opened up to willamette.mat's gmail.  So, through experimenting around with Michelle we discovered that it will open up the web page of whoever is signed in.  Ahh Haaa.   

Learning Curve for TokBox

Well, I've had a lot  of fun learning about tokbox.com.  It is very easy to sign up and mail those video mails.  I invited my parents to tokbox.com and I was able to talk to them while viewing their amazing faces.  It was a blast.  We did have a problem with an echo while we were talking, so you need to wear headphones during the transmission.  My parents and I talked for at least 30 minutes  and we didn't have any trouble during the interaction.  You can create a list of friends that you can dial-up to talk to and you can add as many as 20 people in that conference call. 

I created a video that I wanted to send to my blog and I made an amazing learning mistake.

Instead of sending my pre-made video to my blog, I sent what is called Widget to my blog.  I discovered that people could make a video mail from Widget and send the video mail to whoever they wanted.  This would actually be cool when introducing tokbox to students in the classroom. You could just have them go to the Class Blog and ask them to try out the video mail.  Students wouldn't have register or create their own tokbox account.  This could also be used to have students practice speeches.

     

The other problem I had was sending video mail to my blog.  Barry was very kind and showed me via TeamViewers, how to send my video mail to my blog.  I was trying to embed from the list of items on the left of tokbox screen.  What Barry showed me was that it is done after you press send .  There will be a list of choices on the right of your picture and you press link/embed.

Then you will be given a choice of two lines to copy-copy the last choice and then click to your blog and create a new post.  Click the Edit Html tab and then put your cursor in the blank space and paste.  Then click compose and your video will transfer.  It doesn't necessarily show up until you click View Blog. 

Tokbox.com is fun and easy, even for an old timer like me.  

TokBox Presentation Demo

Here is a brief discussion of the learning curve of Tokbox.

Heres my link

Here is some more stuff

Checking for Understanding-ReQuest

ReQuest is a strategy designed to teach students to ask questions and think of the answers while they are reading. In the book, Checking for Understanding, studies have shown that students who engage in questioning while reading improve their comprehension. I tried this strategy out with my son's Battle of the Book team. Since we are a book club and not a class, we had to alter the strategy. The team had to read 16 books to prepare for the Jeorpordy type question and answer competition. Intially, parents meet with the students and had them answer questions from the Accelerated Reader program on the school computer. Once the students got into the routine of answering questions about their readings we (the parents) asked the students questions. We did this for several meetings and then once we were sure that all the books had been read by the students, we asked the students to come up with questions to ask each other. They did a terrific job. They started out asking knowledge questions and then comprehension content type questions. It worked out great.

I did not ask these students to ask questions of each other until they had read the whole book. I tried to get the kids to write down questions while they were reading but they really had trouble stopping their readings to write down a question. I did finally tell them to just think of questions while they were reading and that at the end of the book they could write down the questions. Most of the students didn't write down the questions but they did have the questions in their minds when it was time to ask their team mates questions. These students will be Battling through April, so they will continue to review their books and ask each other questions.

P.S. They won their first Battle!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Specific Applications for Blogs

I can think of many ways that Blogs can be a part of classroom instruction. When I am teaching I will have a classroom Blog. The Blog will be used to solicit comments and questions from students as well as a place to share pictures of classroom activities. Some specific ideas I have are:

• Taking pictures of field trips and putting them on the Blog with descriptions and then asking students to comment. Rather than simple asking for comments, I could also ask students to answer a reflective question. It would be fun to have the students take turns being the photographer so that it was their pictures that were on the Blog.
• Asking students to comment or answer reflective questions concerning a story that we might be reading.
• Asking students to do some research and have them briefly describe their findings on the Blog.
• Ask students to comment on the Posts of other students.

As I write these ideas, more ideas continue to pop into my mind. I think once you start a class out on the path of participating on Blogs, they will become more and more involved in its use. Students could even take turns coming up with ideas for Post assignments. I think Blogs have a lot of potential for improving student involvement on assignments. In a Public School setting it will be important to provide access to the Blogs for all students.

Web 2.0-Rethinking our Schools

After watching Shift Happens and Pay Attention I felt conflicting feelings. I can definitely see the need for new teachers to not only learn technology but to also- Teach Technology. Wow, 10 -14 jobs by the time they are 38 years old. Call me old fashioned but going through that many jobs in such a short period of time meant you were a lousy worker. The videos do an amazing job of providing a glimpse into the fast pace world that our children will be living and working in. My first reaction to the videos were -what can I do to prepare children for the type of world that they will be experiencing.

• Teach children the ability to learn.
• Teach children how to critically think.
• Expose children to many ideas to develop personal flexibility.
• Help children learn about themselves.
• Teach children about nature.

The videos drove home to me the responsibility that I have as a teacher to teach children technology so that they can be prepared to function successfully in society. The videos also made me concerned for the pace in which our society seems to be heading. Children need time to discover themselves and their connection to nature. When I think of teaching a child- I think all these factors are important.

My Favorite Web 2.0 Tools

Web 2.0 is a web-based platform for applications and services. In other words, the software for programs and services need not be on your computer-"it is in the clouds". I find this sort of technology exciting and scary. It's scary to think that your information is just "floating in the air". But after reviewing all the different programs and tools, I can't but help feel excited about all the possible uses in the classroom. Everyone in our family has played with TokBox-it's a blast. Web based technology can have a major impact on my teaching through providing me with technology that students will find relevant to them. Children seem to have a natural attraction to computers-they seem to relax and interact with each other when technology is involved. They seem more connected to projects and content when computers are involved. And most importantly, they seem to listen better when technology is involved. I think incorporating technology in the lesson plan can definitely enhance learning.



While exploring Web 2.0 I had a blast. I especially enjoyed TokBox. TokBox is a video mail tool. It was simple to use and I kept coming up with ideas for its use. It has a feature that allows you to ring another person and talk to them while looking at their image in time-fantastic and fun. This sort of tool would be easy to teach children. I also liked Dabbleboard. Dabbleboard is a whiteboard that you can free draw, type or put pictures. This would be a great tool when working with students on developing idea webs or Pre-writes. It also is very easy to use and most importantly-free.

Bio

I moved to Salem, Oregon four years ago from Southeast, Alaska. I bring to teaching a wide range of life experiences. I grew up in Southern, California in a small racially integrated desert community. I attended college at San Diego State University and earned a degree in Psychology. Shortly after college, I headed to Alaska. Once I landed in Alaska, I found myself involved in one remote living experience after another. After 18 years of living in Alaska, family responsibilities brought us back to the Lower 48. After years of solitude I feel a great need to be a part of a community. Since my son was born in 1998 I have been immersed in the world of children. I have discovered an unknown passion-teaching. Since I spent most of my younger years exploring and not saving for my retirement, I now realize that I will have work far into my sixties. I lose track of time whenever I am with children so I have decided that teaching is the profession for me-I will be happy and feel fulfilled while making a contribution to society and earning a retirement. View my complete profile