Week 6 of Cedo 550

This week concluded a very interesting class.  I have to say I most, out of everything we did,  enjoyed teaching an online course.  I feel confident that I could do this if I wanted to change what I am doing now.  It is a lot of work, but I think it would be fun and engaging as well.  As for this week in class, I really enjoyed the video called "Shift Happens".  It is a true wake up call as to where are country and children are at this point of time and it shows the importance of being technologically knowledgeable in the 21st century.

Week 5 of Cedo 550

This week was a fun week in Online Facilitation.  I was able to teach my 15 minute lesson on "Qualities of a Successful Online Student."  I felt I did much better than I thought I would do.  I asked many good questions and got my class to share some very good points.  I planned it as an interesting class and got a good grade on it. I think it gave me some very good experience for if I ever teach online in the future.

We also discussed social networking this week.  Overall my feeling of social networking is very positive.  I am part of an online community every day and have been for many years.  I  have been on Facebook since 2007 and really enjoy the opportunities I have to share my personal information and look into what is happening in other people's lives.  As a member of this Stritch Cohort, I also feel I have been in an online community that facilitates learning and sharing of knowledge.  I am very happy with my experiences so far.  


We also investigated the positives and negatives of working on a project collaboratively.  I feel a positive is the ability to bring many ideas together.  When you are only working by yourself, you are limited by your own experiences and ideas.  Have a group to work on a project together really opens up doors and makes your project the best it can be.  On the other hand, the greatest challenge of working collaboratively are those instances when team members do not work together well or there are personality conflicts.  Time is wasted because the members cannot come to a consensus and the product is not developed to the fullest extent.  


This week was a very interesting and useful week, and I continue to enjoy this online facilitation class.  

Week 4 of Cedo 550

This week we have focused on student centered instruction and differentiation of assignments.  Up until this school year, my teaching was very teacher centered.  I did a lot of lecturing and sharing of notes.  After going through Stritch, however, I have picked up a lot of strategies and have been changing the way I have been teaching to a more student centered approach.  I am putting most of my time into switching from teacher centered to student center learning in my Civics class.  The students are given a scenario and are expected to investigate the information, instead of me sharing every little bit of information with the students.  We still hold discussions, with me as the facilitator, but after the students have investigated the information asked of them.  I have also helped my team teacher in Life Science do teaching in this way as well. 

We were instructed to make an authentic assessment for our newly differentiated lesson.  I found that rubrics  really rate what the student is learning.  This works very well with the assignments I give in Civics class. I can honestly show where the student is based on what is expected of the student and what type of input the student put into his/her assignment.   I like the rubric I made because I can accurately see where they did well and were they were lacking.  It also shows them that I am stressing that they learn the content.  I do grade on spelling and grammar, but for many of my students this is a very difficult thing for them to master and I think it is a good thing for me to show them that their content is worth more than a few spelling errors. 

I really enjoyed learning about more differentiation strategies.  For example, for my civics assignment, I am now going to allow students to share their ideas in pictures and video rather than just text.  This small thing can help many students who tend not to be very skilled in writing.

This week has been very informational and I am looking forward to Tuesday when I can present my class discussion on qualities of a successful online student. 

Week 3 of Cedo 550

For the second half of this class, I will be acting as a Facilitator/Teacher. We were asked what challenges we see we will have as an online teacher.   I have not been an online teacher to this point.  However, I think a huge challenge will be to read all of the postings and assignments the students submit.  As I have been working as an online student, I have submitted a lot of ideas in each of my classes.  I can only imagine what it is like for the instructor to go through all of the comments.  I would want to designate a large amount of time in order to give quality feedback to my students.  

During class we were discussing facilitating asynchronous and synchronous discussions.  When posting an asynchronous discussion, I want to make sure that the questions that I post are clear and concise and my students will understand what is exactly expected of them to share.  As for the synchronous discussions I will be facilitating in the future, I think that the questions I ask as well as my ability to quickly react to anything that is brought up will be a challenge when I first do this.  As with anything, I belive I will get better at it as I do it more.  However, the first time doing this will probably be harder than I anticipate. We were given the option of what topic we would like to teach in our synchronous discussion.  I picked "The qualities of a successful online student" because it fits very well into what my class and I have been doing the past year.  I think it is a topic that will generate a lot of good discussion and opinions. I am looking forward to holding my first online teaching experience.  I am nervous, but I think this will be a great opportunity to practice and see if teaching online is something I would like to do in the future.

Week 2 of Cedo 550

This week, I got the opportunity to see what it feels like to be the facilitator and reporter of an online class.  It was intense yet enjoyable to take the role as the teacher in the online class setting.  I learned that you have to be on your feet and know how to direct the class and keep them interested.  I also discovered the importance of asking open ended questions that can get a dialague going. 

As a class, we also looked into some of the facilitation skills that are necessary to carry out a successful class.  I will make sure that I include as many students as possible in a web conference.  It is important to get various viewpoints shared and it helps the class open up when you have many opinions to work off of. 

Another important point to remember is the vvalue of a proper initial contact.  When starting an online class, I will always make an email invitation that is clear, precise, and provides a warm welcome to the class. 

Overall, this week seemed to be of real value to me.  I'm not sure if I will every teach an online class, but the tools provided the past week have helped me feel I could do it if it is something I do end up doing during my career. 

Week 1 of CeDO 550

This week I started a new course called Online Faciliation.  During this course I will be learning about instruction classes online.  I am excited about this opportunity because it will give me yet more tools that I can use after I am done with this program.  The first activity we did this week was too look at the positives and negatives of online education through the eyes of parents, teachers and students.  There is a lot to take into consideration for each of these groups of people.  Cost and quality of instruction are very important to parents.  Students are looking for flexibility in their schedules, but also looking for classes that are interesting and interactive.  Teachers tend to spend a lot of their day working as an online instructor, but they can do it with a flexibility that they do not have when teaching in a typical brick and mortar building.

We also looked at online tools that can be used with our students.  There really are a countless amount of activities available for use, but I found that you need to study them closely and see if they fit well with what you are trying to do in your class.  It does take time to figure out what activities should be used and when you will use them.

Overall, I enjoyed this first week of class and felt I gained some useful tools that I could use in my current classes I teach as well as some tools that may benefit me in the future.

Week 6 of Cedo 535

The item that I have decided to use fully in my professional life is a class wiki.  I am going on my 3rd week of using this now, and it is working very well.  The students can easily access this and enjoy having a centralized place were they can see what we have been doing in class and have the opportunity to edit any information they feel needs to be changed.  Since I have already started to incorporate this in my classroom, it is very easy to measure how well it is working for me.  I can look at all of the edits made by the students and figure out how much participation the students are having within the wiki.  I feel that this experiment will turn into something I use as a full time tool not just in my current Civics class, but in other classes I teach in the future.  It really does make teaching easier and learning for the students a more interactive task.

Week 5 of Cedo 535

This week, I started a Wiki and used Eyejot with my Civics class.  My wiki coincides with the work that my students are doing in class.  After a week of using it, I would say it has been a success.  The students have enjoyed entering their thoughts and what they have found for their assignments.  I have seen a lot of great collaboration with the students and they have done a fine job of fixing mistakes that students have entered in the wiki.  It really has helped take my class to another level of thinking.  I now plan to use this wiki for the rest of the year and years to follow.  I would also like to start a wiki for other classes I teach.

Eyejot has been really fun.  I have sent two Eyejot messages to my students the past week and posted them on Facebook.  The messages relate to our topic in class The Articles of Confederation.  I have got positive responses from my students.  They said it's fun and also makes them think more when they can see and hear me on the computer asking them about what we are learning in class.  Eyejot is yet another great tool that I wish I had years ago.  It's so easy, yet so useful!

I really can't believe this class is almost over.  We have gone through five weeks already and learned a ton.  I think this class has been one of my most beneficial in the whole program up to this date.  I look forward the last week and any new tools that I will be learning about.

Week 4 of Cedo 535

This week we had to work on a podcast or screencast.  As decided to do a podcast using a site called Eyejot.  Eyejot is very easy to use and is free.  It's a great way to record your self as a video message and either send that message to someone via email or post it somewhere someone can see.  As I was doing this, I came up with a great idea.  I currently have a Facebook page for two of my classes.  I typically post questions on the page for students to answer.  I think I'm going to try to post some Eyejot messages that the students can watch then respond to.  This may be more interesting for some of the kids rather than just responding to some written questions.  They seem to like to see me on video when I share videos of me in class, so this may be a way of extending their learning.  I will have to try this and update at a future time.

Week 3 of CeDO 535

I have really enjoyed the topics we have been exploring in this course.  This week is no exception.  The two major topics we were investigating this week were RSS feeds and Photo sharing sites.  I made my first Google Reader to collected RSS feeds from various websites.  I wish I had known about this earlier, it really is neat and useful.  It basically collects information from sites you subscribe to and sends it to you.  This eliminates the need for you to go out and look for the information.  It's like email for web information.  I can see my self continually using this for my personal and professional life. 

I also added photos to my Flickr account.  I actually did have a Flickr account set up from a few years ago, but never used it.  I now have added more pictures and can share those pictures with others.  I'm not sure if I will use it more, but I may.  At this point, I do put all my photos on Facebook and share them with my friends there.  I also back up my computer with Mozy, so I will have to see if I will use Flickr more or not. 

Overall, this week has been interesting and I am looking forward to the second half of this class!

Week 2 of CeDo 535

This week, one of the things we investigated in class is the use of Wikis.  For the past few years, I allowed my students to use Wikipedia as a source of information for their work in my class.  After investigating it more this week, I feel more comfortable with my decision to allow that.  However, I am still going to continue to require students to cross check any information that they find with other sources.  As I did as a kid when it was books, magazines and encyclopedias, I always had to cross check my sources.  I continue to feel that Wikipedia is a good place to verify "big ideas."  Although some of the information on the site might be false, the main topics seem to be concrete. 

I am also interested in making a wiki for my civics class.  I think it would be a great tool to have to gather all of my students thoughts into one central location.  This year, I have tried a new way of teaching with my Civics students.  I post questions on Moodle and have the students find the information on their own using the Internet.  I'm able to do this because I have my class in a computer lab this year, so that helps.  After they find the information, they put it into word or powerpoint and then put it into a shared folder.  We then take a day to look at the info everyone got and discuss it.  If move to using a wiki for class, the students can constantly see what others are posting and make changes as they see fit. 

Week 1 of CeDO 535

This week I started my new class called Facilitating Collaboration using Web Tools.  I found the assignment on investigating blogging services to be quit useful.  I really liked the this site called Coveritlive.  Coveritlive is a service that allows users to cover events live.  If there are speeches, sporting events or other live events going on, this service lets you post your thoughts in real time, so others can see what you are thinking about the topic at hand.  It is very similar to instant messaging.    As a person posts  in real time, readers are able to post comments, which pop up like instant messages.  I can see this to be an exciting way to get students involved with discussions.  This services also allows the readers to answer questions to polling questions that the blogger shares.   This services is free and can work in your school if you get certain school restrictions lifted.  
I also like the book that we are starting to read, "Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms" by Will Richardson.  This book looks into the many new tools that are out there to use in school.  I really like the idea of blogging more with students and having more of a connection that way with my students.  I recently made Facebook pages for 2 of my classes, and so far that has been a fun way of interacting with my students in a way I have not done in the past.  

Week 5 of CeDO 540

This week we took a look at Google Trends.  I found this to be really interesting.  I really liked how easy this site makes it for a person to look at the popularity of two or more subjects based on the searches for the certain topic.  As a group, were were too look into this site and research a topic.  We decided to look into popularity of professional sports.  It was really neat to see the big difference in popularity between NHL and NFL here in America.  Football is a lot more popular!  However, you are also able to look at popularity in different areas of the world.  To no surprise, Canada's love for the NHL for surpasses that of its love for the NFL.   We also compared the NFL to the NBA and they actually were quite similar, but some cities had higher interest for NBA or NFL than others did.   After looking into our group assignment, I wanted to play around with Google Trends a bit on my own.  I took different U.S. cities and matched them up to on another.  New York had the most hits, followed by Chicago.  I was a bit surprised, because I thought 2nd place would be Los Angeles since it is the second largest city in the country, but Chicago had quite more hits than LA.   One thing I found very interesting was when I put Minneapolis in Google Trends.  Overall, there isn't much activity for searches on Minneapolis, but there was a large spike around August 2007....or when the I-35 bridge collapsed.  That event cause many, many people to look up Minneapolis.   Anyway, I am happy that I learned this new tool and I hope I will be able to use it for something practical in my personal or professional life in the future. 

Week 4 of CEDO 540

This past week in class were were to learn about Bill Tancer.  Bill Tancer is general manager of global research at Hitwise, the world's leading online competitive intelligence services company.  He studies Internet trends based on the searches that people do on the Internet.  One of the really interesting things that I learned was the pattern of when people start searching for prom dresses.  It turns out that January is actually the biggest months for prom dress searches.  Who knew?  The reason that information like that is important is because companies, either online or brick and mortar, can use that information to start marketing and selling the their prom dresses.  This technique can be use for countless other products.  This method of data research can be useful most of the time, but sometimes it does have errors.  Bill Tancer spoke about the excitement he got when he thought he could predict the winner of "Dancing with the Stars."  It turns out that the number of searches spiked for one of the contestants not because of her popularity on the show, but because of her attractiveness to men.  This caused  a false prediction that she would win the show, but she came in 3rd.  After learning more about Bill Tancer's data studying methods, I think it is very useful for companies that want to market something they are selling, but I wouldn't use it for trying to win bets on reality show contests!

Week 3 of CeDO 540

This week we had to make a survey that we could collect data on, analyze that data and eventually make a report.  When my group got together, we made a list of possible topics that we could make a survey on.  After discussing for a while, we came up with the idea of making a survey on pet ownership.  We felt that this would be a survey that could generate a lot of data because everyone can share their experience or lack of experience of owning a pet.  We are planning on sending this survey to many people on Facebook as well as on email.  We are hoping for a lot of good data that we can make a good report with.   I am very curious to see what numbers come out of this project!  

Week 2 of CeDO 540

For the past couple weeks we were investigating how to use mean, median and mode as well as learning about different surveys that are available for use.  Though I'm not thrilled about averages, I did learn a few new things the past few weeks.  I think it was useful to think about what numbers to look at depending on what topic your are talking about.  For example, for a group assignment we had to explain what group of numbers we would look at if we were assessing the value of our home.  It would be a good idea to take the mean for the most part because that tends to give an accurate number of where our home would be priced.  However, if there are a few homes that are on the higher or lower end of the spectrum, that can skew it a little.    When looking at surveys, our group felt you really need to have a pay per month plan if you were going to truly benefit from the survey site.  The free plans usually do not offer you as many questions to send out or have a limited number of surveys that you can send.   I felt it was really hard to say exactly which survey sites to use since there are so many of them, but Survey Monkey does seem like a popular and reliable service. 

Week one of Cedo 540

On to another class!  This new class is a statistics class.  I don't recall ever taking a statistics class in the past, but a lot of what we were covering in the first class made sense to me.  Being a special education teacher, I look at numbers fairly often and look for patterns in students' performance to see where they may need a little more help or where they are excelling.  Something I learned this week was the concept of parameters vs. statistics.  Before this class, I thought statistics was the measure of a sample and a population.   I did not realize that you actually call a measure of a whole population a parameter.  Another thing that was new to me this week was skewed distributions.   I always thought that a positively skewed distribution was top heavy to the right, not the other way around.   Now I know that I was incorrect and I will understand what it means for data to be positively and negatively skewed in the future.  Though a lot of the material in this statistics class isn't a ton of fun, I do find much of it interesting and look forward to the rest of the class. 

Week 5 of Digital Story Telling

This week we were assigned to make a rubric  for a multimedia project we have used with our students.  This assignment worked out great because during the final week of school I had my Linguistics class make an Animoto project based on their favorite book they read during the school year.  When giving the students this project, I did not have a rubric for them to follow.   This assignment gave me an opportunity to make something that I can use multiple times next school year.  As I was thinking about what to include in this rubric, I thought about the main things I wanted my students to express in their Animoto.  I wanted them to show me they knew how to make an Animoto account.  I wanted to see pictures in their presentation that accurately represented the book they read.  They also need music that is appropriate for the mood of the book they wrote.  I also added a section on the presentation of the Animoto.  Overall, I think this assignment was very beneficial and I will be able to use this many times in the future.

Another thing we had to do this week was finish our Pecha Kucha presentation.  I did mine on baseball stadiums that I have visited.  It was a fun project, but was hard as I expected.  However, I did set up a routine to make the task not as daunting.   To make sure that each slide was 20 seconds, I used the stop watch on my phone to get an accurate count on each slide.  Before I knew it, I was producing quality voice overs.  I am very happy with my end product and hope others enjoy it. 

Finally this week, as a group we had to evaluate hardware multimedia.  Our task was too evaluate the Ipod Touch and Flip Video Cameras.  Both are unique gadgets that can be very useful in every day life.  It was interesting to really look at these products and see how they could benefit you. 

Week 4 of CEDo 530

I found this week to be a lot of work yet very, very interesting.  It think this will be one of the weeks that I look back on and say "wow, I use a lot of that stuff now."  First of all, I spent a ton of time on my Pecha Kucha, but I really enjoy it.  It think this is a really great way to use Voice thread and keep yourself disciplined enough to not spend too much time on each slide you present to a group.  I am very happy with my presentation.  I did mine on baseball stadiums I have visited, so if you are interested in that topic, please take a look at mine.

The other topic we investigated this week that I really think is practical is Prezi website.  I am really serious about going back to all of my power point presentations that I have for my students' notes and changing them to Prezis.  It's amazing what a different presentation product can do for a presentation.  It's great to be able to zoom in on really important aspects of your presentation as well as being able to move all around to keep the audience engaged.   I'm hoping we can use this tool more during this cohort. 

Week 3 posting for Digital Story Telling

First of all, I would like to apologize for getting this posting up so late.  I was gone this weekend and was only able to get to work on the time frame I had on the airplane coming back from Boston.  Before I knew it I had to stow my computer away and couldn't get to my blog.  Anyway, to this point, my favorite activities of this past week has been revamping my powerpoint presentation and watching the example Pecha Kucha and thinking of what I will be able to do for my own later in this class.  As for my presentation, I think I really did some great things.  I made sure that I opened up some free space in my slides.  I also added a lot of contrasting text, to make it more visually appealing and to help my audience understand the main point of my presentation with out having to read a whole lot of text.  I took away bullet points that were once very prominent in my original presentation.  I also made sure that the slide backgrounds were not all the same and there were some unique slides put into the show.  Overall, I am happy with my presentation, but am open to any constructive criticism.  I still have to add some voice work to it, which I will do tomorrow evening.   As for Pecha Kucha, I am really looking forward to putting one of those presentations together.  I think I will be able to produce an interesting show, though I think it will take a lot of time and I may get frustrated.  I'm not going to let that stop me, I will make something really great.  Anyway, this week has been fun and I still have to look at the Animoto.  It seems like there are a lot of people who have done it already and have enjoyed it, so I look forward to getting at that.  

Week 2 of Digital Story Telling

I have to say that I enjoyed making my Civil Rights voice thread a lot more than I anticipated.  Voice thread is really a great tool.  It allows you to find pictures on the Internet, or use pictures of your own, and set your voice over each slide to tell the story of the pictures you found.  Though I enjoyed doing this project, it was actually pretty hard.  I spent quite a bit of time finding pictures I wanted to use and I spent even more time recording my voice to each picture slide.  It took many takes on each picture to get the correct voice.  So often I would mess up a word, or I just felt it didn't sounds good.  After a while I got my perfect voice and it seemed to work for each slide.  I only made a Voicethread with seven pictures.  I can only imagine how long it would take me if I made a much bigger show. Though I enjoyed making my Voicethread about Emmett Till, I think I would have preferred to make a Voicethread based on something in my life.  Either way, it was a great way to learn this new tool.  I would like to try it sometime with my students.  I have had students make powerpoints on presidents.  I may use this instead as a way for students to present a president in a different manner. 

First Post for Digital Story Telling CEdo530

It's been a while since I last posted!  The past couple weeks have been a nice break, but I am really looking forward to this new class. Right away, I can tell that I will be enjoying this class.  One of the activities we have to do on a daily basis is take a picture a day for 28 days.  It's been fun to think of what pictures to share and it's a good feeling to show others some of the important people, places, and things in my life.  I'm very curious to see what we will be doing with the pictures at the end of the 28 days. 

During this week, we also have been investigating the proper way of making presentations.  I have to say, I've really enjoyed this aspect of class because it is something I preach to people quite often.  Whether it is my students or co-workers, I like to help people make presentations that are interesting and not overly heavy on text.  I've always said, cut to the point.  You do not need every little fact of information on your slides.  This bores people and ends up conveying none of the information you wanted to share in the first place.  I think everyone should study how to properly do presentations since so many people do this for work and school.

Finally, we have also been watching digital stories.  I have done this once in the past, but I am curious to learn new ways of making digital stories as well as ways to add different music.  If done right, these stories can tell so much, even if they are only a few minutes long.  I am looking forward to making these in an easy way, and possibly making one for each trip I take with my family. 

Week 6 Posting for Enhancing Learning Material through Technology CEDO 525

This was my final week of CEDO 525.  This past week, we presented a unit that we revised using some of the technological tools we learned the past 5 weeks in class.  I would have to say that some of the websites that offered different graphic organizing tools as well as the sites that offered ways to make web maps, were the most useful to me.  I also liked learning about the different options available for providing recognition to students, such as certificates and the ability to type on students' work.  As with the past classes in this cohort, I found CEDO 525 a practical class that can be useful for me in the future.  As always, I added some of the tools I learned in this class to my Diigo account so I can have easy access to the information and will not have to search around with Google to find the info.  Now...on to my next class! 

Week 5 Posting for Enhancing Learning Material through Technology CEDO 525

This week in CEDO 525, were were discussing tools for identifying similarities and difference, use of homework and practice, and generating and testing hypothesis.  I currently teach a low level reading class, and often do activities that have the students identify similarities and differences in books we read.  I usually will have the students do this with pen and paper, but I like the idea of being able to do this electronically.  I am going to give my students the opportunity to do compare and contrast online if they do not want to use paper.  As for homework and practice.  I tend to give a lot of home work and practice as bookwork or worksheets in my Civics class.  I would like to diversify the practice I give to my students by making more online quizzes for students and having them do more web based activities.  Finally, in my teamed Life Science class, we give the students plenty of opportunities to generate and test hypothesis that they have.  Recently we used a prob which was connected to notebook computers as an instrument to measure the oxygen level of a plant that was in water, but stored away in the dark.  The students had to make a hypothesis of what they thing would happen to the oxygen level as the plant stays in the dark longer.  It was a great way to set up and test a hypothesis and the use of technology was something that would be otherwise very hard to measure.  I would like to continue to use more technology in science to help test hypothesis students have in class.

Week 4 Posting for Enhancing Learning Material through Technology CEDO 525

The first item I want to reflect upon this week is the video How Cognitive Surplus Will Change the World by Clay Shirky.  This video quickly caught my interest because he was taking about the Mermaid Parade at Coney Island.  I lived in New York in 2002 and was able to see this crazy parade.  Anyway, I thought that Clay made a great point of how Flicker's Tag function makes collaboration much more easier and allows anyone the ability to share there pictures and not just photographers.  In my own life, I use Facebook often and have used the Tag function for photos of people I have taken.  It really does eliminate the need for an institution.  You don't need one person finding pictures and publishing them, or a hierarchy of people doing this, it is done by the individuals and the collaboration is done for itself.  This truly saves time and headaches!  Tagging does replace planning with coordination.  Makes life easier. 

The other video I watched this week was How Cognitive Surplus will Change the World by Clay Shirky.  After watching this video, the events that have been occurring in North Africa and the Middle East came straight to mind.  It seems that all of the unrest that has been happening the second half of 2010 and the first half of this year has been due to "Cognitive Surplus".  Those countries have come to a point in their history where they have the technology to connect people together and the push forward their yearning for freedom.  It appears that much of what Clay was saying will continue to take shape in that part of the world until the people of these countries are free.

The next two things I want to talk about are the topics we discussed in class this past week, Cooperative Learning and Reinforcing Effort.  I think Cooperative Learning is so crucial for our students.  They will need to know how to do this all of their life.  I often see that students don't like doing this much because of personality conflicts.  We are lucky today to have different technologies that can help students learn cooperatively and work out personality issues they may have with others.  Tools suck as Google Docs and Webspiration can help students gather what they have learned and do so in a manner that is beneficial to them academically and socially. Even making a movie about the subjects they are working on can help them in these areas as well.      As for Reinforcing Effort,  there are just a ton of tools we can use as teachers to let the students know we notice the effort they are putting forth.  Whether it is a certificate made online and emailed to a parent, a quick email home, or a text message to the student telling them they did a great job. All of these things can have a huge effect on how the student feels about their work and have an effect on how much effort they put into future assignments.  

Week 3 Posting for Enhancing Learning Material through Technology CEDO 525

This week, I looked at three different websites that provide graphic organizer tools.  The first site I looked at was www.educationoasis.com  I really liked this site because it provides many printable tools that I can use with my classes right now.  All I would need to do is print one out and make copies.  This would be good to have as a starter for class when the students do not have access to a computer.  Some of the items I think I can use on this site are the Think Pair Share chart, KWL chart, and the Cluster Web.  I'm sure I can use the other items on this site, but for know I can see immediate use for these.  A down side to this site, compared with the other two I looked at, is this site only has templates, it is not used to create a concept map from scratch.  The other two sites I looked at were similar.  The purpose of both of them is to make an electronic concept map.  One of the sites I played around with was Bubbl.us.  Something I found helpful on this site was the ability to play around with the concept map tool before signing up an account on the site.  I wish more online tools would do that.  It allows you to get a sense if you want to continue using it or not.  This site was useful, but after I made an account and played with it a while, I felt the other concept map site I tried, Mindmeister.com  was easier for me to use.  I like the easy way to add and delete bubbles in Mindmeister.  With Bubbl.us, you have to use the keyboard, and I'd rather use the mouse.  I also liked the tool bar better and just felt the over all experience was more productive.  The next time I have my students use a concept map, I would like to use Mindmeister. 

Besides commenting on concept mapping sites, I would like to reflect on some of the strategies we read in our book and talked about in class this week.  One of the strategies I would like to use more for Cues, Questions and Advance Organizers is the idea of a pre-chapter survey.  I would like to set up a column for before the chapter and a column for after the chapter is finish to see if the students agree or disagree with a given statement.  I think this would be very useful in my Civics class because there are so many topics my students seem to be unfamiliar with, this would be a great way of testing them on what they actually learned during the chapter.  As for the area of Nonlinguistic Representation, I have started to have my students do illustrations for their weekly current events quiz.  Instead of writing a paragraph summary, the students could chose to write a short sentence and then draw an illustration of the story they want to share.  This works very well with many of my learning disabled students who have more of an artistic ability than a writing ability.  As for note taking, I currently give the students a few pages per chapter that go along with power point presentations that I have for them.  The students have to fill in the blanks of the words they see underlined in the presentation.  I like this type of note taking because if a student is absent, all he or she needs to do is go to my J drive folder and the presentation fits perfectly into their fill in the blank notes.  As for other note taking strategies, I am willing to try something like the Cornell Notetaking strategy, though I have a feeling that many of my students would find that as too much writing and may shut down. 

I felt that this week I learned some real practical tools that I could use with my students.  Though I have used hand outs for concept maps in the past, I don't use them often.  I think the materials that I got this week, both hand outs and electronic tools, will help me use them more with my students. 

Week 2 Readings for Enhancing Learning Material through Technology

The first article I read this week was called "Feedback that Fits" by Susan Brookhart.  One thing that I took out of this reading is to realize how quickly feedback should be given to students.  If a student is working on something such as math or other subjects that require the student to memorize facts, it's good to have instant feedback with the student.  For example, if you are working with a student how to figure out pay they would earn based on the number of hours they've worked.  Instant feedback would be beneficial because the student would know whether or not if they did the problem correctly.  On the flip side, you may not want to give feedback right away on something like a written paper.  You may need to see a few examples before you give meaningful feedback to the student.  As for the kind of feedback to give a kid, I have always felt, and this feeling was confirmed in this reading, that talking to a student one on one does the best for providing good feedback.  Though it's not always practical, I like to try to talk to each of my students one on one regarding their work as often as I can.  Overall, I feel that I do a good job at providing feedback to students I work with, but I know I can always get better.  I can do it more often and do it in a variety of ways, whether if it is written, vocal in class or a one on one conversation. 

Another thing I investigated this week was a rubric creating website and a quiz creating website.  I don't use rubrics too often, but when I do they seem to take time and I'm really not sure if I make them as accurately as I could.  The website Rubrix.com allows anyone to make rubrics online for nearly any time of evaluation.  One thing I thought interesting was that you can use the rubrics made on Rubrix.com either on your computer or on a mobile device.  That can make it easy if you want to move around and look at student work and at the same time show them if they are following the rubric correctly.  Besides Rubrix.com, I signed up for a quiz creating site called http://quizstar.4teachers.org/ .   A great feature of this site is that it is free to join.  I really can't wait to use this with my Civics class.  I have always had the students take their tests and quizzes with paper and pen, but I want to try to make a quiz that they can take in the computer lab.  This site will enable me to do that and I will be able to have it graded online.  I really think this is the way everyone should go, because how often do you use pens or pencils anymore?  

Besides the sites I was to look at this week, I also need to comment a little about setting objectives, providing feedback and providing recognition.  Since I have already talked quite a bit about providing feedback earlier, I am just going to talk about setting objectives and providing recognition to summarize this weeks blog.   As we were talking about in class and read in our book, objectives are really important for students.  Without a real set goal in place, students will not work as hard as they are capable of and they may get lost with the topics the class is working on.  Just by setting up the class with the end in site, this can help our students feel a little more comfortable with what they are studying and have something to strive for by the end of the chapter or unit.  Finally, providing recognition is also a very important element in the classroom.  I like to think of this in the terms of my own life.  When I have done something really well or have done something the way it's supposed to be done, being recognized for my work gives me a charge and makes me want to do well again.  I know that this is the case also with many of my students.  I think many of my students don't get the chance to hear they are doing well as much as they should.  Many of them think they are not "good" at school and that builds up on them.  When I think of all of my students, there isn't anyone I can't give recognition to for something in school, though sometimes it may take a little thinking to what that something is.   One example that comes to mind is a freshman girl who I case manage and have in two classes.  She started the year off really rough.  She would not do her work and her grades failed miserably.  The minute I saw that she was doing something well, I let her have as much recognition as I could.  I made her know that I thought she was doing a good job and that she has the ability to do what needs to be done.  As I have been letting her hear more of that, her grades are no much better and she is failing one class instead of six.  I like to think that some of my recognition has helped her change her outlook of school. 

New class.....Enhancing Learning Materials through Technology Week 1

After a week off, I have started another new class.  This class is called Enhancing Learning Materials through Technology and I will be taking this class for the next five weeks.  To start out this class, we were supposed to read two online articles and respond.  The first article I read was called Principles of Teaching and Learning.  The article was split up into two different views.  One looking at the aspects of effective learning and the other looking at the aspects of effective teaching.  I currently teach high school age learning disability students.  Many of the points brought up in the learning section of this article I see as struggles for my students.  For example, a lot of my students have minimal background knowledge on topics in class.  I often think this makes it much harder to get points across to students and for the students to get a good mental picture of what we are discussing.  I often have a much more interactive class if I have a few kids who do have background knowledge and can help others in the class with the topic at hand.  However, there are those times when I have students who think they know something and they don't and I have to correct them.  But I look at that as a learning opportunity.  Many times when students bring ideas that aren't correct up in class, that is the best time for them to be corrected and to truly understand the topic.  Another point in the article that I can relate to with my students is the motivation aspect.  Overall, I feel that I do an adequate job of motivating my students and helping them be more open to learning, but there are always some students who are very hard to motivate and then it is hard for them to grasp the concept.  I would like to be able to motivate all learners, but not sure if I will ever reach that goal.   Another issue in this article that I agree with is the climate for learning point that was made.  Although many of my students are socially and intellectually younger than their chronological age, I still try to provide a learning atmosphere that is positive and that treats the students like any other ninth grade students.  I think that is a major part of their learning if they see the teacher cares about them and notices that they don't baby them and expects a lot from them.

In the other part of this article relating to teaching principles, there were also a few points that stuck out at me.  The first point made about having relevant knowledge of students is crucial. I try to do that on a daily basis.  I want to know what my students are interested in whether it is outside of school or in their classes.  I feel I get a lot more out of my students when they know I care about them and when they see that I can relate what we are talking about in class with something they are involved with often outside of class.  The other point that I think is really important is the ability of the teacher to make explicit expectations.  I do this daily and also make sure that the students understand what will be going on from day to day or week to week.  I like having a structured class where my students know where to look every day for what will be happening as well as know the materials that are expected of them to have in class.  I also expect each of my students to do well on assessments, even if I know many struggle.  I expect all of my students to re-do their assessments if not done at a certain level.  I think these high expectations make the students realize that I care that they learn information that is taught in my class and that they should take more of the learning on to themselves so they are not constantly making assessments up.  The other point I want to touch base on is recognizing our "expert blind spots".  I have done a lot in my life which has given me a lot to share with my students, but I know that may be over many of the students heads.  I am constantly asking questions with students and make sure that how I present information is not presented in just a way a person who has experienced the topic can relate to.   Finally, once every few weeks, I will ask students what they enjoyed in my class and what they feel I should have done differently.  I have changed some things that I teach based on student feedback and enjoy having that feedback to base how I will teach next year.  

The other article that I read was called A meta-analysis of the effectiveness of teaching and learning.   This article was looking at the overall effects of technology in the classroom.  I found it interesting that some of the studies showed that having computer assisted instruction had positive effects, yet the effects were small.  I would have thought that just by having computer in the used in instruction, the positive outcomes would be much more pronounced.

Last Week of Internet Resources Class

I'm going to keep this short and sweet, just so I have a nice record of what we did this week.  As a group, we looked into copyright issues on the Internet.  Looked at some of the things that are allowable to do and somethings that could get you into hot water.  We also learned about online privacy.  After looking into this information, I have noticed that I am very open when it comes to Internet personal information, but also I know that I protect myself with strong passwords and constant checking of my online financial information.  Also, as a team, we looked at safety for children on the Internet and the different products and laws that are set to help protect children from material they should not be looking at on the Internet. 

Week 3 of Internet Resources

This week I learned about a couple of different options for online collaboration.  Currently, I have been using Google docs for my documents, spreadsheets and presentations and have been using Eluminate for my online meeting space.  We were instructed to look at a few different types of products that do similar things.  I investigated Adobe Buzzword, which is an online word processor.  It seems to be user friendly and has a lot of the same options as Google docs.  I don't think I am going to use this though, because I have been getting used to Google docs and did not see any huge difference that would make me want to stray away from Google docs.  I also started a free trial for Adobe connect.  This is an alternative to the Eluminate room.  I have to say I didn't get the whole fee for it because I didn't run a class on it, but it seems to that it would be a good option if I every wanted to try something new or if I got a job in the future teaching online classes and the platform used is Adobe connect.  If anything, I think it was good to get a feel for this products, in case I ever encounter a time where I would be mandated to use them.  

What I did this week

This week, one of our assignments was to react to the usefulness of Wikipedia.  Basically, at this point in time, I do enjoy it and feel it is a good resource, but it shouldn't be the only resource you use for information.  It can be a great tool for getting a general idea about a topic, but if you really need specifics, you should have cross checks with other forms of information.  I also learned how to use a Google Alert this week.  Basically, in your Google Account, you can set up specific terms.  If those terms come up in the Internet, you will get an email informing you where it is from and directing you to the site where it came from.  This can be a really handy thing if you want to get a lot of knowledge about a certain topic.  Another thing I learned this week that I can see as very useful in my personal and professional life is noodletools.com.  This site has a really great way of helping you find what you need.  It asks you what type of search you are doing and then gives you a list of websites that would best help you get where you need to go. 

New class...new ideas for Blogging

During our first class session for "Internet Learning Resource"  the instructor asked us if we enjoy and thing that our blogs useful.  I do think that they can have some value to them, but I wish we had a different way of setting it up.  We were asked if we can think of some way to do our blogging differently.  I do like this site, but I wish I had more immediate feedback as well as the ability to see many of my peers posts at one time, rather than having to click on their link.  I know that clicking on a link isn't hard, but since there are ways of sharing information, such as Facebook, this way just seems to be a little "old fashion."  I am very use to going on Facebook and seeing the live feed of all of my friends.  If somehow our blogs could be intertwined with some presentation software like that, I think I would enjoy it more.  I really am not sure how this could be done, but if anyone out there has an idea, I would like to hear it.  It think a lot of my peers would like to hear it as well.

As for what I have learned this past week, I really liked being introduced to Wikis.  I have found it very easy to enter my assignments and the Wiki in general is easy to use.  If you are unsure of what a Wiki is, it's just a site that is set up that can be edited by many people.  You have an area that tells you what you need to type about and you just edit and post your ideas under it.  I have used Wikipedia before and understand that is how Wikipedia works, but I haven't actually ever changed anything on that site.  It's fun to experience something similar to that in class as well as getting to use something different in this program than the Angel program and Google docs.  Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy those two programs, but I do like learning about other options. 

Wrapping up "Using Productivity Tools Effectively"

We did a lot these past couple months, but a few things really stuck out and I will probably use them the most.  First of all, I learned how to set up a Google Calendar.  I think this is a great tool not just for me, but also for my students.  I would like to get my students set up to use Google products, and if I do, I think the Calendar can be a great function for them to stay organize and have a place to put their due dates for assignments or for other special things they need to remember in their lives. 

I also feel that I can analyze software more effectively now because of this class.  I never really thought about analyzing software, but now I have tools that I can use if I see something I like and I can share it with others if I think it is something that can be used in the school.

Finally, due to this class, I am going to be trying to do more production based projects with my students.  I don't think I will be able to do a lot right off of the bat, but I am going to try to incorporate some of those types of projects each year and eventually my students will have a significant amount of production based projects to work on throughout the school year.  I see a great benefit having students produce something from scratch and discovering what they should put into the project...having them be the main investigator , not the teacher.  I am currently doing a project like this with my Civics class.  The students have an outline for presenting about a specific president, but they have to produce something that is unique to them and looks different than the other students.  So far it's coming out pretty well! 

Anyway, off to another class.  And as always, I look forward to what awaits!  

The past week of productivity

Something that really stuck with me this week was a video we watched of Sir Ken Robinson.  I think a lot of what he said about education is totally true.  He basically says that school is great for a portion of the population that will be professors as adults.  For the rest of us, it limits our true potential.  He focuses on teaching not only the academic things we normally think of (science, math, etc)  but also teaching things such as art and dance with just as much rigor.  He feels that schooling is set up to kill creativity and ends up making students scared of failure.  I think a lot of that is true, but hard to change.  It think it would be very hard to change the system as it is.  Too many people feel school is supposed to be mainly for learning the core subjects.  If you want to watch the video I am talking about, here it is:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY&feature=player_embedded   .  Another thing that I learned about this week was using tools that evaluate software.  I have never really thought about evaluating software that I many use in the classroom, but now I have the know how to do so if I am in the position to get new software for my class. It's nice to know there are products out there that can help you focus on the benefits and down sides of software you may use in your class. 

The InTime Video I chose

The video that I found that I felt could be used in my Civics class is a state power point presentation.  Here is the link of the video: http://www.intime.uni.edu/video/030moue/8/  .  I typically set some time in my year to discuss the different states and the different types of state government.  Many of  my 9th grade LD students are still very unaware of what other states besides Wisconsin offer or how their government is set up.  This project would give them a great opportunity to investigate a state they have never traveled too and gather interesting facts about the population, geography, demographics and government in a different state.  I already do something similar to this regarding the United States presidents, so if I set up this project a little later in the year, students will have a sense of how to put the project together and how to make the slides visually appealing and interesting.  My students study state government in late April and May, so I will be looking to implement this project sometime during that time frame. 

Back in Action!

I'm getting ready again to get back to class and discover some new practical technologies I can use in my personal life and at school.  Although I have had the last couple weeks off of class, I still stayed busy on classwork for a couple days focusing on spreadsheets.  Up until three weeks ago, I didn't really us spreadsheets for anything more than keeping my monthly budget and keeping track on how I do when I play blackjack. (I enjoy Las Vegas and Oneida Casino :) I also have always used Microsoft Excel, though now I am going to be importing my Excel documents into Google docs spreadsheets so I can have access to them where ever I am.  I learned a few things I never really used in spreadsheet programs.  Out of everything I learned this past lesson, I really like the ability to set up formulas in spreadsheets which allow you to change one cells number and in turn it changes many other numbers on your spreadsheet.  It's a great tool for figuring out ingredient amounts in different recipes.  I was thinking that I could use a similar formula for students who have difficulty with multiplication facts.  I can put a formula into a spreadsheet a student could access and they could play with the numbers and see what products different numbers would produce.  Although I don't typically use spreadsheets with my students, I think that could be a practical use of a spreadsheet for my students with learning disabilities.