Week 7 Continue on our Webquest

I have updated my webquest and added a page for the task and a page for the process.  I believe I may have them backwards but am having trouble moving them.  I found the Move Page option under the gear tool but once I'm there, I'm having trouble figuring out how to move it the way I want.  I moved it once but then it was hidden under the Introduction page.  I did manage to put it back.

I also am having trouble creating a wordle.  Have either of you ever done that before?  When I enter my words then try to create it I get a message that java needs to run.  I tried to download and run it but received an error message.  Anyone have thoughts on how to get around that?

I have questions to ask Todd when meet again this Wednesday, April 1st for class.  I hope everything is going well for the two of you.

Literature Review Assignment

I'm not sure if we were expected to blog this week, but I thought I would share what I wrote about...
I did my report on the T21 (Training for the 21st Century) cohort that Manchester has in place.  Since I am a member of my school's team, I thought I would discuss some challenges that we are facing to share the digital tools learned with our colleagues and our plan to overcome the issues.

Week 5 Lesson Plan/Field Experience and Screencast Video (Part 2)

My socrative lesson went well and revealed some interesting preferences from my students.  I confirmed that they all had a smart phone in their possession.  I let them know they could either use their smart phone or a laptop (I'm fortunate to teach my Accounting class in a classroom which houses a laptop cart).  Now, I have a small class of five students (this is a running start college credit Accounting class).  Not one student wanted to use their smart phone--that really surprised me.  I asked them what they would do if we didn't have laptops in the room and they said they'd ask for paper to record their answers.  Again, this really surprised me.  When I asked them why, they responded that their phones are too small to see and a few mentioned low battery available.

Using socrative was easy.  My students didn't have any issues signing in and entering my class code. They felt the app was easy to use.  I really enjoyed seeing the responses on my laptop as quickly as they were clicking their answers.

Nothing went wrong, but I would have liked to have a paper version of my questions so I could compare it to the questions that I saw were NOT being answered correctly.  That would have made talking and reviewing those questions a lot easier.  It was great to get instant feedback as to what the students understand and what the majority didn't answer correctly.

The students had fun more with me showing them my screen and viewing the results.  I also tried a few quick questions, like... You liked the pep rally today/True or False...they laughed more at hearing the results and prompted a discussion about that event.  My students actually explained to me that they prefer to do quizzes on paper because they like to see the question on paper and felt they needed to re-read the question too much on a computer.  I found that very interesting and didn't expect them to prefer paper to using a computer.

I could improve upon this lesson by using it more for a quick check (instead of a quiz) on whether my students are understanding concepts or material being covered in class.  It might be better to have a projector hooked up to my laptop and have the students use a special name (assigned by me for anonymity) because they really seemed to enjoy seeing the results and it might help to direct the review needed as a result of their answers.

  

Week 5 Lesson Plan/Field Experience and Screencast Video

Since we're used to reading our blogs on Sunday, I figured I'd post my plans then I'll return Monday night and post the results of the lesson I'm planning to implement in class on Monday, 3/16.

I created an accounting quiz to check the understanding of the current chapter with my students before they do a performance (summative) assessment next week.  I'm also typing up the lesson to share with Todd.

Part 2 of our homework is to create a screencast video explaining a new tool to a class.  I'm going to use ThingLink because it's new to me and I haven't used it yet because I wasn't 100% comfortable with it.  I really love the potential of its use for students in all of their classes.  I will share that link once I have it created.  I hope your plans are going well too.  Talk to you soon.

I created my screencast using Screencastify (a tool I learned in the T21 cohort) instead of screenr because I had trouble downloading java on my Chromebook.  This was a learning experience.  I had some images already in Thinglink to talk about but when it became time for me to upload a new image that I had saved to prepare for this lesson, I kept getting messages that the image was too small.  It took me several tries and several deleted screencasts before I finally had one that worked completely.  I will share the link with you to check it out.

https://docs.google.com/a/mansd.org/file/d/0BwLpXTbYEzIUcFIxTzl2TFRNT1U/edit?usp=drivesdk

Week 4 Using Socrative and Voki

I'm happy to report that I had already set up a socrative account while in my T21 cohort class.  We didn't have time to play with it so I will say I learned more about it by using it again and viewing both Todd's video and the one on the Socrative site.  I now realize that we can only have one account to use...meaning you use it for one class at a time.  I named my Room Accounting originally but thought of a better way to use it in my ICT class.  When I went to the profile, I couldn't change the room name.  When I did a little research on the FAQ part of their site, I believe it said I'd have to create and manage more than one account.  I will be playing with that more this week.

As far as Voki, I had fun creating an Avatar but when I tried to embed it into my Introduction page, it didn't work.  If either of you could help me with that, I would appreciate it.  I have an email in to Todd.  I viewed his video again and realized when we click on the html icon, he said to scroll down and paste the code below any code that was there.  I deleted any code that was there and pasted the code from my avatar.  I'm wondering if that is what I did wrong.  I tried to delete the Google gadget and redo the whole process but it's still not working.

I love learning new things, but I'm a little frustrated with myself and will have to wait for help.  I hope things are going better for you two.  Let me know.

Reflection on MSD social media policy, Justine's story and my understanding of social media

I read MSD's Instruction 148 Web Tools and Social Media Policy.  I believe the policy is well written and clearly defines how MSD will provide for safe collaboration and publication of student online work.  While I'm not positive everyone in the district has read this policy as thoroughly as I have for this assignment, I now have a better understanding of my legal and ethical responsibility to provide a safe learning environment for my students.  The policy clearly states that "The District staff has the responsibility to present a monitored, supervised environment providing graduated freedoms from younger to older students based on student maturity."  I interpret this statement as everyone has a role to play in making sure our students are using the internet properly but as far as Netiquette and Digital Citizenship, I'm only aware of those topics being in the ICT curriculum.  It certainly wouldn't hurt if any teacher expecting students to use technology for their class include a brief lesson on appropriate use.

In reading Justine's story, I wasn't surprised to read about the consequences she or others faced when they posted something before they thought about how others might react to it.  I believe most people have heard about similar horror stories.  I thought about how I could help my students avoid making the same mistake by having them read an article such as this one and reflect on it either as a class or as an individual assignment.  Students need to be taught over and over how they should think long and hard about what they are about to post BEFORE they hit that Send button.  Unfortunately, it appears our digital native students have a hard time NOT posting everything they're doing, seeing, feeling, thinking, etc.  In my opinion, that is the biggest difference with digital immigrants such as myself...I don't feel the need to share so much with the internet world.  While I do believe social media has a lot of benefits, this story definitely highlighted a huge misuse of social media.

As more teachers are learning about the educational use of technology, I believe it's important to share and collaborate with colleagues so we are practicing what we expect from our students.  I am aware that some teachers avoid technology all together because of a fear of personal liability.  Teachers that had a Facebook account and friended students were advised against this a few years ago.  Today, social media is being used successfully by many teachers who blog with their students and encourage them to collaborate on assignments.  This is a great example of extending the classroom.  Google Apps for Education (GAFE) is also becoming more popular with teachers and our students are definitely benefitting.  This offers students a great way to submit assignments from wherever they are and receive them as well from their teachers. Ownership is in the hands of our students to create and manage their work.  I'm aware of a lot of sharing between teachers and students with assignments and students collaborating on projects in many classes.  Our administrators are strongly encouraging the use of technology and that is a welcome change from our prior admin. team.  I find it very beneficial to communicate with parents via email instead of playing telephone tag for days and sometimes weeks.




 

Week 2 Homework to Research at least 2 Web 2.0 Tools

I enjoyed reading the three different articles on finding the best Web 2.0 classroom tools.  These are great articles to share with our colleagues (that are not in this class) to help them explore web tools that they may find useful in their classrooms too.

I mainly teach computer classes so I'm looking at all this information and realizing how important my role is to help them learn how to use a lot of these tools not only in my class but FOR all their other classes and beyond.  I loved Katrina Stevens comment "Make students MAKERS not just MEMORIZERS."  I find it fun to try these tools and share them with students and my colleagues.  As I've read these articles, I've taken notes and thought of various colleagues that I could suggest some of these tools for them to try in their classroom.  I liked that Larry Ferlazzo is recommending sites that are FREE of charge--something we in Manchester really appreciate.  Sam, I thought of you when I saw item #'s 96-98 on Fitness in Jeff Dunn's article titled The 100 Best Web 2.0 Classroom Tools.

After reading about all the tools, I would use (and already do) Google Docs.  As an ICT teacher, I feel it is important to teach students how to manage their work in a web-based setting so they access it from any networked computer.  When students realize they can collaborate on assignments, they are sharing this opportunity with teachers that may not be using it themselves in their classroom.  When I explain to students how they can work from anywhere...a hospital room, relatives house, etc. they realize the ownership is on them to get assignments done on time.  If they are home sick, they can share an assignment with their teacher to submit it or get assignments from teachers--it works both ways.  The article by Mary Claudia on 5 Fabulous Ways to Use Google Apps in the Classroom was very helpful.  I had been teaching most of her list of providing instructions to learners of the apps but will add to my list the lesson on converting docs from one format to another and color coding for identification.  I believe students will find those tips very helpful.

I've been exposed to Poll Anywhere and find it useful and fun for students to use their smartphones to participate in a quick survey or two during class.  Unfortunately, not all of our students have that technology. The Chrome App Store is also wonderful, Screencastify, Educreation and Diigo are all apps that I'm starting to use. Screencastify is video screen capture software that students can use to present a project.  It captures their audio as well.    Educreation is an app that transforms your iPad into a recordable whiteboard. It records your voice, handwriting and also allows you to insert pictures to produce your own personal video lessons that teachers and students can share online. Diigo is a great place to bookmark and share web sites with colleagues.I'm a team member on my schools T21 technology cohort and I was most interested in Mary Burns article titled "How to Help Teachers Use Technology in the Classroom...the 5J Approach." Back in 2010, it was reported that only 39% of teachers report frequent use of technology as an instructional tool. In reading the list of limited use causes, I was struck by the realization that teachers are attending workshops to learn technology or how to use the software BUT integrating it into teaching and learning is what is most needed to help teachers actually use it. These type of workshops need to start occuring more so teachers can start implementing technology into their classrooms.

Blog Group 1/Carey, Kelley & Stratton

I found the homework reading assignments very interesting.

I am definitely a Digital Immigrant.  I am currently in my 20th year as a teacher in the Manchester School District.  I am a high school business teacher and I am proud to say that I am a lifelong learner.  Business is always changing and I have worked hard over the years to try to stay as current as possible to prepare my students for the 21st century. I've been frustrated over the years with the technology available for our students.  I've worked with area businesses to get donated technology, spoken at school board meetings to advocate for better technology and I join committees, workshops, cohorts, etc. to try to work with like-minded colleagues to learn about technology and ways to update my methodology and content.  

I have seen our district take some big steps within the past 2 years in infusing updated technology and updating our infrastructure (as Jeff presented in our technology plan).  I believe our district needs to be more assertive in scheduling hands-on PD workshops for more teachers that want to change their methodology and content but don't know how to start on their own.  We all know there are many teachers that are embracing technology and already taking steps to update the way they teach.  We also know there are a lot of resistors that need extra help to encourage them to learn more about HOW they can take small steps to change to improve student learning.

My two youngest children often came home to report how boring school is and that really makes me sad.  I have one son at Central High School in his freshman year and I'm sure he would feel differently if he was being taught using more technology.  We have to do better for our students in this district.  

Prensky asked the tough question, "Which is harder...learning new stuff or learning new ways to do old stuff?"  The latter is the correct answer and I believe it is our district's responsibility to find ways to make that happen with our teaching staff.  We used to have early release days periodically for the district to sit somewhere and listen to someone talk about best practices, etc.  That was not very effective.  I believe it would be better to have late arrival for our students so teachers could work at their own schools in the morning to share best practices and teach each other about technology. Quite a few schools are currently participating in a T21 cohort but we're having difficulty finding the time to share these great new skills with our colleagues.  Mornings would work better and the students would appreciate the extra sleeping time.

 

This is a test to see if I am writing a blog.