Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Blogs, Wikis and Twitter Oh My

I know that I am a week behind with this blog but I will try to make up for it. It's funny to me how much harder the writing part is than the reading. The same thing is true for my reading challenge blog. I have read close to 50 books since I began the challenge, but I have only managed to blog about 27 of them. Why is that? It really makes me stop and think about some of the work we ask our students to do - and why they sometimes have difficulty getting it done.

I have to say that this class (and the last) became even more relevant to me this week while at the TIES conference in Minneapolis. Bernajean Porter (of DigiTales fame) was one of the featured presenters, most of the sessions had to do with blogging, on-line discussions, wikis, etc. and you couldn't go anywhere without seeing a tweet!!!

I had been following a few people on Twitter before, but I found that I was getting a lot of overlap from the information on my RSS feeds. It seemed that people were tweeting about things they were reading on these blogs and I found that I got more information from reading the blog than the tweet so... I guess I will give it another try. Maybe I need to find different people to follow. I think I will start with some of the fabulous presenters at the TIES conference. (Can you tell that I loved this conference? The only bad part is coming back down to reality when you return to work. I would love to see all of these innovative ideas implemented TODAY but I will be patient and try to keep taking the little steps that will get us there in the future.)

The readings this week have motivated me to make some changes to my Reading Challenge Blog (and to work on updating my postings) and to make some other changes to my wikispace. I am considering switching to Weebly, we'll see. All of my reading over the past 2 weeks has really convinced me that we are on the right track with My Big Campus and some of the other wiki's and blogs that are being used in my school. I will continue to push for some of the more reluctant teachers to at least try blogging themselves in order to see how effective it can be and to follow some other educators on their blogs. Rss feeds are a perfect way to build you personal learning network and continue your education every day. What a great way to connect with fellow educators/experts from around the country and around the world. I have said it before to my staff, but I think it's worth another push.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Pecha Kucha Take 2

Okay, I was wrong. In my previous discussions about the Pecha Kuchas, I had indicated that I thought they would be too long. Actually, it wasn't long enough. I really tried to limit what I said about each book and I tried to talk as fast as I could while still being understood - and I still ended up about 10 seconds too long on each slide. I am continuing to tweak it but I'm not sure I'll be able to get it down to 20 seconds per image. I know that's hard for a lot of you to believe, since I am always at a loss for words!!! Overall it was a lot more fun than I thought it would be. This would definitely be a interesting project for students to force them to be as succinct as possible. I think they would enjoy it.

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

PREZI!!!

I love Prezi. I have used it for a number of presentations and I think it is fantastic. It can have a tendency to have too much movement, and make the audience sick, until the creator gets used to using it more effectively. I feel that I use more of the principles of Presentation Zen when I use Prezi. I am less likely to resort to bullet points or writing out my whole presentation. It forces you to really focus on the important points and highlight them by literally zooming in on them. You need to be more organized and have a more well thought out "story" to use Prezi effectively. I think my audiences, mostly students, think it's pretty cool too.

Pecha Kucha

When I started writing my post for this week - I realized that I had missed mine for last week. So....I have to say that thus far, this is my favorite class. I think that the ideas and sites are the most applicable to what I do everyday and I can easily see how they could be used with my students. I love Animoto. I have used it a number of times before, and I have had my students use it on a number of occasions. I like that it is easy to use and still gives you a very professional looking product. The one thing that I'm a little hesitant about is the Pecha Kucha. A first you think that 20 seconds isn't that long for a slide, but you don't really look at one image for that long in most presentations. I tend to do a lot of mini-lessons in my job and don't usually talk for close to 7 minutes straight. I'll have to see how this works as I get started on my storyboard.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Digital Stories in the Library

I actually use digital stories often in the library. I love to use book trailers when I do book talks for classes. The visual images, in combination with music and words, can "sell" a student on a book much better than my description alone. When I talk about books, I usually have a combination of trailers and those without. The books with trailers always get checked out first.

Book talks is only a portion of what I do. I can see that digital stories could really add to the actual lessons that I teach as well. It's reminding of when I used to teach high school social studies. I used to try hard to make the "stories" come alive to my students by painting a word picture, and talking in a conversational way that pulled them in. Why then have I started doing all of my library lessons as power points with bullets? Wouldn't these lessons be impacted just as much by "stories"? I have tried some things, but there is really so much more out there that will really allow me to impact my students more.

Monday, October 17, 2011

Digital Storytelling

I am really looking forward to this class. I think that I'm in for a lot of work, but the content seems interesting. These are skills that everyone needs to improve on, and if I can make my presentations more effective and entertaining, I will be able to make a larger impact on my school community.

I am also a little worried about this class. Typically, creativity is not one of my strong suits. I have never enjoyed creative writing and I am artistically challenged. (My stick figure don't even look like stick figures) Hopefully I can learn some skills and tools that will help my struggling right brain. I have used some tools, like photostory and microsoft movie maker to make "book trailers" and as an assessment tool for a health class project. (The students create a photo story as their final presentation for a unit on diseases - some of these were very personal and powerful)

I am actually currently seeking an alternative to Photostory. Our district upgraded to Windows 7 over the summer, and chose not to purchase the compatible upgrade to photostory. Therefore we need to come up with something else for the health classes to use before these projects begin again in January.

Monday, October 3, 2011

Course Reflection

Whew! This has been the toughest of the classes so far. Apparently my life has a very delicate balance and I can function when all of the pieces fit where they are supposed to. But when one of those pieces slips out of place....watch out.

Actually, I can keep everything together when I stay on top of them, but I managed to get behind in this class and it made it very hard to keep going. That being said, I really enjoyed the class. These are important concepts to effective teaching that sometimes get forgotten in the push for "content". It is necessary to reflect on the different ways that we can impact our students, and to develop an arsenal of strategies to have at our disposal. Isn't it funny how sometimes the simplest concepts (such as feedback) are the ones that we tend to forget, yet they are also the ones that can provide the biggest "aha" moments?!

Week 5 Homework and Practice/Similarities and Differences/Hypotheses

Homework and Practice

Practice is extremely important in order for a skill to become second nature. However, there needs to be a point to the assignments. Constant drills lose their effectiveness after a while. If homework is to be successful, it needs to build on the learning and expand on the lesson. If students are engaged in the learning they will be more apt to complete the assignments and they will certainly get more out of them.

Similarities and Differences

This is an important skill for students to learn. It is often one of the easiest ways to begin analyzing information. I have used wordle.net as a way to visualize the similarities and differences. Students have put the attributes of one character in a wordle and the attributes of another in a separate wordle. Then we start to reduce the number of words in each. It soon becomes apparent what the similar attributes are, as well as which ones are different.

Generating and Testing Hypotheses

I have generally only thought of hypotheses in regards to science classes, but I suppose that it is a skill that you could easily apply to all aspects of learning. Aren't the reading predictions that we ask students to make really just hypotheses by another name? Don't we want students to form questions in order to guide their learning? I know that I will be more careful about getting hung up on terminology in the future.

Comparison of On-line Mapping Tools

I have used a number of these on-line mapping tools before. I love Webspiration, it is easy to use and they have great graphics. However, it is too expensive for large-scale use. Bubbl.us is a good simple tool that is really easy to use, and free! If you have younger children, or are just looking for a very basic mind-map, this is a great site to use. I am afraid that our older students are often looking for things with more bells and whistles. Some of the other sites could be used as presentation tools as well (once you add pictures and other content), but this one is too basic for that use. I have used Mind Meister myself for other classes and found it to be easy to use, however students need to have an e-mail address in order to sign-up. This is a big issue for our district. We have talked about setting up Gaggle accounts for our students in the future, but as of yet that is not the case.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Collaboration vs. Institution

I loved this view of collaboration, let the people who are using the information take responsibility for creating, posting, storing, labeling, etc. The comment about the programmer who came up with only one idea really hit home. It is a little of a quality vs. quantity argument. However, as a classroom teacher, this definition of collaboration would frustrate me. When we design collaborative lessons, the purpose is for each member to have a job that needs to be done. It is definitely more of the institutional definition of collaboration, and group members get very upset if they are the ones doing the 80% of the work while another member only does 20%. So...how do we reconcile the two?

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Feedback That Fits

I am aware that this blog post is a week late - I'm trying to catch up from having a very sick little boy.

I really connected with this article. I have a daughter who was on the receiving end of ineffectual feedback last year. She kept getting a B on her writing assignments, with no indication of what she had done well or what she needed to improve on. When she would ask the teacher, she was told "just keep turning in quality work". When I went to the teacher and asked her to define "quality work", she could/would not. My daughter is a very hard worker and takes her grades very seriously. If she isn't getting an A, she assumes it is because she has missed something, or done something wrong. Therefore, she wanted to know what she needed to work on in order to improve and was given no constructive feedback at all. I was concerned for the other students who really needed a lot of help, how would they improve at all?

The quality of your feedback is incredibly important to the success of the child in the future. You need to make sure that feedback is focused and specific to the learning targets (especially for those students who are even farther behind) in order to focus the efforts on specific areas of improvement. Fortunately for my daughter, most of her teachers have been significantly better at providing this type of feedback.

Monday, August 15, 2011

A meta-analysis of the effectiveness of teaching and learning

Overall I found this article very hard to follow. All of the numbers started to run together as I read. What I was able to gather was that the research seems to support my viewpoint that technology for technologies sake is not an effective way to teach. When technology is used to support or enhance an already good lesson, students learn more.

Principles of Teaching/Learning

Section #5 of Teaching Principles, "Effective teaching involves recognizing and overcoming our expert blind spots", was the part that I related to the most. I often find that I cover material too quickly. I tend to assume that my students have more background knowledge and abilities than they do. This was one reason why I chose to teach high school instead of lower grades - I felt that I wouldn't need to do as much step-by-step instruction and hand holding. This is something that I continue to struggle with today. I am always worried that step-by-step instruction will bore the students and I will lose the ability to capture their interest. It is often hard to find that middle ground that provides ample direction without being too elementary; how do you adequately explain without boring them to death. What do you do with the students who grasp the concepts more quickly and want to move on?

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Wiki vs. Angel

It has been a while since I have posted. Beyond being swamped, who said that summers were relaxing, I haven't felt like I really had anything new to add. Everything that I would have discussed, we had already talked about in class. However, as I was doing the homework for this week, I again had the thought that I preferred the wiki to Angel. As we have posted our discussions, it was nice to be able to scroll through the other responses. On the Angel site you need to click on each individual response to read them. Not that this is a lot of work, however, I often didn't look at all of the responses. I feel that I have gotten a lot more out of this class because I have had easier access to the thoughts of my classmates.

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Google Sites, Web Sites and Wiki's Oh My!

I think it is really important to have a web presence in this day and age. Not only does it allow others to readily access information, it also creates a place to showcase projects, provide resources, allow for questions and answers, etc. I have 2 webpages associated with the school district and my own wiki (I chose to use a wiki instead of a web site generator like Weebly because at the time I was able to do more of what I wanted with wikisapces. I used my wiki as my e-portfolio for my library practicum and when I was interviewing for jobs. Currently our district is really making a push for all teachers to at least have their district webpage up and running.

I think this is true of students as well. I truly believe that students should be publishing their work in some manner for a wider audience. This allows them to become more responsible digital citizens.

I also thoroughly enjoy Ken Robinson. I have seen a number of talks by him and he is always inspiring. His message always points to the importance of allowing students to work to their strengths. Open ended project based learning does just that. It allows students to showcase their knowledge of subject matter in their own way.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

The ever changing world of technology integration

As I was looking at the intime videos and information, I was reminded once again how fast technology changes. These assignments were on the cutting edge when they were created 10 years ago, and many of them now appear very outdated. However, I was also struck by how easy it would be to adapt one of these assignements to current technology. I had this same realization a few years ago when I returned to school to complete my library certification. We had been asked to take an old lesson and revamp it. I looked through my material from MANY years ago (when there was barely any internet to speak of!!!) and found that I didn't need to start over completely. I could easily make my decent lessons good, and my really great lessons even better, simply by adding new technology twists. For example, instead of having my students make a poster for something, I could have them create an advertising campaign using a wide variety of on-line tools. A good lesson does not need to be trashed simply because the technology that it uses is outdated.

The unit that I was particularly interested in was the Solar System Colonization Project for middle school. This caught my eye because one of our teachers has moved grade levels for next year and is being asked to teach Earth Science (an area that she has little background in) and I have been on the look out for resources that could be of use to her. The more I looked at this unit, the more I realized that we could do a lot of neat things with it without having to reinvent the entire thing. When I showed it to her, she was thrilled and now thinks that I am even more amazing!!! You can't beat it.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Spreadsheets in the classroom!

I don't like spreadsheets. I admit it. I find them intimidating. I use them when I have to for budgeting and finances, but I don't like them. (I know that I said that before!) I do like how they make some of my work easier, but I've never really learned how to use them. I know how to plug numbers in to pre-formatted cells like I do for my budget, but I don't really know all that spreadsheets can do. I have learned how to format and create functions, but I don't use them enough to remember from one time to the next, so I find that every time I use a spreadsheet, I have to learn all over again. This is frustrating. This being said, I was pleasantly surprised by this weeks assignments. It never would have occurred to me to use a spreadsheet for a recipe, but it was slick. The lesson that I found was interesting too. Although the basic use for the spreadsheet was fairly predictable, I liked the thinking that was incorporated into the process. The students were really being asked to evaluate and analyze the information that they had inputted. Then they had to speculate about how the numbers would change if they changed certain statistics, etc. and how they would be able to use this information.

I'm not sure that I will ever come to love spreadsheets, but maybe if I continue to work at it, I can learn to peacefully coexist and accept that spreadsheets might have more to offer than I had once believed.

Thursday, May 19, 2011

On-line life

As an LMS I was aware of most of the searching techniques that we discussed in class and the google game, but I hadn't looked at many other search engines. I'm as bad as the kids, I just resort to google because it's familiar. I did find a number of different search engines that were specific for education, and would be great to use with my students. The one I really liked is www.infotopia.info. I have already suggested it to a few teachers, they all loved it, and I put a link to it on my library home page. I need to spend some more time working with this. We have specialized databases that we encourage students to use, this would just be another good step to take.

I was also familiar with google docs as an on-line word processing tool. I like the idea of collaborating on a document and having it available wherever you are. There is nothing more frustrating than getting home and realizing that I saved an important project to my server folder instead of my computer documents and therefore I can't access it from home. However, people have a habit of using what is convenient and familiar which, in this case, is usually Microsoft Word. Again, I am also guilty. As on-line programs become more sophisticated I think people will use them more and more. The one drawback for using these programs with kids is that our students don't have a school e-mail account provided to them so that they often can't create an account. Our new technology coordinator seems to be in favor of this in the future, so maybe there is hope.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Using Productivity Tools - Graphic and Presentation Programs

This week we worked of Graphic and Presentation Programs. I was excited to look at some programs that I was unfamiliar with. I liked the variety of the programs, some of them required little or no skill, and others would be great for some of my more artistic students. I used Pixton for my graphic because it doesn't require much skill, but has many more options that make your comic look more professional. I am a huge comic fan, and love looking for opportunities to use them in the classroom. I find that comics can help students really narrow down the topic to focus on the really important points. They need to be concise and specific in their word choice to make them effective.

The presentation program that I used was less impressive. Although I like the idea of being able to access a presentation from anywhere, I felt like Empressr did not have enough of the features that I use to make a presentation effective. I have used slideshare often, not to create my own presentations yet, but to view those that others have posted to the web.

I have to say that I am not particularly fond of the textbook at this point. I am finding that it is difficult to follow with all of the sidebars. I was reading the first chapter via the posted pdf since my book had not yet arrived and it was a nightmare to get through. Another frustration is that most of the links are no longer active. I know that this is an issue with the rate of change on the internet, but it is still frustrating to see a site that looks like it might be worthwhile, only to find that it no longer exists.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Computers and How They Work Experience

This class was very frustrating for me. I was way out of my comfort zone for most of the time. Although I have to say that I learned a lot. For instance, when I was thinking about my perfect computer, I understood what was meant by the different components. I had never opened a computer before or looked at different processors, etc. Much of my research was also time consuming since I needed to read and re-read in order to make sure that I understood the jargon and the definitions that they were using.

I was really hoping that I would have learned other practical information as well. For instance, when my desktop crashed, how do I go about reimaging it, or what are some things I could try to get my icons back up and running? Some actual troubleshooting techniques. Maybe this is information that will be coming later, but it is an area that I feel that I'm lacking in. We have a tech. department to deal with these issues at school, but they are often occupied elsewhere when we need them and if I knew a few things to try I might be able to fix it without having to wait for them.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Alternate OS

This assignment was very frustrating for me. I was nervous about starting it because I was worried about accidentally installing the program and overriding my current OS. The only computer that I could use to try this project was our desktop - I don't have the rights to download onto my school laptop, and our desktop was out of commission for a while. I finally got it up and running again and then started my project. I chose Ubuntu because it seemed more user friendly, but I think there might have been something wrong with the file itself. Once I got everything downloaded and burned correctly the file wouldn't boot. It just stalled and kept cycling instead of booting up fully. Like I said, a frustrating assignment.

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Anti-Virus Experiences

Okay, this topic could not have come up at a more opportune time. We have a desktop that is about 7 years old and runs windows XP. We have had issues with it in the past and have tried a variety of anti-virus programs. We started with McAfee, since that was the program that was installed on delivery (you got a free year with purchase). Then we started having issues and got the dreaded blue screen of death, even after scanning multiple times a day. We had the computer wiped and then used AVG and Webroot Spysweeper with more success. However, we have been experiencing a lot of problems lately, AVG seems to be able to find viruses when it does a scan, but it doesn't seem to be preventing any (it is regularly finding and removing a number of viruses on each scan) So I took this opportunity to try a new program. I uninstalled AVG and installed a free trial of Vipre Anti-Virus Premium to see what it could do. The reviews all said that it was rated high when it came to preventing viruses from getting through in the first place. I installed it and tried to run a scan - I got a message that said it needed to update the definitions, so I did that. The definitions still said "0", so I did it again. I uninstalled the program and then reinstalled it, with no success. So I accessed the help desk - good way to see their customer support first hand. I got a pretty quick response and we tried a number of things for about an hour. Then the tech. person gave me a link to completely uninstall the program and re-start my computer. Upon restart, I have no icons whatsoever. I can't access anything. I have used the right-click on the desktop, control-alt-delete, etc. and the computer just shows my wallpaper. So....., any thoughts? Was this a problem with the anti-virus software, or was my computer just too far gone for it to help? Maybe the viruses already on the computer where battling with the program and keeping it from installing all of the components. This was not quite what I was hoping for from the experiment. If any of you have suggestions, please let me know. I am at a loss right now!

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

My Computer Experiences

My first computer experience was as a member of the computer club in Middle School. We worked on a Tandy computer, and learned how to write simple programs. There was absolutely nothing fancy about it. This was actually the first time I had ever seen a computer, and I think it was the only one in the building. At home I typed (and I mean typed) my papers on an old manual typewriter and I took typing in high school. I say typing, because that's what it was. We did not learn keyboarding, we typed (at least the school typewriters were electric!)

My brother got a personal computer when he graduated from high school. It was an IBM and used DOS programming. You had to insert a floppy disk every time you turned it on to run the program. Then you had to insert a different floppy disk to run the word processing program (I can't remember what that was called), and then I would print to a dot matrix printer. When he studied abroad for a semester I actually got to use it for my work. I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

When I went to college, we had 2 computer labs for student use. We used Word Perfect for writing papers. All of the computers still used the actual floppy disks, and they crashed often. I can still remember hearing people scream in frustration as they lost their entire term papers.

When I began teaching, we still used an actual gradebook for keeping track of grades and there was one computer in the department office for us to use. Eventually we all got our own computers and actually began using computerized grade books. I couldn't believe how much easier it was, although all of the information was still kept on a disk. The Internet was just beginning to take off when I stopped teaching to stay home and be a mom. I only had a couple of students that last year who were getting information from the Internet and using CDroms.

When I got back into education a couple of years ago, I was astounded by how much I didn't know. My first class "Information Literacy" was a terrifying and exciting whirlwind of technology. I was thrilled with the potential that all of the new technology presented for lesson planning and learning. I immediately started revamping my old lesson plans and couldn't wait to implement the changes.

I have always found computers intriguing, and I have also found that I seem to be able to learn to use new aspects fairly easily. I think that this ability has helped make me more desirable as an educator, and it has certainly made me better at my job.

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Everchanging Technology

This week I have come to the realization that no matter how much I learn about technology, there will always be more to learn. Things change so rapidly, you have to constantly be searching out the next new thing. When I found out that we were discussing social bookmarking this week, I thought that, at least this portion, would be easy for me. Then I sat down to begin the work... I have been using Delicious and Diigo for a little over 2 years now and I love them both. I try to convert everyone that I can, because it has made my life as a student and an educator much easier. However, I had never heard of Diig, Furl or Stumbleupon.
I began using Dropbox about a year ago to share larger files with my classmates and pictures with my family, but I was unfamiliar with Evernote and I had absolutely no idea what FERPA was.

It's easy to see why some of our colleagues get set in their ways. They find the constant change of technology frustrating and unsettling. I try hard to remember my absolute sense of panic and hysteria when I began this journey 2 years ago so that I can be more understanding when I try to talk about the next new thing that I want my staff to try.

Monday, February 21, 2011

I started this blog last year for a class in instructional technology. As you can see, we were required to create three posts for the class. Obviously I haven't kept it up since the class ended. I'm not very comfortable with writing a blog. I guess that I haven't felt that I have anything to say that rates putting it out in cyberspace. I don't know why, since I have absolutely no problems rambling about anything and everything to the people around me. Don't get me wrong. I love the blog format, and follow a number of fantastic educators. I'm continually grateful that they choose to share their experiences and expertise, and I have benefited often. I just always think that I should leave cyberspace to the "experts".

I have been working on changing this view, and hopefully keeping this blog up more regularly will help. I am a new Library Media Specialist and many of the information literacy standards have to do with creating information for others to use. We are supposed to be teaching our students to not only use the Internet to gather information, but to participate in the culture of learning. I guess it's time to practice what I preach.

I just finished my coursework for my Library/Media Certification this past summer. After a whirlwind of learning about new technology that was available, I was excited to put my learning into practice. Although I am familiar with many of the recent innovations, I am not naive enough to think that I know it all. I am continually reminded of this fact as teachers come to me with questions that I cannot answer. As the only technology person in my building, I am trying to increase my knowledge base even more so that these humbling experiences become fewer and farther between.

I am lucky to work with a group of teachers that are also excited about the possibilities that technology brings to the classroom. We have already completed many fabulous projects this year using google earth, glogster, my big campus (a cheaper alternative to Moodle), photostory and pixton. As we move forward, I hope to find even more tools and ideas to bring back to my teachers.